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Greg Sandow on the future of classical music

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Archives for April 2007

Change of pace — my symphony

April 16, 2007 by Greg Sandow

I'm writing this from O'Hare Airport in Chicago, where I'm waiting for a flight to Sioux Falls, SD. There I'm going to hear the premiere of my new symphony, played by the Dakota Chamber Orchestra, the chamber wing of the South Dakota Symphony. Which, in turn, is an orchestra that's getting some deserved buzz among professionals. Delta David Gier, the music director, does a terrific job, doing big, unusual repertoire, and getting the orchestra to play exceptionally well.  He also programs a lot of new music, and commissioned this piece from … [Read more...]

The death of classical music?

April 13, 2007 by Greg Sandow

Of course I've been following the debate (if that's what it is) between Alex Ross (also here) and Norman Lebrecht (see also the comments to his blog post) about the classical record industry. Nobody who's read me a lot will be surprised to know I side with Lebrecht, and I think there's a very simple way of stating the issue. Classical recording used to be a profit-making venture, both for major labels and small ones, without anybody needing to release any crossover albums. Well, OK, major conductors might record an LP of Strauss waltzes, to … [Read more...]

Boring old Handel

April 9, 2007 by Greg Sandow

There was a British newspaper piece linked on Musical America this week, something about Handel operas being boring. And then we had the opening of Handel's Giulio Cesare at the Met, with a worshipful review in the New York Times.  ("[T]he richness and endless variety of the music... the piercing psychological insights of this staggering masterpiece.") There's one thing I know for sure -- performances of Handel's operas today are nothing like the performances in Handel's own time. Back then, these operas (and in fact all operas, by all … [Read more...]

Recovering

April 8, 2007 by Greg Sandow

I'm sorry I've been inactive so long, but I'm happy to say that I'm home from a rather long hospital stay, and then a session in a rehab facility -- and now I'm recovering. There's a lot I could say about how medical institutions work, based on my own experience these past weeks, and on things my friends and family have gone through. Maybe I could put it this way -- try to imagine Gray's Anatomy combined with Catch-22. Or imagine a version of  Gray's Anatomy (a more truthful one) in which half the communications between people on the … [Read more...]

Greg Sandow

Though I've been known for many years as a critic, most of my work these days involves the future of classical music -- defining classical music's problems, and finding solutions for them. Read More…

About The Blog

This started as a blog about the future of classical music, my specialty for many years. And largely the blog is still about that. But of course it gets involved with other things I do — composing music, and teaching at Juilliard (two courses, here … [Read More...]

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How to write a press release

As a footnote to my posts on classical music publicists, and how they could do better, here's a post I did in 2005 -- wow, 11 years ago! --  about how to make press releases better. My examples may seem fanciful, but on the other hand, they're almost … [Read More...]

The future of classical music

Here's a quick outline of what I think the future of classical music will be. Watch the blog for frequent updates! I Classical music is in trouble, and there are well-known reasons why. We have an aging audience, falling ticket sales, and — in part … [Read More...]

Timeline of the crisis

Here — to end my posts on the dates of the classical music crisis  — is a detailed crisis timeline. The information in it comes from many sources, including published reports, blog comments by people who saw the crisis develop in their professional … [Read More...]

Before the crisis

Yes, the classical music crisis, which some don't believe in, and others think has been going on forever. This is the third post in a series. In the first, I asked, innocently enough, how long the classical music crisis (which is so widely talked … [Read More...]

Four keys to the future

Here, as promised, are the key things we need to do, if we're going to give classical music a future. When I wrote this, I was thinking of people who present classical performances. But I think it applies to all of us — for instance, to people who … [Read More...]

Age of the audience

Conventional wisdom: the classical music audience has always been the age it is now. Here's evidence that it used to be much younger. … [Read More...]

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