Monthly Archives: April 2009

“Two guys” identified

In my post a while ago about Chris O’Riley’s terrific concert of Radiohead and Shostakovich, I neglected to mention the graphics that were a notable part of it. Steve Smith, in a comment, asked me what I thought of them (a compassionate way of pointing out my omission!), and, explaining what had gone on, I talked about “two guys with laptops” sitting on stage, creating the effective graphics in real time.

And then the two guys e-mailed to tell me (again very politely) that they had names. Which I should have mentioned! So apologies to Stephen Byram and Jonathon Rosen, who created the graphics, and were an integral part of the concert I liked so much.

Reaching a young audience — from a student

A while ago I posted the response from one of my Eastman students to a question I gave my Eastman class on a takehome exam. How would you design a concert to reach students your own age? Leah Goldstein thought she’d get people in the audience to help write the music.

(The course, by the way, is on the future of classical music. It’s a shorter version of the one I teach at Juilliard.)

So now here’s another answer from Kara LaMoure — long, detailed, smart, and passionate. Of course I’m putting it here with Kara’s permission. I’ll let her speak for herself, but note two important points she makes. First, that people her age don’t want to be educated at a concert. And, second, that — no matter what older people might think — people her age don’t need visual stimulation at a concert. Instead, she says, they’re likely to find it gimmicky.

Here’s what she wrote:

This question is considerably harder [than the other question on the takehome exam] because it involves something that doesn’t exist–that is, a symphony or similar entity that performs with my age group in mind.  I wonder if I am the right person to devise a solution to the problem, though.  In this course we have established that only a teeny-tiny percentage of young adults make up the classical music audience, and since I am a fanatic and avid student of classical music, I don’t know that I would be a good representative of my generation in this instance.  Besides, for me, the current status quo is good enough.  When I attend symphony concerts with my fellow music students, we analyze the performance as a spectator does at a sporting event, laugh at the composition as one might for a line in a movie, and gossip about the performers like tabloid journalists.  The symphony as it is works well for people like us, which is why I propose an alternate kind of group altogether for a performance geared toward lay young adults.  This group would be a chamber orchestra that goes on tours much like a rock band would (I’m pretending here that money is no object).  When making artistic decisions for this group, I think it is important to focus on what the people of my generation, unlike the older audience at the symphony, do not want from a concert.

The first thing that we do not want is an education.  We have already spent our entire remembered lives in school, and now we think that we can discover things for ourselves.  We want to bike across entire continents, run campaigns for politicians and parties we just learned about, impart our vast newfound wisdom to the poor younger generations, and take up wild new hobbies like skydiving and classical music.  If we really want to know something, we will go to Wikipedia.com, and if we are among the lucky many who have ditched our Bachelor’s degrees in Medieval Literature and Philosophy for jobs in finance or analysis, chances are we will access the website immediately from our iPhones.  All this is to say–enough with the program notes and the pre-concert lectures!  In my generation, we already know everything, and if for some reason we’ve missed something, we will learn about it ourselves (maybe by going to more concerts!).  Program notes for my traveling orchestra will feature headshots and bios of musicians, even the ugly or strange ones.  After all, fat Indie rockers who hide behind their hair and their glasses still end up marrying hot actresses.  Artist statements are a must.  The audience needs to realize that the performers are just as smart, hip, and funny as they are.  Composers, too!  For a piece by Mozart or Brahms, I would let the composers speak in their own words by publishing excerpts from their personal writings about the piece or their work.  Including an old dead guy with the living composers would be seen as humorous but also trendy.

My program might include the following:

A commissioned brass fanfare.  This would be played in “surround sound” with the instrumentalists standing in all areas of the theater.  Brass players are lucky in that they can play as loudly and as passionately as they want to.  I would never tell them to back off during rehearsal, even though they might blow out an audience member’s ear.  The beauty of placing performers in the audience is that each person hears the piece with a different balance.

[Arvo] Pärt:  Tabula Rasa.  I did not discover the music of Pärt until I was in college.  At the time I was not majoring in music, but I was taking a seminar about contemporary art and noise, so I brought Tabula Rasa in to share with my classmates.  I had planned to play only a small section, but when the music started, the whole room sat in awe of the piece, and our teacher allowed us to listen to the entire work.  This piece is amazing in that it can facilitate meditation, relaxation, or just the absorption of its beautiful sounds.  Another piece that would work similarly is Kayhan Kalhor’s Silent City.

Stravinsky:  Pulcinella.  I say Pulcinella, but I think any of Stravinsky’s chamber works, like the Octet or Histoire du Soldat, would work very well.  They allow the audience to really appreciate the virtuosity of the performers while not completely overwhelming them with strangeness.  The way that Stravinsky mixes in many different styles of music and manipulates the timbres of instruments never fails to blow me away.  I also think that smaller works such as these can pave the way toward an understanding of the composer’s great masterworks, such as his ballets.

Improvisations over drum-and-bass or other electronic music.  People in my generation listen to music so loud that they can feel it.  Honestly, it’s the most powerful way to experience it.  In the absence of a Mahlerian orchestra, complete with pipe organ and massive regional chorus, I think some nice bass beats could do the trick.  If the jazz musicians that play at Java’s Coffee are any indication, watching people improvise is one of the most amazing ways to connect with a musical performance.  Let’s combine these two elements and see what happens!

Original compositions for world percussion and chamber orchestra, or any other world music ensemble.  Here I am thinking about the Silk Road Project, which must have been one of the most successful civic music projects in recent memory.  The music satisfies my generation’s cravings for the exotic and also eliminates any worries that my group is pretending to be a symphony orchestra of the same old Western tradition.

Pieces by well-known indie artists (we’ve discussed Jonny Greenwood…how about Sufjan Stevens or Jonsi Birgisson from Sigur Ros?).  Works by these composers, or songwriters, or however you would like to call them, already contain many of the same elements as “classical” music, but they are way more popular and way more exciting to listen to.  I suggest that we just forget that there is actually a distinction between classical and rock and just play some amazing music for the instrumentation of my ensemble.

Which brings me to my next point of what my generation does not want.  We do not want just a “rock concert” or a “classical concert”.  We want a concert of the artists that we like, who are of course very independent and defy all classification.  My hypothetical ensemble would be marketed as primarily that ensemble and not so much as a group of compositions to come hear.  Yes, the composers of the music are important, and the music is nothing if it does not convey its story, but the audience members must first make a connection with the performers in order to enjoy a performance. 

My generation doesn’t

need bells and whistles, either.  I am thinking of the popular trend for symphony orchestras to play video while music is being performed or for actors to act our scenes that correspond to the music.  I think that a generation of people who grew up with the over-stimulation of video games, computers, and busy soccer schedules would see these things as gimmicky.  If we cannot go to a progressive classical music concert and feel like we’re escaping the normal flow of life, then what is the point?  My ensemble will wear all black, and we will not constantly keep the audience separated from us by darkness.  If the whole orchestra is playing, then the stage will be lit accordingly, but if something is happening in the audience, or if there is just a soloist playing, the lighting will change.  The Pärt might be played in darkness, and a rousing world music piece might be played with all the lights on. 

The composers and conductors will participate in the music-making–they will serve as members of the ensemble when their pieces are not being played.  This way, all the musicians are on a level playing field, really.  And there will be multiple conductors.  Conducting is of a higher quality when someone can be an expert on the piece, and if the audience members come to talk to us after the concert, we can refer them to different conductors who each have different strengths.

I close with this thought:  it is important to keep in mind that not everyone will like the music that we play.  Even the most popular rock bands have their haters, and I hope that the classical music world or my imaginary ensemble won’t be offended if we can’t convert the whole world to the wonders of our craft.  We must simply do what we can as performers and hope that we have somehow helped satisfy the audience members’–and our own!–desires.

Moment of truth

We’re all concerned, I’m sure, about the impact of the economy on classical music organizations. 

And we’ve seen some trouble. Groups going out of businesses, big orchestras making cutbacks. The same thing, no surprise, as we see elsewhere, in the profit-making world. The same economic factors are in play. 

But here’s something to look for very soon. Large classical music institutions are finishing their subscription campaigns. They’re trying to get new people to subscribe, and, above all, they’re trying to get current subscribers to renew their subscriptions. 

Normally this is more or less routine. Most existing subscribers renew. Yes, there’s been a falloff in subscriptions over many years, and that appears to be a long-term trend, which shows no sign of reversing. But still — even though marketing people at these institutions work hard on subscription campaigns — renewals are, in the larger scheme of things, relatively routine.

But maybe not this year! From what I hear, single-ticket sales have been surprisingly strong during the current season, despite the economy. And subscribers bought their tickets before the economy collapsed, so they’re still showing up. Attendance, therefore, is remaining at whatever level it was at before the economy got into trouble. (My impression here is based on anecdotal data. If I’m wrong, please correct me!)

Subscriptions for next year, though, could spell trouble. Will people renew? Maybe not, or, more precisely, maybe not in the numbers seen in previous years. Maybe some notable percentage of subscribers — some of whom may even have lost their jobs — will look at their budgets, and say, “No, not this time.” 

Anecdotal data once again: preliminary indications are that subscription sales are falling. Maybe not by any overwhelming percentage, but even a 5% falloff can mean a significant hit to the bottom line. 

So this is data we ought to be looking for. When the first round of the subscription campaign is over (organizations may launch other campaigns later on), how will the numbers look. Memo to my brothers and sisters in the music writing biz: Go right to your local orchestra, opera company, and presenting group. Go to any chamber music institutions that sell subscriptions. And ask all these people when their current subscription campaign will end, and, when it ends, ask them for some numbers. 

Don’t let them hide the figures, or stonewall. If they do those things, tell the world that they’re doing it. We all have a right to know how the classical music business is doing. It’s our music, too. 

Game, promotion, scavenger hunt

Out of friendship and admiration for Bang on a Can composer Michael Gordon and his publicist — that would be my friend Amanda Ameer, whose “Life’s A Pitch” blog is essential reading — I’m helping publicize a performance this Wednesday at Le Poisson Rouge in New York. On the program: Michael’s very nice piece Trance.

To hear a sample of it, the very last track of the CD, just go here. To hear the previous track…well, it’s a puzzle. Think of music blogs you might have visited, and go to the one that licks its lips, metallically, in the dark of night. (Its creator can be found posting comments here.) There you’ll find a hint about other blogs to go to, where you can hear other tracks from the piece, seven in all.

If you find all seven blogs, you can win free tickets to the show. First three to find all seven should email the list to Amanda. Good luck!

And if you just want to buy the music (not a bad option) on CD or as a download, go here.

YouTube (sigh) Symphony

I wanted to like the YouTube Symphony, whose concert disappointed me. I really did want to like them. Their backstory is irresistible, obviously. Musicians from many countries audition by video, professionals pick finalists, the world votes to decide the winners, everybody (some barely able to believe that it’s real) come to Carnegie Hall, the Mecca of classical music, to play a concert. 

And this is, in many ways, good for classical music. Press from many countries thronged the press conferences, interviewed musicians, came to rehearsals and the concerts. Major American TV shows featured the happenings. People who’d never go to classical concerts came to Carnegie Hall. 

As Clive Gillinson, Carnegie Hall’s Executive and Artistic Director, said at a press conference (I wasn’t there, but I was told about it on good authority), classical music needs more exposure. It needs to reconnect with the culture at large. (OK, those are words I often use, but I gather that Gillinson said much the same thing.) And this event helps classical music do that. I think it’s another step — and a big one — in something I talked about here a while ago (here and here), a steady change in the way the world looks at classical music, so it now seems far more accessible and interesting than it did 10 years ago. 

But to understand why I wasn’t just disappointed, but actually dismayed, after the concert, you have to understand how the event was produced. There was video throughout, introducing the musicians. These were videos the players had made themselves, in the best YouTube tradition, and they were irresistible. Nobody with a heart could help loving these people, being thrilled for them, and wishing them all the success in the world. 

But the videos also kept telling us, implicitly and explicitly, that the concert was a wonderful concert. And then there was Michael Tilson Thomas, who conducted most of it, just about jumping out of his skin with delight, making a huge commotion about everything (as he so often does), telling us over and over again how wonderful everything was. 

And then there were classical music celebrities. Yo Yo Ma and Lang Lang on video. Gil Shaham live on stage, playing a movement from a Mozart concerto. And a Britten folksong arrangement, with the orchestra’s violins. Rising cello star Joshua Roman playing unaccompanied Bach. (I incorrectly identified him as a member of the orchestra, in my post on the orchestra’s club night.) Young pianist Yuja Wang, an eye-popping virtuoso. 

And then there were three young kids, pianists, picked by Lang Lang as rising stars, playing a Rachmaninoff piece for six hands. They really didn’t know how the music went, and couldn’t quite get the rhythms together, but they were prodigious little finger machines, were completely adorable, and knew exactly how to end with a flourish, musical and visual, to make the audience explode. 

Nor should I forget the visuals. Projections, expertly produced. Floating clouds for Debussy, though that was the least of it. Musical notes soaring off in an ecstatic spiral, almost literally from Yuja Wang’s head, as she played. Colors, lights, glitz. I’ve never seen a classical concert produced like this. It must have cost a fortune. 

And it all conspired to say, “This is wonderful! This is special! This is heaven!” And while it was wonderful to see classical music given the kind of multimedia treatment pop concerts get — though it outdid most pop shows I’ve been at — and wonderful to ask myself what kind of mileage the Chicago Symphony, let’s say, might get if they produced their concerts this way, it also was more than a little bit much. I was transported back to corporate press conferences I attended years ago, from companies like Sony, where nothing’s left to chance, everything’s overproduced, and the production takes over every cubic inch of mental space, so there isn’t any room for independent thought. The concert, you just about had to think was wonderful. How could it not be? We were told every moment that it was!

Afterwards, outside Carnegie Hall, out on 57th Street, TV crews from Britain, Germany, and Japan (along with maybe other countries that I didn’t spot) were stopping people — including, I think, some celebrities (but I’m bad at recognizing celebrities) — to ask what they thought. Everyone I saw them interview was starry-eyed. Everybody thought it all had been wonderful.

But at the heart of all of this — at its artistic heart, where the music lives — something was hollow. The playing wasn’t wonderful. Nor was it, for the most part, scrappy or exciting, which could easily have made me love it, even if technically it wasn’t so great. You can read two reviews, linked on ArtsJournal, one from the New York Times (favorable), another from my wife, in the Washington Post (not favorable). Not surprisingly, I agree with my wife, not because we conspire to give the world the same opinion on everything, but because, after 10 years together, I know we hear the same things, though we sometimes draw different conclusions from what we hear. 

So here’s what I heard. (I’d first thought, when I contemplated writing this, that I’d be kind, and not go into detail, because I loved the musicians so much. But given the hype, I”d rather be honest.) Right at the start, when the orchestra began with the third movement of the Brahms Fourth Symphony, there were details unattended to. Small notes were obscured. And the strings were underpowered, compared to the rest of the orchestra. 

Then came what, in retrospect, seems like a programming  mistake, four pieces designed to show off each orchestral section. In an excerpt from Lou Harrison’s Canticle No. 3 (and how lovely to hear Harrison on a concert like this), the percussion couldn’t seem to find a rhythm, to agree on exactly where the beats were. In an excerpt from the Dvorak D minor wind serenade, the winds sounded weak and dry. In an antiphonal Gabrielli piece, played from two sides of the balcony (another terrific idea), the brass didn’t have much heft, and was unfocused rhythmically (even taking each section separately, and cutting them slack on the more complex problem of getting the two groups together). 

And really, I think I’ll stop now, because I’m feeling more than a little cruel right now, even though (to be perfectly honest), I’ve pulled a few punches in what I’ve just said, no matter how critical I might have seemed. I‘ll just add that the piece that ended the first half, Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries, unfortunately couldn’t have been better chosen to highlight some of the orchestra’s problems, in this case with the brass, which just didn’t have either the weight or the rhythmic flair to project the famous tune. 

Things were better in the second half, in part because of the repertoire. A new piece by Mason Bates (featuring himself as DJ, playing his laptop) was terrific music. John Cage’s Renga, in which the orchestra improvised, got exactly the right treatment, full of spirit and an honest sense of musical exploration. 

And maybe the highlight of the concert was a new Tan Dun piece, Internet Symphony No. 1, “Eroica,” which was triumphantly vulgar (I loved every moment of it, including the flamboyant quotes from the Eroica Symphony), and also played with an explosive exuberance I didn’t hear in the other pieces. This was exactly what I would have loved to hear throughout the evening, and which would have made me love the concert, no matter what detailed fau

lts I heard. Maybe the piece sounded so good because the musicians had rehearsed their parts individually with Tan, online. Or maybe it’s an easy piece to play. Or maybe — how’s this for heresy? — Tan is a better conductor than MTT (at least in his own work), and/or was more fun to work with. 

But some people didn’t even hear the second half. During intermission, I talked to some orchestra professionals I know, and none of them were happy. Two even left, one out of boredom, the other with a sense (I think it’s right to put it this way) of faint disgust. 

And here’s where I felt, if not disgusted, then dismayed. The event came off, I’m sure unintentionally, as an orgy of self-congratulation. To be fair, the playing did get better, and (though the final programmed piece, the finale of the Tchaikovsky Fourth, was oddly square) the encore, the big march from Berlioz’s Damnation of Faust, had a lot of energy, even if it didn’t match the Tan Dun explosion. And maybe, maybe…maybe if the group had played together longer, if they’d had a couple of tryout concerts in Dubai and Prague, if they’d had more rehearsal, or if the New York rehearsals hadn’t (of necessity, I’m sure) been so unremitting…maybe then the concert might have been more powerful.

But as things were, the actual playing got a little lost in the sea of self-congratulation. (None of which, I want to stress as strongly as I can, was the musicians’ fault. Nor did they participate in it, though the use that was made of their videos helped create the problem.) And there was something very sad in this. To overpraise things, to make them seem better than they are — and to do this so relentlessly — degrades standards, just a little. 

And I wonder whether many people involved in the planning, though they set out with the best will in the world, and were genuinely excited, maybe should reconsider what they did, and ask if they didn’t contribute to something that was as bad, in certain ways, as it was good. It’s fine to get starry-eyed over classical music. But it’s sad to think that this concert didn’t measure up, not to top professional standards (which wouldn’t be fair to hold this group to), but to the standards of the good youth orchestras I’ve heard. 

Start, of course, with the Simon Bolivar group from Venezuela, who are deservedly world-famous. But add the orchestras I’ve heard at the University of Maryland and at Florida State, and at the  National Orchestral Institute in Maryland…these set a standard that the YouTube Symphony can’t yet meet. And while it’s hardly fair to expect the audience at Carnegie Hall to have heard these groups, and to make comparisons, it’s also not quite right to gush endlessly about how wonderful everything is, without a word or two of honest caution. 

Would it have hurt for MTT, let’s say, to tell us that what we’re hearing was a work in progress? That only so much could be done in the rehearsal time available? That everyone involved had done wonderful work, and made great progress — as I’m sure they did — but that there still was ground to cover? And that everyone involved knew that, and didn’t want anyone to think that, as yet, they’d achieved any kind of musical triumph?

That would have been refreshing. And, I think, would have reinforced the honor of everyone involved. 

I’ll finish with one more cautionary thought. A lot of people look down on American Idol. It’s cheap, people say. It’s trashy. The winners are shallow, empty, full of glitz. 

But one thing American Idol does expose is chops. Who has them, and who doesn’t. Nobody can pretend that some attractive contestant can sing well, if he or she doesn’t, and others on the show can plainly sing much better. 

Nor is this complicated. Anyone can hear it, if the comparisons are right there on TV. And if orchestras somehow could compete like that, everyone would have heard the problems at Carnegie Hall last night. It’s not rocket science. You don’t need musical training. Put the Ride of the Valkyries, as the YouTube players played it, next to other performances by other orchestras (as in fact you’ll be able to do, right on YouTube, once they post the videos of last night’s event), and you’ll see exactly why I wasn’t happy. 

I know the audience at Carnegie Hall couldn’t do that. And if they were enthusiastic, I also know that their enthusiasm was entirely genuine. But the people in charge of the event, most of them, know perfectly well, or ought to know, that the playing wasn’t all that good, and somewhere in the mix of all their duties, all their work to present and publicize the concert, they should have taken time for a word of caution, for the sake of simple honesty, and to preserve the high artistic standards that supposedly make classical music better than what we see every night on TV.