April 2009 Archives

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.

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.

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

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.

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. 

Last night at Le Poisson Rouge (the NY club where I seem to go all the time, to hear classical music) a cellist named Joshua Roman came on stage. He said hello, in the friendliest, most club-appropriate way, and then said he'd play the prelude from the third Bach cello suite. "If you know it," he added (or words to this effect), "you know what I mean. And if you don't know it, you're about to hear it!" 

Hypothetical Concert for People My Own Age

It occurred to me that one of the ways musicians try to encourage audiences to find relevance in Classical music is by bringing the composers of that music to life.  Program notes, pre-concert talks, informal explanations during concerts - whatever the method - musicians often provide biographical information about the composers who wrote the pieces and the circumstances of these compositions.  Ours is a narrative society; we like to hear and tell stories.  Accordingly, both performers and audiences like to know the backstory of the music.  If the audience begins to care about the story behind a piece, the story of the person who wrote it, then they become even more interested in hearing the piece itself.  On this principle, what better way to get audiences to care about any composition than to let them write the music themselves?  

Now this may sound like a crazy idea, and I certainly haven't figured out all of the ins and outs of what this process may entail.  Or maybe someone somewhere has already done this; I don't know.  Please forgive the mess of ideas, but this is a definitely a brainstorm-in-progress.  This is how I imagine a Democratic Composition Project:

The basic premise is that a system is set up in which potential audience members from the general public are encouraged to submit ideas which can be turned into music.  These musical ideas, in whatever form they are gathered, are then compiled and condensed by a musician (or composer) into some sort of coherent notation, whether a file on Sibelius or some sort of graphic notation by hand, in which case the musicians would improvise according to the images in their parts.  Preferably the final piece would be about fifteen minutes in length - something not so short as to seem insubstantial, but not too long either.  Within the shortest amount of time possible (the closer to the deadline of submissions the better, so people's interest doesn't wane), this piece would be performed at a concert.  The people who submitted ideas would naturally be curious to hear what their piece sounds like.  This performance would be their chance! 

I imagine this project would work very well through the internet.  The organizers of this Democratic Composition Project would create a website where people can deposit their ideas.  The site can explain the concept of the project and the performing resources available (your ideas will be incorporated into a piece about yea minutes long and performed and recorded live. This is the available instrumentation....or whatever).  I imagine people could submit an idea in whatever form inspires them: perhaps a jpg image of something, or a fragment of text that could become a lyric, or maybe even a sound file of a groove they wrote on Garageband.  We could advertise on Facebook, or even send announcements of this project to other universities around the country.  On a local level (so we could fill the seats at the concert), the organizers of the project would make classroom visits to local schools or organizations (since we're gearing towards people my age, I'd suggest we start with other university students in Rochester, at the UofR or RIT perhaps).  They could post flyers at popular university locations, within the music schools, or at Java's or Boulder Coffee, all of which would direct people to the website.  Any online submission would also require the submission of a functional email address.  This way we could directly contact the people who submitted in order to announce the performance date, time, and place, and - especially for those who are not in the Rochester area - the release of a recording of this piece that would be available for purchase.  I like the idea of the "pay what you can policy" where people could download the recording for free, but have the option to pay if they so choose. 

I feel that the DCP would be a great gateway piece to introduce audience members to other music on the concert program.  Maybe it will turn out as a fantastically interesting work, or maybe it will just sound awful.  But either way, the audience that comes to hear it will bring a curiosity and enthusiasm to the concert and would be especially receptive to hearing other compositions in a new light.  The audience would be encouraged to listen to the creative output of the other compositions on the program, to try to imagine what creative ideas sparked these works.  

It seems to me that the DCP could be a concert program in itself - it really depends on the scale of the project, of how many submissions are received, and how easily they can be compiled into some coherent form. But I propose that the Democratic Composition Project be performed at the beginning of the program and be followed by other compositions with the same spirit of improvisation and creativity.  If, during the course of rehearsals, it becomes apparent that the DCP bears any strong resemblance to the works of any other specific composer (maybe it sounds aleatoric, for instance, or expressionistic) the concert can include a similar composition on the program. The rest of the program could be an homage to improvisatory creative work, and could include such pieces as Bill Dobbins' Preludes and Predilections for piano, compositions based on Classical works such as a Chopin mazurka that include an open section in the middle for improvisation.  The program might also include a Mozart piano concerto with improvised cadenzas (or, if time is an issue, just one movement), a string quartet playing a theme and variations, a jazz combo improvising over a standard or pop tune, or...?  This is a tremendously flexible program, so long as the unifying theme of creative nexus of ideas is emphasized throughout.  

Leah wondered if this idea might be too crazy to make sense, but she can trust her instincts. It's workable. On a similar tip, Jon Deak, associate principal bass of the NY Philharmonic, has been doing workshops for years in which he teaches children and adults to compose, whether they've had musical training or not. I took part in one of those workshops once, and the results were astonishing. Anyone can compose, given the right encouragement (plus sympathetic musicians to play the compositions, which when people don't know how to read and write music might use graphic notation). 

In today's Boston Globe (Sunday, April 12), a librarian named Karen Zundel is quoted, talking about why she loves the arts:

"The arts are what sustain us and bring individuals and communities together and help us to connect with our innermost beings," Zundel says. "A new car won't do that. When you buy a new car or a new outfit, you get that little thrill that lasts very temporarily, and then it's gone. But I think art really sustains me. It lasts."

Nicely put, and of course it's exactly the kind of thing professional arts advocates like to say. But what artist got Zundel talking like that? Ellis Paul, a New England singer-songwriter, who'd dropped his record label and instead raised money from his fans to finance his next album. Zundel was explaining why she's saved up money to make a contribution.

Which demonstrates the truth of what I said in my posts about the arts and popular culture. (Here and here.) In our time, many people -- maybe most people, and certainly most younger people -- don't separate popular culture and art. Art is where you find it, and popular culture is just as likely to produce art as the formal, established, funded, capital-A arts. Certainly Karen Zundel seems to think so. Or, to put it differently, if we think of art the way Karen Zundel does, then popular culture (or lots of it) is art.

The Globe piece, by the way, is fascinating reading. And even better is one on the same subject from USA Today. It's a model that, I think, can easily work in classical music. Get your fans to finance the recording you want to make, by paying for it before you record it. Some will even give you lots of money. Read the stories, and see.

Christopher O'Riley, at Miller Theatre, in New York, on March 27. He played Shostakovich Preludes and Fugues, along with some of the Radiohead transcriptions he's played many times before. Full house. Young audience. Radiohead fans, I'd guess, but they applauded really hard for Shostakovich.

So why was this so important? Seems to me it gives us one model for putting classical music in the same world as popular culture, in this case by putting the two literally next to each other.

And don't think the combination didn't work! Chris didn't segregate the two kinds of music into two halves of the program. He mostly alternated them, playing a prelude and fugure, then Radiohead, then back to Shostakovich. A couple of times he played two Radiohead transcriptions in a row. But there was a constant alternation, which made the blend seem entirely natural. Neither music seemed "better" than the other, or deeper, or whatever honorific you want to pin on whatever kind of music you admire.

Including "appealing"! Both musics here were quite appealing, and while I love those preludes and fugues (astonishing music that hasn't, I think, quite made it into the heart of the piano repertoire, where it deserves to be), I wasn't alone in likeing them. As I said, the audience, even if they cheered more loudly for Radiohead, applauded quite warmly for Shostakovich.

And some of the segues were astonishing. Sometimes Chris would go directly from the end of one of the fugues right into the start of the following Radiohead song, and the transition would be magical. For a moment, it wasn't clear which piece was which, or, maybe more profoundingly, which genre either was supposed to fit into. They clearly belonged together. That was the bottom line.

Something else that made this good. It wasn't an effort to win a new audience for classical music. Radiohead wasn't the bait, put on the program to get people listening to something classical. Chris loves both. So he played both. He'll be doing something similar on April 17, at Miller, where he'll pair Nick Drake transcriptions with Debussy, and on May 5 he'll link Elliott Smith and Schumann.

Because this wasn't outreach -- wasn't didactic or eduational, wasn't anything it didn't seem to be, on its face -- that made it genuine. No preaching to the audience. No hoping (as far as I know) that for the concert really to reach its goals, the people in the audience now have to start going to purely classical recitals. It was what it was. We can't hope, in classical music's future, to somehow convert younger people into the kind of classical audience we have now. They are what they are, and they're perfectly willing to appreciate classical music, especially in a context that feels friendly and familiar. And artistically convincing to them.

I don't say that all classical concerts in the future will be like this. I couldn't possibly know such a thing. And there's also no need for it. Once classical music really does take its place in mainstream culture (a better term, maybe, than "popular culture"), then people will go to purely classical concerts who don't go now, and some will, you'd think, become classical music fans, just as people now might be fans of ska or punk or classic rock.

But certainly we'll have concerts featuring classical music along with other genres, simply because many people like more than one kind of music. Which, in the end, is the key to the Christopher O'Riley performances. He's playing music that he loves. And he's breaking out of the traditional classical box to do that.

In the maintream classical world, you play your instrument, in Chris's case the piano. Your instrument has a repertoire of music written for it by classical composers. If you're going to give a concert, you choose your music from that repertoire.

Other kinds of musicians don't work like that. They say, "I'm a musician. I play the piano. What kind of music do I want to play?" And then there's no telling what they'll come up with.

This, as I see it, is what Chris does. He's a musician. He loves Radiohead. So he plays Radiohead (having done a great deal of creative work to write transcriptions of their songs for the piano). And he loves Shostakovich, and thinks the preludes and fugues will fit with Radiohead, so he plays both at the same concert. End of story! The key to this isn't, again, that it reaches out to nonclassical audiences, or that it daringly breaks boundaries. The key is simply that it's what Chris loves, an expression of himself as a musician. And that's why it's so convincing.

If you take the troubleto read this blog on the Web, you get one thing the RSS feed can't give you. (And believe me, I understand the convenience of RSS feeds.) 

I had a lovely comment at the end of March from Adrienne McKinney, a piano teacher in Lexington, KY. She'd read my "Two Things I've Written" post, and my recent piece in the Wall Street Journal on alt-classical music. I'm touched that she took me seriously, and replied like this:

In reading your piece here and the WSJ article, the general idea seems to be that if we want to save classical music we need to 'let it go,' in a sense, or at least loosen up a bit. We need to be willing to embrace something different that has a chance of attracting a bigger audience, like the nonclassical nights in NY, in order that the concerts we love to attend now -- the traditional classical symphony or piano recital for that matter -- can still exist. What can I as an independent music teacher do? How can I break out of my mainstream mold and take this concept to heart? How can local music teaching organizations get involved?

These are terrific questions. She found one answer, which she put out on Twitter:

Thinking of having each student bring me a CD or mp3 of a favorite song so we can do a studio project. Hoping to build on @gsandow 's ideas.

The idea, of course, is to engage with the nonclassical music her students like, and bring it into their lessons with her. I like that! Could help develop a student's musicianship, for one thing, if with Adrienne's help they take a recording of a song and do something with it on the piano. And of course it puts the classical music they normally play at their lessons alongside other music they know.

So what do the rest of us think? Does anyone have ideas for Adrienne? And for all the piano teachers out there? This could be a very productive discussion.

I've been pondering the reasons why the composers I call alt-classical seem to strike a nerve with the new young audience I keep talking about. It's not just because these composers sometimes write music with a pop-like beat. First, the pop-like beat might not be steady, and might just pop up here and there. 

While I work on longer posts...

Time to grapple with this. Continuing from my last post on arts advocacy...

Of all Mahler's works, it may well be the astonishingly "modern" Seventh Symphony that most fully expresses the mayhem of living in the contemporary world. It lays out the conflicts and contrasts, then offers a kind of alternative refuge--dream-like, entrancing 'night music.' In the end, though, it is in this world, not some remote afterlife, that this symphony finds its true victory. It seems to say: "This is life. It's rough--but I am going to look it square in the face, and win."