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 … [Read more...]

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. But second, and much more important, the music might not have a pop-like beat at all. And yet it feels like it fits into the culture where pop-like beats dominate. How does that work?I got some insight into that, I thought, when I … [Read more...]

While I work on longer posts...On Monday night in New York there'll be a performance of two pieces of mine. This is at Symphony Space (95th and Broadway) at 7:30, with a pre-concert discussion at 6:30. I'll be speaking. It's all part of Victoria Bond's Cutting Edge festival.My pieces: Sonatina for Clarinet and Piano, and Short Talks, a work in progress for a pianist who also plays a drum. The performers will be Charles Neidich, clarinet, and Jenny Lin, piano and drum. Both pieces are short and, at least to me, packed full of detail. The … [Read more...]

Time to grapple with this. Continuing from my last post on arts advocacy...3. What we should doWell, first, what we shouldn't do. We shouldn't talk as if the arts are better than popular culture, or as if they're the sole or main source of meaning in our society. First, those things aren't true.  (See two previous posts, here and here.) Second, attacking popular culture -- aka what other people like --  wouldn't exactly be a productive way to bring people to our side. "Hi! Support the arts! They're far better than all that … [Read more...]