From my wife Anne Midgette's probing review of classical music in the White House, in today's Washington Post: ...what becomes clearer, in this presentation, is that classical music no longer automatically holds a position of predominance among today's power elite. The day's message was, "Look, classical music can be fun," even though this message is also a tacit admission of the widespread assumption that it isn't. President Obama reflected that, indeed, in his opening remarks, joking that newcomers to classical music shouldn't worry … [Read more...]

In Zombieland (a delectable movie), there's a scene where the four dysfunctional people we're learning to love smash up a store full of tacky western-style souvenirs. And have loads of fun doing it. They're allowed to, because as far as we and they know, they're the only human beings left in the US. It's them against millions of zombies. And what do we hear on the soundtrack while they're smashing the souvenirs? The Marriage of Figaro overture, sounding like wild, crazy fun, just as it ought to in the opera. (It would work even better in the … [Read more...]

Three quick notes about things I learned in Tunis. First: Composers in Guatemala incorporated Afro-Caribbean music into their compositions -- in the 18th century! I learned this from Dieter Lehnhoff, an Austrian violinist and conductor who's been living in Guatemala for many years, and has studied, published, and recorded Guatemalan compositions from past centuries. There are recordings of some of these pieces with the Afro-Caribbean influence, but they're not (I gather) available outside Guatemala. Dieter says the composers used pizzicato … [Read more...]

We hear a lot about classical music in Finland -- about how many orchestras they have, how they train and nourish musicians, how many fine composers they have. Etc. But apparently they have no more luck getting younger people to go to classical concerts than we do. Timo Cantell, an arts management professor at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, gave a paper in Tunis about this. He interviewed people in their 20s and 30s who don't go to classical concerts. He asked them, among many other things, about advertisements for classical concerts: "A … [Read more...]

Two more posts on Tunisia, before I get back to business as usual, including my book. (My other posts on the Third World Forum on Music, held in Tunis, and which I spoke at, are here and here.)I'd mentioned international issues in music, and discussed -- a familiar subject here -- music advocacy, which the organized international music community likes to talk about. Another one, more important, I think, is cultural diversity. Countries around the world want to preserve their local musical cultures, whether that's their ancient musical … [Read more...]