Sandow tag:www.artsjournal.com,2008-02-19:/sandow//20 2011-08-18T01:52:43Z Greg Sandow on the future of classical music Movable Type 4.31-en Going fishing tag:www.artsjournal.com,2011:/sandow//20.46814 2011-08-18T01:43:08Z 2011-08-18T01:52:43Z I'm going on vacation, and won't blog again till after Labor Day. Or, more evocatively, I'm going to treat myself to some time in my private art colony, aka my country home in Warwick, NY. Where I'll relaunch my book... Sandow http://www.artsjournal.com/sandow/ I'm going on vacation, and won't blog again till after Labor Day. Or, more evocatively, I'm going to treat myself to some time in my private art colony, aka my country home in Warwick, NY. Where I'll relaunch my book (the link takes you to old versions of it), and compose. (A cello piece.)

Some thoughts, though, before I go. From time to time I send out a newsletter. Can't believe I haven't mentioned it in the blog, but if you click, you can read the latest issue. And if you click again, you can subscribe. In the fall, the newsletter will show up more often -- every month, I'm thinking. It's a way to catch up with things you might have missed in the blog, to find out what I think is most important, of all the things I'm thinking and doing.

And, just maybe, to have some fun with things that never find their way here. For instance, an escalator in the Archives station on the Washington, DC Metro. It sang, and I recorded it on my iPhone. Some of the most wistful music I've heard in quite a while. An escalator with personality! (If it was a character in Winnie The Pooh, it'd be Eeyore.)

Finally...it seems a little distant now (and I have to say I'm getting tired of debates with people who just don't think that classical music is in trouble, or that it doesn't need to change). But some readers will remember when I blogged about the speech Jesse Rosen gave in June, at the League of American Orchestras conference. Jesse is the League's president, and I'm certainly not the only one who thought he broke some new ground in what he said, by forthrightly stating that orchestras are in trouble, and won't survive without major change.

If you read my post, you'll find links to what he said. Powerful people in the orchestra world have said these things before, but not in public. And definitely not when they were speaking in an official capacity to the entire field.

So good for Jesse. But the reason I bring this up here isn't just to praise him once again, but to talk about the comments my post got. Two people who sharply disagree with me posted their disagreement. But they didn't say that what Jesse said was horrible, that it would destroy classical music, that it would distract orchestras from their sacred mission, which of course is to play symphonic masterworks.

No, they said that Jesse's thoughts were platitudes. Boring, Pointless. Things that had been said before, not once, but many times.

I responded (by writing comments to at least one of these comments), but what I said was totally L7. Square. Full of platitudes!

Does anyone say "L7" anymore? Back in my rock & roll days, in '88 or '89, I knew Donita Sparks, the frontwoman in a tough all-female band called L7, which I see is fondly remembered. And I see, following that last link, that Donita in a British show got off one of the great rock & roll lines of all time, though some people won't think it's in good taste. Which of course is one reason it's a great rock & roll line.

But I digress. I tried to explain, in my reply, that Jesse had said what hasn't before been said, in an official capacity, by anyone with a job like his. All true, but I missed something fabulous.  Once upon a time, people who said what Jesse said were denounced for attacking the artistic core of classical music. Orchestras (to choose just one of Jesse's points) have to respond more to their audience, and to their community? No! Their mission is far more sacred than that, and responding to the needs of those who don't understand the mission (in all its profundity) will only distract the orchestra, and dilute its art. 

Certainly that's what was said in 1993, which was the last time the League (at that time called the American Symphony Orchestra League) took anything approaching such powerful leadership. That was the year they published a report called Americanizing the American Orchestra, which raised -- at a time when these thoughts were new  -- all the ideas about diversity and community that Jesse championed in June. 

And the report was shot down. Edward Rothstein, then the chief classical music critic of the New York Times, attacked it. Which then strengthened powerful people inside the League who hadn't liked the report, and the balance of power shifted. The report was buried, and has barely been mentioned from that day to this. 

But now the climate has changed, and the ideas in the report -- which now look very mild -- are widely shared. I've filled my blog with them, echoed them in public talks, whatever. They're so common, in fact, that those who don't like them seemed to have shifted their tactics. Instead of condemning what's being said, my opponents dismiss all of it as platitudes.

Now, "platitudes," if you ask me, is hardly the word for ideas that have barely been put into practice (no matter how often they're urged), and which, spoken by Jesse, had an impact nothing short of volcanic. 

But by calling these thoughts "platitudes," my opponents admit that the ideas they hate are everywhere, and may even (let's keep our fingers crossed) will widely be put into practice.

Which means that we're winning. Thanks to those who -- though they didn't quite know what they were doing -- pointed that out! 

Have a good few weeks, everyone. I'll be back in September. 

]]> One look at the future tag:www.artsjournal.com,2011:/sandow//20.46646 2011-08-03T14:51:55Z 2011-08-03T17:04:13Z Sandow http://www.artsjournal.com/sandow/ I'm delighted -- amazed, thrilled, just over the moon -- about next season's programs at the Brooklyn Philharmonic, the first season under the orchestra's new conductor, Alan Pierson. 

Talk about the future of classical music! Pierson, an indie classical musician known for conducting Alarm Will Sound, a pretty astounding new music ensemble, is shaping the orchestra's season almost entirely around Brooklyn composers and Brooklyn communities:

In this debut "reboot" season, the Brooklyn Phil features the work of generations of great Brooklyn musicians, from Aaron Copland and Lena Horne to Mos Def and Sufjan Stevens. The orchestra will also connect with its own past, through Beethoven's Eroica Symphony--the first work the Brooklyn Philharmonic ever performed, in 1857. In each of the three neighborhoods, one Beethoven movement is presented in a context that speaks to the local community.

I've never seen anything like this. So I've taken the unusual step of reproducing the entire season announcement press release here, so everyone can see what's going on. What's different about what they're doing? They're not just bringing orchestral repertoire to Brooklyn. They're bringing music that's about Brooklyn, including things that Brooklynites already know. 

Which means that they're doing very little standard repertoire. Some people will of course deplore that. But lt them deplore. Fact is that the Brooklyn Philharmonic has been a troubled institution, and hasn't made any kind of programming work, financially, for many, many years. So why not try something new? 

And the emphasis now shifts to new music. Aren't we supposed to like that? 

And can classical music survive anywhere, in the long run, if most performances are old music? I'm not at all sure of that. 

And aren't orchestras all over the US trying to remake themselves, by getting closer to their communities? So here's a dramatic example of how to do it. Larger orchestras, of course, have subscription seasons, featuring standard rep, that still work for them financially (though if you project the numbers into the future, the trend doesn't look good). So they wouldn't abandon that, and transform all their programming, Brooklyn Philharmonic-style. 

But if they want to approach their wider community, they ought to take a look at what's happening in Brooklyn next year.


"We will become 'Brooklyn's orchestra' like never before." --

Alan Pierson, Artistic Director of the Brooklyn Philharmonic

 

BROOKLYN PHILHARMONIC

2011-12 SEASON ANNOUNCEMENT

 

 

A new vision for the urban orchestra led by new artistic director Alan Pierson

 

 

The Brooklyn Phil moves into three Borough neighborhoods

-- Brighton Beach, Downtown Brooklyn, Bed-Stuy --

and performs a series of concerts that reflects the heritage of each,

engaging the community through artistic collaborations, family events and local partnerships


 

BRIGHTON BEACH

Brooklyn Phil opens its orchestra series accompanying beloved and rare Russian cartoons

[Brighton Beach is a vibrantly Russian neighborhood, full of immigrants, with Russian showing everywhere, on storefronts and signs.]

Chamber Concert: Notes of Freedom with Sergei Dovlatov's New Yorker stories

Gems from Gubaidulina, Pärt, Schnittke, Shostakovich, Zhurbin

Family Workshop: Cartooning & Music Making

[Click "Continue reading" for the rest.]

 

]]>


DOWNTOWN BROOKLYN

Premiere of David T. Little choral work based on painting of Brooklyn Village in 1820

Brooklyn Youth Chorus sings new Sarah Kirkland Snider work inspired by the Brooklyn Bridge

Excerpts from indie star Sufjan Stevens' The BQE

Chamber Concert: Living in Brooklyn with author Phillip Lopate

Family Workshop: Shape Note Singalong

 

BED-STUY

Mos Def performs hip hop classics live with orchestra (arr. Derek Bermel)

Orchestra tribute to Bed-Stuy's own Lena Horne

Chamber Concert: Spirituals, Rags & Strings with poet Tyehimba Jess

Family Workshop: Emcee Me

 

THE BEETHOVEN THREAD

Brooklyn Phil salutes its roots by performing a movement of the Eroica Symphony--featured on the Brooklyn Phil's 1857 debut--in each neighborhood's orchestra concert

 

BEETHOVEN REMIX PROJECT

Open competition to remix the finale of Beethoven's Eroica;

Brooklyn Phil will play a symphonic realization of winning entry at Bed-Stuy orchestra concert

 

Plus numerous works by Brooklyn composers, from Bristow & Burleigh to Gershwin & Copland 


 


"I want the Brooklyn Phil to become an essential, dynamic force for music in the borough." 

-- Alan Pierson


 

A UNIQUE CONCEPT, A UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY

 

It's not every day a Board of Directors appoints a new Artistic Director and gives that person carte blanche to determine and design the artistic present and future of the organization. But that is exactly what the Brooklyn Philharmonic Board has done in appointing Alan Pierson the eighth Director of the orchestra since its founding in 1857. Pierson, well-known as founder and conductor of the leading new music ensemble Alarm Will Sound, is celebrated not only for his musical skill and intellect but his programming, which is genuinely creative and completely entertaining. The 2011-12 season reveals Pierson's adventurous vision for the Brooklyn Philharmonic: a new programming paradigm, which actively involves communities and engages them in new and exciting collaborations.

 

Pierson will bring the Philharmonic out into the borough, giving concerts in three vital neighborhoods: Brighton Beach, Downtown Brooklyn, and Bedford-Stuyvesant. Each neighborhood will host three different events--an orchestra concert, a chamber concert with readings by distinguished authors, and a family event--which are influenced by local culture and involve the participation of local artists, organizations, and businesses. All events will be free or low-cost, use a variety of indoor and outdoor venues, and demonstrate the orchestra's ability to make music in a variety of styles and configurations.

 

Of prime importance to the new Brooklyn Philharmonic is the creation and nurturing of community partnerships in each neighborhood. This season, the Brooklyn Phil's Community Partners include the Brooklyn Youth Chorus (Downtown Brooklyn), Roulette (Downtown Brooklyn), Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation's Center for Arts and Culture (Bed-Stuy), Children's Talent Development Fund (Brighton Beach), and Brooklyn Public Library, a long time partner (Downtown Brooklyn and Bed-Stuy).

 

In this debut "reboot" season, the Brooklyn Phil features the work of generations of great Brooklyn musicians, from Aaron Copland and Lena Horne to Mos Def and Sufjan Stevens. The orchestra will also connect with its own past, through Beethoven's Eroica Symphony--the first work the Brooklyn Philharmonic ever performed, in 1857. In each of the three neighborhoods, one Beethoven movement is presented in a context that speaks to the local community.

 

Says Pierson: "I can't imagine another place where the project of designing orchestra concerts to reflect and speak to the local culture would be as rewarding and stimulating."

 

 

T H E  '11 / 12  S E A S O N

 

TWO PREVIEW CONCERTS OPEN SEASON

 

Hip hop legend and critically-acclaimed actor Mos Def, the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, songstress Mellissa Hughes and other special guests join members of the Brooklyn Philharmonic in two lively samplings of things to come in 2011-2012. The programs will feature small ensemble versions of music the full orchestra will play later in the season, including Derek Bermel's arrangements of Mos Def's original songs, 19th century Shape Note singing, and works by David T. Little, Frederick Rzewski, and Lev Zhurbin.

 

Brooklyn Phil & Mos Def at Restoration Rocks Music Festival

October 8, 2011, time TBA

1368 Fulton Street

Tickets: Free

 

Featuring:

Mos Def, hip hop artist

Brooklyn Phil Chamber Players; Alan Pierson, conductor

Program:

Mos Def arr. Derek Bermel, "Life in Marvelous Times" (2008) and other songs

Frederick Rzewski, Coming Together (1972)

 

  

WNYC New Sounds Live presents the Brooklyn Phil

October 12, 2011, 7:00 pm

The Winter Garden at the World Financial Center, NYC

Between 225 Liberty Street and 200 Vesey Street

Tickets: Free

 

Featuring:

Mos Def, hip hop artist

Mellissa Hughes, voice

Corey Dargel, voice

Brooklyn Youth Chorus; Dianne Berkun, director

Brooklyn Phil Chamber Players; Alan Pierson, conductor


Program

:

Shape Note Singing

David T. Little, excerpt from Winter Scene (2011)

Lev Zhurbin, excerpt from Only Love (2008)

Frederick Rzewski, Coming Together (1972)

Mos Def arr. Derek Bermel, "Life in Marvelous Times" (2008) and other songs

 

 

  

THE BRIGHTON BEACH SERIES

 

Brooklyn Phil Orchestra Concert:

RUSSIAN CARTOON MUSIC

November 3, 2011, 7:30 pm

Millennium Theater, 1029 Brighton Beach Avenue

Tickets: $10-$55

 

The Brooklyn Philharmonic launches its yearlong journey through the diverse neighborhoods of New York's largest and most vibrant borough in Brighton Beach. The Brooklyn Phil, local Russian artists, and legendary Soviet animation studio Soyuzmultfilm team up to bring 70 years of great Russian animation back to the big screen and onto the concert stage for the first time. With great scores by Shostakovich and Vyacheslav Artyomov, Russian actors voicing much loved Soviet-era cartoon characters, and an award-winning new Russian cartoon (Only Love) taking a tongue-in-cheek look back at the Soviet era, the first orchestral performance of the Brooklyn Phil's relaunch season promises an entertaining and wholly original concert experience. Advisory: These are adult-themed cartoons; parental guidance suggested.

 

Featuring:

Singers from the Children's Talent Development Fund

Brooklyn Philharmonic; Alan Pierson, conductor

 

Program

:

Gennady Gladkov arr. Zhurbin, One Destiny to Share from "The Bremen Musicians" (film by Inessa Kovalevskaya) (1969)

Dimitri Shostakovich, The Silly Little Mouse (film by Mikhail Tsekhanovsky) (1939)

Beethoven, Allegro con brio from Symphony No. 3 (with Akop Kirakosyan's film "Doom") (1804)

Vyacheslav Artyomov arr. Zhurbin, Boy is a Boy (film by Natasha Golovanova) (1986)

Moisei Vainberg arr. Zhurbin, Winnie Pooh goes Visiting (film by Fyodor Khitruk) (1971)

Lev Zhurbin, Only Love (film by Lev Polyakov) (2008)

Gennady Gladkov arr. Zhurbin, suite from The Bremen Musicians (film by Inessa Kovalevskaya) (1969)

 

 

Brooklyn Phil Chamber Concert:

SERGEI DOVLATOV: NOTES OF FREEDOM IN BROOKLYN

October 30, 2011, 5:00 pm

Shorefront Y, 3300 Coney Island Avenue

Tickets: $12

 

In 1976, Sergei Dovlatov's first book was destroyed under orders of the K.G.B. Three years later, unable to get his work published in the Soviet Union, Dovlatov escaped to America, where his slyly-humorous stories became fixtures of The New Yorker magazine until his death in Brooklyn in 1990. Dovlatov's widow Elena Dovlatov collaborates with the Brooklyn Phil Chamber Players in a concert that brings together Dovlatov's much-loved stories with music by composers who inspired him and who shared his struggle for artistic freedom, including Alfred Schnittke, Arvo Pärt, Dmitri Shostakovich, and Sofia Gubaidulina.


  

Brooklyn Phil Family Workshop:

CARTOONING & MUSIC MAKING

October 23, 2011, 10:00 am

Shorefront Y, 3300 Coney Island Avenue

Tickets: Free

 

Art and music teachers with the Brooklyn Phil Chamber Players lead children through this exciting and creative workshop for families. A week before the Brooklyn Phil and members of the local Brighton Beach community bring to life the famous 1969 Russian cartoon, families at this workshop will read the original Brothers Grimm story, The Bremen Town Musicians. Participants will learn how to draw cartoons and compose original music using this classic folktale as inspiration. A quartet of Brooklyn Phil musicians finishes off the afternoon with a performance of the children's work.

 

 

 

THE DOWNTOWN BROOKLYN SERIES

 

Brooklyn Phil Orchestra Concert:

BROOKLYN VILLAGE

Co-presented with the Brooklyn Youth Chorus and Roulette

Two performances: March 23 and 24, 2012, 7:30 pm

Roulette, 3rd Avenue and Atlantic

Tickets: $20

 

The entire history of the Borough is encapsulated in Brooklyn Village. The Village was born 387 years ago around an ancient Indian trail in present-day DUMBO. This early settlement gradually evolved into what we now call Downtown Brooklyn, the largest business district in the Borough, and a cultural hotbed known the world over. When Artistic Director Alan Pierson and the Borough's oldest orchestra take the stage at Roulette's impressive new space, the stories of this community will unfold in a modern multimedia presentation. The whole show draws inspiration from Francis Guy's 1820 painting "Winter Scene in Brooklyn," which hangs in the Brooklyn Museum (see http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/francis_guy/). All the works on the program have ties to Brooklyn, some depicting sites in the Borough, and most written by Brooklyn residents, including world premieres by David T. Little and Sarah Kirkland Snider.

 

Featuring:

Mellissa Hughes, voice

Brooklyn Youth Chorus; Dianne Berkun, director

Brooklyn Philharmonic; Alan Pierson, conductor

Ted Sperling, stage director

Royce Vavrek, librettist

Jeff Johnson, research

Beth Morrison, producer

 

Program

:

Beethoven, "Scherzo" from Symphony no. 3 (1804)

Sufjan Stevens, The B.Q.E. mvt. 6, "Isorhythmic Night Dance With Interchanges" (2007)

Sarah Kirkland Snider, new choral work on Brooklyn Bridge (2011) (World Premiere commissioned by the Brooklyn Youth Chorus)

George Frederich Bristow, "Nocturno" from Symphony in F# minor, op. 26 (1858)

Benjamin Britten, Carry Her Over the Water for chorus (1941)

Two Shape Note songs for chorus (with audience participation) (early 19th century)

David T. Little, Winter Scene (2011) (World Premiere co-commissioned by Brooklyn Phil and Brooklyn Youth Chorus)

 

 

Brooklyn Phil Chamber Concert:

PHILLIP LOPATE: LIVING IN BROOKLYN

Two performances: March 1, 2012, 6:30 pm

at the Brooklyn Heights Public Library

280 Cadman Plaza West

March 4, 2012, 4:00 pm

at the Dweck Center of Brooklyn Public Library's Central Library

10 Grand Army Plaza

Tickets: Free

 

Brooklyn-born master writer Phillip Lopate joins the Brooklyn Phil Chamber Players for a concert that explores the Borough's development over the past 200 years, from a bedroom community to a major city of its own. Music will include repertoire by great Brooklyn composers such as Gershwin and Copland (who was born and raised in Prospect Heights), as well as composers living in the Borough today.

 

 

Brooklyn Phil Family Workshop:

SHAPE NOTE SINGALONG

February 26, 2012, 1:00 pm

Brooklyn Youth Chorus Academy

179 Pacific Street

Tickets: Free

 

Audiences are invited to perform with the Brooklyn Philharmonic! David T. Little's Winter Scene takes one back in time to the Brooklyn of the 1820s, when the great tradition of American shape note singing was the rage in New York. In a single afternoon, shape note singing expert Aldo Ceresa will immerse participants of all ages in this impassioned, deeply communal American tradition. No experience is necessary, and everyone who participates is invited to sing with the Brooklyn Philharmonic in its May 24 and May 25 performances.

 

 

 

THE BED-STUY SERIES

 

Brooklyn Phil Orchestra Concert:

MOS DEF, LENA HORNE, AND THE BED-STUY TRADITION

June 9, 2012, 8:00 pm

Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Plaza

1368 Fulton Street

Tickets: Free

 

A profound and authentic lover of language, renowned Bed-Stuy artist Mos Def is one of the most influential hip hop stars of all time. He joins Artistic Director Alan Pierson and the Brooklyn Philharmonic in bringing together the aggressive energy and charged lyrics of American hip hop, the classic ballads of legendary Bed-Stuy singer and activist Lena Horne, and the revolutionary music of Beethoven, remixed anew by emerging Brooklyn artists (more info about the Brooklyn Philharmonic Beethoven Remix Project is here).

 

Featuring:

Mos Def, hip hop artist

Leslie Uggams, voice

String players from the Noel Pointer Foundation

Brooklyn Philharmonic; Alan Pierson and Linda Twine, conductors

 

Program

:

Beethoven Symphony no. 3, Finale

Beethoven remix, arr. Andrew Norman

Lena Horne tribute:

Cole Porter, "From This Moment On" written for Out of This World (1951)

Fats Waller and Andy Razaf, "Honeysuckle Rose" (1928)

Richard Rogers and Lorenz Hart, "Lady is a Tramp" from Babes in Arms (1937)

Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler, "Stormy Weather" (1933)

Mos Def arr. Derek Bermel, "Life in Marvelous Times" (2008) and other songs

 

 

Brooklyn Phil Chamber Concert:

POET TYEHIMBA JESS: SPIRITUALS, RAGS & STRINGS IN BROOKLYN

Dweck Center of the Brooklyn Public Library's Central Library

10 Grand Army Plaza

May 9, 2012, 6:30 pm

Tickets: Free

 

In 1892, H.T. Burleigh became one of the first African-American students admitted into the National Conservatory of Music in New York City. The spirituals he sang inspired the Conservatory's visiting director, Antonín Dvořák, to write several masterpieces based on American themes, and to envision a rich and unique future for American music. Now, the Brooklyn Phil Chamber Players team up with poet Tyehimba Jess in a concert which imagines these artists' lives and stories, and spins out the legacy of this first link between African-American music and the symphonic tradition.

 

 

Brooklyn Phil Family Workshop:

EMCEE ME

with ReadNex and Brooklyn Philharmonic Musicians

Restoration Plaza Community Room

1368 Fulton Street

June 2, 2012, 10:00 am

Tickets: Free

 

The Brooklyn Phil Chamber Players and Readnex Poetry Squad team up for a workshop that introduces a new generation to the social power and cultural legacy of hip hop and spoken word poetry. Participants will learn how to express themselves through this rich medium, and discover its extraordinary impact.

 

 

 

ADDITIONAL BROOKLYN PHIL EVENTS

 

 

RECITAL: BROOKLYN BRIDGE WITH DEBORAH BUCK

Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway

January 29, 2012, 2:00 pm

Tickets: $15, $10 for Brooklyn Museum members

 

Brooklyn Phil's very own concertmaster, Deborah Buck, presents a program of music written during the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge.

 

Program:

Brahms: A Major Sonata (1886)

Vaughn Williams: Lark Ascending (1920)

Bernstein: West Side Story Suite for Violin and Piano

Tchaikovsky: Waltz Scherzo

 

 

SCHOOL TIME CONCERTS:

THE TIME IS ALWAYS RIGHT: A CENTURY OF BLACK MUSIC IN AMERICA

with the Brooklyn High School of the Arts Choir

Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts at Brooklyn College

2900 Campus Road

March 13, 10:15 am & 12:00 pm

Tickets: $6 per student

Program:

Otis Redding, "Respect" (featuring Brooklyn High School of the Arts choir)

Sam Cooke, "A Change is Gonna Come," (featuring Brooklyn High School of the Arts choir)

William Grant Still, Lenox Avenue (1937) for speaker, chorus and orchestra

Ellington, The River Suite (featuring Jason Samuels Smith, Divine Rhythm Productions (1970)  

 

 

BROOKLYN PHIL: OUTSIDE-IN ANNUAL CONCERT

Galapagos Art Space in DUMBO

May 2, 2012, 8:00 pm

Tickets: $15

 

The Brooklyn Philharmonic is looking for Brooklyn's great musical wizards. Each year, the Phil's Outside-In program (formerly called the Composer Mentorship Program) recruits exciting Brooklyn music-makers who work outside the classical music world, and collaborates with them to express their imaginations through orchestral instruments. The Brooklyn Phil is excited to present what this year's crop of Outside-In fellows has dreamt up.

 

Program:

Tim Fite, new work

Charlie Looker, new work

Natalie Weiss, new work

  

 

BROOKLYN PHILHARMONIC

When the first conductor stepped to the podium in Brooklyn in 1857 to launch the Brooklyn Philharmonic, Bizet, Wagner and Berlioz were the strident young voices of new music. De Tocqueville had just departed Brooklyn to warn our European cousins about the mad democratic experiment he'd witnessed in America. Abraham Lincoln's wife hurried to attend the Philharmonic's first concert in Brooklyn's newest music hall. And the people of Brooklyn were, as always, defining what it means to really live in our country.

 

Now 154 years later, the Brooklyn Phil is not only one of the oldest living orchestras in the New World, but with 166 world premiers under its belt, 65 works commissioned from living composers, and the accolades of 22 ASCAP awards, it's also one of the most adventurous and widely acclaimed musical forces in America as well. The New York Times calls it "feisty and provocative. Rolling Stone raves the Brooklyn Phil is "vital" and "inspired."

 

In 2011 newly appointed Artistic Director Alan Pierson rebooted the Philharmonic, taking it on the road deep into Brooklyn's famed neighborhoods to connect with the deep and vibrant musical traditions of the people who love it most.

 

 

ALAN PIERSON

Alan Pierson has been praised as "a young conductor of monstrous skill" by Newsday, "commanding" by The New York Times, and "gifted and electrifying" by The Boston Globe. He is the artistic director and conductor of the acclaimed ensemble Alarm Will Sound which has been called "the future of classical music" by The New York Times and "a sensational force" with "powerful ideas about how to renovate the concert experience" by The New Yorker. Alan Pierson has appeared as a guest conductor with the London Sinfonietta, the Orchestra of ST. Luke's, the Brooklyn Philharmonic, the Steve Reich Ensemble, Carnegie Hall's Ensemble ACJW, the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, the New World Symphony, and The Silk Road Project, among other ensembles. He is also Principal Conductor of the Dublin-based Crash Ensemble, and was a visiting faculty conductor at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. He has collaborated with major composers and performers, including Yo Yo Ma, Steve Reich, Dawn Upshaw, Osvaldo Golijov, John Adams, Augusta Read Thomas, David Lang, Michael Gordon, La Monte Young, and choreographers Christopher Wheeldon, Akram Khan and Elliot Feld. He has recorded for Nonesuch Records, Cantaloupe Music, Sony Classical, and Sweetspot DVD.

 

Alan Pierson grew up in Chicago. He graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with degrees in Physics and Music, and from the Eastman School of Music with a Doctorate of Musical Arts in Conducting.

 

"Incontestably a sensational force...not only extreme virtuosity, but powerful ideas about how to renovate the concert experience."

-- Alex Ross, The New Yorker

 

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

 BROOKLYN PHILHARMONIC 

2011-2012 Season-at-a-Glance

in chronological order

 

ALL PROGRAMS AND DATES ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE

 

Season Preview Concert I

BROOKLYN PHIL & MOS DEF AT RESTORATION ROCKS MUSIC FESTIVAL

Saturday, October 8, time TBA

1368 Fulton Street in Bed-Stuy

Works by Mos Def (arr. Derek Bermel) and Frederick Rzewski

Mos Def, hip hop artist

Brooklyn Phil Chamber Players; Alan Pierson, conductor

Tickets: Free

 

Season Preview Concert II

WNYC NEW SOUNDS LIVE PRESENTS THE BROOKLYN PHIL

Wednesday, October 12, 7:00 pm

WNYC New Sounds Live at the World Financial Center

Between 225 Liberty Street and 220 Vesey Street

Works by Mos Def (arr. Derek Bermel), David T. Little, Lev Zurbin, Corey Dargel, Rzewski

Mos Def, hip hop artist

Mellissa Hughes and Corey Dargel, voice

Brooklyn Youth Chorus; Dianne Berkun, conductor

Brooklyn Phil Chamber Players; Alan Pierson, conductor

Tickets: Free

 

The Brighton Beach Series

Family Workshop: CARTOONING & MUSIC MAKING

Sunday, October 23, 10:00 am

Shorefront Y, 3300 Coney Island Avenue

Brooklyn Phil Chamber Players

Tickets: Free

 

The Brighton Beach Series

Chamber Concert: SERGEI DOVLATOV: NOTES OF FREEDOM IN BROOKLYN

Sunday, October 30, 5:00 pm

Shorefront Y, 3300 Coney Island Avenue

Works by Shostakovich, Pärt, Schnittke, Gubaidulina and others

Brooklyn Phil Chamber Players

Tickets: $12

 

The Brighton Beach Series

Orchestra Concert: RUSSIAN CARTOON MUSIC

Thursday, November 3, 7:30 pm

Millennium Theatre, 1029 Brighton Beach Avenue

Works by Shostakovich, Vainberg, Gladkov, Artyomov, Zhurbin, Beethoven

Films by Kovalevskaya, Tsekhanovsky, Kirakosyan, Golonova, Khitruk, Polyakov

Local actors and singers from the Children's Talent Development Fund

Brooklyn Philharmonic; Alan Pierson, conductor

Tickets: $10-$55

 

Special Event

Recital: BROOKLYN BRIDGE with DEBORAH BUCK

Sunday, January 29, 2:00 pm

Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway

Works by Brahms, Vaughn Williams, Bernstein, Tchaikovsky

Deborah Buck, concertmaster of the Brooklyn Philharmonic

Tickets: $15, $10 for Brooklyn Museum members



The Downtown Brooklyn Series

Family Workshop: SHAPE-NOTE SINGALONG

Sunday, February 26, 1:00 pm

Brooklyn Youth Chorus Academy, 179 Pacific Street

Tickets: Free


 

The Downtown Brooklyn Series

Chamber Concert: PHILLIP LOPATE: LIVING IN BROOKLYN

Thursday, March 1, 6:30 pm

Brooklyn Heights Public Library, 280 Cadman Plaza West

Sunday, March 4, 4:00 pm

Dweck Center of Brooklyn Public Library's Central Library, 10 Grand Army Plaza

Works by Copland, Bernstein and others

Phillip Lopate, author

Brooklyn Phil Chamber Players

Tickets: Free

 

Special Event

School Time Concerts: THE TIME IS ALWAYS RIGHT:

A CENTURY OF BLACK MUSIC IN AMERICA

Tuesday, March 13, 10:15 am & 12:00 pm

Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts at Brooklyn College

2900 Campus Road

Works by Otis Redding, Sam Cooke, William Grant, Duke Ellington

Brooklyn High School of the Arts Choir; Avid Williams, conductor

Brooklyn Philharmonic; Wayne Du Maine, conductor

Tickets: $6 per student

 

The Downtown Brooklyn Series

Orchestra Concert: BROOKLYN VILLAGE

Co-presented with the Brooklyn Youth Chorus and Roulette

Friday, March 23, 7:30 pm

Saturday, March 24, 7:30 pm

Roulette, 3rd Avenue and Atlantic Avenue

World premiere by David T. Little, co-commissioned with the Brooklyn Youth Chorus

World premiere by Sarah Kirkland Snider, commissioned by the Brooklyn Youth Chorus

Additional works by Sufjan Stevens, Beethoven, Bristow and Britten

Mellissa Hughes, voice

Brooklyn Youth Chorus; Dianne Berkun, director

Brooklyn Philharmonic; Alan Pierson, conductor

Ted Sperling, stage director

Royce Vavrek, librettist

Beth Morrison, producer

Tickets: $20

 

Special Event

BROOKLYN PHIL: OUTSIDE-IN ANNUAL CONCERT

Wednesday, May 2, 8:00 pm

Galapagos Art Space in DUMBO

World premieres by Tim Fite, Charlie Looker, and Naomi Weiss

(Outside-In Composer Fellows)

Randy Woolf, Composer Mentor

Brooklyn Phil Chamber Players

Tickets: $15

 

The Bed-Stuy Series

Chamber Concert: TYEHIMBA JESS: SPIRITUALS, RAGS & STRINGS IN BROOKLYN

Wednesday, May 9, 6:30 pm

Dweck Center of the Brooklyn Public Library's Central Library, 10 Grand Army Plaza

Works by H.T. Burleigh, Scott Joplin, Dvorak and others

Tyehimba Jess, poet and performance artist

Brooklyn Phil Chamber Players

Tickets: Free

 

The Bed-Stuy Series

Family Workshop: EMCEE ME

Saturday, June 2, 10:00 am

Restoration Plaza Community Room, 1368 Fulton Street

ReadNex Poetry Squad

Brooklyn Phil Chamber Players

Tickets: Free

 

The Bed-Stuy Series

Orchestra Concert: MOS DEF, LENA HORNE, AND THE BED-STUY TRADITION

Saturday, June 9, 8:00 pm

Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Plaza, 1368 Fulton Street

Works by Mos Def (arr. Derek Bermel), Cole Porter, Rogers & Hart, Fats Waller, Harold Arlen, plus Beethoven and the Beethoven Remix Project

Mos Def, hip hop artist

Leslie Uggams, voice

student string players from the Noel Pointer Foundation

Brooklyn Philharmonic; Alan Pierson and Linda Twine, conductors

Tickets: Free

 

 

 

For tickets, the public should call the Brooklyn Phil Box Office at 646-397-2765, 

M-F, 12-6 pm beginning July 28 or visit www.bphil.org.

 

For further information, press tickets, photos, and to arrange interviews,

please contact Aleba Gartner Associates at 212-206-1450; a@alebagartner.com

]]> Arresting data tag:www.artsjournal.com,2011:/sandow//20.46620 2011-08-01T13:54:04Z 2011-08-01T14:43:37Z I'm a little bemused at the debates that still seem to rage about whether classical music -- as an activity in our culture -- has declined. Seems to me that the only way you can think it hasn't is... Sandow http://www.artsjournal.com/sandow/ I'm a little bemused at the debates that still seem to rage about whether classical music -- as an activity in our culture -- has declined. Seems to me that the only way you can think it hasn't is by bypassing some fairly clear data. 

So here's more, from a piece in the Washington Post on Wolf Trap, by my wife, Anne Midgette. Wolf Trap, of course, is the national park outside Washington which has been presenting arts events for 40 years. And I should stress that Anne wasn't looking for evidence, pro or con, for classical music's decline. She was just writing the kind of piece that journalists write, when a leading local institution has an important anniversary. Wolf Trap is 40. How's it doing?

And the answer is, it's doing fine. But not, these days, by presenting many classical concerts. Wolf Trap has been criticized for stressing entertainment over art, but Anne suggests another way of looking at that choice. Wolf Trap has always presented what it and its audience thought was entertainment. But what "entertainment" means has changed. It used to mean classical music. Or, anyway, certain classical concerts, like all-Tchaikovsky programs. These used to sell out Wolf Trap's 7000-seat Filene Center, in the 1980s, but don't anymore:

"We used to sell out two nights of Tchaikovsky," says [Wolf Trap president Terrence Jones], referring to the early days when the NSO often offered the same program at Wolf Trap over two or more evenings. "Now we're not even selling one." 

And, as Anne adds, "[t]he NSO's all-Tchaikovsky program July 7 had banks of empty seats." (See her review of that all-Tchaikovsky concert.)

So that's one piece of unexpected data Anne's reporting led to. Wolf Trap used to sell many more tickets to classical performances than it does now. And that seems to be true elsewhere, as well. Anne also talked to Welz Kauffman, president of the Ravinia Festival, outside Chicago. Same story there. I'm sure someone will blame the managements at both places, saying they'd sell more tickets if they marketed the concerts better, and maybe that's true. 

But I'm sure they market more than they did in the '80s, simply because everyone in the arts markets more these days. And what can't be denied is that, in the '80s, with (at the very least) no more marketing than these institutions do now, they sold many more classical tickets than they currently do. So the size of the classical audience has clearly declined.

The other piece of data? That in the '80s there were 20 or more classical stars who could sell out a large house, and now there are hardly any. Ann McKee, Wolf Trap's senior vice president for performing arts and education, names three: Yo-Yo Ma, Joshua Bell, and Itzhak Perlman. Welz Kauffman adds two more, Reneé Fleming and Lang Lang. "When I do presentations for my board," Anne quotes him as saying, "I always show them that list of 1985 stars and then [the current] five, and people gasp." 

It's sad, really. The old ways, in classical music, appear to be fading away. But new things are coming! See my next post. It's an exciting time. 







]]> Intermezzo tag:www.artsjournal.com,2011:/sandow//20.46548 2011-07-26T18:12:04Z 2011-07-26T18:45:33Z As I've tweeted, and posted on Facebook -- here's a sound I just love. Is it an animal, singing? Is it music from some other culture? No, it's an escalator at the Archives stop on the Washington DC Metro. Somehow... Sandow http://www.artsjournal.com/sandow/ here's a sound I just love. Is it an animal, singing? Is it music from some other culture? No, it's an escalator at the Archives stop on the Washington DC Metro. Somehow it sings, and (to my ear) very wistfully, too. 

On Facebook, my friend Lucy Miller (hi, Lucy, and thanks) found someone this sound like. Roswell Rudd, a jazz trombonist. Here, on YouTube. Uncanny connection.

And for more diversion, from the excellent "Click Track" pop music blog at the Washington Post, you can listen -- in chronological order -- to just a few seconds from every No. 1 pop single, from Elvis to today. The length of each cut varies, so each time you get enough to know what song it is. (Someone did hard work on this.) It's diverting to hear. And informative. You'll hear a parade of changing musical styles! Corresponding, of course, to changes in our culture. Which now are audible. 

And it's striking (a) how pop music grew more sophisticated, over the years, and (2) how some songs hit home in just a few seconds. I was looking for an example, and two came up, one after the other -- the Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations" and, believe it or not, "I'm a Believer." Yes, the Monkees. It's a lesson on focused musical content. What blend of melody, rhythm, harmony, and sound sticks in your mind, the moment you hear it? (Also "Light My Fire" and "(Sittin' on) The Dock of of the Bay.") [Blog software won't recognize " and ( as part of the same word! Explaining any weird line break you see...]  Also "Hey Jude," "ABC," "Bridge Over Troubled Water," and so many more.)

Great fun. Though sometimes disorienting, as each few seconds brings a new universe. 
]]> The culture I've seen tag:www.artsjournal.com,2011:/sandow//20.46476 2011-07-20T19:18:50Z 2011-07-20T20:15:19Z Sandow http://www.artsjournal.com/sandow/
A few years ago, I was visiting a friend, who also had another visitor -- the concertmaster of a Group 1 orchestra (referring to the League of American Orchestras classification of orchestras by budget size, in which the 20-odd largest are in Group 1). 

We were hanging out, talking in a relaxed, friendly way. And at one point, the concertmaster asked me, "What's the happiest day in a string player's life?" 

The answer: "The day they get tenure in an orchestra, and never have to practice again." Which was a joke. But -- who's going to deny this? -- a joke with substance behind it. Orchestra string players, buried in large string sections, don't always have to play their best. And, if I'm to believe this concertmaster, often do coast. or at least often enough to make a black-humor joke about it. 

I remember asking a violinist in another Group 1 orchestra -- one of the nation's largest -- how his section stayed together when they played the tricky rhythms in the Sacre du printemps. His answer -- and this was a man I'd met maybe 10 minutes before -- "We don't!" 

At one of the biannual gatherings of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation's Orchestra Forum -- attended by board, staff, and musicians from more than a dozen orchestras -- I joined with the executive director of a well-known orchestra to organize a discussion for musicians. Our topic: Why don't orchestra musicians smile when they play?

Maybe 15 musicians came to this meeting, from both large and mid-sized orchestras. When we posed our question, their immediate answer was: "Why should we smile? The conductors are so bad that there's nothing to smile about." Of course that echoes the findings of studies I quoted in my last post -- it's well-established that the quality of conductors is one of orchestral musicians' most common complaints. 

I think you can see where I'm going here. My own conversations with orchestra musicians don't lead me to believe there's a constructive artistic culture in our orchestras. I don't deny that musicians try very hard, that some conductors are really good, that the overall level of performance is quite decently high, or that some performances aren't (once in a while, anyway) visionary. 

But on an everyday level, there's something less than full artistic satisfaction. Remember the student from my Juilliard course this past spring, who said that when she takes an orchestra audition, her playing has to be "precise, mechanical, robotic," because what the orchestras are looking for is, first and foremost, uncreative perfection. 

Echoing that, most people involved with orchestras surely know Robert Vernon's workshops for violists, in which Vernon (the principal violist of the Cleveland Orchestra) teaches people who play his instrument what they have to do to get orchestral jobs. He tells them exactly how to play the viola passages from the orchestral repertoire that they'll be asked to play at their auditions. Exactly how to play them. No deviations allowed. This is how they have to play, if they want to get a job.

I understand completely that orchestras need discipline. In any performance, everyone has to be on the same artistic page. But from what my student says, and what Vernon does, would you think that orchestras might just be deselecting the most creative talent they might otherwise attract?

The principal bassoonist of one of America's absolutely top orchestras talked to me once about playing the Sacre du printemps. He said he thought Stravinsky wanted the opening bassoon solo to sound wild and raw. Nobody, after all, had ever written such a wildly high and exposed passage for the instrument before. But now, the bassoonist said, every bassoonist learns the solo in school, and can play it very smoothly. If, he added, he tried to make it wild and rough in one of his orchestra's performances, the conductor and audience would surely think he didn't know how to play. So he'd never do it.

After I talked to him, i happened to find myself with two of this orchestra's clarinetists. I told them what the bassoonist said. They said they felt the same way about the "critics" section of Ein Heldenleben, in which Strauss uses high clarinets to mimic the raucous screams of critics, who try to shoot the hero down. This music, these clarinetists said, should sound wild and raw. But if they played it that way...same refrain. The conductor and the audience would think they couldn't play. 

Does this paint a picture of an orchestra -- and in this case, one of the best we've got -- as a place where creative musicmaking can freely take shape? 

In one of my earlier posts on all of this, I mentioned the musicians at one of the Mellon meetings, who complained that their music director would stop the orchestra at rehearsals, and then start talking before every one of the musicians had actually stopped playing. Which meant that some of the musicians didn't hear all of what was said. 

In the years this music director had been with them, no musician (as far as I know) ever spoke up about this problem. The music director of course wasn't there (no music director, to my knowledge, ever attended these gatherings, except one from a smaller orchestra, who came once). Nor was anyone from the orchestra's management. So the musicians were, in effect, talking to themselves. 

No blame for that -- they were glad to have the chance to vent. But what they needed, I'd think, was the chance to vent to the music director, so that this very simple problem could be fixed.

And if they couldn't talk about a mere procedural detail, does anyone think they could bring up something serious about how the orchestra played?

I'm not cherry-picking these examples, extracting them from a larger store of anecdotes that point a different way. My experience, over the years, is that orchestra musicians talk as if their artistic freedom was very sharply circumscribed, even if they themselves might not see it that way. I think they're so used to things the way they are, they often can't imagine anything different. 

After a Berlin Philharmonic concert at Carnegie Hall a few years ago, I ran into a musician from the New York Philharmonic whom I happened to know. Berlin, I think, is all but universally acknowledged to be the world's beset -- and most inspiring -- orchestra, an institution run by its musicians, who show great commitment and great autonomy while they play, not least in the way they move, putting their entire bodies into every note. 

"Did you see that?" the Philharmonic musician asked me, almost levitating (as, I think, we all were, from how wonderfully the musicians played). "Did you see how they move? If I moved like that, I'd be reprimanded." 

That concludes my posts on orchestra culture, in my larger series on whether orchestras play as well as they might. Surely it's clear that orchestras in which the things I've described in this post happen -- no matter how good their performances might seem -- could play better (more spontaneously, more imaginatively, more excitingly, more passionately, more raptly) than they do. 

The other posts in this series:

    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
]]> More unsatisfied tag:www.artsjournal.com,2011:/sandow//20.46443 2011-07-19T15:56:20Z 2011-07-19T16:15:24Z I know that what I'm writing here is difficult. I may seem to be attacking orchestra musicians. Which I'm not, not at all. I have the greatest respect for them. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't look at some difficulties... Sandow http://www.artsjournal.com/sandow/
I know that what I'm writing here is difficult. I may seem to be attacking orchestra musicians. Which I'm not, not at all. I have the greatest respect for them. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't look at some difficulties they might have...which I'm hardly the first to mention.

So, continuing from my last post...

I'd mentioned studies and other writing, published in Harmony magazine in 1996, about how satisfied (or not) orchestra musicians were with their work. And I wrote about one of them, a study by Harvard psychologist Richard Hackman and some collaborators, in which orchestra musicians were found to have dramatically powerful internal motivation, but only average job satisfaction. Which seemed, to Richard and (when I read his stuff) to me, like a contradiction. Orchestral musicians have a dual view of their work. They could say, with total honesty, that they focus intensely on the quality of their work. And then they can turn around, and talk (as I've heard them do) with almost cynical black humor -- or outright cynicism -- about how not quite great things are for them. 

There's more detail -- a lot more -- in another study, "Stress and Job Satisfaction among Symphony Musicians," by John Breda and Patrick Kulesa, also published in Harmony. Again something that I think is contradictory shows up, which is that "[r]espondents [orchestral musicians surveyed for the study] reported moderate levels of job satisfaction and a low level of job dissatisfaction." If satisfaction is only moderate, shouldn't dissatisfaction be a little more than low? Again, I think I see musicians taking a double view of their work.

But what's most interesting -- given that I started all this by asking whether orchestras play as well as they could (or should) -- are the reasons for whatever dissatisfaction the musicians do report:

Specifically, they are generally dissatisfied with their voice in matters affecting the orchestra, and they are unhappy with the job performance of their music directors.

Unhappy with the "job performance" of their music directors? They think their music directors aren't good enough? Then wouldn't that mean they don't think their orchestras play well enough? Because if the conductor isn't good enough...well, you see what I mean. Again I think the double view comes into play. If I say orchestras don't play well enough -- and, further, that there's no central way to address this inside an orchestra -- some musicians jump on me, and say they work really hard on musical quality, giving all sorts of heartfelt examples. None of which I'd deny.

But then, if we're to believe this study, they also think, overall, that their conductors aren't good enough. Which means they themselves think the playing could be better! I might wonder if the very powerlessness that I think exists, about musical quality -- that (as I've said often enough in these posts) there's no overt, collective way for musicians to make the playing better -- makes at least some musicians unwilling to discuss the question. Because to get into it, they'd have to delve into all kinds of uncomfortable areas. 

Enough from me. Let me (so to speak) turn the floor over to Robert Levine, principal violist of the Milwaukee Symphony and a union official, who with his father Seymour Levine (an academic) wrote a powerful paper  called "Why They're Not Smiling: Stress and Discontent in the Orchestra Workplace" (also published in Harmony). 
    
This takes a much more personal view of problems inside orchestras, and amounts to a white-hot critique of orchestras' internal culture. Coming, let's note, from a prominent orchestra musician. 

And here we get into something I quoted from John Breda and Patrick Kulesa, but didn't say anything about, that musicians "are generally dissatisfied with their voice in matters affecting the orchestra." If we're to believe Robert and his father, this goes very deep. I'll silence my own voice now, and simply quote:

A more subtle stress musicians face is difficult even to label, much less to quantify. Instrumentalists generally view whatever they produce on their instruments as flawed in comparison with the ideal they have set for themselves. This comes, at least in part, from a system of instrumental education that views anything less than absolute technical perfection as completely unacceptable. Yet it is also the mindset that an instrumentalist, at any level of proficiency, must maintain in order to improve. But most instrumentalists, however good, are never going to reach perfection in their playing or even reach the level regularly achieved by the soloists who stand in front of professional orchestras.

In few other professions are the practitioners forced to confront their own professional failings so regularly, and this constant awareness of their personal limitations can lead to chronic internal conflict between diminished self-esteem and musicians' natural desires to think well of themselves....

[T]he disparity between myth and reality in professional orchestras is extreme and serves as the most powerful source of musician stress and counterproductive institutional dynamics.

[One myth the Levines cite is the myth of the omnipotent conductor. Musicians are the first to know that conductors aren't omnipotent -- and might, in some cases, not even be competent -- but have to pretend that they buy the myth.]

What happens when a member of the orchestra asks the conductor a question is"revealing. (Virtually every communication from a musician to a conductor in a rehearsal is phrased as a question, even when it is really a statement of fact or belief.) One of the authors once heard the principal clarinetist of a major American orchestra ask the conductor whether he wanted the notes with dots over them "short, or like the brass were playing them?" This rather complex statement masquerading as a question conveyed both the musician's lack of respect for the brass players in question and scorn for the conductor's failure to notice the problem. But to fit the myth of the omniscient conductor, the comment had to be phrased as a question, for how could a musician possibly inform an omniscient being? The myth dictates that a musician can only tap into that well of knowledge, not add to it.

Questions from musicians to conductors must be respectfully phrased and, ideally, prefaced with the honorific "Maestro." (This title may be dropped if the conductor is sufficiently young or doesn't speak with an accent.) Such questions must not explicitly challenge the conductor's interpretation of the music or conducting and rehearsal technique in any way.

This arrangement makes matters awkward for the orchestral musician who desires to improve the quality of the orchestral product. The musician must not challenge the conductor's tempi or interpretation; he or she cannot even suggest that there might be a pitch or ensemble problem, much less how the conductor might fix it. Questions are therefore limited to issues of whether the parts agree with the score or how the conductor would like a certain passage bowed. Even the latter has risks, however, as it implies that the conductor didn't see how it was bowed the first time; certainly no self-respecting omniscient being could have missed something as elementary as whether a passage started up-bow or down-bow.

In fact, the myth makes virtually all communication from musician to conductor impossible. (In one major American orchestra, musicians are discouraged from addressing the music director until he addresses them first. Matters are arranged so that the music director never encounters musicians except on the podium or in private meetings which he calls.) This is not to say such communications don't happen, of course, but the farther they venture from simple inquiry, the more uncomfortable they are likely to make orchestra members and the more angry the conductor. Challenging the conductor's omniscience is, quite literally, taboo.

Musicians in a professional orchestra of any significance know quite a bit about music and about what they're doing. So do many conductors, of course; but generally, individual conductors do not know more than the orchestra in front of them knows collectively. In fact, about certain issues, such as the mechanics of string playing, conductors usually know quite a bit less. Most orchestra musicians would agree that many conductors deal ineptly with technical issues such as pitch and ensemble, and that many conductors do not even recognize such problems when they occur, much less address them. Most orchestra musicians, after all, have extensive chamber music experience, in which pitch and ensemble are prominent on the work agenda.
This is actually the fundamental structure of the orchestral workplace. During rehearsals or concerts, musicians experience a total lack of control over their environment. They do not control when the music starts, when the music ends, or how the music goes. They don't even have the authority to leave the stage to attend to personal needs. They are, in essence, rats in a maze, at the whim of the god with the baton.

Much of what is inexplicable to observers of professional orchestras can be explained by stress caused by chronic lack of control and musicians' attempts to deal with it. Musicians' first line of defense is the classic tactic of avoidance. It is no accident that every professional orchestra of any consequence is unionized and that the resulting collective bargaining agreements under which orchestras labor spell out in
exquisite detail the limits of a conductor's authority over the musicians. Such agreements attempt to limit the amount of time musicians are exposed to a situation over which they have no control, as well as expressions of musicians' need to control at least something about the workplace.

There is another, more subtle effect of this chronic lack of control on orchestra musicians: infantilization. Forced to play the roles of children, musicians can behave childishly. Musicians who, when not at work, are perfectly responsible adults, can regress to the level of five-year olds at work, especially when the conductor is even less like the mythic omniscient father figure than is the norm for conductors. Moreover, these musicians tend to view their world, much as a child might, as a mysterious and threatening place. The paranoia that some orchestra musicians exhibit towards managers and conductors, and even towards those of their colleagues who serve on workplace committees, is a consequence of this world view. Yet the subjects of this generalized paranoia are not some anonymous "they" off at corporate headquarters; they are people who, on a daily basis, stand in front of these musicians, answer their questions, and find the money to pay them.

If even half of this is true, then of course orchestras -- for all the tremendous skill and devotion that their musicians have -- don't play as well as they could. 

And, of course, they have deep problems with their institutional culture. 
]]> Not so satisfied tag:www.artsjournal.com,2011:/sandow//20.46430 2011-07-18T16:52:23Z 2011-07-19T15:30:50Z Resuming my posts on how well orchestras play...My points today:orchestral musicians are deeply committed to their work, but not satisfied with itthey have trouble resolving this contradictionand since their main complaints are about the quality of the conductors they have... Sandow http://www.artsjournal.com/sandow/
My points today:

    • orchestral musicians are deeply committed to their work, but not satisfied with it
    • they have trouble resolving this contradiction
    • and since their main complaints are about the quality of the conductors they have to play for, they couldn't possibly believe -- in their hearts -- that their orchestras play as well as they ought to
But first, a look back:

What I'm starting to get at here is the inner culture of orchestras. I began to touch on that in my "Four personalities" post, in which one of my Juilliard students talked about what her playing is like when she takes orchestra auditions: 

...precise, mechanical, robotic.  In orchestra auditions it is more important to do nothing wrong than to do anything particularly well.  They are basically looking for a reason to eliminate you, and "bad intonation" is a lot more convincing than "plays like an automaton."

We can decide for ourselves if she thinks orchestras are looking -- in practice, now, not in theory -- for creative musical artists. 

And I continued down this path in my "No direction home" post, in which I said that orchestras don't -- as a rule; there are exceptions --  really have anyone who's in full artistic control. They don't, in other words, have artistic directors, something you'll find in virtually any other arts organization of any kind, including pop record labels. (If this seems implausible to you, read the post for a full explanation.)

But my most important post so far on orchestral culture was the one I called "Atomized," in which -- building on a comment by a musician in the Cleveland Orchestra -- I said that orchestra musicians, by their own admission, can only address the quality of their orchestras' playing in silence, as individuals, or at best in private, small-group discussions. There's no way to do it openly. 

So...my three points. 

There's a literature about orchestral musicians' job satisfaction. It dates from the '90s. If anyone thinks, after reading what follows, that the studies are no longer relevant, please tell me! But from what I've found, from contacts with orchestras in recent years, I'd think the studies are as useful now as they were when they were done. They (or summaries of them) were published in Harmony magazine, the publication of the Symphony Orchestra Institute, a very useful organization that's now defunct, though the magazine is archived on the Polyphonic.org website. 

The best-known study was done by Richard Hackman, a psychology professor at Harvard (and someone who loves orchestra concerts very deeply), working with collaborators. There's a kind of urban legend about his work, that he found orchestra musicians had lower job satisfaction than air traffic controllers, whose work is wildly stressful. 

But this isn't true. Richard and his collaborators didn't study air traffic controllers. Professional hockey players, in fact, had the lowest job satisfaction of all the occupations studied. Orchestra musicians ranked in the middle, just below federal prison guards. (Musicians in professional string quartets ranked first.) 

But a crucial finding of the study, in my view, is that nobody Hackman and his people studied had greater internal motivation. That is, orchestral musicians are on fire to play as well as they can, something reflected in the comments I've gotten on these posts. And, believe me, I deeply respect this. But Richard, speaking sympathetically, thought the high motivation to some extent clashed with the not so high job satisfaction. Here's how he put it in an interview with Paul Judy, the head of the Symphony Orchestra Institute:

...no group we have studied has greater internal motivation than [orchestral musicians]. Yet their overall job satisfaction, and especially their satisfaction with opportunities for continued growth and development, are not pushing the top of the scale. The professional symphony orchestra, it seems, does not provide as rich and rewarding an occupational setting for musicians as one would hope.

(This interview is the only source for Richard's findings that you can find on the web, without special access. RIchard and his collaborators published their findings in the Musical Quarterly, but you need access to the Oxford University Press scholarly journals to read what they wrote.)

So this is part of what I have in mind, when I say (my second point at the start of this post) that musicians have trouble resolving the contradiction between satisfaction and commitment. If they were happier in their jobs, would they play better? Maybe not -- Richard and his team found a slight negative correlation between orchestral quality and job satisfaction. Musicians, that is, were very slightly more likely to be dissatisfied in orchestras that played really well!

But that's under current conditions, which I'll have more to say about in a moment. Though it's an astonishing finding. Surely something's wrong, somewhere, if the better orchestras aren't the most satisfying to be in. I have to wonder whether, if orchestral culture were more deeply satisfying, whether the negative correlation would disappear. And whether orchestras would play better than they do now. 

What strikes me most, though, is a kind of dual thinking that seems to go on, when I post about these things here. I ask whether orchestras play as well as they might. So then I get strong pushback from musicians who insist that they're ferociously committed to terrific playing, and that they have many ways to influence the quality of their orchestras. Plus fervent objections to my sports analogies, saying that orchestral concerts exist on a far higher level than sports, that what goes on in them is spiritual uplift. This all would reflect the internal motivation that Richard discussed. 

But what I don't hear about is the job satisfaction. That is, I don't get many full-spectrum responses, in which someone might say, "Listen, we're not all that happy doing our jobs, but we try as hard as we can to play at the highest level." I think -- and I say this with sympathy and respect -- that one reason I'm not likely to get many responses of this kind is that, if I got them, musicians would then have to ask how much better they might play if they were happier doing their jobs. If, for instance, they really had ways, both individually and as a group, to openly, constructively, collectively address the quality of their playing.

If, that is, they weren't atomized. 

This post is getting long. i'll continue it. 





]]> Sports and uplift (more) tag:www.artsjournal.com,2011:/sandow//20.46331 2011-07-11T15:25:01Z 2011-07-11T16:00:29Z A note to people who think I might have written too much here about sports. Once you've gotten what I'm trying to say, sportswise, feel free to scroll down to the subhead that shows I'm moving on to classical music.... Sandow http://www.artsjournal.com/sandow/
A note to people who think I might have written too much here about sports. Once you've gotten what I'm trying to say, sportswise, feel free to scroll down to the subhead that shows I'm moving on to classical music. I won't be offended. 

Thinking some more about about the comments I've gotten trashing my idea that sports and classical music could be compared in any useful way. Plus my responses, both in the comments, and in my "Underestimating" post. 

One theme in the comments has been that classical music is about uplift and transcendence, while sports are comparatively trivial, about nothing more than competition and winning. 

One reaction I have -- and please forgive me if it seems harsh -- is that the people saying that don't know sports very well. And I was encouraged in this belief by a chart I saw this morning in USA Today, which I read over breakfast in a hotel I stayed in, on a road trip. The chart shows the percentage of people who talked about a given topic during the past week. Sports came last of the four topics named, with just 46%, lower than the weather, movies and TV, and politics. 

And could the percentage be lower among people concerned with the future of classical music?

Whatever. I think anyone who knows sports well would say that matters of ethics, character, uplift, and even transcendence are everywhere in sports. To the people who think it's all about winning...what makes a team or individual win (but especially a team) is character. Discipline. Work. Cooperation. 

And these things are constantly noted in sports conversation and commentary. Who has these things, who doesn't A-Rod, the Yankees star, despised because he cares (or anyway used to) more about himself than the team. Everyone in New York falling in love with Eli Manning when the Giants won the superbowl, because we all thought he didn't have grit enough to be a championship quarterback, and then he showed us he had it. Everyone, just two days ago, loving the Tampa Bay Rays because they came up out of their dugout to cheer Derek Jeter when he got his 3000th hit, even though he'd hit a homerun that tied the score in a game the Rays badly needed to win. 

Or in any tennis tournament, how much tennis fans notice how someone reacts after losing, or for that matter winning, how they talk to the player they just beat or lost to, when they meet right after the match at the net. How much we love it when Sharapova, after losing unexpectedly to a newcomer in the French Open final, was really warm and congratulatory, and then kept that tone in her TV interview afterward. 

Or the non-famous pitcher who lost a perfect game, when the umpire made a transparently bad call. He was out the next day to deliver the lineup card to that same umpire, something the manager usually does, but that the pitcher did on this occasion, just to show he had no  hard feelings. All of baseball, fans included, applauded him as a class act. 

And how much we hated to read this morning about the people deriding the guy who caught Derek Jeter's homerun, the 3000th hit. The guy gave it back to Jeter, without asking anything in return, when he could have sold the ball for untold sums. And paid off his student loans! A big boo to those who derided him for this. They're not class acts. 

These things are as important in sports as winning. Maybe more important, in many cases. And they often inspire entire cities. When the Red Sox won the world series, after being down 2-0 to the Yankees in the playoffs. And then winning every other post-season game they played. That uplifted the entire city of Boston. As the whole city was ashamed, when the Patriots turned out to be stealing information from other teams. 

I wouldn't minimize these things. Every one of them is a life lesson. Very specific. Uplift with content. 

     Whereas in classical music...

Some people have said in comments here that classical music is about uplift, or transcendence. Now, maybe i'm not alone in thinking the tone of these remarks might be just a little sententious. (Sorry again if I'm harsh.)

But suppose the commenters are right. Suppose classical music, these days, is about uplift. Suppose that's what (as at least one person did say) that this is why orchestras play, and why people go to orchestra concerts. Orchestras play to uplift their audience. The audience comes to be uplifted. 

Supposing that's true. (And I've seen some studies that support the idea.) Then what does that say about classical music as an art form.

Forgive me, please, if what I'm about to say seems (once more) harsh. But if uplift is what people want, expect, and get when they come to a classical concert, then classical music has fallen out of the realm of art. It's not art anymore. It's comfort food, operating on more or less the same plane as new age music. 

Because art does -- or should do -- more than uplift us. It's also supposed to challenge us, surprise us, shock us, even disgust us. Push our buttons. Take us to places we never dreamed about, and might not like. That's what art has done in the past. That's what many of the great masterpieces of music -- the ones that now comfort and uplift us -- did when they were new. 

If you know in advance what an experience is supposed to be for you, and if the experience then reliably delivers what you expect, that experience might be many things, some of them valuable. But it's not an experience with art. If art is doing what it should, you never know what you're going to get. The whole point is to open horizons you never knew you had. Not just to take you to the same place, over and over and over and over. 

Ironically, everyone...this is what the movies do. Yes, many are formulaic, many are dumb, some have not much more going on in their hearts than to make a lot of money. But often we're completely surprised by a movie, even a big studio production, and taken to some new place. That can happen not just to us as individual viewers, but to a subculture, or to our entire culture. It happened with Brokeback Mountain. It happened in the '60s with The Graduate, Easy Rider, and Bonnie and Clyde, films which in turn would never have been made if a subculture of artists and intellectuals and just plain curious, artistic people hadn't been wildly surprised, upended, and transformed by French and Italian art films of the 1950s and '60s.

Sports also can surprise us, take us places we didn't expect. 

While classical music -- according to some of its strongest supporters! -- takes us nowhere new. Uplift, uplift, uplift. The same, expected thing, over and over. Not a bad thing, not a weak thing, but not (in my view, anyway) an artistic thing. 

What a sad fall for a great art form. We can do better. And we will, once classical music is reborn. 
]]> No direction home tag:www.artsjournal.com,2011:/sandow//20.46302 2011-07-08T16:19:44Z 2011-07-08T17:12:56Z Sandow http://www.artsjournal.com/sandow/ This may come as a shock, but -- continuing my posts on the artistic quality of orchestras -- the larger American orchestras normally have no one who functions as their artistic director. 

You may think this is nonsense, when you read it. What's the music director? you might ask. Chopped onions? 

But in fact -- as insiders know -- many music directors, maybe most, don't take responsibility for the concerts that they don't conduct. In some cases, they may not even take much interest. There may be reasons for this. A top-class music director is only in town certain weeks of the year. He or she, in most cases, is also the music director somewhere else. Time is limited. 

And even knowledge may be limited! The then-artistic administrator of a top American orchestra told me, some years ago, that their incoming music director had asked not to be consulted about who should guest-conduct. He didn't often hear other conductors, he explained, so much of the time he might have no opinion. 

Bottom line: music directors -- even while they may well play a key role in hiring and firing, and may also take the lead in getting an orchestra to play better (at least when they conduct) may not take responsibility for the overall artistic thrust of the institution. (There are exceptions: Barenboim did that, I believe, when he was in Chicago. Boulez certainly did it at the New York Philharmonic. Which is not to slight other situations where this may or may have been the case.)

     Artistic administrators

So who else at an orchestra might play that role? Well, there's the artistic administrator, or VP of Artistic Affairs (or some such title). This person (usually with one or two associates) certainly runs the artistic business of the orchestra day to day. If (as I once saw happen) two of the soloists for a Verdi Requiem performance pull out abruptly, just days before the concert, it's the artistic staff who find replacements.

They may also engage soloists and guest conductors, and might program every detail of concerts that the music director doesn't conduct (if -- as I've said happens often enough -- the music director doesn't choose to be involved). The artistic staff also takes (as a rule) complete charge of parks concerts, school concerts, holiday concerts, and almost everything else that's not part of the core subscription series. 

So why wouldn't the artistic administrator (or artistic VP) be the artistic director? Because, almost always, these people don't have enough clout. They do the heavy artistic lifting, day to day, but the music director outranks them. Only with support from a music director (and from an orchestra's CEO, the executive director or president) could an artistic administrator assume anything approaching artistic control of an orchestra's work. (I think Bob Moir, artistic VP in Pittsburgh, has at least in the past filled that role, and wonderfully.)

      The head honcho

But I mentioned the person in overall charge, the executive director or president (titles vary from orchestra to orchestra). Wouldn't this, at least in the last resort, be the artistic director? 

Not usually. Most of these people would be the first to admit that they don't have the artistic chops to do that job. And in any case they spend at least 90% of their time fundraising. And supervising every other aspect of the orchestra's work. They may not have time for artistic direction, too. 

Certainly they'll vet artistic plans, and maybe disapprove, if something proposed seems to be too expensive, let's say, or else seems, to the marketing department, impossible to sell tickets for. Or they might overrule the marketing department, and tell the artistic staff to do the concerts even if no one comes. 

(One big exception, I believe, was Tom Morris, when he ran the Cleveland Orchestra. He was fully capable of directing artistic affairs, and in fact does that now at the Ojai Festival. And in fact I think that, during his reign, Cleveland did present an exceptional example of coherent artistic direction. From what I've heard and observed, Tom and Christoph von Dohnányi, the music director at the time, worked closely together in artistic planning, very ably helped by Ed Yim, the artistic administrator in those years. The three were very much on the same page, it seems to me, and really took charge of the orchestra as an artistic entity.)

But wait. Shouldn't the board of directors be in ultimate charge, artistically? They legally govern the institution. And they're the ones who hire the music director. 

But in fact most board members wouldn't think themselves capable of taking charge artistically. And, in truth, they wouldn't be. So they won't try to set an artistic direction. Like the CEO, they might make their voices heard -- one of them, let's say, might complain, "Too much new music!" -- though short of firing the music director, the CEO, and the artistic staff, the board has no power to enforce its artistic views. 

And all of this goes, i think, deeper than what I've up to now suggested.

     Consequences

Suppose an orchestra has a music director with a particular interest -- conducting new music, let's say. Does this mean this now becomes the guiding strategy of the institution?

Maybe not. I know one major orchestra that engaged a music director with a definite bent toward new music, and then put in place a board president who (from what I've heard) disapproves. Not exactly a coherent policy, but -- the music director has no power to set overall organizational strategy! And so may be powerless to do more than simply conduct the pieces -- new or otherwise -- that he or she favors.

Two examples (from opera, as it happens, but the same things can happen with orchestras):

    • In the 1990s, the Chicago Lyric Opera was a roaring commercial success, selling 103% of its tickets. (Subscribers would return tickets they couldn't or didn't want to use, and those tickets would be resold.) The company also liked to do new or modern pieces. For these, ticket sales would initially not be as strong as they would be for the standard repertory. But the company apparently was united on the importance of doing new and modern work, and so the maketing department, faced with a production that wasn't selling, went into high gear. They were pit bulls. They had lists of everyone they could identify who'd ever bought a ticket to a new or modern work, and (as they told me at the time) they'd call these people, one by one, until they'd sold out the house.
    • By contrast, the Metropolitan Opera didn't make any special effort in the '90s to sell seats to Wozzeck and other modern works that James Levine (to his credit) liked to do. Or so the marketing director in those years once told me. Overall, the company was selling 92% of the house, and that, to the marketing director, seemed good enough. Faced with a production (like Wozzeck) that wouldn't sell, he'd accept that as a law of nature, saying (as he put it to me in very plain terms) that it was the artistic peoples' right to put on what they liked, and if the price was four or five productions each year that didn't sell, that was acceptable. Modern opera, then, would appear to have been James Levine's strategy, but not the company's.
I once saw firsthand what happened when the music director of a big American orchestra got an idea that involved a department he didn't normally control. Everyone jumped to do his wishes. But what he wanted involved quite a bit of change, for something that, perhaps, wouldn't change the face of the institution all that dramatically. So when, after not too long, the music director (enmeshed in other projects, including, of course, his other music directorship) lost his fire for his new idea, no one else pursued it either. And while remnants of it persisted for a few years, it never became the central focus that the music director apparently had wanted at the start. 

One last situation. What happens if an orchestra doesn't play as well for guest conductors as it does for its music director? Or sometimes doesn't. Who has the power to address that problem? 

Well, the music director could. But he or she doesn't hear the concerts, as a rule, that he or she doesn't lead. So does he or she have standing to say the playing wasn't good enough? For what it's worth, I've never heard of a music director addressing this issue, though I'll be quick to say it may have happened. It doesn't seem to be the normal rule. 

The artistic administrator can't say anything. Well, maybe privately, to a few trusted musicians. But that's the kind of atomized way of dealing with artistic matters that I noted in my last post. It doesn't show the orchestra as a coherent, conscious institution, addressing an artistic problem openly, and as a group

The executive director, similarly, isn't likely to say anything. The musicians, in fact, might object. They might (as I've heard happen in a different though not unrelated situation) ask if their contract allows the management to talk to them about this subject. And I've been told by musicians that it would be in most cases an outright contract violation for the board to say anything.

So the problem -- if it exists -- might well not be addressed, unless the musicians themselves choose to address it. And if they did, again judging from what I discussed in my last post, they'll only do it privately, one on one, or in small groups, atomized, not discussing the situation openly, in any organized way. 
]]> Atomized? tag:www.artsjournal.com,2011:/sandow//20.46282 2011-07-07T14:41:43Z 2011-07-07T15:27:24Z About orchestra culture...I got a comment on one of my posts from Henry Peyrebrune, a bassist in the Cleveland Orchestra, whom I know from the Mellon Foundation's Orchestra Forum. I want to thank him for the comment, which was this:Greg... Sandow http://www.artsjournal.com/sandow/ About orchestra culture...

I got a comment on one of my posts from Henry Peyrebrune, a bassist in the Cleveland Orchestra, whom I know from the Mellon Foundation's Orchestra Forum. I want to thank him for the comment, which was this:

Greg - we talk about performance all the time - it's called rehearsal. While it's primarily led by the conductor, there are always side discussions within sections and sections taking time during rehearsal breaks or after rehearsal to go over passages. And - individual players can focus on their own performance during their own practice, which is informed by years of intense scrutiny. And and - we always talk about the way the orchestra is playing during breaks and between rehearsal and concerts. I think it's a big mistake to leave performance quality and artistic decisions as the sole province of the music director, but my experience is that musicians talk more about quality and the orchestra's shortcomings than any other topic, and we all make artistic decisions every time we put the bow on the string or make the air in our instruments vibrate. 

I should first say that I respect these thoughts a lot, not least because I know and respect Henry, and because (as I think we all know) the Cleveland Orchestra plays with tremendous care and polish. It's also an orchestra that has had an ethic (so to speak) about playing well. They don't (unlike some orchestras) play their best only with a conductor they like, and only at important concerts. I once heard some of their musicians play a show for kids and their parents, in a school gym. I don't think they'd have played any better if this had been a full orchestral concert, on tour in Vienna.

So bravo to them for that. 

But I think -- again with respect -- that Henry's comments show what I might call an atomized state of artistic caring. He tells us that the orchestra works on artistic matters, as a community, in these ways:

    1. They have rehearsals
    2. At rehearsals, players have private talks or else talks in their sections about how they're doing, and may take extra time to go over specific passages
    3. Individual players practice their parts [and when they're in the Cleveland Orchestra, I'll add, they'll practice very carefully]
    4. They talk about performance quality during breaks, and between rehearsals and concerts
    5. They make artistic decisions every time they play even a single note
All of which of course is true! But notice the inward, very private focus. At rehearsals, the conductor is in charge, so for the most part any overt artistic decisions come from him or her. The players largely react within themselves, in silence.

Henry's third and last points refer to things the players do alone. And the conversations he talks about in his second and fourth points are private, one on one, or among small groups. What's missing is any orchestra-wide discussion of performance quality. The closest they might come, to judge from what Henry says, is when sections -- led, very likely, by the section leader (the principal player in that section) -- discuss problems that may have come up in their playing. 

But what happens when there's a large problem? What happens when, in the opinion of other players in the orchestra, a section isn't playing well enough? What happens when the players don't like the music director's way of making music, or take strong exception to what the music director wants to do in a particular piece? What happens when many people in the orchestra think that, just maybe, the orchestra doesn't play (let's say) Baroque music as well as it should? What happens when everyone knows that one of the principals is getting, sadly, older, and doesn't play as well as he or she used to?

Well, you can say that many of these things are the music director's problem. And that if the players don't like the music director, then they're stuck with him or her, unless they can make some private noise before the music director's contract is renewed. 

But that only underlines how atomized the players are, how much of their artistic work is done in private, or at the command of someone else. And how few ways -- if any -- there are within most orchestras (and the Cleveland Orchestra, I'll say again, is better than most) to deal communally with artistic problems. 

Orchestras, to summarize, do have artistic discussions, largely in private. But they don't seem to be organized as self-directing artistic entities. (Except, of course, orchestras like the London Symphony or especially the Berlin Philharmonic, in which the musicians are legally the owners of the orchestra.)

This atomization is more than a theoretical problem. At one discussion I attended at a Mellon gathering, members of one of the participating orchestras complained about their music director. The music director, they said, would stop the orchestra during rehearsals, but start talking before there actually was silence, or in other words while some of the players, being maybe a little late to react (or maybe the music director didn't give a strong enough signal to stop) were still playing.

As a result, the players groused, they couldn't hear some of what the music director said. 

A small problem, you might say? Sure. But note that it had been going on for years, and that nothing was ever done about it. Nobody said anything to the music director. Or to the management, to be passed on to the music director. The players were atomized. They could complain about this to each other, or bring it up at a small and private minor meeting during one of the Mellon gatherings. None of their board and staff were present, and certainly not the music director. They weren't about to bring this up at a meeting everyone was at. 

And never, not once, did any of the Mellon gatherings I was at address any problem like this. There was, at one point, a private discussion in which musicians from one participating orchestra told their executive director, in a very heartfelt way, that they didn't like the music director. Who then was removed, as part of a truly notable revamping of many aspects of the orchestra, in which (among other things) the players agreed to take less money, in exchange for greater artistic and administrative control.

But things like that are rare, to say the least, among American orchestras. And note that, wonderful as the outcome was, the discussion I heard was done in private. Atomized, again, though in this case in a wonderfully healthy way.

How bad can this get? I've been reliably told that in one not small American orchestra, there's a violinist who hasn't played a note for years, in rehearsals or performances. He/she plays air violin, miming the gestures of playing, but not producing any sound. 

And this, I'm told, goes uncorrected, though surely every musician in the orchestra must know about it. You'd think a musician who quite literally didn't play would be fired. You'd think the other musicians wouldn't stand for it. And, let's be fair, in many orchestras, or surely most of them, this situation really wouldn't be tolerated. 

But that it can exist -- if my information is correct -- in one not small orchestra would seem to demonstrate that artistic matters aren't (strange as this may seem) dealt with in any systematic way. 
]]> While we're talking about orchestras... tag:www.artsjournal.com,2011:/sandow//20.46265 2011-07-06T16:13:26Z 2011-07-06T16:50:13Z Sandow http://www.artsjournal.com/sandow/ seems to be finding a young audience. Or that's what a Los Angeles Times story the link takes you to says. Thirty-five percent of the orchestra's audience, we're told, is younger than 35. 

Which compares to data from past generations, when the classical music audience was no older than the rest of the population. In 1955, for instance, more than half the Minneapolis Symphony audience was under 35. (That orchestra, of course, is now the Minnesota Orchestra.) 

If the Toronto story really is true, it might be the biggest news in classical music, even bigger than the Philadelphia bankruptcy. Good news, I'd like to think, trumps bad news. I'm thinking of going to Toronto, maybe this fall, to see it all first hand. 

And the second development is Jesse Rosen's speech at the League of American Orchestras annual conference last month. He's the president of the League, and his speech -- though delivered in a wonderfully calm and friendly and constructive way -- was dynamite. Here are links to the official text, and to a video of Jesse giving the speech. The text, of course, is quicker to read, but watch the video, if you can. It has things not in the official text, and the tone is masterful. 

What did Jesse say? That orchestras are in serious trouble. They're spending more, and taking in less money. Deficits are rising. And the deficits are structural -- not simply the result of economic troubles, but instead built in to the way orchestras function. 

On top of all that, fewer people go to classical concerts. Orchestras haven't learned how to reach their audience -- existing or potential -- in other ways. Donors are wary of giving money; support from foundations and corporations is way down.

And, in the face of growing diversity in the world at large, their audiences (despite efforts to change this) remain almost completely white.

The solution, as Jesse outlines it?

Orchestras have to face these facts, transparently admit them (with data on how they're specifically affected), and take steps to change things. 

They have to realign themselves with the needs of their communities. 

And -- very important for the series of posts I've been doing lately -- they have to become more creative:

If we are to be a creative form, not just a re-creative one, then we must work to attract creative people, as well as nurture the gifts of those already in our orchestras.

We need to be asking, what kind of talent must we include to create the musical experiences  that will usher in the next generation of people who passionately want us in their lives?

Young entrepreneurial musicians, some of them in our orchestras, are finding a following with audiences and funders by performing in small and often unlikely venues. 

They may cross genre boundaries, or simply rethink their approaches to traditional repertoire, but they thrive on intimacy and audience engagement. If we want -- and I think we do -- this next generation of creative artists involved with our orchestras, our current audition system needs to change to embrace a broader range of talents than just superb musicianship and technique.

Of course Jesse doesn't go as far as I do, in questioning whether the playing itself -- apart from new ways of presenting it -- is arresting enough to seize a new audience. But I think his points are allied to mine. 

And one more thing. It might be tempting to say that what he says is simply his opinion, or the opinion of the League management, and that it doesn't speak for orchestras. Of course there are complex issues buried in those thoughts -- when you speak for an orchestra, who, exactly, would you be speaking for? The board? The management? The musicians? 

But leaving that aside (even though it's a question that matters), Jesse was hardly speaking only for himself, or his colleagues at the League. The League doesn't work that way. It's a membership organization, and it can't get far ahead of its membership. 

So anyone setting official League policy has to get buy-in at least from prominent members. Which, as Jesse notes in things he said that aren't in the official text -- one reason you might want to watch the video -- he went over this ground with some of the member orchestras, long before drafting the speech. Some of the orchestras objected, saying that even though what Jesse said was true, they couldn't admit it publicly. (Something I myself have heard said behind the scenes.)

But later these orchestras came around, and backed this extraordinary public announcement of orhcestras' troubles. 





]]> Abstract? tag:www.artsjournal.com,2011:/sandow//20.46241 2011-07-05T16:46:37Z 2011-07-05T17:04:46Z Often people say that classical music -- instrumental music -- is abstract, and therefore not easy to understand. Thus, as one commenter said a few days ago, it can't be compared to baseball and movies, which aren't abstract, and therefore... Sandow http://www.artsjournal.com/sandow/
But I don't think this is true. Here's a response I wrote to that comment, edited slightly to make it more understandable as an independent blog post:

I think that in past generations orchestral music wasn't considered at all abstract. Certainly in Mozart's time, people followed it easily, applauding the moment they heard something they liked. There are stories from the early 19th century of audiences -- when Beethoven's symphonies began to be played with anything like regularity -- crying out in wonder when they heard passages that amazed them.

And, in past generations, top-rank classical artists used to make up stories that they thought the great instrumental works they played would tell. And the audience did, too. For a wonderfully (and famous) example, look at the passage about Beethoven's Fifth in E.M. Forster's novel Howard's End, in which a family goes to hear an orchestra concert, most of them 20 or younger. One of them makes up a fabulous scenario for the Beethoven symphony. Forster doesn't write as if this was anything unusual. (And also as if the young age of the audience -- plus the way they applaud after every movement -- weren't unusual either. He wrote this in 1904.)

So in my view the idea that instrumental works are abstract, and thus need training and preparation to understand, isn't true. 

[The commenter talked about Hanslick, the 19th century critic, talking about instrumental works as abstract, but that wouldn't have been anything like a universal view in his time. I think we need to see his thoughts about that against the background, first, of Brahms vs. Wagner. Hanslick was emphatically on Brahms's side, and in fact fanned the flames of the conflict, making it maybe greater than it was. Wagner had thrown out the old forms, and Hanslick, defending them, elevated them to lofty heights they may never have occupied before. And the second piece of background here is the ongoing battle, in the 19th century, between classical music -- understood as Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn, Mendelssohn, Schumann -- versus popular music, understood as opera, especially Rossini. Plus concerts by virtuosi. One way of drawing the distinction was by elevating classical music to a superhuman plane. Hence the talk of abstraction.]

And the belief in this causes problems, I think, by (1) encouraging performances to be abstract, so that people don't easily grasp them, and (2) encouraging people to believe that classical music is difficult, that they need to learn a lot before they can appreciate. And, most damaging, (3) by encouraging people to feel that they shouldn't trust their natural reactions to what they hear. Which might well be to make up stories.

The classical forms in fact are very simple. Sonata form, which might seem the most difficult (though it can be explained in just a minute or two), is a narrative form, which means that it's likely to result in pieces which naturally shape themselves into stories. 

And even its more abstract elements may not be too hard to hear. When I worked with the Pittsburgh Symphony, hosting and helping to program a concert series called Symphony with a Splash, aimed at newcomers to classical music, we did the first movement of Mozart's Paris Symphony. Mozart wrote a letter to his father about that piece, explaining just what he did to get the audience to applaud (during the music, of course). I told our audience that they were free to applaud anytime they wanted, as soon as they heard something they liked. 

So they applauded while the piece was going on, and did it often. And the most striking thing was that the applause from one moment to the next changed a lot in its volume and quality. The most vehement applause came at the moment when the recapitulation diverges from the exposition. This was an audience that doesn't know sonata form. But they could hear that something new was happening. So they understand, on a gut level, one of the supposedly most subtle aspects of sonata form. Which means, I think, that these things are far less abstract and difficult than many of us think. 

If I'm right in my historical analysis (in brackets, above), and the idea of classical music as something abstract took hold as something defensive, as a defense for the idea that classical music (or some forms of it) were superior to other kinds of music, then it would make a lot of sense -- sad as it is -- that these ideas have such currency today. People fall back on them to defend classical music's unpopularity.

While I'd say that it's only unfamiliarity that makes classical instrumental music seem so hard to grasp. Plus performances that flatten everything out. 

Think of symphonic movie scores. Everyone can follow them, can tell you when the music changes mood, and what the changes are. Why can't they do the same in Beethoven or Richard Strauss?  
]]> Four personalities tag:www.artsjournal.com,2011:/sandow//20.46173 2011-06-30T19:01:10Z 2011-06-30T19:13:39Z Sandow http://www.artsjournal.com/sandow/
So there's a teaser. To prepare for that post, I want to share something one of my Juilliard students wrote this past semester, which I'm quoting with her permission. I'd asked the class (in a takehome exam) to react to a blog post by Jade Simmons, a pianist who's on a crusade to help classical musicians be more fully themselves while they play. 

My students embraced her view, and one of them wrote what follows:

A lot of us, especially those of us who are still in school, place too much importance on playing perfectly at the expense of thinking about the audience.  Of course a certain amount of technical precision is necessary to make a piece recognizable and enjoyable, but what is most noticeable to audiences is whether or not someone approaches the work with joy and spirit!  As a result I've pretty much developed 4 ways of playing.

1) The way I play in orchestra auditions - precise, mechanical, robotic.  In orchestra auditions it is more important to do nothing wrong than to do anything particularly well.  They are basically looking for a reason to eliminate you, and "bad intonation" is a lot more convincing than "plays like an automaton."

2)The way I play in juries/other auditions - there's a little room for flexibility and personality here, but not much.  I still know that I will get more points off for making a mistake than being boring, but they will notice if I'm totally phoning it in.  It's especially hard to play Bach in juries because everyone has his or her own opinion as to how it should be played.  I generally just play it as middle of the road as I can so that no one loves it but no one hates it.

3)The way I play in performances which my teacher is attending - I have two very wonderful teachers here at Juilliard and they both allow me a lot of artistic freedom.  But every once in a while, they put their foot (feet?) down.  If I really (and I mean REALLY) don't like what they want me to do, I will just pretend that I don't understand what they are asking me to do.  (I'm pretty sure they know what's going on though.)  If I'm ok with it but prefer my own way, I play it their way when they are listening.  And I can't help but think that it probably sounds a little unconvinced, but while I'm still studying with them I feel like I owe it to them to use their ideas when they really think it's important.  Do I really owe it to them?  I don't know.  But I'm graduating in two weeks so HA!

4)The way I play in any other performance - I try to just have fun!  Especially when playing on stage with friends, I think the audience has the best time when we really interact with each other and show that we are committed to the performance.  If something goes wrong, all the better!  It's also important for the audience to see that we are humans.  It's not easy to be so vulnerable in performance - I'm generally a little bit of a nervous performer. I usually try to remember what someone told me (I don't remember who) which is that when you get noticeably nervous in a concert it's almost better because the audience roots for you more. 
 
Anyways, hopefully my multiple personality disorder will one day be resolved - hopefully I'll have it down to 2 or 3 next year as I will be just performing and taking orchestra auditions.  And once I get a job and tenure, who knows!  I could very well finally become myself!

Now, maybe this more directly relates to how students play, than to how orchestras play. But I think we can see the connection. If students are encouraged to do, in their playing (and in their auditions) only what other people want, will that make them creative once they start working professionally.

Note, of course, that this student (someone with, generally, a marvelous spirit and a terrific sense of humor) things that things might finally improve, once there's a tenured job in an orchestra. So the student, while noting that there's pressure to conform, doesn't necessarily agree with everything i'm saying (and I honor her for that). 

Let's hope that's right, and that this student has a long, rewarding, creative career playing in orchestras. Biut let's also think about what we might do to make music study at least a little more flexible. 
]]> Underestimating tag:www.artsjournal.com,2011:/sandow//20.46171 2011-06-30T18:24:05Z 2011-06-30T18:57:12Z Sandow http://www.artsjournal.com/sandow/
But there are two threads, two motifs, in the comments that I think are worth mentioning. 

     Sports are simple

First -- because I said that sports fans know far more about how their team plays than classical music fans know about how orchestras play -- comes the notion that my comparison isn't valid, because sports are simple. It's all about winning and losing, nothing more than that. And the performance of individual players can be measured simply by statistics. (By contrast, I guess, orchestra concerts deal with lofty matters of the spirit, intangibles that could never be measured, or that it would be laughable to try to measure.)

But anyone who knows sports well knows this isn't true. What makes a team win? Quality performance, in big and small things, tangible things and intangible things, honed -- both on a team, and by individuals, over many years. Take, for instance, an outfielder who knows, from long experience, exactly how the ball caroms off the stadium walls behind him. He'll get to balls other outfielders miss. But there's no way to measure this, and -- as baseball commentators often say -- a skill like this (or a shortstop's extraordinary range in the field, how fast and how far he can move, on any given play) may actually lead to worse stats. An outfielder who knows the caroms can get to more balls, some of which will be really hard to pick up. So he'll make more errors, which brings his fielding average down. Same with shortstops with lots of range, who get to more ground balls.

How about hustle? Another intangible, but every fan knows it's crucial in sports. Running as hard as you can to first base, even if the ball you've hit looks like an easy out. Throwing a dangerous pitch -- one you might easily miss with, but which, if it goes where you want, might be unhittable -- with the game on the line. 

And instinct. The way some basketball players have an almost supernatural sense of where everyone on both teams is, on the court, at every moment. Or quarterbacks, about to be sacked, spotting in 1/10th of a second a pass receiver about to get free, way down the field. And then throwing the ball at the last moment directly...not to where they are now, but to where they're going to be when the ball arrives. 

And brains. The number of situations, in baseball, that you as a player have to know, is uncountable. You're in the field. What do you do if the ball is hit to you? Depends on where you are in the game, who's on base, how many outs, what the count is, and also, if there are men on base, often on the speed and habits of the runners. You'll play differently if you know, for instance, that a runner on second is slow, but takes hopeless chances, for instance getting to third on a single, but then bolting for home, when he shouldn't. If you know a runner has that profile, you'll be poised to throw him out, much more than you'd need to be with someone really fast, who'd probably make any base he ran to, or someone slow but smart, who wouldn't take chances. 

And then, on the next pitch, with a different count, all those calculations might change. There's a book that goes into these situations, Pure Baseball, by Keith Hernandez. Astonishing, how many details there are, how much players, coaches, and managers have to know. And know in their guts, so they can react instantly if things go according to plan, but also improvise something new, if there are surprises. 

Players practice incessantly, too. Or the good ones do. I remember hearing once that Phyllis Curtin, the distinguished soprano, felt in her younger days that she didn't sing "ah" vowels well enough. So she vocalized the entire role of Salome (in Strauss's opera) on "ah." A ballplayer, similarly, may feel he doesn't react fast enough to ground balls hit to his left. So he'll get someone to hit 500 of those to him, until he starts getting it right. 

An accumulation of all these tiny things, most unmeasurable (but instantly spotted by experts), make a team win. And the lack of them makes the team lose. 

      Uplift

The other thread I noticed was people saying that people who go to orchestra concerts don't want to critique them, because they go to be uplifted. 

I find that an extraordinary view. What makes a concert uplifting? Surely it's the accumulation of small and big things done right in the performance (just as that makes a sports team win). And so why shouldn't people who go to the concerts demand the best, and know when they're not getting it?

Or do we believe that the mere fact that an orchestral masterpiece is competently performed makes it uplifting? And that therefore we don't need to ask any questions. That, it seems to be, is expecting the audience to be ignorant, passive, almost childish. Orchestral players, certainly (as so many commenters said, so strongly) care and work hard on the quality of their playing. So the audience shouldn't notice? Shouldn't care? It's beyond them, over their heads?

Are we asking them to check their brains at the door? Or do we imagine that orchestral performance is such a subtle and complex affair that only those trained to hear it should even bother making critiques? i'm sorry -- it's just not as fancy as that. If people heard these things talked about, they'd catch on very fast. Take, for instance, how well the members of a string section play together. I used to be deaf to that, until someone pointed out mistakes to me, notes that frayed apart, for instance. Anyone in the audience could learn to hear such things, if they were pointed out. The difference, for instance, between the first violins of a top-rank orchestra sustaining a soft high note and those in a third-tier or student group -- that's not hard to hear, once you know to listen for it. 

And -- back to uplift -- don't we, these days, critique just about everything? One commenter wrote, sagely, I thought, about going to the movies with friends, and having lively conversations about all sorts of artistic and technical things that they notice. But then they go to an orchestra concert, and his friends just say, "That was nice." People go to church, and critique the sermons! Even though, presumably, they're there for uplift. 

And not all classical works are uplifting. Rossini overtures -- which, by the way, I love -- are lots of fun. But uplifting? They're so sacred you shouldn't notice that (in a performance you just heard) the crescendi just didn't have much force? 

Makes no sense to me. And i think it's part of the reason why classical music has trouble in the world today. Its ideology says that everything's wonderful, when (a) plainly it isn't, and (b, my main point here) we don't react like that to anything else in our world. Newcomers go to classical performances, and may well like them, but the sense of unreality -- of classical music being treated as nothing else is -- makes it less likely that people who go for the first time will ever come back. 
]]> Shivers tag:www.artsjournal.com,2011:/sandow//20.46128 2011-06-28T20:57:38Z 2011-06-29T06:13:26Z Just a little bagatelle, as a diversion...A few weeks ago, I saw the Kennedy Center's production of Follies, the great but difficult Stephen Sondheim show, a cult item among musicals if ever there was one. Not the world's most successful... Sandow http://www.artsjournal.com/sandow/ Just a little bagatelle, as a diversion...

A few weeks ago, I saw the Kennedy Center's production of Follies, the great but difficult Stephen Sondheim show, a cult item among musicals if ever there was one. Not the world's most successful effort, the Kennedy Center show (though it's coming to Broadway). But it sent me back to the recording of the truly great live New York Philharmonic concert production of Follies, which happened in 1985. 

And which had as someone in the biz just observed on Facebook, had the most electric audience he'd ever seen. (The occasion was the birthday of the album's producer, Thomas Z. Shepard.) 

I agree. Most electric audience I, too, may ever have been in. So here's a taste of that. It comes in the middle of the show's first song, "Beautiful Girls," which to my mind is one of the most sweepingly evocative show songs of all time, walking a knife-edge line between glamour and decay.

Which of course all echoes what the show is about. Follies takes us to a reunion of Ziegfeld Follies showgirls, held in the remains of the theater they once sang and danced in. (Well, presumably Ziegfeld, though it's called something else.) The cast of the show has come on stage before the song, guests, all of them, at the party. The Ziegfeld figure greets them all, and offers his long-ago MC, singing the song that used to introduce the girls back in their glory days. Of course the song is "Beautiful Girls," and while he sings it in the show, ghosts of the showgirls come onstage, straight from the past, the old showgirls make a dramatic reentrance into the party, along with ghostly images of the young showgirls they used to be, wearing the show-stopping costumes they wore long ago. [Which shows the silly mistakes people -- in this case me -- can make. I'm even reading a book about the show. I knew perfectly well who enters during the song...]

At the Philharmonic, though, it worked (if I remember right) differently. The song starts. At first the only accompaniment is the piano. Very contemporary, very black and white. But then there's a leap up a half step, and the full orchestra comes in. At this point (again, if my memory serves) the cast of the performance came on stage, to an ovation that -- as you'll hear if you listen -- ends all ovations. The audience doesn't just clap. It shouts and screams. For more than a minute. And only stops because what we've been hearing is an instrumental interlude, and now the singer comes in again. 

So do listen to this! It makes me shiver. 

And why the ovation? Well, start with this. Follies was a cult show, produced on Broadway in 1971, and never, then or since, very successful, despite a fabulous premise (glamour fades edgily into decaying reality) and a beyond fabulous score. New York, meanwhile, is full of people who love Broadway shows, and surely know all these songs by heart. 

And those people filled Avery Fisher Hall for the performance. Add the prestige of the Philharmonic, and, of course, the way-beyond-Broadway splendor of their sound. And then, finally, consider the cast, assembled by Tom Shepherd, full of great names you'd never dream you'd see on a single stage: Barbara Cook, Mandy Patinkin, Comden and Green, George Hearn, Elaine Stritch, Carol Burnett, Lee Remick (better known in the movies, but she started on Broadway), Liliane Montevecchi (who eats "Ah, Paree" alive, doing things with it you wouldn't believe, if you knew the song only from Regine's wan version at the Kennedy Center). 

Plus Licia Albanese, the long-retired Met diva, but a cult figure in the New York opera world, not least because, each year at the Met opening, she'd sit in a center box and belt out a high B flat in the next to last phrase of the national anthem.) 

So take an expectant audience, people who know and love the show (and maybe wondered if they'd ever see it live), add the New York Philharmonic, and then, all at once, with a change of key and a sunburst of full-orchestra sound, bring the cast I've listed on stage. People just lost it, and who could blame them?

Though it would never have happened, I think, without Sondheim's music, which could spark ovations all by itself, and somehow carries, deep in its theatrical DNA (because Sondheim worked the show's subject into the notes), the sound of ovations long past. It's an incredible moment. An audience screaming. 

The singer on the recording is Arthur Rubin. Paul Gemignani conducts. 

And -- a footnote to the above -- it used to happen in classical music, back in the days when an adoring Vienna crowd lined the railroad tracks when Toscanini left town. And when (as I've blogged) Geraldine Farrar gave her farewell Met performance, and her fans strung banners from one side of the balcony to the other. 

Can we bring those days back? (We'll need stars who get us excited enough.) 

Sondheim's lyrics (to quote him, earlier in the song, "no rose can compare"):

Careful,
Here's the home of
Beautiful girls.
Where your
Reason is undone.

Beauty
Can't be hindered
From taking its toll.
You may lose control.
Faced with such Loreleis
What man can moralize?
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