Artist/director/maven Peter Sellars got right to the point in his conference keynote for the American Symphony Orchestra League, suggesting that the contemporary standard for the American orchestra doesn’t serve the art, doesn’t serve humanity, and disconnects the two in the process:
If you want to respect your grandparents, take care of your kids. You can’t keep your grandparents alive forever, but they’re still with you in your own children. In America, we fell in love with an artificial life-support system that wouldn’t let certain things die. Telling ourselves it was out of love that we were doing this, we starved the kids.
Any business that still has things on the shelf from 50 years ago as its primary offering…it’s a little odd. Everybody’s saying everything but the obvious — it’s dead.
Well worth a read or a listen. You can find links to the audio of the keynote (mp3 format) and a printed excerpt (pdf format) on Henry Fogel’s weblog.
What a wonderful keynote address!
Many of us often fall into the trap of doing it the way it’s always been done and serve the audiences we’ve always served.
This is a wake-up call to not only reach out to the soul of the art and the souls of our communities, but also to our own souls. We must remember why we chose careers in the arts and remember the fire in our belly that burned so hot for extolling the virtues of the arts before we were bogged down by management details.
The symphony orchestra is inherently 19th century. No matter how many bells and whistles you put on a horse and buggy, it is still a horse and buggy.
Righteous orchestral trips to ghettos are novel for a while, but would quickly wear thin with everyone involved. A hip integration of commoditized world music into orchestral works will turn out to be as hollow as it is short lived. Grandfather’s corpse cannot be revived; it must be buried – and for the sake of our children. The orchestra cannot be reinvented. We must begin with something entirely new.
The most tragic part is the way orchestras absorb so much money and talent from the music world when those resources could be used for new genres, concepts, and ideas that might lead us to a better future.
The symphony orchestra is the result of centuries of development of an art form. Appreciate the art and build upon this. We do not need to re-invent the wheel. Perhaps the symphony needs a fresh coat of paint but her foundations are still rock solid.
Not every symphony should even THINK about taking a trip to the “ghetto” to play for the masses. As Sellars pointed out this kind of thing begs the question: “What are your motives? Because people can see through your motives very clearly.” Perhaps, just perhaps, Sellars and the LA Philharmonic’s motives are pure and this rings true to their audience. If LA Philharmonic’s does this performance each year but does not let it become something bigger than themselves, if it becomes a ritual done out of pity, or feeling of obligation then it will become trite, meaningless and insulting.
What a wind bag of hot air — a long ,long speech that said nothing — telling dimwits what they expected to hear — pseudo profundities that went nowhere.
Honestly, I cannot believe that this is being praised! I listened to the recording, and then read the article and I’m still trying to understand his thesis, argument, or intention. He offers no real substantive criticism solutions, alternatives, or objectives as to what really symphonies should be doing. Instead it seems just like a collection of platitudes that don’t really say anything. I hate to sound like a troll but this was a profoundly meaningless speech. I can’t believe that we’re devoting so much time and space to praising a relatively useless speech.