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Life's A Pitch

For immediate release: the arts are marketable

Archives for February 2012

Frogger of Seville

February 29, 2012 by Amanda Ameer

For Rossini's birthday and Leap Day, the Google homepage featured cartoon froggies performing The Barber of Seville. They neglected to also feature Sadie Hawkin's Day, so I refer you to this In Honor.   … [Read more...]

“Nice is different than good”

February 27, 2012 by Amanda Ameer

Lin-Manuel Miranda, who was truly excellent in the recent City Center production of Merrily We Roll Along, started a series of Tweets that are continuing to this moment of Sondheim lower back tattoos (#sondheimlowerbacktattoo). This started when Miranda Tweeted back at theater publicist [I've since been corrected on Twitter - "Theater Publicist-in-the-making"...well congrats or I'm sorry, @mrtylermartins, You've Arrived!] Tyler Martins's suggestion of a Sondheim tramp stamp: You can read all the potential Sondheim lower back tattoos … [Read more...]

“Even better, you’re not watching PBS”

February 24, 2012 by Amanda Ameer

Placido Domingo did VERY well on The Colbert Report last night. Stephen Colbert is obviously a fan, which makes the thing completely adorable. The two discussed "the most popular song of all time" ("La donna è mobile", obviously, not "Imagine"), why tenors get all the girls, and "soaking the snooty crowd". The Colbert Report Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive After a commercial break, Stephen and Placido perform. Together. More classical musicians on TV, … [Read more...]

Who’s honoring classical music now

February 23, 2012 by Amanda Ameer

Tonight, Plácido Domingo will teach Stephen to sing on The Colbert Report. My sister points out that he probably needs to learn because Obama has been singing everywhere. The show has done a better job than most of supporting classical music, which is to say, I found three interviews. All from 2008, randomly enough. Here's Alex Ross, from January 29, 2008, talking about Ronald Reagan getting to first base with Communism: The Colbert Report Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video … [Read more...]

The Borrowers

February 21, 2012 by Amanda Ameer

Photoshopping one of Hilary's CDs into the back of Tiger Woods's crashed car is the extent my creative output, so I'm not going to judge composer Osvaldo Golijov. There is a controversy swirling around a commission for the Eugene Symphony. Respected NPR classical music critic Tom Manoff blogged about it here, and the Register-Guard picked up the story: When the Eugene Symphony performed the Pacific Northwest premiere Thursday night of “Sidereus,” a newly commissioned work by Grammy Award-winning composer Osvaldo Golijov, two members of the … [Read more...]

Ladies and gentlemen: GUSTAVO!!

February 3, 2012 by Amanda Ameer

Recently credited with ending gang violence in LA, Gustavo Dudamel has achieved something even more impressive: on Monday, he will appear on the best television show of all time, Sesame Street. For those of you who don't remember, Sesame Street is on PBS. The Los Angeles Times reports: In the segment, Dudamel and Elmo demonstrate the word "stupendous" by conducting a sheep playing a violin, an octopus playing the drums and a chorus of opera-singing penguins. Would that the sheep was a Hilary Hahn sheep. Or a Hilary Hahn alpaca. Nico … [Read more...]

Amanda Ameer

is a publicist who started First Chair Promotion in July 2007. She currently represents Hilary Hahn, Gabriel Kahane, David Lang, Michael Gordon, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Sondra Radvanovsky, Julia Wolfe, Jean-Yves Thibaudet and Lawrence Brownlee. She thanks Chris Owyoung at One Louder Photo for taking the above photo very quickly and painlessly. Read More…

Life’s A Pitch

Why don't we apply the successful marketing and publicity campaigns we see in our everyday lives to the performing arts? Great ideas are right there, ripe for the emulating. And who's responsible for the wide-reaching problems in ticket sales and … [Read More...]

Archives

@Amandaameer

Tweets by @amandaameer

Interviews

Talk to me about marketing Shakespeare

Oh gosh: let's see if I even remember how do to do this. Back in the day, when I didn't have clients playing everything Ravel wrote for the piano etc., I did interviews with Industry Professionals. … [Read More...]

Talk to me about Music Marathon

Remember when I was really awesome and posting interviews every week? Well, I'm less awesome now, but here's an interview with Billy Robin of Northwestern University. He started Music Marathon on … [Read More...]

Talk to me about BBC Music Magazine

As often as possible, on Fridays I will post interviews with colleagues from the field who are far more knowledgeable than I am on various marketing and publicity topics. In honor (-our) of all … [Read More...]

Talk to me about Metropolis Ensemble

In the immortal works of Todd Rundgren, "Iiii don't-want-to-work, I just wanna write-on-this-blog-all day." That's not entirely true: I love my job, but it does make things I also like to do--coming … [Read More...]

Life’s a Twitch, Part 3 (The Journalists)

Though many, many more music journalists are on Twitter, these are the people I noticed interacting with the publicists I interviewed the most. Oodles of thanks to  @nightafternight: Steve Smith, … [Read More...]

Talk to me about ‘Opera News’

As often as possible, on Fridays I will post interviews with colleagues from the field who are far more knowledgeable than I am on various marketing and publicity topics. This week, we have F. Paul … [Read More...]

Talk to me about not music blogging

At the ends of weeks, I post interviews with people who know a lot more about aspects of the proverbial business than I do. Two weeks ago, theater blogger Jaime Green told us she would blog … [Read More...]

Talk to me about theater blogging

Happy Friday! It's not raining and I actually have an interview to post!  This week we have Jaime Green, Literary Associate at MCC Theater in Manhattan and blogger of 5 years. Below she discusses … [Read More...]

Glenn Petry, 21C Media Group

Because 1. no one wants to read about The Life and Times of Amanda Ameer every day and 2. because there are many, many people out there who know more about publicity and marketing than I do, every … [Read More...]

Talk to me about Dilettante

Sometimes it's hard being Amanda. For example, when I think of lots of cool people to interview for (le) blog, and they say yes, and then I don't have time to write the questions? Yes, at times like … [Read More...]

A Virtual Panel

A Conversation

Jan 18-22, 2010: I hosted a virtual panel on when and how artists, managers, journalists, presenters and publicists single out musicians for being "special" in their promotion and career-building efforts. Participants included musician, pianist … [Read More...]

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