{"id":95,"date":"2008-09-25T09:30:14","date_gmt":"2008-09-25T09:30:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp\/?p=95"},"modified":"2008-09-25T09:30:14","modified_gmt":"2008-09-25T09:30:14","slug":"cant_hardly_wait","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/2008\/09\/cant_hardly_wait\/","title":{"rendered":"Can’t Hardly Wait"},"content":{"rendered":"

First, a note about the silliness of the classical music industry: <\/p>\n

The Gramophone Magazine<\/a> Awards are being announced across the pond today – perhaps even AS I TYPE THIS BLOG ENTRY – and I’m expected to write a press release about the winners. Fine, fine – just tell me how many people voted, give me the list of the awards, etc.. What am I told at 6 am this morning? “This information is under embargo till today’s lunchtime”. <\/b>UNDER EMBARGO!! Am I waiting on the Gramophone Awards winners AND Bush’s solution to America’s financial crisis? Under embargo. Give me a break. How much of the population woke up this morning – giddy with anticipation – leaped to their feet and Googled GRAMOPHONE ARTIST OF THE YEAR? ~Nobody. Whatever. I know who the Artist of the Year is already. And if I know, you should be able to figure it out.<\/p>\n

I have been thinking a lot lately about anticipation. I started seeing Iron Man <\/i>DVD previews on The TV last week, and was like, September 30th – yes – sign me up. This year, however, I will not tell everyone I know that I want a copy, since a similar announcement last year resulted in not one but four Ratatouille <\/i>DVDs for Christmas. I was actually giddy with anticipation about (and then devastated by) the Sex and the City <\/i>movie this summer; I wasted a truly embarrassing amount of time trying to find different versions of the trailer online. ((LAME)). I’m seriously excited about the new Deerhoof CD, since I’ve been hearing about it and seeing it everywhere since July<\/a>. <\/p>\n

When was the last time you were really excited about a classical CD? Was anyone in this wide world like, “I hear Hilary Hahn is recording a definitive Schoenberg disc…can’t wait!” No, they were not. They learned about it when I or the Director of Publicity at Deutsche Grammophon sent out a a press release, maybe two months before the release. No one leaked recording sections, Hilary never performed sections live on the radio, I never offered any blogs exclusive mP3 downloads. I’m not complaining about the response to the disc, but how amazing would it have been to really gear people up for it? <\/p>\n

The Metropolitan Opera does an excellent job via their posters around the city getting folks excited about productions; the Satyagraha posters<\/a> are especially memorable. But why don’t they videotape Atomic<\/i> rehearsals and “leak” them on YouTube? The people who know what Doctor Atomic<\/i> is about\/sounds like are…few. Perhaps if folks saw clips of rehearsals, the “not your grandfather’s opera” point would be driven home. I already asked Eric<\/a> if I could come to a rehearsal. Maybe I’ll sneak in a Flip camera. <\/p>\n

You also don’t see teaser ad campaigns often in classical music. I wasn’t going to bring this up, but I thought the “ad” “campaign” (me hanging up flyers at like, Collis Commonground) for our production of Pippin <\/i>at school was pretty good: basically, we pulled quotes from the musical (“Sometimes the fornicating I’m getting isn’t worth the fornicating I’m getting.” “Think about your life.”), typed them up in big, bold white letters on black backgrounds, printed 8.5\/11 sheets and on the very bottom in small type said “Pippin the Musical” and the date (which I have since blocked from my memory). Then, the week of the show we printed flyers in the same font that had the actual performance and venue information. The “Be Kanye” <\/a>ads (for Absolut Vodka) and the bus ad campaign for the recent Die Hard <\/i>movie (“Yippee Ki Yay Mo – John 6:27”<\/a>) are real-world examples of this. In retrospect, I should have come up with a banner ad or window card campaign using the “unplayable” tag on the Schoenberg concerto.<\/p>\n

Incidentally, the more creative you are with your teasers, the less money you have to spend. The “Be Kanye” ads are made to look cheap, and the Die Hard <\/i>ads were simple white text on a black background (perhaps they saw Pippin<\/i> at Dartmouth…).<\/p>\n

HIlary Hahn is Gramophone Artist of the Year, by the way. One<\/a> down, one<\/a> to go. Was this entry enough pre-buzz for that announcement? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

First, a note about the silliness of the classical music industry: The Gramophone Magazine Awards are being announced across the pond today – perhaps even AS I TYPE THIS BLOG ENTRY – and I’m expected to write a press release about the winners. Fine, fine – just tell me how many people voted, give me […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-95","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}