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PostClassic

Kyle Gann on music after the fact

Is More More or Less?

I appeal to my experienced readers to settle a dispute. I have been told by a couple of artists that the only way to break through the wall of public indifference and get attention in the press is to have a lot of work come out at once. A CD will pass unnoticed; release three CDs in quick proximity and people will suddenly think you’re on a roll, and treat you as important.

Now, it just so happens that I may have the opportunity to put out three CDs in 2005. And one of the record producers just told me exactly the opposite: that if you put out two CDs in quick succession, one of them will compete with the other, and each will only get half the attention it might otherwise have. Both of these opinions have been given to me in the strongest possible terms, with the presumed weight of vast experience behind them. Personally, as a critic I am more likely to pay attention if I suddenly receive three CDs by one artist, because I can write a more in-depth piece – but at the Village Voice I set my own agenda, and I am told that I am so atypical in that regard that I don’t count.

So, for my own sake and to settle a disputed point for us all, which is better? If you have three CDs to make, do you space them one a year for maximum exposure? or do you try to time them to come out all at once?

What’s going on here

So classical music is dead, they say. Well, well. This blog will set out to consider that dubious factoid with equanimity, if not downright enthusiasm [More]

Kyle Gann's Home Page More than you ever wanted to know about me at www.kylegann.com

PostClassic Radio The radio station that goes with the blog, all postclassical music, all the time; see the playlist at kylegann.com.

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Sites to See

American Mavericks - the Minnesota Public radio program about American music (scripted by Kyle Gann with Tom Voegeli)

Kalvos & Damian's New Music Bazaar - a cornucopia of music, interviews, information by, with, and on hundreds of intriguing composers who are not the Usual Suspects

Iridian Radio - an intelligently mellow new-music station

New Music Box - the premiere site for keeping up with what American composers are doing and thinking

The Rest Is Noise - The fine blog of critic Alex Ross

William Duckworth's Cathedral - the first interactive web composition and home page of a great postminimalist composer

Mikel Rouse's Home Page - the greatest opera composer of my generation

Eve Beglarian's Home Page- great Downtown composer

David Doty's Just Intonation site

Erling Wold's Web Site - a fine San Francisco composer of deceptively simple-seeming music, and a model web site

The Dane Rudhyar Archive - the complete site for the music, poetry, painting, and ideas of a greatly underrated composer who became America's greatest astrologer

Utopian Turtletop, John Shaw's thoughtful blog about new music and other issues

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