By popular demand on Facebook…well, two people asked for it :-) …here's the story I said there I'd tell about the Pet Shop Boys. How something I said gave them an idea for a song. I was interviewing them in LA in 1988 or '89, when I was pop music critic for the LA Herald-Examiner. I'd long liked them, as I remember serious rock critics tended to. I know Greil Marcus did. I loved their delirious rhythm, their intelligence, and Neil Tennant's deadpan singing, which somehow made room for both the intelligence and the delirium. But a … [Read more...]
How Ice-T was a mensch
One of my happiest moments, in my years as a journalist, was when I got Ice-T (shown in the photo) to stop saying something homophobic and cruel in his live shows. That happened in LA, late in the 1980s, when I was pop music critic for the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, a now long-defunct daily newspaper. Ice-T — now best known as an actor, a regular on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit — was the leading rapper in town. So it was natural for me to interview him. Before the second time I did that, I went to a live show he did, and … [Read more...]
Perilous orchestra life
"When the task force made its report, it led with a bombshell." Read on! It's early in the last decade, and the CEO of one of America’s top orchestras is at a gathering, talking to someone they’re friendly with. At this gathering are board members, staff, and musicians from more than a dozen orchestras. And at this point in their proceedings, anyone can start a discussion. You just write the subject on a sheet of paper, and post the paper where everyone can see it. The CEO writes his subject: “WHAT TO DO ABOUT THE SHITY ECONOMY.” Their … [Read more...]
Reaching out with love
How could we think in a really big way — an expansive, loving way — about the future of classical music? I think we might move toward acceptance. Acceptance of classical music’s place in the world, even if it's not as large as we'd like it to be. I don't mean we wouldn't work to give it a larger place. But we wouldn't be angry at how things are now. We wouldn't blame anyone. And above all, to all the many people who don't love classical music, we'd open our arms, with loving acceptance. Because these are our fellow humans, who … [Read more...]
Something American orchestras don’t want known
Continuing from my last post, with what should be in a book on the past few decades’ history of American orchestras… One main focus of the book would of course have to be orchestra finances. Along with the long-term decline in ticket sales, which of course affects the bottom line. So the writer of this book would need accurate information about orchestra ticket sales from the 1980s till the present. And orchestras won’t reveal this! They of course have the data, and report it to the League of American Orchestras. The League then publishes … [Read more...]
We need to unearth some history
I wrote on Facebook awhile ago that there ought to be a book on the history of American orchestras from the 1980s on. Or the 70s, maybe. I got that idea from comments on a good-natured post I did, citing Will Roseliep’s writing about the first websites the Big Five ever created. Period pieces, all of them, As of course they’d be, since they date from the early days of the web. In the comments on Facebook, people active in orchestra affairs back then reminisced about creating those websites. How hard it was to convince orchestra boards … [Read more...]
Force of nature — how the Chicago Lyric Opera sold tickets
Some anecdotes from the backstage front lines (so to speak) of opera in the US in the 1980s. I served on an NEA opera/music theater panel with two larger than life women, Beverly Sills and Ardis Krainik. Beverly at that time ran the New York City Opera, and Ardis (a beautiful soul) ran the Chicago Lyric. At one point they got in an argument. Beverly said it wasn’t possible to sell tickets to contemporary opera, Ardis said it was. Beverly was adamant. I thought Ardis was right. Because if she could sell them, they could be sold. I … [Read more...]
Not as deep as it seems
I had a range of thoughts about Ellen Reid and Roxie Perkins's opera Prism, which won the Pulitzer prize. I loved Reid’s music, but thought the text by Perkins and also the staging (despite evocative design) were too elementary, somehow both too indirect and too obvious. And I longed for the days decades ago, when artistic music theater pieces had a much bigger audience. Prism showed us a metoo situation, painful and damaging, in which the hurting woman was held back by her mother from acknowledging the truth of what she’s been through. … [Read more...]
Me, John Kander, and the opera/music theater coup d’etat
Here's some history that might not be much remembered now. Involving a 1980s push to get new operas produced, and a funding coup pulled off by opera companies, theater companies, and Broadway producers. Which unexpectedly helped artists in what was then called the avant-garde, people like Meredith Monk and the late Robert Ashley. Back In the 80s, many of us were pushing to get more new operas produced. If we somehow could have known how much new work is on opera stages now, we'd have thought thst paradise was coming! That all our grants and … [Read more...]
My not so little son’s great taste
My son, Rafa, seven years old. And such taste in music. It might have been a year ago that he fell in love with the Hamilton cast album. Went to sleep to it every night. Had his favorite songs, and some he didn't like. And before that, Michael Jackson, especially "Thriller." But now he blows me away. A recent favorite was "Feel It Still," by Portugal. The Man (the group's name punctuated just that way, and with no period after Man). New to me, and I loved the song from the moment he started going to sleep to it, putting it on repeat … [Read more...]
More joy
I talked in my last post about Steven Isserlis making a concert joyful, because he felt joy himself. Two nights after I heard him, on March 8, went to the WoCo Fest, a festival of music by women, and was so radiated with joy that I cancelled plans I had for the next night, and went back again. What made WoCo Fest (presented by a new group, the Boulanger Initiative) so joyful? Well, we could start with the cause, music by women. Do something for a special reason, and maybe the event will be special. Or maybe not! I'm sure we've all been to … [Read more...]
Joyful music
I heard three joyful classical concerts a month ago, on three successive nights. Such happiness in a single week! I'll talk now about one of these evenings, Steven Isserlis playing music by men and women, with pianist Connie Shih, at the Kennedy Center on March 6, presented by Washington Performing Arts. So I don't make this post too long) I’ll momentarily hold two joyful evenings at the WoCo Launch Festival, an explosion of women’s music, presented in DC by a new group, the Boulanger Initiative. Which filled me with so much joy that I came … [Read more...]
Shaking my head
[Corrected version] Another day, more things in our classical music world that make me shake my head and smile. First a Boston Symphony press release, announcing what they’ll do next season. Bright, shiny language! They’ll offer “fresh, innovative projects alongside many of the most popular and impressive works ever composed for orchestra.” Which I guess sounds better than “fresh, innovative projects alongside the same stuff we always do.” Oddity alert: I’m quoting the press release I got by email. It’s … [Read more...]
Words from a student
Yesterday I had an enjoyable phone talk with a freshman at Stuyvesant High School in New York, which happens to be where I went, decades ago. He’s doing a project about why classical music isn’t popular today, and, as many people do, found me online and hoped I’d talk to him, which I was happy to do. I enjoyed every minute of our talk, and one part of it — how he came to classical music, and his reaction to his first orchestra concert — is worth reporting here. So how did he come to classical music? From hiphop. That would seem to be his … [Read more...]
Action on diversity, instead of talk
So refreshing! A major classical music institution taking strong action on diversity. This is the English National Opera, as reported in the Guardian in January. Their new CEO, Stuart Murphy, came to the ENO from a background in TV, and — maybe because on TV, even if things could go further, people do think about diversity, and take some degree of it for granted — he was shocked at what he saw at the ENO. To quote the Guardian: Opera is shockingly white, overly traditional and too slow to change, according to the leader of one of … [Read more...]