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Greg Sandow on the future of classical music

Oops

June 17, 2021 by Greg Sandow

Update…my July 8 performance won't be streamed. It's in the catacombs under Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn. No Internet there! But it'll be filmed, and there will be video available later on. Sorry for the misinfo! If that's a word. Should be! July 8 — two variations I've written on "America the Beautiful," for Min Kwon's America/Beautiful project. Me and more than 70 other composers! Unfolding online July 4, with live performances July 7 and 8. I'll be on the July 8 concert. Not all composers on every performance, of course! … [Read more...]

America Slow Dance

June 15, 2021 by Greg Sandow

That's the name of a variation on "America the Beautiful" that I wrote for Min Kwon's America/Beautiful project… But wait…what IS that? Min commissioned variations from more than 70 composers. I wrote two.  Pause now…to imagine her learning them all.  That's what I wrote in my newsletter. Adding that Min's got boundless energy. And that she's a pleasure to work with!  She’ll unveil her commissions from July 4 to July 9, streaming and live. With my pieces coming July 8, both ways. The live performance is on Andrew Ousley's "Death of … [Read more...]

Coming back

June 11, 2021 by Greg Sandow

I haven't blogged in a long time. I’ve been quiet lately. Not storming the world with ideas about the future of classical music. Just peacefully teaching at Juilliard (remotely, of course), doing some composing, doing some consulting. That's how I started a newsletter I've sent out. My first in quite awhile. It marks a reemergence into a life more public than I've lately had. In part I'm motivated by a performance of my music, coming up soon, both live and streaming. This is part of a big project launched by pianist Min Kwon, called … [Read more...]

Oooo, Pet Shop Boys

January 24, 2020 by Greg Sandow

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

January 23, 2020 by Greg Sandow

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

May 21, 2019 by Greg Sandow

"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

May 17, 2019 by Greg Sandow

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

May 13, 2019 by Greg Sandow

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

May 9, 2019 by Greg Sandow

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

May 6, 2019 by Greg Sandow

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

May 2, 2019 by Greg Sandow

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

May 1, 2019 by Greg Sandow

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

April 24, 2019 by Greg Sandow

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

April 16, 2019 by Greg Sandow

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

April 15, 2019 by Greg Sandow

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...]

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Greg Sandow

Though I've been known for many years as a critic, most of my work these days involves the future of classical music -- defining classical music's problems, and finding solutions for them. Read More…

About The Blog

This started as a blog about the future of classical music, my specialty for many years. And largely the blog is still about that. But of course it gets involved with other things I do — composing music, and teaching at Juilliard (two courses, here … [Read More...]

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Resources

How to write a press release

As a footnote to my posts on classical music publicists, and how they could do better, here's a post I did in 2005 -- wow, 11 years ago! --  about how to make press releases better. My examples may seem fanciful, but on the other hand, they're almost … [Read More...]

The future of classical music

Here's a quick outline of what I think the future of classical music will be. Watch the blog for frequent updates! I Classical music is in trouble, and there are well-known reasons why. We have an aging audience, falling ticket sales, and — in part … [Read More...]

Timeline of the crisis

Here — to end my posts on the dates of the classical music crisis  — is a detailed crisis timeline. The information in it comes from many sources, including published reports, blog comments by people who saw the crisis develop in their professional … [Read More...]

Before the crisis

Yes, the classical music crisis, which some don't believe in, and others think has been going on forever. This is the third post in a series. In the first, I asked, innocently enough, how long the classical music crisis (which is so widely talked … [Read More...]

Four keys to the future

Here, as promised, are the key things we need to do, if we're going to give classical music a future. When I wrote this, I was thinking of people who present classical performances. But I think it applies to all of us — for instance, to people who … [Read More...]

Age of the audience

Conventional wisdom: the classical music audience has always been the age it is now. Here's evidence that it used to be much younger. … [Read More...]

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