Archives for 2009

This is the flip side, more or less, to my last post, about how safe it is for an authoritarian government like China's to encourage classical music. The repertoire from the past -- all those great masterpieces -- seems very safe today. There's not much in it that could challenge anything the Chinese government wants its people to believe. And classical music has worldwide prestige, so China seems greatly cultured by encouraging it. But today there's a stunning piece in the New York Times, by their classical music reporter, Dan Wakin, that … [Read more...]

China, for various reasons, has been a topic of conversation in my life lately. And one question that always comes up is why, exactly, classical music is so prevalent in China -- though, it's important to note, nobody quite knows how prevalent it is. Prevalent enough to be notable, in any case, and to produce some terrific composers and astonishing young instrumentalists. So why is this? Maybe it's linked to China's emergence as a world power, and to its blinding increase in wealth. Now we have more people with money. Classical music (much as … [Read more...]

ADDED LATER: I want to make something very clear -- that the organization I'm talking about here is quite terrific, both artistically and in the way they're run. Which made me thrilled to work with them, even before the work began. I talk a lot in what follows about strategic planning, and about how not to jump into certain innovations until there's a strategic plan for the innovations to be part of. This organization, in my contact with them, does a better job with strategic thinking than some major institutions I've worked with or otherwise … [Read more...]

This is a footnote to my "Missed Opportunities" post, in which I urged music schools -- and music students, even if the schools don't take any action -- to promote student recitals, and in fact to develop a new audience (of the students' own age) that never came to these recitals at all.Part of my plan, if the schools got involved, was to do video streams of every recital, and then to archive these videos on the schools' websites. But here I should have mentioned some inescapable issues with streaming rights. You can't just stream copyrighted … [Read more...]

I asked my students -- both at Eastman and Juilliard -- to invent a concert that might attract an audience their own age. And the responses have been fabulous. I've posted a couple from two of my Eastman students, Leah Goldstein and Kara LaMoure. Leah had a sparkling idea for a concert with music partly by the audience, and Kara designed an enticing concert, with some important notes on what people her age like and don't like. And now Kathryn Eberle, one of my Juilliard students, came up with an idea for an American Idol-style competition for … [Read more...]

On Twitter I met Josh Newton, a composition student (older than most) at the University of Southern Maine. Josh has many interesting things to say, and gave a talk not long ago to a group of non-music students at his school. And out of that, something striking emerged. Let him tell it (I'm quoting his e-mail to me, with his permission):I started by asking how many of the 15-20 students had been to a concert at all within the last few years, how many of those were art music (after translating for them), and then how many would attend … [Read more...]

My Wall Street Journal piece on In C, that is -- about the triumphant Carnegie Hall anniversary celebration. Which I loved. But beyond that, I found myself getting wistful, wishing that the '60s had changed the classical music mainstream. Doesn't matter, in the long run. Change is coming anyway. The 1960s didn't do much for classical music in America, or at least they didn't change the major concert halls. Musicians didn't grow long hair, and the same familiar masterworks went on being played. But outside the mainstream, a classical-music … [Read more...]

A friend of mine in the marketing game -- in the performing arts, but not in classical music -- got called into a meeting. "What's your media strategy?" his bosses asked. And he tells me he answered: "What media?" What he meant ought to be clear enough. Traditional media are fading. Newspapers are slipping away, and also covering the performing arts less, a decline that includes notable cuts in classical music coverage. Network TV has a shrinking audience. And, maybe most important, old media might not do very much for performing arts … [Read more...]

In my post a while ago about Chris O'Riley's terrific concert of Radiohead and Shostakovich, I neglected to mention the graphics that were a notable part of it. Steve Smith, in a comment, asked me what I thought of them (a compassionate way of pointing out my omission!), and, explaining what had gone on, I talked about "two guys with laptops" sitting on stage, creating the effective graphics in real time.And then the two guys e-mailed to tell me (again very politely) that they had names. Which I should have mentioned! So apologies to Stephen … [Read more...]

A while ago I posted the response from one of my Eastman students to a question I gave my Eastman class on a takehome exam. How would you design a concert to reach students your own age? Leah Goldstein thought she'd get people in the audience to help write the music. (The course, by the way, is on the future of classical music. It's a shorter version of the one I teach at Juilliard.)So now here's another answer from Kara LaMoure -- long, detailed, smart, and passionate. Of course I'm putting it here with Kara's permission. I'll let her speak … [Read more...]

We're all concerned, I'm sure, about the impact of the economy on classical music organizations. And we've seen some trouble. Groups going out of businesses, big orchestras making cutbacks. The same thing, no surprise, as we see elsewhere, in the profit-making world. The same economic factors are in play. But here's something to look for very soon. Large classical music institutions are finishing their subscription campaigns. They're trying to get new people to subscribe, and, above all, they're trying to get current subscribers to … [Read more...]

Out of friendship and admiration for Bang on a Can composer Michael Gordon and his publicist -- that would be my friend Amanda Ameer, whose "Life's A Pitch" blog is essential reading -- I'm helping publicize a performance this Wednesday at Le Poisson Rouge in New York. On the program: Michael's very nice piece Trance. To hear a sample of it, the very last track of the CD, just go here. To hear the previous track...well, it's a puzzle. Think of music blogs you might have visited, and go to the one that licks its lips, metallically, in the dark … [Read more...]

I wanted to like the YouTube Symphony, whose concert disappointed me. I really did want to like them. Their backstory is irresistible, obviously. Musicians from many countries audition by video, professionals pick finalists, the world votes to decide the winners, everybody (some barely able to believe that it's real) come to Carnegie Hall, the Mecca of classical music, to play a concert. And this is, in many ways, good for classical music. Press from many countries thronged the press conferences, interviewed musicians, came to rehearsals … [Read more...]

Last night at Le Poisson Rouge (the NY club where I seem to go all the time, to hear classical music) a cellist named Joshua Roman came on stage. He said hello, in the friendliest, most club-appropriate way, and then said he'd play the prelude from the third Bach cello suite. "If you know it," he added (or words to this effect), "you know what I mean. And if you don't know it, you're about to hear it!" Then he played it, with just about irresistible verve. He's a cellist from the YouTube Symphony, whose members had come to New York from … [Read more...]

At the end of my Eastman course on the future of classical music -- a shorter version of my Juilliard course on the same subject -- I asked my students to imagine a concert that would attract people their own age. Leah Goldstein came up with a fabulous idea, which I'm quoting here, exactly as she wrote it, with her permission:   Hypothetical Concert for People My Own Age It occurred to me that one of the ways musicians try to encourage audiences to find relevance in Classical music is by bringing the composers of that music to … [Read more...]