Three more things I’m doing this fall, beyond the Maryland project I described a few days ago. First, of course, there’s the graduate course I teach at Juilliard, which in the fall is about music criticism. The first class is Wednesday. Shortly I’ll post a link to the web page I’ll make for the students, so you can see what the course is about, and, if you like, do all the reading and listening.
Then early next month I’ll travel to the midwest (that’s the American midwest — I mustn’t forget that I have international readers). There I’ll begin work with an orchestra I don’t want to name yet, helping them work with community partners to plan a community event. I love doing things like this. They keep me in touch with the realities of the classical music world, and help show me how my ideas might work in practice. Or might not!
And on October 9th I’ll fly to the Netherlands, to give a keynote speech on October 11 in the Muziekgebouw in Amsterdam, at an annual gathering of Dutch classical music professionals. Magnus Still, a Finnish marketer, will also give a keynote speech, and then I’ll take part in a debate, mainly aimed, I’m told, at people who work with Dutch orchestras. I’ll also meet with people at music schools in Amsterdam and The Hague.
This will be my third international appearance during the last 12 months; I spoke in Tunis last October, and in Australia in July. What’s invaluable is the chance I get to learn what classical music is like outside the US, how the pressures we face here play out — in some of the same ways, but also in different ways — elsewhere.
If you’re curious, you can listen to my Tunis talk, and read a greatly expanded written version of it, with comprehensive footnotes that give some of the sources I draw on, when I say many of the things I often say.
As for Australia, here’s a written reconstruction of a talk I gave, which I think might be the best summary of what I’m saying these days about the future of classical music. Plus you can hear an an interview I did on Australian radio (on an ABC show called
“New Music Up Late With Julian Day,” ABC being the Australian equivalent of the BBC). And you can read transcripts of some of what I said, which were very kindly published in Limelight, the ABC magazine.
