Greg Sandow on the future of classical music

I'm grateful to everyone who answered me — here, on Facebook, and on Twitter — when in a blog post I asked how long the classical music crisis has been going on. And I'm also grateful for the lively discussion that followed. When I asked the question (in the post I've linked to above), I said I thought we'd learn something from the inquiry. And that's certainly been true. Several people offered some detailed memories of when they saw the crisis hitting, often in the course of work they were doing in the classical music world. These people — … [Read more...]

October 12, 1891: The young and wildly beautiful American soprano Sibyl Sanderson — able to sing G above high C — sang Massenet’s Manon in Paris and had the triumph of triumphs: The sold-out theater was filled with the upper echelons of Paris society — literary, social, and artistic.… Paris took leave of its senses. Never had it seen such witchery.… The greatest artists, writers, and musicians of France flocked to the artists’ loge to congratulate [Sanderson] after every act.… When the star and her mother finally emerged from the stage door … [Read more...]

Maybe Gareth Malone isn’t a great name in the US, where I live, but in Britain he’s taken choral music to new places, serving, as he’s said, as an “"animateur, presenter and popularizer of choral singing.” He got famous for a BBC reality show, The Choir,  in which he taught choral singing to teenagers. But to get the full flavor of what he does, consider this. To quote his Wikipedia entry) he presented a children's programme for CBBC, The Big Performance in which ten keen, but extremely shy, young singers took the opportunity to overcome … [Read more...]

I’m back from vacation. Many good things happened, among them a growth spurt in our little boy’s thinking. He’ll be two next month, and in our three weeks away, he began acting and communicating like a member of the family. And no longer like a baby who can’t always grasp what’s going on. I’ve got many good things coming up, too, including a major consultancy with a classical music institution that wants to make truly major change. Can’t say more than this just now, because they haven’t announced any plans, but my work with them is under … [Read more...]

Forgot this detail in my vacation post. I've sent out a new issue of my newsletter. You can read it here. A lot in it will be familiar to regular readers of the blog, but some issues aren't like that. Go here to subscribe. It's a good way to catch up with things I'm doing and thinking about. Have a great three weeks! This is, really and positively, the last you'll hear from me till September. (The photo shows my son Rafa, excited about art in a museum. See the newsletter for more.) … [Read more...]

No Friday post today. I'm on vacation until Labor Day. My wonderful assistant will approve comments, so anything anyone says here will appear on the blog. But I won't be responding. I hope you all have a wonderful August. Restful, productive, whatever your hearts desire. And I'll leave you with a photo of my little boy doing a vacation thing — standing shin-deep in the water, close to knee-deep, holding one of his cars. Plus a playlist. Some of his favorite videos. You'll see what good taste he has! The Three Stooges, … [Read more...]

Great fun. The Three Stooges sing opera, in a 17-minute 1945 short called Micro-Phonies. Or sort of sing opera. Or fake singing opera (hence the title). For those who aren't Three Stooges fans, the first half might be slow going. But the second half, in which the Stooges sing "the sextet from Lucy" at a rich snob's house party — that's priceless for anyone. And the sextet (abridged) works really well as a trio. Seriously! (Bel canto experts already know that one of the soloists in the piece, the mezzo singing Alisa, is really just … [Read more...]

Just a few items today, as I wind down toward vacation. There's a strong piece on videogame music on San Francisco Classical Voice, the thorough, lively website that covers classical music in the Bay Area. It's not a comprehensive look at the subject, since it's an interview with one producer/composer, who's hosting a videogame concert with the San Francisco Symphony. But still the piece raises all the right questions, and in a thoughtful though playful way. You know, like the old chestnut: Is videogame music art? The real point, as the … [Read more...]

The story so far, in Marlissa's words: I realized I had to be a singer. I moved from my home in St. Louis to the Washington, DC area, to work with contacts I’d made when I was a graduate student at Peabody. And I made plans to create a big splash with my second album. All of that is in my first post.  And so, continuing: When I thought of my sophomore album project, I knew I wanted to do something vastly different than anything I’d heard or done previously. Something that would highlight my strongest attributes as an artist, and present … [Read more...]

[From Greg: [Just about a year ago, Marlissa Hudson emailed to say that she liked my blog, had ideas that synced with it, and wondered if we could meet. If I remember rightly, she'd put me on her mailing list (a good networking move), so I knew her name, and knew she was a soprano working in the Washington, DC area, where I live. And in any case I'm often contacted by people who read me, all kinds of people, by (for instance) the executive director of an orchestra in France, and by many music students. I always try to meet these people if I … [Read more...]

One of my favorite opera-going moments: When Franco Corelli started an aria facing the back of the stage. Of course you're never supposed to do that. You always face forward in your big moments, partly because you don't want to eclipse yourself theatrically, but also to make sure your voice is heard. But Corelli, or so it seemed, didn't see it that way. He was singing the tenor lead in La gioconda at the Met, maybe in the '70s. The opera calls for him to sing his big aria, "Cielo e mar," alone on stage. "Cielo e mar," he sings. Meaning … [Read more...]

Many items today. Mannes -- formally known as Mannes College the New School for Music -- is headed down a new road, led by its dean, my old friend Richard Kessler. Among much else, they'll stress new music as a central part of their curriculum. This is a revolutionary step for a conservatory, and they're just starting down this road. You can read about it in a story from Opera News. Of course I'll blog more about this, in months to come. Along with radical developments at least at one other music school. *** The Knights, already an … [Read more...]

[Now we come to the changes Nicole Canham made, which drew such an explosion of new people when she was artistic director of the Canberra International Music Festival.] [In part one of her post, she told us why changes were needed. And why she also continued the festival's older programming, because, as she says: Something I’ve observed and find difficult to understand is why in our discourse there isn’t more tolerance for integrating both the best of traditional practice with a realistic understanding of contemporary culture. It has been my … [Read more...]

[From Greg: Nicole Canham — an Australian musician, festival director, creative producer, scholar, and innovator -- is, as you're about to see, someone who fits perfectly with what we're doing here. She herself was attracted to my work, and contacted me a few years ago when she was in New York. I later met her in Sydney, when I was visiting Australia to give a keynote speech at what was billed as a "Classical Music Summit," a conference that brought people from around the country together, to talk about where classical music should go.  [We … [Read more...]

Many people in classical music know the name Marie Duplessis, because she was the real-life Paris courtesan whose story — greatly fictionalized, in a novel by Alexandre Dumas — was the inspiration for La traviata.  And a New York Times review of a new biography of her starts by almost deploring the disconnect between fiction and reality. How sad, some people think, that the real courtesan didn't nobly sacrifice herself, the way her idealized persona in Dumas and Verdi did. But how her life really ended was, to my mind, much more touching. … [Read more...]