Greg Sandow on the future of classical music

[From Greg: Introducing another guest blogger, Sally Whitwell, a pianist — and much, much more — from Australia. Her website says she's a pianist, composer, conductor, and educator. But she's still more than all of that. An exciting spirit, an innovator, one of the many people who's reinventing what it means to be a classical performer. While teaching music to kids, with the greatest enthusiasm. I met her when she took one of my branding workshops, in which we had fun strategizing how she should present her portfolio career(s). With great … [Read more...]

[From Greg: I'm delighted to introduce another guest blogger, composer and — is this the right word? — mentor Alex Shapiro. I call her a mentor, because she's very active working with ASCAP's Composer Career Workshop, helping young composers develop careers. Which she's eminently qualified to do, because her own career is so successful, and so individual. But somehow "mentor" seems too conventional, too hierarchical. She may teach, and teach things that people need to know. But I'm going to guess that she inspires the people she works with, as … [Read more...]

[Jerry Klickstein commented on my own entrepreneurship post, and among other things linked to one he'd done on the subject, on his blog The Musician's Way, named after his book with the same title. I loved his post. Thought it made the best case I'd ever seen for entrepreneurship at music schools. I asked Jerry if we could reprint it here, and he graciously said yes. I should add that last week I had the pleasure of speaking to students at Peabody, in an event Jerry hosted as part of Peabody's new entrepreneurship center, which he heads. He's … [Read more...]

In my first guest post here on Greg's blog I wrote about a performance I recently did of Franz Schubert's song cycle, Winterreise, and the words I spoke beforehand to the audience.  So many people I perform with seem surprised that I enjoy this aspect of performing and that I feel so strongly about sharing in this way.  It's made me realize how daunting it can be for many musicians, whether they are students, amateurs, or professionals, and it is this fear that is the inspiration for this post. I've had my share of public speaking … [Read more...]

Entrepreneurship is the newest, buzziest thing at music schools. I've been involved with it quite a bit, and I'm all for it. But there's one misconception I quickly want to clear up — that these programs are all about business, and have no relation to art. Not so! They're a shot in the arm for musical creativity, because if they give students the skills to build whatever career they want, why can't the students, building their careers, make music in ways all their own? Though I do think the business skills taught might be too limited. Of … [Read more...]

In my last post — the first in this series — I said that music schools aren't creative enough. Now I want to talk about how we can fix that. I should say here that I'd love to run a music school, or otherwise be in a position to put my ideas into practice. The first principle is simple enough, but very important. We can't turn the school upside down. There's an established structure, inhabited by people with a stake in how the school operates: students, their parents, faculty, alumni, donors. We can't tell everyone to start thinking … [Read more...]

Not long ago, I was talking to students at a major music school about performances from the past, like the ones from the 1920s through the 1950s that I assign in my Juilliard course on the future of classical music. (If you'd like to see them, follow the link, and scroll to the assignment for February 27.) The students loved these recordings, and some had heard one of them before. They kept saying how much personality those old musicians had, and how they all just seemed to "go for it" (as the students expressed it) — to put all of … [Read more...]

I have a personal/mission statement on my website, that says: Where I want to be is out here on the front lines making the world safe for classical music, one note at a time. True, every day. And out here on the front lines, life is fast and furious, and unpredictable. Sometimes very noisy. I was thinking about what to write about for Greg's blog today, and I thought that really I should write just about that. The sound and fury of the musician's life. Just the day to day, in all its beautiful, crazy-making complexities, in these … [Read more...]

Time to go on with our mavericks posts, in which I and many readers listed people and groups doing new things in classical music. And on that tip, I've started to create a mavericks document in our Resource sidebar, which you'll find if you look on the right of the blog site, and scroll down. You'll see that we now have various things there — Nathan Shirley's guest post about good classical music videos, for instance, and a summary of my research about how young the classical music audience was in the past. I want to turn Resources into an … [Read more...]

 [From Greg: A followup to Erica's guest post yesterday, about the performance of Winterreise she did in a small town. Here she tells us what she said before the performance, to introduce the piece to an audience that doesn't know classical music. This is one of the best introductions to a classical piece I've ever seen. An inspiration, in my view, for us all.] Ed and I are so glad that you have joined us here today.  I’ve had the opportunity to perform this incredible set of songs before but I was struck today, as my husband and I were … [Read more...]

[From Greg: Again I'm happy to introduce a guest blogger, my friend Erica Sipes, a pianist and cellist who plays and teaches in rural Virginia. Erica brings a perspective that I certainly don't have: She tells us what it's like to bring a new audience to classical music in small towns. For an overview of her thoughts on that — invaluable, I think — see her own blog posts about the classical city mouse, and the classical country mouse. In the post you'll read here (which she and I decided we'd crosspost from her blog)  she talks with deep … [Read more...]

This is my course on the future of classical music, called "Classical Music in an Age of Pop." You can see the week by week schedule — and all the assignments — here. And I'm ready to teach a version of the course online. Three 90-minute sessions, with group discussion, for $250. I have people interested already, and if I get one or two more, I'm ready to go! Please contact me if you'd like to join us. So what happens in this course? Which, I'm amazed to remember, I've been teaching now for 17 years. Well, right now we're looking at what … [Read more...]

[From Greg: Here's another guest blogger. I met Liza Kravinsky maybe a year ago, when she hired me as a consultant, to help her work out a strategy for launching the project she describes here. The things we talked about don't enter into her post; maybe they'll come up in later posts she might make, or maybe they won't. That doesn't matter, because what I loved was the project itself. And especially the way that it didn't simply combine pop and classical music — that's been done quite a lot — but also brought together pop and classical … [Read more...]

[From Greg: Again I'm happy to introduce a guest blogger, our second one, pianist/composer Nathan Shirley. He brings us his favorite classical music videos, and I think it's a marvelous list, lively, provocative, and — as the best lists of this kind are — highly individual. We'll save it as a permanent blog sidebar, in the "Resources" section on the right, on the main blog page. This section will expand over time, and I hope will become an archive of ideas and information, useful for anyone interested in the future of classical music. Nathan's … [Read more...]