More thoughts about my suggestion that press releases should die. Instead of press releases, I said, publicists should send short, informal email -- very short! two paragraphs! -- with all essential info, most centrally including some convincing reason why anyone would want to go to the event, or talk about it in the media. And then, as I said, you'd include links to further info. But here's my new thought. These links shouldn't go to a boring page of text. And certainly not to a ghastly old-style press release! They should go to a web page … [Read more...]
Comments — finally fixed
It took a while. But finally the comments on this blog work the way they're supposed to. You won't be asked to sign in. I'll have to approve all comments before they post -- to kill spam and malware -- but I'll try to do this first thing every day. And otherwise things will proceed as usual. Comment early and often! … [Read more...]
The death of press releases
Or at least I hope they die. I don't think they serve any purpose anymore.I'll call this yet another "solutions" post, though I don't know that the press release problem is one that many people have identified. I think it's real, though, and in the ongoing discussion about how to promote classical concerts -- and find a new audience -- the press release is something we ought to reexamine.It's a formal document, written almost like a newspaper story. Headline, subheads, content. With the emphasis on who, what, when, and where. More or less like … [Read more...]
Comments — the saga
The story so far: Spam comments flooded this and other ArtsJournal blogs. Inside them was evil code, very hard to root out, which infected ArtsJournal with malware. Google then marked ArtsJournal (and all its blogs) as attack sites, and many people were blocked from reading us. This was fixed. But how can we keep spam comments away? The captchas -- those word puzzles you had to solve before you could comment -- don't work anymore. Evildoers hire people in the third world to solve them by the thousand. And so the solution seemed to be...A … [Read more...]
“Solutions” recital program
One problem classical music has is anonymity. Might seem strange to say that, given how famous some classical stars are, but for the most part, we're trained to hide our own light, and cast a … [Read more...]
Learning from The Savvy Musician
Don't forget that I'm vitally interested in solutions to classical music's problems -- new approaches, things you've tried, things that worked, even things that didn't work, because I'm sure we all can learn from those, as well as from things that succeeded. And things that fall in the middle between apparent failure and apparent success. And note the "Solutions" page on this blog site, where (with help from Doug Laustsen) I archive solutions -- mine, and many from other people -- that I've posted here. Send me yours!So here's a … [Read more...]
Two for the price of one
I have two new blog posts today -- one called "Gatekeeper alternatives -- do it yourself," and another (which I admit logically comes first), "The trouble with gatekeepers." Both bounce off an exchange I had on Twitter about how best to promote events and careers, through traditional means (working through old media and established classical music institutions), or by using new media, and bypassing the standard gatekeepers. Or else bringing them in after you've laid the groundwork on your own. For all kinds of reasons, the "alternatives" post … [Read more...]
Comments are back…
...I'm happy to say. I trust this means the cyberattack now lies in the past.I don't know if we'll institute some form of registration, as I suggested. That decision lies with ArtsJournal. I'll let you all know what develops.But meanwhile, comments are back. … [Read more...]
Gatekeeper alternatives — do it yourself
So here's a test case, derived from something my wife Anne Midgette and I encountered during a university residency a few years ago.We were asked to meet with a faculty chamber ensemble, made up of terrific musicians, who were scheduled to make their New York debut. And they had a simple question to ask us. How could they get a review in the Times?The answer, unfortunately, was equally simple. Almost certainly, they couldn't get a Times review. There's too much competition. Too many concerts. Yes, they'd have a better chance if they'd scheduled … [Read more...]
Comments disabled
You may have noticed that it's no longer possible to post comments here. And in fact comments have been disabled on all ArtsJournal blogs. That's because the hackers who infected ArtsJournal entered the site by posting spam comments, which have flared up lately, sometimes gigantically. One day last week this blog got 42 of them. Readers probably didn't see that, because the comments were posted, apparently randomly, to a variety of very old posts. But still, there they were, serving (with the use of hidden code) both as beacons to attract more … [Read more...]
The trouble with gatekeepers
On Twitter the other day, I had a running I(and of course compressed) debate with @clusterhocket, aka Ken Thomson, a clarinetist, saxophonist, and composer from Brooklyn. The subject was gatekeepers. Or, less compressed, the established gateways to developing a performing career. They'd include performance venues who'd book you to perform, their publicists and marketers, who'd spread the word about you and do all they can to sell tickets, and of course the established media, who, if you (or your publicist, or the venue's publicist) do … [Read more...]
Warming my heart
Today there's a heartwarming piece about me in the Chicago Tribune, by their longtime classical music critic, John von Rhein. John was going to come to one of the talks I gave in Chicago on Tuesday of last week, and asked me for some background. As it happened, he couldn't come to the talk, but I'm honored by how carefully he read the package of links that I sent him, and by how seriously he takes what I say. In the end -- and this makes me happy -- his piece isn't about me. It's about where classical music needs to go. The more people talking … [Read more...]
Not an attack site!
Apologies to everyone who tried to come here, and got a scary red warning that this is an attack site!It isn't. I don't know why it's been flagged as one -- along with all of ArtsJournal, from what I've been told. I understand it's being worked on. And the weirdest thing is that not every browser flags my blog as evil. Firefox did, but IE doesn't, Chrome doesn't, and, on my iPhone, Safari doesn't and Opera Mini doesn't. Go figure. I got here on Firefox, finally, by going into the "Security" tab in the settings dialogue, and unchecking "Block … [Read more...]
Two-way music
Today I was catching up with the first episode of Treme, David Simon's new series on HBO. Simon being the creator of The Wire, an epic which, to my mind, is one of the best things ever on TV, and a standing rebuke to classical music.If, for instance, an opera company would produce anything as epic, as probing, as crucial to our understanding of the civilization we have right now, I'd fall off my feet with shock and, yes, respect. So, Treme. Takes place in New Orleans, just after Katrina. Starts with preparations for music, a band getting itself … [Read more...]
Honesty
Or, if you like, honesty as yet another classical music solution.For instance, this -- an excerpt from an account (on the Ion Arts blog) of, well, an exit Q&A with Christian Thielemann, the conductor. He was discussing what's going to be his final season as music director of the Munich Philharmonic, a position he wasn't leaving willingly:Thielemann introduces the works he will perform...He clearly doesn't like that part of a seasons' presentation, which must strike him as an artificial song-and-dance. "You can all read... so I don't really … [Read more...]