This is a co-blog exercise – the most exercise I’ve gotten all week,
in fact – with my friend and the toast of New York, composer-performer Nico Muhly. His corresponding entry is here.
Over
the summer, I had a phone meeting of sorts with a fellow New York
publicist about a series of concerts in which we were both involved.
She later made fun of me, because apparently throughout the call I kept
saying that journalists needed to “toe the line“;
I’m not even sure I was using the expression correctly, but my point
was that these four concerts were interestingly programmed/situated and
should be recognized as such, i.e. be covered by the press.
My
neighbor Kenny (“Dog”, to his friends) started a youth basketball
league a few summers ago (“The Dog Show”). Here is a 30-35ish year-old
man who works in maintenance in a building in Harlem and spends his
free time arranging for hours upon hours of of entertainment and
exercise for the neighborhood munchkins and their families. This is
something that should be pitched – to NY1, Bloomberg, and various
uptown publications – why? Because it’s an actual story.
There
is an inherent problem with having a/being a publicist: one is expected
to pitch all things related to one’s clients, but not all things are
actually stories. Journalists must get inundated with press releases
that say…nothing at all. “Hilary Hahn is coming to your city!!!” is
simply not interesting – no offense, Hilary. And even if you, as a
publicist or publicity director at an orchestra/presenter, do
get the just-coming-to-town or just-putting-on-a-concert story, who
wants to read that? Some artists and performances are simply not
story-worthy, and if they are actually written about, shame on the
newspapers.
Nico is blogging about a new party game he recently
invented: try to create a worse program than that of the New York
Philharmonic’s Opening Night Gala.
“This concert is now past”, indeed. Is that a warning or a clarification?
Does The New York Times have to review the concert simply because it’s the Philharmonic? In his review,
Anthony Tommasini spends the first five paragraphs reflecting on Lorin
Maazel’s tenure as Music Director. I don’t blame him: what could he
possibly have to say about the evening itself? This bit is actually
intriguing, and as usual, I appreciate a chatty tone:
Overall, though, the performance [of Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony] was incisive, rich-textured and lucid.
Mr. Maazel has said that he objects to overly romanticized
interpretations of Tchaikovsky that turn the symphonies mawkish, and I
am with him on that. These are ingenious scores and should sound that
way in performance.
This
is amusing, because is anyone surprised that Ibert’s Concerto for Flute
and Orchestra with Sir James Galway was ineffective? Nothing curious about that!
The performance of Ibert’s Concerto for Flute and Orchestra before intermission was curiously ineffective.
I also like this. Points for comedy and giving Times readers a sense of what it was like to be at the (nightmare of a) concert:
At the end he received a warm ovation, though not quite enthusiastic
enough, it seemed, to warrant an encore. Mr. Galway gave the audience
one anyway: an arrangement of “Flight of the Bumblebee,” tossed off
indifferently.
Tommasini
manages to write an interestingish review/retrospective of a terribly
programmed concert, while other concerts that evening went unnoticed by
the Times. Does that help the industry? If the Philharmonic
(and other local presenters/orchestras) know they will get reviewed by
their local papers no matter what they program, what is their
motivation to think creatively (or, perhaps more importantly, to
program with a sense of cultural relevance)? Publicists will pitch and
journalists will cover, and no one is accountable for a program
actually warranting comment.
So yes, I would like it if
everyone would toe the damn line. Administrators, think about your
programming. Publicists, think about your pitches. Journalists, reward both
efforts with equally interesting press coverage. Nico makes the point in his post that good and relevant concert programming really isn’t that difficult – he came up with four excellent examples of what the Philharmonic Gala could have been…this morning. Pitching stories is also not terribly difficult, as long as you have good material to work with.
If the Times stopped covering the Philharmonic’s boring concerts, would the Philharmonic be forced to program differently? If the Philharmonic’s publicity department told the artistic administrators, sorry, we can’t pitch this, would the Philharmonic be forced to program differently? Chicken…egg…chicken…egg…
you are wise to TOE the mark literally.
Good again! as the basketball play-by-play announcers like to say. I would just add that programming — in the narrow sense of selecting what works will be played — isn’t the only thing that determines whether a concert is interesting or a nightmare. Another factor is how closely the evening hews to the 20th-century performance and audience-behavior conventions that have lately come under scrutiny from your artsjournal colleague Greg Sandow, scholars like Kenneth Hamilton, and many others. The Chicago Symphony’s Beyond the Score event (the word “concert” doesn’t quite capture what goes on at these things) last week centered on that old chestnut, Pictures at an Exhibition, a piece that could easily have been on your opening night program at the NY Phil. But the Beyond the Score format (brainchild of Gerard McBurney, who narrates the first half of these evenings) opened up the familiar music in all kinds of ways. Those kinds of innovations are pretty rare, though, which is why the League of American Orchestras is about to commission a study of innovation in the symphony sector. Meanwhile, I agree that there’s no excuse for dull programming. I just think we also, and urgently, need to try some new ways of presenting the standard repertoire, and maybe some very old ways that have gone out of style.
It’s really not fair to pick on Tommasini. He did his job exactly: to report on the opening night of the city’s major orchestra, and to criticise the performance. I can’t see how it would have been preferable, or more effective towards your own goals, for him to have decided in advance that the program was not interesting enough to write about.
Definitely not picking on Tommasini. His review was significantly more interesting than the concert itself! My point was that because it’s the Philharmonic, it automatically gets reviewed, while many other presenters/groups/artists in the city are competing for the Times’ attention, and are probably doing more relevant things. -AA
I’m thrilled to see two of my favorite bloggers teaming up. Thank you for all that you write!
I am a host at a classical music radio station, and just got in the program listings for our broadcast of the Milwaukee Symphony. One program really caught my attention:
Ravel: Suite of 5 Pieces from Mother Goose
John Adams: Violin Concerto (featuring genius Leila Josefowicz)
Ravel: Daphnis et Chloe
Milwaukee has many other intriguing and different programs that still fit the “something-concerto-big one” format. Here’s another:
Rimsky-Korsakov: Scheherazade
Higdon: Percussion Concerto
Hanson: 2nd Symphony
That with TWO American composers, and one still alive and also a woman! Some orchestras are stretching–in good ways. Full disclosure: I am not from Milwaukee, just happy with their programming.
New Life’s a Pitch rule! Every time Leila Josefowicz and/or Alex Ross is mentioned here, they MUST have “genius” in front of their names. -AA