Anne Midgette weighs in on the discussion over on her blog The Classical Beat:I do think it's unfortunate, though, when there's no sense of a person behind the playing. Classical music can suffer from a sense of entitlement: there's an idea that the music is so great it's enough just to play it, and everyone should be in awe. Yes: the music is that great. That's precisely why the performer has to work so hard to delve into it, to bring it across, to make it more than merely notes executed well. (The same thing, incidentally, holds true of … [Read more...]

Amanda is, as she says, the Blog Mistress, so I'm starting by responding to her latest post. (I'm also going to try to fold as many points as possible into this post as it may be my last - I don't have any more transatlantic flights this week which will provide me with hours to write/a valid excuse not to practice.)In answering Amanda's question about where the responsibility for making concert presentations special lies, I'm going to return to one of my original points (fine, OK, Alex Ross' point, which I seem to have unofficially co-opted): … [Read more...]

If I may--and I may, because I am the Blog Mistress--I'd like to steer the conversation toward classical music concert presentations. If I may--and again, I may---I'm going to quote my own blog entry from November: I saw three excellent classical pianists last week: Jonathan Biss, who performed at the club (le) poisson rouge with my client Gabriel Kahane, Leif Ove Andsnes, and Pierre Laurent Aimard, both of whom played at Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall. I went in knowing two out of three would be "special."Let's start with concerts that I … [Read more...]

If you're just joining us now for the virtual panel on specialness that friends and colleagues have described to me as "intense," "required reading," and "wordy," here's what's been going on this week. If you could hear Benjamin Linus' voice in your head when you read this, that would be great. Previously, on Life's a Pitch.Jonathan issued a throwdown about how the human interest press publicists dream of actually distracts audiences from the music. He writes, "the more of a persona the person onstage has cultivated, the harder it is for this … [Read more...]

In response to Amanda's question (James: to what extent do you feel knowing about your clients' both musical and non-musical pursuits helps you pitch them to presenters? What prepares you to defend their uniqueness, or sometimes, is uniqueness not what a presenter is looking for?), I have to start with my favorite dodge away from oversimplification: it depends. On the most basic level, greater knowledge of what my artists care about is always helpful to me.  It helps me talk to them, it helps me talk about them, it helps me get through the … [Read more...]

Matthew, further to this:As a critic, I make no bones about the fact that my own taste is highly idiosyncratic, and that I will never, ever be all things to all people. The fact that my own sense of specialness is driven more by repertoire than performer puts me, I know, in the minority, as does the nature of some of that repertoire. I'm curious if every concert or recording you preview, or every artist you profile, is special to you. As you mention in your post, and as we all know, arts coverage is shrinking. Beyond repertoire, as you write in … [Read more...]

I'm sure you all miss me blogging about the usual highbrow fare here on Life's a Pitch. (A quick scan down the December entry titles shows Girls straddling footballs sell things, In which I am pardoned for stealing electricity, and Flacks and the City. Why do you people read this??). But I think our very...special?...guests James, Jonathan, Matthew and Michael are doing a fantastic job. They may even be out-blogging their hostess, which, I should have clarified, is Not Actually Allowed. If you're just tuning in now, here's what you missed. … [Read more...]

Wow. One day, five posts (four not written by me), and a lot to think about. As I read each post the first time through, I diligently made notes. Unfortunately, if I attempted to address all of the points in them that intrigued me, at the end of the week I'd no longer be a professional pianist, special or otherwise. One thing I've noticed which I do want to address, though, is the very wide variety of attributes/activities/priorities landing under the "special" umbrella. That's natural, and good, given the different perspectives the five of us … [Read more...]

I was at the Chamber Music America conference this weekend, and took a turn around the exhibitor section after one of the sessions. For those of you who have never been to a conference, artist management companies set up booths, lay out artist flyers, and sell their clients to the presenters who walk by. I realize this sounds a bit like some kind of Orientalist Indiana Jones market sequence, and that's not entirely inaccurate. Watching bookers and managers really sell their artists is a pleasant reminder that, all evidence to the contrary, … [Read more...]

The critic side of me wonders if I'm part of the problem or the solution here--probably a little of both. But since I started off as a musician, and still try to keep at least a couple of toes in that pond, my starting point is the same as Jonathan's: classical music in performance is special in and of itself.The marketing worry, of course, is that one runs out of ways to say that. But I sometimes think that presenters and marketers underestimate the power of using institutional clout to simply assert specialness. The Boston Symphony Orchestra … [Read more...]

I'm going to admit something while I'm laying on this pillowy expanse of interweb and not having to look in the eye any of my esteemed colleagues from all corners of the music world: I myself have argued both sides of every state-of-the-industry debate I can think of, at one time or another, and I suspect that many others have done the same.  For me, the need to do this arises from how quickly I find myself zooming in and out while looking at "the picture" in front of me-- -pondering one moment the effectiveness of a single piece on a … [Read more...]

Hi all...blogging virgin here...it is, yes, my maiden voyage.  I am told to keep it frank, conversational, and informal.  (Having just re-read my opening sentence, it appears that I should not have too much trouble with that directive.)Amanda, in two paragraphs, has already touched on a number of my favorite topics about which to kvetch, so let me touch on a few of them before I get to her central question of "who's responsible for making the artist special anyway!" How presenters and artistic directors make choices about who and … [Read more...]

First off, I'd like to thank Amanda (and ArtsJournal) for providing this forum for discussion of a question I think is really, really important, and for (inadvertently?) starting the discussion with this post. Because I'd been interested in "the special problem" for a while (and because I was involved in one of the concerts that inspired the post), I emailed Amanda in response to what she'd written.  I'm sort of unspecial, myself, but I have heard some version or another of the phrase "a great performance of a great piece is not … [Read more...]