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...]