[contextly_auto_sidebar id="CQhPzZWVh8jxsEaOyi6fMZg5Wcjhv7YT"] I said in my last post that — having shaken my head at really poor press releases from orchestras — I’d provide some examples of good ones. That’ll come, but for now I’ll just suggest an approach to writing a release, an approach that ought to produce something better than what we usually see. What I’d suggest, simply enough, is to do more than recite facts, and instead to tell stories. And that the stories shouldn’t mainly be about the pieces you’re going to play, but about … [Read more...]

[contextly_auto_sidebar id="UuANeqSiKdMeerpMJrDW276gXqtH5irV"] I’m gratified by some early support for yesterday’s post, about feeble orchestra press releases. And Marna Seltzer, on Facebook, agreeing with what I said, hoped I’d give some examples of good press releases. Good thought, Marna. I’ll do that. And now a thought for today. About our hoped-for new audience, the one we want, younger people, millennials and above. We need to know who they are, what they want, what matters to them. A Washington Post article provides a reminder. … [Read more...]

[contextly_auto_sidebar id="amHdFddmSmvtFkWm4UMiIY3aeUxt5hjV"] I don’t mean to pick on the Minnesota Orchestra. Or on anyone. But this is the time of year when symphony orchestras announce next year’s season, and their press releases…are weak. The most basic fact about classical music today is that we need new listeners. But I can’t see these press releases doing much to find those. Which to me is a serious problem. Can’t we learn to talk about classical music, in a way that might make compelling, so we can people — especially people outside … [Read more...]

[contextly_auto_sidebar id="y731Zt4Em3IDVP8gSeOPtKgfgPFgo9aa"] A piano student speaks to her audience, for the first time, and is absolutely thrilled. I’m going to do something that may seem like blowing my horn, reprinting praise for myself from a reader. And from a reader who, with other students in a course she was taking, was assigned to read me. Which is kind of double praise — first my writing is assigned to a class, and then one of the students writes me in gratitude. Of course, being human, I like to know that my work means so … [Read more...]

[contextly_auto_sidebar id="o70SCvjPg0M7pqCGxfbql5xcDGwHDu54"] I’m glad my joy posts seem to resonate with many people. This is the last of them. (See the end for links to the others.) I’m doing this last one because in the one before, I went out on a limb, and said I loved a Rolling Stones song more than any Brahms symphony. Gasp! Making the point that — as a mark of the value we put on any music — shouldn’t be censored in any way. But now I want to correct any thought that entertainment makes me happier than art. Which isn’t a … [Read more...]

[contextly_auto_sidebar id="raVMhkPhEYFijmBLi0SGN34DeszS6FjA"] Here’s another followup to my post on musical joy. Inspired by a speaker at the College Music Society northeast regional conference, I’d realized that we don’t talk enough about joy in music. True joy, the kind you can’t mistake for anything else when you feel it. (I’m sure we don’t make room enough for joy in most of what we do, but I’ll stick to music here.) So I realized that many of us might not make room enough for joy when, God help us, we judge some music that we’ve … [Read more...]

[contextly_auto_sidebar id="pXQxcrO1n34RXSBPr3PZqF35RVWWh8R5"] A quick followup from yesterday’s post, about joy in music. I talked about Ronald Sherwin, from U Mass, who’d spoken at the northeast regional conference of the College Music Society, about pure joy in music. That inspired me to imagine Juilliard, where I teach — or other music schools — starting each academic year with a celebration of musical joy. A radical change! Then today, just turning this over in my mind, I had a further thought. Why limit joy to schools? When I … [Read more...]

[contextly_auto_sidebar id="LxbxxSVCGnYvspYZoR8Gc2UQ6ybR7fHs"] This past weekend I gave a keynote talk at the Northeast regional conference of the College Music Society. The people in CMS are academics, people who teach music at colleges and universities. And conservatories, too. And their subject, at this conference, was sustainability. Can these music departments survive, if what they teach is — as of course is the case — largely classical music? I called my talk “The Road to Survival,” and you can hear it here. I recorded it on my … [Read more...]

[contextly_auto_sidebar id="W2WGwZ26tN5eMGVssGzsWABdo3ViSgsb"] There are many kinds of music in the world, outside of classical music. Of course there’s jazz. And Broadway show tunes, and world music, and pop music in all its endless variety. Plus film and TV scores, and music for videogames. But there’s also music created for specialized use: Background scores for TV commercials. Music, sometimes quite elaborate, created for events like the Olympics or the Super Bowl. Musical logos for TV news shows. The little chord you … [Read more...]

[contextly_auto_sidebar id="68FbHomVXf2Nwb8UdXcnBxlinA3gqEwG"] Just a word about why my wife Anne Midgette and I ended up with side by side reviews in the Washington Post this morning, even though I’m not a writer there. (She, of course, is the Post’s chief classical music critic.) This isn’t the start of anything regular for me. I just filled in to solve a problem. Because of disruptive snow last week in Washington, the National Symphony’s schedule changed, and neither Anne nor any of her regular freelancers was available to review a … [Read more...]

[contextly_auto_sidebar id="9bpQDOI4rfIqBqmtVIXVdMBeXQ00iCxS"] Me out in the world, that is, showing up in a couple of places. First, a podcast from WQXR, the classical music public radio station in New York. On which I talk with host Naomi Lewin about the National Symphony’s triumphant performance for 2000 people in a dance club. The podcast starts with Sunil Iyengar, the National Endowment for the Arts’ director of Research and Analysis, who talks in the most relaxed and engaging way about an important study his agency did, about barriers … [Read more...]

[contextly_auto_sidebar id="Fb0VsRJPfi9vp8mwdyHKRsmlS4uwi9JK"] March 15. That’s the deadline for something new and different: the Savvy Musician in ACTION Chamber Music Competition. It’s different because, as its website says, it’s for “ensembles that feature artistic excellence and innovative event design.” Or, to put it another way, entrepreneurial ensembles, entrepreneurial both in art and in how they do business. And it’s different, too, because it’s joined at the hip with the Savvy Musician in Action arts entrepreneurship … [Read more...]

[contextly_auto_sidebar id="wejqGZ53wCT520F5hkCqtnM6XvwK1u0M"] So now about some names. Names, that is, of people who get talked about as, just possibly, the next New York Philharmonic music director. This is the third post in my series about Alan Gilbert and what kind of figure his successor should be. The first was about Alan, and in general about what the Philharmonic might need. The second was about some dreams (wild ones, if you like), about the next music director as an exciting public figure in New York. And now the third post. … [Read more...]

[contextly_auto_sidebar id="ojIqNlIw64scnz8T8kTXSHMoVzMr7UPu"] What the New York Philharmonic needs in a music director…I laid this out in my last post, though maybe without fully focusing on it. The Philharmonic needs someone dynamic, someone who can be the face of an orchestra that comes alive for as much of New York as possible. And since NYC — my home town! — is a very particular place, one with a highly developed sense of itself, this music director needs to be seen as a New Yorker, whether born or made. Leonard Bernstein, even if he … [Read more...]

[contextly_auto_sidebar id="PvwBKgWAB0PAlhcjdPsdVLJYaA5AIkw3"] About Alan Gilbert leaving the New York Philharmonic: Rightly or wrongly, he wasn’t perceived — at the very least by influential people in the orchestra field, and (from what I’ve heard) by many of the Philharmonic musicians — as someone with heft enough to be music director of such a big orchestra. Here’s an insider’s word about that. A few years ago, before the Philharmonic hired Matthew VanBesien to succeed Zarin Mehta as the orchestra’s CEO, I talked to someone who runs … [Read more...]