As I said in my last post, I ask the students in my Juilliard course on the future of classical music special questions online. I do this to supplement what we do in class, and — in this very complex discussion — to touch on things we might not otherwise get to. In my last post, I quoted the first question I asked, about what classical music will be like in 20 years. The question after that was more personal. It was cued to what we talked about in class this week (follow the link and scroll down to February 4). Which was how classical music … [Read more...]

[contextly_auto_sidebar id="29Zq7FWU40yRCu85k42D1dc5YJGymOxu"] Each week, in my Juilliard course on the future of classical music, I email a question to my students. Something to get them thinking, something to take us a little beyond what we talked about in class. Or to go deeper into it. The question I asked two weeks ago was simple, but very basic. It could even have been a way to start the course. And, for everyone reading this — I’d love to know your own answers! Here’s the question: Imagine the classical music world 10 or 20 … [Read more...]

[contextly_auto_sidebar id="6PhJHxYsIWndEpWU4MTzxl1UYh3fEc7t"] So last week I did a post I called “Excited audience,” about how the crowd at the National Symphony’s recent club performance shouted in excitement at some exciting music. The music happened to be mixed classical and pop, based on Bach, but with a beat. But the passage that made the audience shout happened to be pure Bach. This led me to ask if we could ever get the normal classical audience reacting like this, in the concert hall. Well, there are many reasons why that’s … [Read more...]

[contextly_auto_sidebar id="U9ZKZeEOtHhedFzv5Is4iOgEuSU4DzmA"] The Go-Go Symphony — which plays some of the most exciting music in Washington, DC, a perfect fusion of classical music and funk — is in line for a great honor, and a great opportunity. I’ve blogged about their first triumphant performance with a full symphonic ensemble, and their founder, Liza Figueroa Kravinsky, has done guest posts about how she developed the group. (She talks here, for instance, about the group’s big breakthrough into the heart of the go-go world, go-go being … [Read more...]

[contextly_auto_sidebar id="cybmj5APWYlvIbPh5rKDH7ECM2aVCjJt"] Here’s a followup to my last blog post, about music, excitement, and another frontier for classical performance . The post was about an exciting performance the National Symphony did in a Washington, DC club, for an audience of around 2000 people who don’t normally go to classical concerts. Younger clubgoers, to judge from how they looked. On the program were classical pieces, and also some marvelous things — which easily held their own with the classical works — aimed at … [Read more...]

[contextly_auto_sidebar id="moT41mYs3aEczDi5WeFRMcssnYagxfl7"] The triumph The National Symphony Orchestra played in a very large club, attracting so many people — more than 2000 — that they had to turn people away. And they didn’t just play classical music. The program did began with the Candide overture, and included the onrushing second movement of the Shostakovich Tenth, plus “Montagues and Capulets” from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet, and, to end the evening, the “Mambo” from West Side Story. All of which the crowd — young, white, hip … [Read more...]

Happy new year! I thought I might start 2015 with a few words about myself. Of course this is my online home, and many of you know me. But maybe it’s good to be a little bit comprehensive, partly to sell some of the things I do, but also to have a more me-like presence here. So… The basics I live in Washington, DC, with my wonderful wife Anne Midgette, chief classical music critic for the Washington Post, and our three-year old son Rafa. A smart, enterprising, funny, affectionate kid, and growing into a good family citizen. For 18 … [Read more...]

Happy holidays to all! The photo shows my son — three years old in October — in front of our Christmas tree. Speaks for itself. Though it can’t tell you how thrilled he was when he learned to hang ornaments: “I did it!” Or how, while we were decorating the tree, he’d walk away and sit facing it in a chair on the opposite side of the room. ”I looking at it!” Or how I suggested we turn out the lights to look at the tree in the dark. And how he turned them off himself, saw the glowing lights of the tree, and just about danced. Or how he … [Read more...]

[contextly_auto_sidebar id="Cz19u65owQa4WzVOPbGyaq19QJBAdRSf"] Here’s a book by Adam Tendler, 88x50: A Memoir of Sexual Discovery, Modern Music and The United States of America. And here’s a well-meant quote, from Kirkus Reviews, which picked this as Indie Book of the Month: "An honest, searching exploration of the artist as a young man." Which is a safe, conventional description of what’s going on. It’s accurate enough: The book definitely is what the quote says, or rather fits into the category of books like that, since the words … [Read more...]

[contextly_auto_sidebar id="4fbcUuBsn5SfYJcogrRJDChgcFg93ItA"] Here’s a question I asked myself, at one of the recent Irving Fine memorial concerts at the Library of Congress in DC. Fine, I’ll say in passing, is one of those entirely respectable but not memorable composers whom — in a festival or retrospective — we all more or less pretend was more important than he was. But I don’t want to go into that here. Instead I want to ask the larger question that occured to me. Fine began as a neoclassicist, and then, in the 1950s, started writing … [Read more...]

[contextly_auto_sidebar id="0CQQxamfgn9Hce92qXid56YFjNnmRCbN"] WARNING: THIS BOOK CONTAINS STRONG LANGUAGE ABOUT CLASSICAL MUSIC. *** Srini Kumar, genius sloganeer and counterculturalist, used to sell a bumper sticker that read “Destroy what bores you on sight.” I suggest orchestras heed this advice. Why belabor it? Players are uncomfortable. Audiences are visually bored. Nobody knows what's going on. Can we all agree to move on? Okay. Enough. The first quote comes from the Amazon page for a book by Will Roseliep, The Libertine's Guide to … [Read more...]

[contextly_auto_sidebar id="2z8Iqc4FTXmNqb0dSTIQfB6JLeuIeJ94"] Clubbing for Classical Musicians: A Do-It-Yourself Guide to Working in Alternative Venues, by Sarah Robinson, the codirector of Classical Revolution: L.A. Since she co-runs an organization that fosters playing in clubs and is a veteran club player herself, her book is beyond authoritative. And in fact you couldn’t find a more helpful guide, to something that more and more classical musicians are doing these days. It’s so helpful, in fact — and so thorough — that I’d reccommend … [Read more...]

[contextly_auto_sidebar id="YIPXOje5P1XkP7QlcaW0xveAhVMPRs8d"] Picking up now from one detail in my last post, about some Atlanta Symphony realities… When people say the Symphony is the soul of Atlanta, what do they mean? They can't be saying that any large part of the town dances to the Symphony's beat. Or that entire neighborhoods define themselves by what the Symphony plays. Or that whenever there's a performance, thousands of people — tens of thousands! — ask themselves if tonight they ought to go. Because those things clearly aren't … [Read more...]

…falls into every life. Today, with regret, I’m going to rain a little on the Atlanta Symphony. Of course I’m celebrating their return to life, especially for the musicians’ sake. They’re once more doing what they love, getting paid, and (no small thing) getting healthcare. But along with that, here are three things to think about: The contract Crucial to the settlement was an increase in the number of fulltime musicians (receiving full pay and benefits). Once the Atlanta Symphony had 95 fulltime members. That number fell, once the bad … [Read more...]

[contextly_auto_sidebar id="70PVqZFYlov39Dc4ArV5U7JAsBI1aSFb"] Here’s a link to the talk I gave in Spain a couple of weeks ago, at an arts marketing conference that was both focused and fun. I mentioned the talk in my last post, about why I think the arts — as an industry that claims to represent art — are basically over. I didn’t put it that way in Madrid, instead talking about “old-model” vs. “new-model” arts, the old model being, well, the Kennedy Center in Washington, built on a grand scale, and deliberately placed off to the side … [Read more...]