…now happily accepts comments. If you'd like to post one, just click on the "comments" link at the end of the entry you want to comment on. You can post anonymously, if you like, simply by leaving the "name" and "email address" fields blank. To read comments, first look to see if there are any; if the number in parentheses is zero, then there aren't any comments. (And yes, I know that many of us know all this already, but trust me -- there are people reading this who don't know it.) If there are comments, click on the "conments" link to read … [Read more...]

Last Wednesday I taught the last class, for this year, in my spring semester Juilliard course, “Classical Music in an Age of Pop.” I had a marketing specialist as a guest, and he asked the students some useful questions. How did they decide which concerts to go to? Because they’re professionals, they actually look at listings, ads, and websites, to find out when there’s music that might interest them. They might be looking for a piece they like, or a piece they’ve never heard live, or something with an important part for their own … [Read more...]

Episode seven of my in-progress book on the future of classical music is now online. After some introductory stuff, it goes in a new direction (well, not so new to those of you who read the first, now discarded version of the book). Everything up to now has been the introduction to the book. Now I've embarked on the first main section, which will give chapter and verse, in considerable detail, of how classical music is in trouble. But I start with a look at the distant past — at the days when Bach and Mozart were composing, but classical … [Read more...]

From Jon Farley in Britain (and posted here with his permission) comes something worth thinking about. Jon says, “I studied music at school and though I loved the music I found the stuffiness overbearing.” And then this: I went to a [classical] concert last week and the thing that struck me was that nobody talked to the audience and that's really weird! I listen to a wide variety of music and it's only the classical world that does this. Even a hello, how are you? would do. I went to a contemporary music concert the next night - … [Read more...]

Here’s a really good classical music press release. Faithful readers will remember how exasperated I’ve been at bad ones (and, sadly, the vast majority of classical music press releases I see are really bad). <b SONY CLASSICAL PRESENTS THE ACCLAIMED COMPOSER/INSTRUMENTALIST EDGAR MEYER IN COLLABORATION WITH PERHAPS HIS MOST PROVOCATIVE PARTNER YET - HIMSELF <b CDS IN STORES TUESDAY, APRIL 25, 2006 Three-time Grammy Award winner Edgar Meyer has won remarkable acclaim both for the music he has written and for an inexhaustible … [Read more...]

There’s been a lot of talk in the past couple of years about the intrinsic value of art, as opposed to its economic value. Here’s a really lovely statement about that, from Mary Pat Mombourquette, the Managing Director of Symphony Nova Scotia, from testimony before the Canadian parliament: Also, we give people something to aspire to. There is more than what's down in the trenches. There is something to crawl out of the trenches for, and when you get out, you can see something. It sort of inspires people, it broadens them, and it allows them to … [Read more...]

From Dan Walter, who’s 30, says he grew up with heavy metal, rock, pop, and rap. Lately he’s been buying and downloading classical recordings, and says he’s “a little bit upset with myself for not discovering and continuing to follow this great form of music much earlier in my life. I have been reading biographies of composers and doing research on the web about all the music I am interested in and continue to discover something new on a daily basis. I have a pretty big CD collection of popular music and have decided to start a collection of … [Read more...]

Not long ago I wrote two posts here about why classical music organizations should embrace pop music. I gave many reasons — that we need to embrace the world outside us, that we’ll never attract a new audience unless they know we live in the same world they do, and of course that many people in the classical world like pop music, and many classical musicians play it. Later I added one more thought, that a concert of pop and classical music together might be fun, and stimulating. But talk about missing the obvious! This weekend, I joined many … [Read more...]

…which leads to a less happy followup. I found myself late one night in a discussion with a dozen or so orchestra people, mostly musicians, from a variety of orchestras, both large and medium-sized. When I joined the discussion, they were talking about why orchestras don’t move more on stage, why they don’t smile, why they don’t acknowledge the audience, and even (when appropriate) perform to it. Everyone in the room, without exception, wanted these things to happen. But everyone, again without exception, didn’t think it would be easy to … [Read more...]

From Jennifer Foster, at WDAV at Davidson College, in North Carolina: I was at a Sunday afternoon concert at a small Episcopal church in town. (A local baroque cellist has a treasure trove of early music friends from Berkeley who come to town to perform from time to time.) The concert opened with Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 5. The harpsichord player, a mischievous looking fellow named Henry Lebedinsky, was in the heat of playing the daylights out of his extensive solo. Rather than wallow in the kind of attention a well-heeled classical … [Read more...]

I worked with Leighton Kerner for six years at the Village Voice in New York, back in the early ‘80s. And I want to add my voice to those who mourn his passing. As everyone so rightly said, he loved music—loved it with everything he had. He never seemed to get jaded, or overloaded. He was always out there, always going to performances, always excited. And his reviews showed his enthusiasm. I can’t remember him ever being harsh, even if he hadn’t liked something he heard. And when he liked it, he was generous and grateful. I remember one review … [Read more...]

Not long ago I visited the New York Philharmonic’s archives. My main job was to research Stravinsky performances. Had Stravinsky’s neo-classic works ever been played during the 1920s, ’30s, and 40s when he himself wasn’t conducting? The answer, confirming my instinct, was that they hardly ever had been. But I was also interested in what the archives might show about the age of the audience in the past, and while there wasn’t much information, Barbara Haws, the Philharmonic’s fabulous archivist, did give me this. How times have changed! (And by … [Read more...]

Episode six of my in-progress book about the future of classical music is now online. It completes the introduction to the book—or, as I've started to call it, the improvisation of the introduction to the book. In it, you'll find some pretty trenchant criticism of one last piece of classical music orthodoxy, along with—in a very different key—my own declaration of love for classical music. Plus more, including the dedication of the book. It's dedicated, in effect, to everybody reading this, to everyone who wants to see change in classical … [Read more...]

Here’s a fabulous rant I got during an e-mail exchange with Michael Wittmann, a physicist and college-radio DJ. As Michael says, “we indie kids (I'm 34, grew up with Dead Kennedys and Beethoven in equal amounts during the 80s, etc.) have our own art music.” By which he means bands like Sonic Youth. But he’s also into new classical music, and like many people who know both worlds, knows that there’s a powerful potential (and often actual) crossover between them. But let him say it: I am completely convinced that the highbrow, "stuffy shirt" … [Read more...]

When I wrote my post on classical and pop performed together, I should have noted a few places where this really happens, or almost happens. Key among them ought to be the London Sinfonietta, which has done concerts with Warp Records, a pop label, in which Warp artists play on programs where the rest of the music is by serious postwar composers like Xenakis. These concerts have been wildly successful, attracting a large, young audience, who from what I’ve heard like the Xenakis pieces just as much as the pop stuff. And then there’s Zankel … [Read more...]