That's what I'm billed as giving next Wednesday, at the College of Music at the University of Colorado at Boulder. I'll be the guest of their Entrepreneurship Center for Music, and my talk -- called "The Classical Music Crisis: How You Can Help" — is billed as their Spring Keynote. And it's open to the public: (free) 5 PM, January 30, in room C-199 in the Imig Music Building (the main music building) on the CU campus. All my readers are welcome, along with anyone else. Come up and say hello afterward! Below you'l find a campus map, showing … [Read more...]
More mavericks from readers
Continuing the growing list of mavericks, people in classical music who do things in new ways. Go here for the first post in December's mavericks series, scroll to the end for the complete list. Readers named more than 50 maverick people or groups. And here come some more. Start with Etienne Albin Abelin, a Swiss violinist, composer, and conductor with an active career both in the classical mainstream, and in indie classical work. Here he is as a member of Orchestra Mozart Bologna, a group Claudio Abbado conducts. And here's a MySpace page … [Read more...]
Classical music wish list
That's what you'll find on Tom Huizinga's NPR blog today -- things many of us hope will happen in classical music during 2013. I'm there, along with Marin Alsop, Jennifer Higdon, Kevin Puts, and some others, including Tom himself, of course, and his fellow NPR blogger Anastasia Tsioulcas. Alsop's wishes are as lively as she is. Her first one: For all of us in classical music to stop being afraid of having fun ... and showing it! Love that! Here's a summary of my wishes: classical music institutions should make finding a new audience … [Read more...]
New directions
A followup to yesterday's "Renewal." I realized, as I said in "Renewal," that my blog — and all my work — involve a community, a community that nourishes me, and that I seem to nourish, a community of people involved with (or even just thinking about) change in classical music. But I also realized that it's time for something new. And I thought of two new paths to follow. I could take my work to an institution, maybe a music school or university, maybe a music school that's looking for a director, and would want me to take the … [Read more...]
Final mavericks: Jade Simmons and a Go-Go symphony
Well, final only for now. Because, as I said in my last post — where I finished the list of readers' nominations — I'll be continuing this in the new year. So the name to conjure with, maverick-wise — the maverick of the year, if I had to name one — would be Jade Simmons. One look at her website (follow the link) tells you she's different. "Cyber Digs of Multifaceted Pianist Jade Simmons," it says. "Take off your shoes & stay awhile!" I don't know anyone in classical music who's so much at home in our outside culture, who does the same … [Read more...]
A lot of mavericks
Finishing — for now — with the many, many suggestions I've gotten from readers. If I missed anyone (maybe a Facebook comment, or something on Twitter, or whatever else might have escaped my dragnet, forgive me! This isn't over. We'll resume in the new year. And then keep doing this! Because what we've done here is something badly needed. We're compiling a list of classical music alternatives — of the many new things that people have done, to change the face of this art form, and give it a new birth. From Andrew Lyon: I am … [Read more...]
Mavericks — continuing
More classical music mavericks, as submitted by readers: From Geoffrey Jones: The Artists in Residence program at Strathmore [a major concert hall, between Washington, DC and Baltimore], some of them are breaking molds and have huge talents. Three suggestions from Brett Amacher: I think this is a great example of how to "reach outside the classical music bubble": 'The Speedbumps at the Canton Symphony' did that very well, imo (details on the blog post below). http://www.callumndad.com/?p=361 Tonhalle Orchester Zurich's "tonhalleLATE"... … [Read more...]
More mavericks
More suggestions from the many I've gotten, after I asked who in classical music is doing things in new ways. I'll post all the suggestions I get, though not all at once. The suggestion I posted: Ad Hoc, a chamber ensemble in Rochester. (I'll have more) One thought, before going further. Many people mention performances in clubs. Nothing wrong with that. Classical musicians have been playing in clubs for more than a decade, and clearly they're bringing classical music closer to everyday life. But because this has been going on for so … [Read more...]
Maverick nominations
Many suggestions for maverick classical music people and groups — which I asked for in a recent post — have come in, via blog comments, email, Facebook, and Twitter. I asked for "nominations," actually, which now I regret. Did I really think I was going to vet all suggestions, and then pick some of them? No way! I'll just pass on all suggestions. And I'll have some of my own, like Ad Hoc, the Rochester chamber ensemble I blogged about, or Jade Simmons, or the River Oaks Chamber Orchestra (ROCO) in Houston, or… (more to come). Jade and … [Read more...]
Getting out of the classical music biz
Here I want to offer a radical idea: That all of us in classical music should get out of the classical music business. As I stressed at the end of my last post, this doesn't mean we should stop doing classical music. It means we should think about it differently. Here's an example. Someone I know, a veteran arts professional with a sterling resume (among other things, he ran one of the leading performing arts institutions in the US), emailed me about something he found dismaying at the New York Philharmonic. Alan Gilbert was about to conduct … [Read more...]
Visiting Austin
I'll be in Austin on Thursday (that's November 8), to speak to classes at the University of Texas. Don't think I'll have any public availability, which is a shame. I'd love to meet any readers who might be in the area. My host in Austin will be Robert Freeman, former director of the Eastman School, and founder of the entrepreneurship program there, which (as far as I know) is the oldest found in any music school in the US. It'll be a pleasure to meet Bob for the first time in person. Future trips this year might include Colorado and … [Read more...]
More history
Here — from a 1975 book by George Seltzer, The Professional Symphony Orchestra in the United States — is another bit of history. (To go along with the 1951 scene of audiences applauding after each movement of a piece, that I shared in my last post.) Seltzer's book is a collection of many articles, some short, some quite long, including a New Yorker piece from 1960 (if I remember correctly; I don't have the book with me) by Joseph Wechsler that gives the best account of what it's like to play an orchestra piece -— from the musicians' point of … [Read more...]
100 Cage
Years ago, a dear friend, a violist, gave two solo recitals, with the same program. One of the pieces was John Cage's Variations IV, in which the score is nothing but a sheet of plastic with some black dots on it. You're asked to draw a map of your performing space, overlay the plastic on it, and everywhere a dot falls, do something. [As we'll see, I didn't remember this correctly! I'm largely right, but got some details wrong.] Which makes this one of those Cage pieces -- the famous silent piece is the best known -- that many people still … [Read more...]
Programming for a new audience: one example
And now to some specifics -- how classical music programming (repertoire) could change, in the new world we'll be in when we've found a new audience. Or, of course, how we'll need to change what we offer, to be part of the culture our new audience lives in. I'll describe a concert I saw at the University of Maryland, created by students at the National Orchestral Institute (NOI). It shows one approach. But before that, a word about Boulez and Godard, in my last post. I said Boulez, the leading advanced musician in '50s and '60s France, … [Read more...]
A wild time
It's a wild time for classical music. That's the headline on my home page. And it's the opening sentence of the revised and final version of my book. Why is this a wild time? First because of the classical music crisis -- declining ticket sales, a shortage of funding, an aging, shrinking audience, all these things we've talked about for so many years. And, of course, lying behind all that, there's the sense we've all had that classical music -- at least for the past generation -- has been growing more distant from the rest of our … [Read more...]