That's the title of a very fine piece of writing on the current state of classical music, written by Brian Wise, an editor and producer at WQXR, the classical music station in New York, and posted on the WQXR website on December 26. I've just caught up with it. (Thanks, Brian, for sending me the link!)It's full of things I didn't know, and you may not either, most notably some stats that show the steep -- even drastic -- decline in the number of performances some of our largest classical music institutions are giving this season. Which fits … [Read more...]

My cousin's husband died today, a man I was close to. He died peacefully at home, after being diagnosed with stage four cancer some months ago. He was a physicist, who worked for years in Los Alamos. Over the past few years, now retired, he devoted himself to art, taking studio classes and doing marvelous work. I'll resume my posts on culture change on Monday. Today, in Carl's honor, i'm going to write some music. Bless him -- he was a fine spirit, and both his devotion to art and the fine work he did were inspiring.  … [Read more...]

I said in my last post that I'd start blogging about changes in our culture that spell trouble for classical music -- because classical music hasn't kept up with them. And I thought I'd start with Glee, the hit TV show about high school singing groups. Out of curiosity (on my own, I'm more likely to watch Project Runway, Caprica or The Walking Dead), I went on Hulu and watched an episode ("Special Education," which aired November 30). And I liked it. But not only that. I thought it threatened classical music. A little … [Read more...]

Back from my holiday. Refreshed. And, with any luck, focused. Hope you all had good holidays, and happy new year, everyone! Hope it's a good year for you, for me, and for classical music.In in the past, I've begun new years with a post I'd often call "Where we stand," in which I'd sum up the evidence for trouble in classical music. Here's a revision of one of those posts, which I've used as an assignment in my spring semester Juilliard course on the future of our field. (More on the course when it begins, on January 12.) This year … [Read more...]

Happy holidays, everyone. I'm shutting down the blog -- well, shutting down my blogging -- till January 4. I'm off to visit family, and take a much-needed break. Comments might not be posted during that time (remember that, as protection against spam, they have to be approved before they go online). Though here I want to give a shout of Christmas and year-round thanks to Douglas Lautstsen, who's been helping me tremendously by going online to approve the comments for me. So, again, best wishes for the holiday season. I hope all my readers … [Read more...]

A thought, bouncing off the discussion of my "Orchestra Scoreboards" post -- in the comments to the original, and then in my followup, and in comments to that. When I or others suggest changes in the classical concert format, some people worry that these will hurt the way people listen. If, for instance, we have a screen showing what's going on at any moment in the piece we're hearing, this will disturb people trying to listen seriously, or actually hurt their ability to listen. In my followup post, I suggested that all of this is … [Read more...]

When I suggested some Christmas gift CDs, I somehow forgot Maya Beiser's Provenance, which I'd raved about so strongly earlier. It's a rich solo cello exploration -- with added multitracking, electronics, and drums -- of the middle eastern music Maya heard when she was young, and growing up in Israel. Plus (middle eastern-esque) Led Zep's "Kashmir," which she heard, just as we all did. Her romp through that crowns the album.And I might also give a shout to Carlo Bergonzi's Christmas album. Such a wonderfully pure tenor, though also formidably … [Read more...]

This is the second news item I promised yesterday. Might have commented on it a while ago, but...life happened. The Cleveland Orchestra wants a younger audience. Though the headline in the Cleveland Plain Dealer story about that was pretty mild. "Free tickets for children one of many new initiatives planned by Cleveland Orchestra." And yes, anyone under 18 will in the future get free admission to the lawn, for the orchestra's summer concerts at the Blossom Music Center. And, at some point, they'll also get free tickets to at … [Read more...]

Here's a news item with -- as I'll hardly have to stress -- great importance for the future of classical music. Work for New York freelance classical musicians is drying up. This was a major story in the New York Times, early this month. And, believe me, it was dire. I remember the New York freelance classical music scene in past decades, and knew many musicians who made a living from it. Not always the easiest living, but you could get by, and maybe even do well. And now, to quote the Times story:[N]ight after night highly trained … [Read more...]

Some of the best -- most thorough, most well-documented, most perceptive -- writing I've seen on the future of classical music is in a three-part series from Kyle MacMillan, the fine arts critic of the Denver Post. Full disclosure -- Kyle and I agree on many things, and he interviewed me for the series. I'm quoted in the first part, which came out a week ago Sunday. The second part appeared yesterday, with the third one scheduled for next Sunday. But leave my involvement out of it. Kyle's writing speaks for itself. If you want one … [Read more...]

"Support is building like a tidal wave," says the Daily Telegraph in Britain, about a wonderful, unlikely, but conceivably successful project -- to push a recording of John Cage's 4'33" (his famous silent piece) to the top of the British pop chart. This is a protest action, a way of resisting what many in the UK feel is manipulation of the pop charts by Simon Cowell. Read all about it here, in a BBC News story. Last year, to keep Cowell from getting his hand-picked song to No. 1, a group of pop music people started a movement -- which … [Read more...]

In one spasm of my recurrent Anglophilia, I read most of a long, two-volume history of Britain in the '60s, by Dominic Sandbrook. In the first volume, Never Had it So Good (which runs from the Suez crisis in 1956 to the rise of the Beatles) there's an episode that's worth recounting here. It's about the growth of British suburbs. In the '50s, suburbs became a phenomenon in Britain, just as they did in the US. They'd grown tremendously, and seemed not just to be a new place to live, but to create a new way … [Read more...]

My "Orchestra scoreboards" post -- or rather my reprinting of Michael Oneil Lam's blog post -- evoked a lot of comments. Some very supportive. Some people loved the idea of putting data/info about a piece being played on a screen in the concert hall. And some people didn't. More on them in a moment. But it was good that one commenters noted that similar things have already been done:The Houston Symphony and Pacific Symphony (and maybe others?) have offered something I think is akin to the scoreboard concept....both orchestras have held … [Read more...]

From Michael Oneil Lam (who's married to one of the students I work with at the University of Maryland) -- an idea for making orchestra concerts more comprehensible to outsiders. And, believe me, he's got reasons for thinking about this. He's not a classical music person, but he goes to hear his wife play the bass in the University of Maryland Symphony Orchestra. And wishes he could have a little help in following the music.He wrote this for his blog, The Free Arrow. I'm reposting it here with his permission. Thanks, Mike! What you wrote is … [Read more...]

Each fall, I teach a graduate course about music criticism, at Juilliard. As I've said here before, it ends up being a class in how to talk about music, more than a class about criticism itself. Though we do read my favorite classical critics (George Bernard Shaw and Virgil Thomson), as well as current reviews from the New York Times, which the students pick, and bring into class.They also have to do a bit of writing. I tell them (and I mean it) that they'll be judged not by their writing skills, but by what they say. They're musicians, after … [Read more...]