Here's a viral YouTube story, from Kara LaMoure, a bassoonist who took my course on the future of classical music at Eastman last year. Kara's a member of The Breaking Winds, a bassoon quartet. They dressed in Lady Gaga wigs, played a Lady Gaga medley, put a video of it on YouTube -- and as of today had just over 135,000 views. Which is around 7000 more than they had a couple of days ago. So they've gone viral, as Kara happily emailed to tell me. And how did that happen?Easy assumption: that Lady Gaga made them a hit. Or, rather, that her name … [Read more...]

Or, rather, the problems of defining classical music, the subject of my last book riff, and many comments. Including some very passionate ones from a man I greatly respect (hi, Michael), who longs with all his heart for a definition of classical music that's based on our current classical music culture. Other commenters have correctly noted ambiguities in the definition I proposed (I specified that classical music is the music of the European tradition, and that it's written out in advance by a composer). Broadway musicals, for instance. … [Read more...]

Some places you can find me:In Symphony magazine, the publication of the League of American Orchestras. I've got a piece on the revolution that orchestras need. I think it's one of the best things I've done. Very hard-hitting, but optimistic. The spirit of rebirth (I'd like to think) in action. And then on a blog called Orchestra R/Evolution the League set up, as a lead-in to its annual conference. I'm one of the regular bloggers there, and the theme of my first post was Robert Burns -- how we in classical music have to learn to see ourselves … [Read more...]

Another "solutions" post, this week's entry in a series of posts that offer new ideas and, even better, new innovations -- successful ones -- in classical music.This one comes Leo Pot, who emailed me from the Netherlands. He's the director of Theaters Tilburg, a complex consisting of two theaters and a concert hall, in a town in the southern part of the Netherlands, with a population of 200,000. I'm quoting Leo's email with his permission, though at his request I rewrote some of it, because English isn't his first language. Thanks, Leo! What he … [Read more...]

Here's a link to the latest from my book, Rebirth: The Future of Classical Music. It's a riff on chapter four, in which I try to define classical music. (Check my outline of the book, to see where this fits.)And why would I want to define classical music? Because existing definitions come with fascinating baggage. They define classical music almost exclusively in terms of the masterworks of the past, and also include value judgments, about classical music's value, and even its superiority.I think these notions get in the way. And here's a … [Read more...]

Let's make this a little more formal. I said I'd give $50 to the favorite charity of the first publicist to show me that he or she has "stopped sending press releases, and instead sends the email I've described, linked to a lively webpage." And of course that's the email -- replacing a press release -- that I described in my post on why nobody should send out press releases.But now I think I should specify more detailed rules, so people will know what I'm looking for, and so my judgment won't seem arbitrary. To qualify for my gift -- which I'm … [Read more...]

More thoughts about my suggestion that press releases should die. Instead of press releases, I said, publicists should send short, informal email -- very short! two paragraphs! -- with all essential info, most centrally including some convincing reason why anyone would want to go to the event, or talk about it in the media. And then, as I said, you'd include links to further info. But here's my new thought. These links shouldn't go to a boring page of text. And certainly not to a ghastly old-style press release! They should go to a web page … [Read more...]

It took a while. But finally the comments on this blog work the way they're supposed to. You won't be asked to sign in. I'll have to approve all comments before they post -- to kill spam and malware -- but I'll try to do this first thing every day. And otherwise things will proceed as usual. Comment early and often! … [Read more...]

The story so far: Spam comments flooded this and other ArtsJournal blogs. Inside them was evil code, very hard to root out, which infected ArtsJournal with malware. Google then marked ArtsJournal (and all its blogs) as attack sites, and many people were blocked from reading us. This was fixed. But how can we keep spam comments away? The captchas -- those word puzzles you had to solve before you could comment -- don't work anymore. Evildoers hire people in the third world to solve them by the thousand. And so the solution seemed to be...A … [Read more...]

One problem classical music has is anonymity. Might seem strange to say that, given how famous some classical stars are, but for the most part, we're trained to hide our own light, and cast a  … [Read more...]

Don't forget that I'm vitally interested in solutions to classical music's problems -- new approaches, things you've tried, things that worked, even things that didn't work, because I'm sure we all can learn from those, as well as from things that succeeded. And things that fall in the middle between apparent failure and apparent success. And note the "Solutions" page on this blog site, where (with help from Doug Laustsen) I archive solutions -- mine, and many from other people  -- that I've posted here. Send me yours!So here's a … [Read more...]

I have two new blog posts today -- one called "Gatekeeper alternatives -- do it yourself," and another (which I admit logically comes first), "The trouble with gatekeepers." Both bounce off an exchange I had on Twitter about how best to promote events and careers, through traditional means (working through old media and established classical music institutions), or by using new media, and bypassing the standard gatekeepers. Or else bringing them in after you've laid the groundwork on your own. For all kinds of reasons, the "alternatives" post … [Read more...]

So here's a test case, derived from something my wife Anne Midgette and I encountered during a university residency a few years ago.We were asked to meet with a faculty chamber ensemble, made up of terrific musicians, who were scheduled to make their New York debut. And they had a simple question to ask us. How could they get a review in the Times?The answer, unfortunately, was equally simple. Almost certainly, they couldn't get a Times review. There's too much competition. Too many concerts. Yes, they'd have a better chance if they'd scheduled … [Read more...]

You may have noticed that it's no longer possible to post comments here. And in fact comments have been disabled on all ArtsJournal blogs. That's because the hackers who infected ArtsJournal entered the site by posting spam comments, which have flared up lately, sometimes gigantically. One day last week this blog got 42 of them. Readers probably didn't see that, because the comments were posted, apparently randomly, to a variety of very old posts. But still, there they were, serving (with the use of hidden code) both as beacons to attract more … [Read more...]