In defense of relevance

I've said it many times and I'll say it again (I'm sure Sam has grown weary of this) - one of my favorite catchphrases - "If you don't like change, you'll like irrelevance even less."

I was thinking about the whole notion of relevance over the weekend, particularly of the naysayers who claim that "classical"/concert music (can't we come up with a better term for it??) has no place in contemporary culture. How is it possibly relevant to the 21st century? Who listens to an orchestra?

My riposte: Are you kidding me? Are you watching the Olympics?

First of all, did you notice the group of musicians that participated throughout the opening ceremonies? Uh-huh. Not a rock band; members of the Vancouver Symphony (although there was the requisite kerfluffle over live vs. Memorex).

And speaking of the opening ceremonies, yes, of course we had Sarah McLachlan and k.d. lang, but we also had Canadian opera singer Measha Brueggergosman, singing the all-important Olympic hymn.

Now, the medal ceremonies. National anthems; empty fauxchestra MIDI recordings? No way. All recorded by a very much real Vancouver Symphony:



And it goes beyond the Games themselves. I'm always fascinated by music choices for TV ads, and two GE ads stood out to me immediately. This one clearly banks on the universality of Beethoven:



And another ad by GE, this one using the slow movement of the Ravel Piano Concerto. Call me a sucker for sentimentalism, but it pulls at my heartstrings every time I've seen it (nearly a dozen viewings at this point). And it's very much the choice of music that creates the poignancy of this ad:



And of course, we can't discuss classical music in popular culture without talking about figure skating - here's a link to what I thought was the better of the two Scheherazade compilations heard in pairs finals. The orchestral music/figure skating pairing is very logical; symphonic music provides the kind of variety of moods, shifting colors, grandeur and drama that make a great skating program. Sure, sometimes you get slightly odd mishmashes of selections, but the fact remains that it still exposes a broader audience (who isn't glued to the Olympics right now?) to concert music. I think it's a good thing.

Of course, then you get the purists who make snide remarks about how dumbed-down the music is - here's a bit of barely-contained snarkiness about how ignorant skaters are about the classical music often used for their programs. Which I think is misdirected, in a way, because I don't think they're concerned about "musical integrity" in the way one would be if one were, say, presenting a concert of the same music just as music, without the spectacle of the skating which is, after all, the main focus in a skating competition. So what if they chop up musical selections or go from Mendelssohn to Chopin? And who's to say what's "tacky" in this context?

This kind of commentary/critique bothers me because it does everything to confirm the perceived snobbery and elitism of those of us in the classical biz (critics and bloggers included). I don't expect a seamless, logical, historically informed performance of symphonic music in a skating program any more that I expect the average orchestral musician to know about a triple Lutz or the byzantine judging system. But I'm happy that music and skating intersect, that a larger audience hears and appreciates it, and that a few might even be interested enough to look up Scheherazade, or whatever. It's all about exposure, keeping in the public eye and ear, participating in contemporary culture. Because the world is an ever-progressing, ever-changing place. And who likes irrelevance?

Ideals vs. Reality

It usually doesn't take long for a major recession to stop inspiring empathy for one's fellow human beings, and just start getting on everyone's nerves. If you work in an affected industry (and honestly, whose industry hasn't been affected by the last two years of economic turmoil?) you've undoubtedly got co-workers whose morale has plummeted and whose attitude at work has taken a turn for the nasty, even if they started off the downturn determined to do whatever it took to help pull everyone through. The bottom line is that we all seem to have a limited supply of good will before we start looking around for someone to blame for our situation.

Those of us in the arts are no exception to this rule, and increasingly, it seems like the journalists who cover the arts are getting decidedly antsy as well. Early on in the recession, you could sense a certain amount of sympathy from the press for arts groups trapped between a fiscal rock and hard place, which wasn't surprising, given what a precarious state newspapers themselves are in. But the new year seems to be bringing a change in the winds, and I've started to notice more writers penning screeds against the cuts to artistic product being made by many of the nation's orchestras and opera companies, crippling once-in-a-lifetime-recession be damned.

What troubles me about this shift in journalistic focus isn't that writers are calling on big-budget performing arts groups to remember their artistic mandates - that is, after all, one of the more important roles of the press. But I must admit that I resent it when writers hide behind big platitudes while failing to take an interest in the nitty-gritty of their subject. Too often, arts writers implore the largest local performing arts groups to take more and bigger chances at the riskiest possible times, without acknowledging what a suicidal leap of faith it could be.

Much as I would love to live in a world where taking unpopular but principled stands is predictably rewarded by public acclaim, we all know that isn't the world we live in. Put another way: do I like that my orchestra and many others are checking every last artistic decision we make against the bottom line right now? (And then re-checking and re-re-checking it just to see if we can squeeze a few more drops of blood out of the stone?) No. I hate it. And so does everyone else in the business.

But at the risk of coming across like an apologist for the front office of a floundering baseball team, I just don't think it's responsible to expect organizations that survive on the generosity of our donors to celebrate a crippling recession by making demonstrably risky artistic decisions and then demanding even more money to fund them. And the truth is, if we did start making a habit of that, the same journalists who are now decrying a lack of originality in our programming would be lining up to demand accountability on the fiscal side.

One of the occasionally unpleasant side effects of being an arts group that caters to hundreds of thousands of paying customers per year is that you don't have the luxury of squeezing yourself into a niche market very often. Full-size orchestras employ close to 100 musicians alone, without even counting staff, and opera companies employ far more. No nonprofit theater company or dance troupe even comes close to that kind of overhead. To stay afloat, we've got to fill a 2,500-seat concert hall on an alarmingly regular basis, and that's a lot different than an organization that needs to sell 300 tickets a night.

Furthermore, much as we might like to imagine that it's possible to completely separate artistic decisions from financial ones, I've just never seen any evidence that that's a workable reality in any but the most outrageously wealthy of arts organizations. And it strikes me as odd that, at a time when much of the news media is still asking the question of how much of our previously inflated American lifestyle is still affordable post-meltdown, so many arts writers seem to be indignantly demanding an immediate return to 2007-era thinking.

P.S. You'll notice that I didn't link to any particular offending article or commentary before beginning this little rant. It's a bit gutless, I know, but I basically didn't want to seem like I was singling out any one journalist and/or risk getting into a debate over the merits of that one piece. (Besides, if you browse the music headlines on ArtsJournal on a regular basis, you could likely make your own list of such commentaries.)

Tweet tweet

Yet another article/blog about arts organizations and their forays into online social media, this one focusing on Twitter.

While in a broad sense I agree with author Anne Midgette's assertion that "the classical music field’s attempts to be hip and draw in a younger audience are a little embarrassing, or stilted", she lost me at "I’m not sure just how many core classical fans use Twitter". I thought the whole purpose of arts organizations using these types of media was to reach people who would NOT consider themselves core classical fans?

As an outreach vehicle, it makes sense to tweet. But the problem is, many organizations assume that simply disseminating information in a tech-savvy way (and to a different demographic) will lead directly to the holy grail, bringing in "the young people"/increased ticket sales.

That erroneous assumption is apparent in the way many arts organizations tweet - "Enjoy the sounds of Mozart & Mahler 2nite @xyzsymphony". This is not going to garner you any new patrons, I assure you. Because the purpose of many of these online social engines is not "We're cool too, buy tickets!". It's more about fostering connections and developing relationships without the expectation of a tangible outcome or goal.

I tweet regularly (a couple of times a day, usually) and follow about 100 individuals/organizations, from Artsbeat (news and views from New York Times critics and arts reporters) and Tim Lefebvre (frequent bassist of Chris Botti's band) to Serious Eats (for my foodie side) and UniformProject (because I love fashion and this is just a fascinating idea, for a good cause).

I follow several dozen conductors/composers/soloists as well, and those who I most look forward to hearing from provide not information about their upcoming album release, but musings about life on the road or the fantastic wine they had yesterday or finding time to practice while their children are napping. Ironically, having a 140-character insight into people on an everyday basis (often about mundane things - "Today's lemon curd came out REALLY well") makes me feel connected to them. And when you feel privy to someone's inner thoughts, and you find those thoughts interesting/funny/thought-provoking, you might be more inclined to check out their show when they swing through town.

When it boils down to it, I look forward to logging into Twitter at the end of the day to check out what the motley assortment of people I follow have been up to/thinking/trying to do that day, and there is definitely a sense of self-created community there. Because in the end, that's the whole purpose of online social sites - supporting an exchange of ideas and fostering a sense of connectedness.

So why should arts organizations be a part of this? First, because lots of people spend their time hanging out online, and it's dangerous to not be a part of the larger conversation - and non-participation just feeds into the notion that classical music/classical art is stodgy and behind the times. Second, and more importantly, because it's simply very, very important to share ideas and forge relationships. Not just on a basic humanity level (not that I'm knocking that...), but also because when you have warm, fuzzy feelings towards someone/something, you're more likely to have a high opinion of them, feel like you relate on a personal level with them, support them in an emergency, speak well of them in public, and contribute to a positive buzz.

Positive image, accessibility, personal connection. The possibility of all this fantastic self-generated PR on a free platform. What's not to love?

When In Doubt, Shoot The Rich

There's nothing like a great big mess of fuzzy populist logic to get my blood boiling on a Monday morning, and thanks to outgoing St. Paul Pioneer Press arts critic extraordinaire, Dominic Papatola, I've just been reading an 1800-word rant of cosmically fuzzy and populist proportions by none other than rock star David Byrne, who maintains an impressively extensive blog on his website.

It's always dangerous to try and summarize an argument that you vehemently disagree with, but since I'm assuming that most of you aren't actually going to go and read the whole blasted thing, I'll do my best to be fair up front. Basically Byrne has noted from local LA news reports that the LA Opera is currently in severe fiscal distress, and is seeking (and has since received) some $14 million from the city/county government to keep it from collapsing before the end of the current season. Byrne has also noted that the very same LA Opera is undertaking a truly massive (even by Hollywood standards) production of Wagner's Ring cycle, at an estimated cost of $32 million. "What makes this situation notable is not the amount of money," says Byrne, "but the fact that the audience will be so small, and that the state is footing part of the bill."

Leaving aside the question of how we're defining "small," Byrne's obviously got a point here. It's wildly awkward, to say the least, to be asking for a massive government bailout at the same time that you're continuing work on the operatic equivalent of Avatar.

Of course, bailing on a project as big as the Ring when you've already committed significant resources to it might not make fiscal sense, either, so my guess is that LA Opera has found itself in a damned-if-they-do, damned-if-they-don't situation, and is trying to make the best of it. But whatever - Byrne's not dealing in such minutiae. He has bigger fish to fry.

His next target is museums and other cultural institutions around the US which, inspired by huge projects like the Bilbao Guggenheim, decided that a splashy new building (or piece of a building) designed by one of the four or five "starchitects" whose names are actually known to the wider public would be enough to generate new revenue streams and public devotion for ever and ever, amen. Once again, that's not exactly what happened, but Byrne again has a serious point to make, and it's one that's been made by many who analyze the arts world for a living.

But that's where Byrne stops dealing in reality, and makes his stunning leap from a defensible idea - that large arts institutions (much like banks, Fortune 500 companies, and families across America) spent much of the last 20 years thinking too much about expansion and consumption and too little about long-term fiscal security - to an absolutely absurd one...

"However this mess ends up, my thoughts are that maybe it’s time to rethink all this museum, opera and symphony funding — and I refer mainly to state funding. A bunch of LA museums just got a bailout from LA real estate king Eli Broad, and that’s great, but I suspect there will be county money involved there somewhere too. I think maybe it’s time to stop, or more reasonably, curtail somewhat, state investment in the past — in a bunch of dead guys (and they are mostly guys, and mostly dead, when we look at opera halls) — and invest in our future. Take that money, that $14 million from the city, for example, let some of those palaces, ring cycles and temples close — forgo some of those $32M operas — and fund music and art in our schools. Support ongoing creativity in the arts, and not the ongoing glorification and rehashing of the work of those dead guys."

Now, look. I'm all for getting America's commitment to arts education back up to a civilized level, but this argument has honestly become the last refuge of the damned in the cultural sphere. It boils down to "I don't personally enjoy or attend the specific performance/museum/concert that recently received money from my city/county/state, and therefore I believe that said money was entirely wasted, and probably should have gone to the schools instead. Won't someone please think of the children?!" It's the arts equivalent of me saying to you: Minnesota spends a huge amount of money to give out food stamps that I never use and that are no good to me. Wouldn't that money be better spent giving poor kids an education so that they won't grow up to need food stamps?

Moreover, in the rush to decry and demonize government assistance of any kind to any private institution in the wake of the massive bank bailouts of recent years, I've noticed that Americans on both ends of the political spectrum have gotten exceedingly good at spotting which of their political/cultural enemies receive some level of public funding. But those same people often seem willfully blind to public funding that goes to causes or organizations that they personally value. People working in the arts or education blast huge state subsidies to build a baseball stadium for a billionaire MLB owner, but conveniently ignore (or defend) the subsidies that helped build the Guthrie Theater. Others toss around words like "socialism" when government wants to provide equal access to health care using public funds, but ignore (or defend) the enormous earmark their city/county/state received to fund a new hospital and create a few hundred jobs.

Back to Byrne, though, because he's not remotely done throwing around baseless assertions and drawing bizarre conclusions from them...

"The problem of course, as far as private funding goes, is that what billionaire wants to fund school education?"

Um, well, tons of them, actually. Your average hour of public radio contains half a dozen underwriting credits for education-based foundations funded by America's wealthy. But I'm sorry, I interrupted - you were saying...?

"Where’s the glamour in that? You don’t get your name etched in marble on the outside of a hall for that, or get invited to amazing galas, so what’s the point? That’s why I’m focusing on public and state funding — let the private funders bankroll the opry halls, if that’s where they want to hang out."

Ah, yes, that old canard. Rich people, you see, don't actually fund arts and culture because they like it or think it's important. They fund it to see their name on a building and have a private box where everyone in the hall can gaze upon them in their fur coats and other frippery. In other news, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett recently grew moustaches like the guy on the cover of the Monopoly box, started charging exorbitant rent on Park Place and Marvin Gardens, and used the proceeds to build a secret volcano lair from which to control their impending plan for planetary domina...

...oh. No. Wait. My mistake. That's what rich guys in cartoons and James Bond movies do. Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are too busy funding education and trying to cure AIDS for that volcano stuff.

At it's core, Byrne's argument boils down to this: it's not fair that so much money goes to cultural institutions that celebrate the classics when modern-day artists, musicians, and writers have to struggle for recognition and subsistence-level funding. Moreover, "it’s more important to encourage creativity than to imply that good work can only be made by professionals — your betters."

Hard to argue with that. But Byrne doesn't actually offer any solution to the problem: he just whines about imagined elitism amongst the cognoscenti, and then, like a toddler throwing a tantrum, takes his dissatisfaction with the status quo to its most illogical end: let's just blow the whole thing up! And coming from a musician who actually produces thought-provoking work on a consistent basis, that's worse than fuzzy logic. It's an attempt to start a war that will inevitably claim you as a casualty.

Fightin' Words

UPDATE, 11/18: Composer Institute participant Spencer Topel's latest blog entry is up over at NewMusicBox. This time around, Spencer's pondering just how far composers will travel to hear the music they've written, and how that ties into Americans' sense of distance...

--------------------------

Over at ArtsJournal, composer/critic Greg Sandow is celebrating the Chicago Symphony's announcement that Mason Bates and Anna Clyne (a Composer Institute alum!) will be the CSO's composers in residence next season. And Greg's excitement boils down to what he sees as a possible evolution of the flavor of living composer that major American orchestras choose to showcase. Notably, he sees Bates and Clyne as part of a new generation of young composers who mix genres, drop in pop references, and most importantly, write music that your average concertgoer will enjoy listening to...

"For years, the Big Five orchestras -- New York, Chicago, Cleveland, Philly, Boston -- featured modernist new music. Boulez, Matthias Pintscher, Birtwistle (a Cleveland favorite), Magnus Lindberg currently in New York, Carter and Babbitt currently in Boston. Along with a welcome dose of John Adams, but the emphasis was modernist. Or, in other words, on music that hardly anyone likes (whatever its virtues might be), music the normal audience can't respond to, and which also has no base (for instance among artists in other fields, or younger people) outside the classical audience. It's music like this, I think, which leads orchestras to conclude that new music doesn't -- no matter what many people might expect -- attract a young audience."

Now, this is a controversial paragraph, because fans of certain Modernist composers have never really been willing to acknowledge that Modernist music sounds like indecipherable noise to most listeners. (And to be fair, a lot of those who think Modernism was ill-conceived and hurt classical music badly also don't do a very good job of separating that judgment from the clear reality that Carter, Birtwhistle, Boulez, et al are brilliant men who deserve respect.) But if you ask me, Milton Babbitt's notorious screed, "Who Cares If You Listen?" (originally published in 1958,) tells us that Modernist music established itself as contemptuous of the audience at a very early stage, and I really don't think that's a debatable point.

So why is it that Modernist composers didn't fall out of fashion with orchestras and the people who lead them the moment an alternative style of composition was available? Composers have been writing far more ear-friendly (and yet unquestionably serious) music for decades now, and yet music directors like James Levine in Boston (not picking on him in particular, he's just the highest-profile example going at the moment) continue to insist on packing concert programs full of Carter and Wuorinen, despite audible dissatisfaction from the audience.

I've had any number of theories about Modernism's death grip on orchestras over the years. I used to think it was a peculiarity of the Northeast's overly academic personality. (That one dissolved when I started traveling more, and realized that geography didn't seem as relevant as I'd suspected.)

Then I decided that it might have to do with a simple intellectual disconnect: if you've spent a lot of time studying Modernist music, as many musicians do in the course of learning to be musicians, it does start to make more sense to you, and it can be hard to remember that your average concertgoer did not spend four years listening to Babbitt and Stockhausen as preparation for attending your concert.

I still think that second theory has potential, as does the possibility that the musicians who continue to promote Modernism truly do believe that one day, we'll all wake up and it'll sound as normal to us as Stravinsky. (This is an absurd idea, and maybe someday I'll go into the many, many reasons why.)

I'm all for challenging audiences, and I'm not for a moment suggesting that we should just give up on "serious" new music and start considering John Williams and Mark O'Connor to be the new Copland and Dvorak. But I'm with Sandow on the undeniably positive nature of an orchestra with Chicago's pedigree embracing a generation of composers who, frankly, have been getting way too little respect from the orchestral establishment and the press that covers it.

Don't get me started...

I'm always surprised what passes for "news", particularly in our corner of the music industry. For instance, I've mentioned in past posts, every now and then we get yet another piece about the "phenomena" of female conductors, few of which draw any new conclusions (if they draw conclusions at all).

So, in view of all the talk of orchestras slashing budgets and struggling on the fiscal front, I guess it's time to trot out another "conductors are overpaid" article, this one from the Guardian.

To say that pieces like this one - written with little apparent understanding of either the business of music, or, more importantly, the artistic process of music – frustrate me to no end is an understatement.

First off, I don't deny that there are some conductors who demand exorbitant fees by anyone's standard (“rockstar fees”, they say, but even rockstars are taking fee reductions in this recession). But I really object to using those very few to judge the majority. One can find people with extreme salaries in all walks of life - athletes with contracts worth well over $20 million come to mind. If you leave the big leagues and look at rank-and-file, however, salaries are nothing to write an article about; the starting salary for a minor league ball player, for instance, is in the $25-35K range. Should we judge athletes' salaries by the few that make astronomical figures? No. Neither should we for conductors.

Then comes the bit that really rubs me the wrong way:

But how much difference does the average conductor make? What can be said is that music, given players sufficiently accomplished, speaks for itself. Even in the case of the talented few maestri, the skills on offer are subject to an indefinable alchemy of charisma and self-belief. And as is the case with any dictator, what seems paramount is the ability to inspire confidence in their powers.

You do not have to be a musician to wonder if such a nebulous yet omnipotent job description might be dangerous.

To say that “music speaks for itself” defies a bit of logic; one needs only to hear five or six examples of the opening of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony (try it on iTunes, it really is illuminating…) and one begins to understand how any decent conductor puts a distinct imprint on the score at hand. The notes on the page, everything printed in the score, might hypothetically “speak for itself”, but how that translates to an actual sonic world is entirely the responsibility of a conductor.

As for “the ability to inspire confidence in their powers”, let me tell you this; musicians are acutely aware of whether a conductor is full of musical knowledge of simply full of it. An orchestra will have little confidence in an overbearing podium personality if a seriously studied understanding of the score and inherent musicality is not there. Charisma counts for very little (at least from the musicians’ perspective – audiences are more easily fooled) if a conductor doesn’t have the goods to back it up.

The article's premise seems predicated on the notion that the major job of a conductor is to cut a dictatorial figure on the podium, acting as a symbolic figure that players don't even pay attention to:

The truth is that almost the last place you look as a musician is towards the conductor. There simply isn't time. The notes fly past and the brain is in overdrive, busy processing vast amounts of information on the page...

To assume that the conductor is largely responsible for the music is a bit like believing an air-traffic controller should take most of the credit for a Red Arrows display.

Any player or conductor will tell you that it's impossible to have eyes glued to the podium. That would be both impractical and nonsensical. Furthermore, people who make these kinds of observations assume that what they see and hear in a concert is the be-all and end-all of a conductor’s role. ANY player (and any good conductor) will tell you that the most significant work a conductor does is in rehearsal.

As for the argument that orchestras could play conductor-less; yes, some specialized ensembles do (and they tend to be chamber orchestras), but they take a great deal of extra rehearsal to be able to coordinate and to come to artistic agreements. Apply that working model to a large modern symphony – 80+ players – and just imagine the artistic differences, never mind the practical hurdle of working on ensemble with so many people. With the number of extra services needed to accomplish that, you could hire an “overpaid” conductor several times over, and save everyone hours, to boot.

But that's just assuming a conductor is merely a glorified metronome. The most important function of a conductor is to give a focus and unified vision to the repertoire being played. And that focus and understanding comes from 1) long hours of study of a score (20 hours per actual hour of music, minimum, to really begin to understand a score) and 2) the ability to communicate the knowledge gained from this study, by both physical gesture and verbal explanation, whether it be the largest of musical ideas to the smallest detail of tuning a tricky wind chord or fixing an inner rhythmic figure.

Perhaps I take umbrage in this article simply because it insults what I do for a living, but the larger issue is that when obviously one-sided rants like this one hit the mainstream media, it casts a negative light on the classical music business as a whole. And we certainly don’t need that right now. If it’s just muckraking and stirring controversy so one can be self-righteously indignant (and it’s easy to get people worked-up about money in an economic downturn), so be it. It’s simply perturbing to come across an article that the average reader with little knowledge of classical music might take as fact, when it is clear that the author has a very specific bone to pick.

And that’s my rant for the day!

Sick Sad System

The current national debate over health care reform is one that musicians are watching particularly closely. Certainly we're all wondering what our health insurance system will look like on the other side of the debate, but as an industry, the music business could be deeply impacted by a changed health care model.

First of all, many musicians are part of that 46 million-strong voting block that simply can't afford any insurance at all. Freelancers who bounce from gig to gig (and that's most musicians, by the way) are almost never offered benefits, even when they substitute for the same orchestra or contractor frequently. So unless they can piggy-back on a spouse's employer-based insurance plan (which frequently isn't an option, since musicians have a habit of marrying other musicians,) their only option is to purchase one of the horrendously expensive individual plans offered by private insurers. Assuming, of course, that they don't have any preexisting conditions.

Even those of us lucky enough to have full-time jobs with large orchestras (and therefore, access to pretty good insurance coverage) could benefit hugely from new controls on the system. Orchestras are the 800-lb. gorillas of the music world, yes, but as businesses go, we're pretty small. The Minnesota Orchestra employs fewer than 200 people, and that means that, when our management asks insurance companies for bids to cover us, those bids come back awfully high, because the insurance companies don't really need our business.

Contrast that with a large corporation with tens of thousands of employees: the insurance companies desperately want that large pool of policies, so they cut the corporation a break on the individual rates. Basically, the fewer employees you have, the more each individual policy is going to cost.

Then there's the fact that musicians tend to actually use our health insurance. Performance injuries are extremely common, and the kind of injuries we get tend to be the kind that require extensive rehab. So annual rate increases are often sharply higher for us than they might be at your company.

There's been talk for several years now of trying to pool together all the full-time orchestra players in the US in an effort to get one big insurance plan for all of us, but since every state has its own laws regulating health insurance, and every orchestra has its own collective bargaining agreement governing everything from how much money we make to how long the rehearsals are, no one's holding their breath for a national OrchestraCare plan.

But something's gotta change. Like so many businesses, orchestras are being financially crippled by the rising cost of insurance, and no one has yet offered a solution that can garner enough political support to become law. In fact, my understanding of the plans on the table is that the employer-based model would remain the primary insurance delivery system in most cases. That's great news for my insurance company, but it's sure not good news for me or any other musician.

Playing The Race Card

Happy Labor Day, all! Everyone nicely recovered from their State Fair food coma and ready to dive back into the real world? Excellent. Me, too. So let's start the fall with a thorny topic I've been meaning to write about for quite a while.

The issue of race in America's classical music industry is an omnipresent embarrassment that few musicians like to talk about. Orchestras tend to be made up largely of highly educated individuals who consider themselves extremely open-minded. Many musicians volunteer their skills to inner city schools, and some go out of their way to offer affordable lessons to kids who can't afford the going rate. And yet, nearly every American orchestra remains a sea of Caucasian and Asian faces, with African-Americans and Hispanics a glaring rarity.

Now, it would be easy to chalk this up to institutional racism, just as the lack of women in orchestras until shockingly recent times was a result of deliberately exclusionary policies. But it's not that simple: nearly every American orchestra now holds its auditions behind a privacy screen and identifies candidates only by a number, so that the audition committee cannot (theoretically) know who is playing. And while the advent of the screen nicely fixed the gender problem, it hasn't done anything much to add more musicians of color to the ranks.

Conventional wisdom among musicians is that the racial imbalance in our industry is a direct result of the racial achievement gap in America's schools. Public schools in poverty-stricken districts (which, of course, tend to have higher percentages of black and Latino students) frequently have no music program at all, or a severely underfunded and understaffed one at best. And when you consider that it's not at all unusual for string players, in particular, to begin taking lessons at the age of 4 or 5, a lack of easy access to instruments and lessons can kill a potential musician's career before s/he leaves elementary school.

There's also a distinct social aspect to music that might feel exclusionary not just to blacks and Latinos, but to any family that doesn't fit the usual demographic. I grew up participating in youth music programs that were centered in major cities, but nearly every kid in the programs came from the suburbs, and from families with money. My suburban public school had its racial diversity bussed in from Boston, but the Saturdays I spent in the heart of the city playing in orchestras and string quartets were, for the most part, lily-white. It would never have occurred to any of us to suggest that people with darker skin than ours couldn't play music every bit as well as we did, but neither did it occur to us to wonder why they weren't doing exactly that.

Because music takes a lifetime to master, it's very easy for all of us to point the finger backward at school boards, politicians, and even parents who choose not to expose their kids to music. But as Peter Dobrin pointed out in a blistering column in the Philadelphia Inquirer last month, that sort of buck-passing lets those of us in the industry off far too easy. "It's time to stop saying the talent isn't there, and to stop citing the objectivity of the audition screen. The only thing the screen hides is the audition process, and it's not even doing a very good job of that anymore."

As I read Dobrin's larger point, he's suggesting that orchestras won't start showing more racial diversity until they are forced to by some mechanism other than a blind hiring process. So imagine if the orchestra business suddenly instituted an aggressive affirmative action program (leaving aside the thorny issue of whether the current Supreme Court would allow such a program to stand) and began giving preference to black and Latino candidates. Musicians would scream bloody murder, of course, because this business is supposed to be entirely meritocratic. But wouldn't such a system immediately give the largest organizations in the music world a vested interest in improving the quality and availability of music education programs for underprivileged kids?

In the early years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, business owners could plausibly claim that the reason they continued to hire whites at a far, far higher rate than blacks was because of a lack of proper education and skills training in the black community. Yet, since the entire system had been set up to keep blacks at a disadvantage, a system had to be devised to force people and governments to change that system in order for the situation to improve. Simply saying blacks were equal to whites wasn't enough to improve their access to upper levels of society.

I'm not suggesting that a system of racial quotas for orchestras would fix the problem in our business. But there's no question that it is a disgrace for an industry that spends so much time talking about our value to the wider community to still, in 2009, be less racially diverse than your average corporate boardroom or Congressional subcommittee.

Easier Said Than Done

There's never been a shortage of people anxious to tell those of us who work in the arts that we're a) hopelessly behind the times, b) in desperate need of making our "product" more relevant to the next generation of consumers, and c) on the verge of complete irrelevance if we don't become more cutting edge and daring right this very minute. In the orchestra business, these people are usually consultants or media pundits (frequently the same people,) and in recent years, they've become shockingly good at getting their alarmist message wide distribution within the industry.

For the purposes of civility, I'll leave aside the question of how ethical it is for someone who runs a consulting business for orchestras to double as a pundit and editorialist forever claiming in whatever publication will have them that orchestras are in crisis and need someone (someone professional... you know, to consult with) to help turn them around. That's a topic for another day. My major beef with a lot of the "future of the industry" analysis I come across (and I read a lot of it, believe me) is that it tends to be awfully long on diagnosis and awfully short on cure.

For instance, it's become almost a religious conviction on the part of some in the orchestra business that the union rules governing recording, broadcasting, and other media are antiquated, and orchestras are being terribly hurt by their continued existence. (I'm starting with this issue because I don't entirely disagree with its premise. Our media rules are antiquated, and I defy anyone to say otherwise.) So you hear a lot of noise from the consultant/pundits about how fast the media landscape is evolving, and how desperate the situation is, and how if we don't wake up and change everything, like, yesterday, we're doomed to the same fate as 8-track tapes and Betamax video.

But even assuming they're right, where's the solution? Our media agreements are a nationally negotiated rule book that individual orchestras usually don't have the right to change even if we want to. (Also, these rules are agreed to by both musicians and managers, so blaming the whole thing on the union is disingenuous and wrong. Last I heard, a new set of more progressive media rules had been tabled because a certain crucial CEO walked out of the process.) And while the consultants are great at pointing out the finish line they want you to get to, I've yet to meet one who's found a way to navigate the tangle of individual interests that stand in the way. Or, for that matter, one who's even tried.

Another supposed truism you hear all the time lately is that orchestras have just got to invest major marketing bucks in social networking. Facebook and Twitter aren't the future, they're the present, and we're missing an entire generation of potential fans by not marketing to them where they live online! I recently read an entire newspaper article by a local Minnesota entrepreneur who wants to hold symposiums to teach arts leaders how to set up Facebook groups.

Now, here again, I don't totally disagree. I've been on Facebook for years, and I even finally signed up for a Twitter account this summer (mainly because Sarah bullied me, and also because someone told me I'd get the NHL entry draft news fastest there.) Social networking is an undeniably useful way of keeping in touch with large numbers of people, and that's obviously alluring to arts groups looking to build the 21st-century equivalent of word of mouth.

But honestly, when's the last time you responded positively to a company trying to solicit your business on Facebook? Hell, the Facebook universe practically exploded when they started running small ads on the site, and flamed up anew when the rumor went around that the company was going to start using your profile info to decide which ads to show you. And last year, when Sarah and I started creating event pages for our ItC concerts and sending them to everyone we knew (as well as asking y'all to invite people for us,) the response was, quite frankly, underwhelming. I'd be shocked if we sold a single extra ticket as a result. These days, the Minnesota Orchestra's official Twitter and Facebook pages mainly link to our blog entries and offer occasional concert come-ons and ticket discounts, which I suppose is better than not doing it at all, but which I doubt has resulted in much of an uptick in sales.

Again, I'm not saying that orchestras and other arts groups don't need to face the new realities of the entertainment world head-on, or even that the arts punditocracy is wrong to be constantly chanting their Change mantra. (As Sarah is fond of saying, if you don't like change, you'll like irrelevance even less.) But as this awful recession drags on and the ranks of those who seem to think they have all the answers for our industry grow by the week, I'm getting a little tired of reading condescending screeds full of lofty pronouncements but no specific ideas for how we might achieve the end results that the authors are so certain we need. Quite honestly, it's making me grumpy (as you can probably tell.)

Basically, what I'm saying to the ever-expanding universe of arts consultants and commentators is this: if you're so smart, kindly pick up a hammer and jump in, rather than standing around the edge of the foundation talking about how grand it will be if we just stick to your vision. Thanks.

Postscript: I'm aware that I didn't link to any offending articles in this post, which may seem to undermine my point for those who don't spend their free time reading consultants' reports and browsing arts blogs. Trust me, these people are out there - I didn't link them because a) I didn't want to boost their page views, and b) I don't really care to hear their responses.

In Which Sam Fixes The Economy

Okay, not really. But I think we've all been stunned this week as news of just how dire the economic crisis is has rolled in from states like California, Pennsylvania, and New York. Compounding the fear is the very real sense that those in power, whether at the state or national level, are more interested in fighting petty turf wars and making flowery public statements than actually finding creative ways to address what now threatens to be a fiscal and social catastrophe for many Americans.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
That's Great Now Fix the Economy
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Jason Jones in Iran

Oh, and in case anyone's forgotten, the media are only too happy to keep churning out stories about how hard non-profit charities, social service organizations, and arts groups are being hit by the recession, just as more and more people find themselves in need of the services that many of these groups provide.

The overall sense you take away from a few days of this sort of news coverage is that the entire country is on fire, and the fire department is ignoring the alarm bells because they're too busy arguing over who's winning the hand of poker they've been playing while waiting for an alarm. It's beyond frustrating for those of us waiting outside the halls of government for the slightest hint of leadership.

So anyway, here's where I offer up a small suggestion that might beget a few other small suggestions that might (somehow) lead to someone in authority actually doing something, if anyone's still interested in that approach to governance. Basically, my idea stems from two fervently held political beliefs espoused by opposing camps here in Minnesota, and it takes the form of a potential change in state tax law that might bridge the ideological gap and help out those struggling non-profits at the same time.

Republicans in Minnesota have long complained about our state's high business taxes, saying that, by taxing corporate profits at 9.8%, we're essentially begging leading companies to locate elsewhere, thus depriving our economy of jobs that might otherwise be attracted to the state's legendarily high quality of life. Now, whether you agree with that idea or not, it's a legitimate point of view that cannot easily be dismissed.

Another belief that's hard to dismiss is one that you hear constantly from those on the Minnesota left these days: that by slashing local government aid, fending off spending increases, and holding firm against any new state income taxes at all during his seven years as governor, Tim Pawlenty has shifted the state's tax burden to urban property owners and those who can least afford to pay, and made it much harder for cities and counties to offer a social safety net, with the result that more people find themselves underwater just as the national economy is at its worst.

I see an opportunity here, and I see it in the example provided by one of Minnesota's largest companies: Target. For years, Target has had a policy of donating a full 5% of its pre-tax profits back into the community. That amounted to $169 million last year, money that went straight into the coffers of schools, hospitals, and arts groups around the US. (Full disclosure: Target is a longtime supporter of the Minnesota Orchestra, and some of its executives have served on our board.) It's a corporate policy that can't be placed in a political pigeonhole, and that (since you never hear about it in Target's ubiquitous ads) the company apparently undertakes just because it seems like the right thing to do. In other words, it's a policy that actually accomplishes something other than ideological purity.

So what if Minnesota were to offer a hefty tax break to companies that undertook a similar policy to Target's? (There could be a sliding scale on the percentage of profits a company would be required to donate to qualify, of course - 5% would be pretty steep for a small business.) Any Minnesota corporation willing to support struggling non-profits in the state at a significant level would earn the right to pay less into the state's coffers. And any company that doesn't want to participate is free to stick with business as usual, and keep on paying our 9.8% tax rate.

Now, I know - this kind of plan never makes it into law, because there's too much for the ideologues on both sides of the aisle to shriek about. True believers on the left hate the idea of replacing government support for non-profits with corporate donations, and the hardcore anti-tax crowd on the right sees charitable mandates as nothing more than a different kind of tax. Both sides commence to arguing feverishly, and eventually things get so ugly that just making the whole thing go away is actually seen as a reasonable compromise.

But seriously - hasn't the last year taught us that ideological purity is pragmatic poison? Haven't we pretty much hit the wall as far as believing that either the right or the left have all the answers? All I want at this point is for someone in authority to start implementing a few practical solutions that will help us all lift ourselves out of this mess, and I'm just not interested in hearing any more garbage about how perfect the world would be if only the Democrats/Republicans/Socialists/Fascists/French would stop screwing everything up.

So I'm laying my personal left-of-center credentials on the line to suggest that one of the answers could be for everyone to follow the example of a gigantic, multi-national corporation that a lot of people love to hate. Any takers?

More opera avante garde

If you thought a Klingon opera was weird, try this on for size: an opera sung underwater.

Opera, perhaps because of it's theatrical elements, has often been more cutting-edge than orchestral music, a trend that has become more notable as of late (I'm thinking in particular of the Lincoln Center Festival's production of Zimmerman's "Die Soldaten" at the Park Avenue Armory). Chamber musicians and soloists, as well, have been thinking outside the box in terms of alternatative performance venues (The Knights, Matt Haimovitz). I've always been a proponent of creative concert formats and exploring new performance spaces (I'm at the end of the article).

As always, orchestras are latest in the uptake. I know, I know, the usual argument is that it's cost-prohibitive, acoustically unideal, etc. etc., but to all of that, I say, take a gander at the "Die Soldaten" review (link above) again. Opera is far more costly to produce, with built-in sound issues (singers/orchestra), but if the interest is there and the effort is made, the possibilities of an extraordinary, unique and memorable artistic experience abound.

So why the lag in the symphonic sphere? Is it an overreliance on tradition? Reticence to think really creatively? Fear?

Passion Play

I read an interesting post on a local blog written by some of Minnesota's best professional chefs this past week, in which baker Solveig Tofte (of the justly famous Turtle Bread Co. in southwest Minneapolis) inveighed against people whose supposed "passion" for something (food, for instance) is belied by their lack of willingness to actually put in the work necessary to make a career of it...

"Passionate people tend have a romantic idea about what it means to be a baker, and we all know how long romance lasts. So these guys work for a week or two, and then I get to work at midnight and they’re in their car crying because nothing is as they thought it would be... Or they take all day making one baguette, cut it open to analyze the crumb structure and want accolades for doing such a great job."

I imagine that Tofte's post struck some readers as cynical and mean-spirited - after all, isn't passion exactly what's supposed to drive creative types? Don't we want our chefs (and actors, and musicians, and athletes) to be passionate about their work? Why would you try to discourage people with passion from making the object of their enthusiasm their life's work?

The world is full of people who are absolutely, devotedly passionate about everything from baseball to Beethoven, which is why people are willing to shell out their hard-earned money to watch Joe Mauer hit or the Minnesota Orchestra play a symphony. Those of us who perform for a living, whether on a stage, on a field, or in a kitchen, quite simply wouldn't have careers were it not for the existence of such people, and none of us should ever lose sight of that fact for a moment.

But on balance, I tend to agree with Tofte's sentiment. When I look back at the people I went to music school with, and I assess which of us were the most vocally passionate about music, I can't deny that those tended to be the people who didn't end up making it in the professional music world, at least as performers. Like Tofte's wannabe bakers, they romanticized the idea of playing music for a living to such an extent that either a) they were unable to objectively assess whether they themselves were good enough to make it in a very tough business, or b) they found the mind-numbing drudgery of daily practice and the complicated politics that permeate the musical workplace antithetical to their notion of what the life of a musician should be. Disillusionment is the enemy of the passionate, because it robs them of of any sense that what they're doing with their life is worthwhile.

Meanwhile, those of us who took a more pragmatic view of our chosen career path (it's a very cool job, yes, but it's still a job, and you can't expect it to be great fun every single day) have tended to weather the storm better. Call it cynicism if you like, but the reality is that it is not in my job description to love the music I play. My job is to play the music that's put before me (most of which I have no hand in selecting) in such a way that it will cause the audience to love it.

Much of the time, of course, I do love the music I play, but would anyone find it acceptable for me to turn in a bored-sounding performance of a piece I happen to think is overrated or that I've played ten times before? Of course not. In other words, the job of an entertainer is not so much to be passionate as to inspire passion in others. And it's an important distinction, if a somewhat touchy subject...

Looking For The Flames

I've written before about St. Paul's T.D. Mischke, the former KSTP radio talker who once showed up at Orchestra Hall just to watch a rehearsal and chat excitedly with as many musicians as he could collar. These days, Mischke's taken a new gig over at City Pages, our alternative weekly paper, where he conducts a daily online "radio" show and, even better, writes regularly for the paper and its web site. Not surprisingly, he's instantly become one of the most indispensable columnists in town. The man has a way with words, and when he turns his thoughts to music, well...

"They said God help the artist who doesn't want to rebel. Have mercy on the poor bastard who isn't running away from something pleasant and beelining toward something dangerous. Because that's where the fire flares all night long. And if an artist, a musician, a songwriter, isn't looking for the flames, then he's found himself a deadly little pocket of comfort, as edgy as a new suburban development, as easy as a patio. Then he's no artist at all."

That paragraph ought to be carved in stone at every concert hall, musicians' union local, and music school in the world, if you ask me.

No One's Fault, But Everyone's Problem

Sorry for the light blogging this week - it's been a very busy time at work, both on and off stage, and I haven't had much of a chance to sit down and collect my thoughts. But as I was browsing through various gloom-and-doom reports from the limited corner of the press that still bothers to cover orchestras, I was struck by how different the perspective of an observer can be from the perspective of those of us who work in the music business, and how the observer's perspective is frequently the only one that gets reported and therefore sets the public tone for the organization that's being reported on. (I suspect that the people who work for AIG could tell you a thing or two about this.)

Just for instance, I keep pretty close track of press coverage of the Philadelphia Orchestra, partly because it's the orchestra I grew up listening to and I studied with three of its musicians as a teenager, partly because I have a number of friends who play in it currently, and partly because the Philadelphia Inquirer is one of the few US papers left to still employ full-time arts writers assigned to a specific beat like the orchestra. Now, at the moment, the PhilOrch is in a tough spot - they're between music directors, between CEOs, only just appointed a new board president, and they're being walloped with the same fiscal two-by-four that everyone else in the industry is feeling.

The music director issue is a tricky one, because Philly's search for a new chief conductor has now dragged on for long enough that everyone is getting somewhat antsy about it, and even though the orchestra has placed famed Swiss conductor Charles Dutoit in a temporary leadership position, the lack of a permanent leader is becoming distracting. And in recent months, the music critic at the Inquirer has begun openly campaigning for one specific conductor to be given the job, even going so far as to say that "the search is over," and that it's only a matter of time before the orchestra realizes it.

But here's the thing: the orchestra, while it had high hopes for the critic's anointed winner, wasn't actually terribly impressed with his work on the podium as a guest conductor. (No, I'm not guessing about this, just in case you're wondering.) But the newspaper keeps putting his name on the top of the search list, so there he stays, the frontrunner. And it's not the first time this has happened in Philly, either - another of the critic's favorite guest conductors was said (by the critic) to be a strong candidate for the top job, and again, it was a conductor who the orchestra found eminently forgettable. And while a music director is hired by the board of directors, not by a vote of the musicians, no savvy board would ever consider the self-defeating proposition of hiring an artistic leader the musicians had no interest in following.

So what is the critic's role in this situation? I don't mean to imply that the Inquirer critic (whose writing I quite like) is behaving badly here, although I know that many members of the orchestra believe he is. He's in an impossible situation: major orchestras treat music director searches the way the federal government treats missile launch codes, and the press is given zero indication of what anyone inside the organization thinks about any given candidate. For that matter, most orchestras won't even acknowledge that a given conductor is a candidate when asked directly. So what can the poor beat writer do other than speculate?

The problem is that the speculation almost always turns out to be wrong. Back in 2002, the Star Tribune published more than a few articles in which it was strongly implied that conductors Yakov Kreizberg and Roberto Abbado were the frontrunners to succeed Eiji Oue as our music director. This, I'm guessing, was based on the fact that at the time, both gentlemen were guest conducting us fairly regularly, which is not generally an indication of anything. Meanwhile, Osmo Vänskä's first appearance with us, while it garnered good reviews, passed without any real notice in the press regarding whether he might or might not be a candidate, which is stunning to me. My mother happened to be in town for that first Osmo concert, and I distinctly remember saying to her as soon as it was over, "No one's saying anything outright, but I think you might have just seen our next music director." I have it on good authority that members of our board who were in attendance that night also felt an immediate spark between conductor and orchestra, so clearly, you didn't have to be on stage to know that something was up.

I don't really have a larger point to make here, and I don't mean to imply that music critics are lacking perspective or integrity. Most of them are knowledgeable people and good writers trying very hard to cover an industry that resists serious journalism the way oil resists water. But as I read story after story detailing the various troubles that arts groups are finding themselves in at the moment, I find myself constantly wondering which of the details presented as fact are actually correct, and which are the ones that are lacking a key bit of context, framing an issue incorrectly, or are just flatly inaccurate. And then I wonder what the consequences of those inaccuracies will turn out to be. Scary thought...

Taking It Out On The Kids

I ordinarily try to stay away from the kinds of debates that ensue when politicians threaten to cut arts budgets to deal with economic troubles. People who work in the cultural field tend to get all up in arms at times like this, claiming loudly that the arts are vital (which I agree with, obviously) and that arts groups are "always the first to be cut" when times get tough. And while it's true that the arts are an easy target for those wielding the budget knife, I generally have a tough time arguing that subsidies for theaters and museums should be treated as more vital than, say, school lunch programs. So I just choose not to engage the argument most of the time, and quietly thank the heavens that I'm not the one who has to make such decisions.

But I admit to being a bit indignant over this business of Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty wanting to essentially shut down a school that has been a beacon of arts education for the entire US since its inception. The Perpich Center for Arts Education was created with the primary support of former MN Gov. Rudy Perpich and his wife specifically to insure that a serious arts curriculum could exist in perpetuity in the state, even when economics dictated that many ordinary public schools trim or eliminate art, music, and dance programs. Furthermore, in its more than two decades of existence, it has made a point of accepting students from all economic backgrounds, and even offered a boarding option for outstate kids in order to insure that it didn't become the type of resource funded by the state that can only be taken advantage of by kids in the Cities.

Under Governor Pawlenty's budget plan, the Perpich Center would see its 2010-11 budget slashed by 30%, which would kill the boarding program immediately, and cause catastrophic cuts to the school's core educational offerings. The cuts would get even deeper in subsequent years. Furthermore, the governor wants to eliminate the center's unique admissions process, under which students audition much like they would for a college-level music, dance, or theater program, and replace it with the rules that govern charter schools. This would mean, among other things, that the school would be populated on a first-come, first-served basis, regardless of whether prospective students have any interest in or aptitude for the program they'll be enrolling in.

Now, as I said, I generally try not to get sucked into debates like this, because goodness knows, I have no idea how I would close a $4.8 billion budget hole. And if the Perpich Center were just another training academy for kids with wealthy parents, I wouldn't be writing this post at all, because those kinds of kids will always have options in life. But the Perpich Center isn't that kind of place. It's a model of what public education can be, and it inarguably has made a huge difference in the lives of countless Minnesota kids who otherwise might not have had any chance of making a career out of their assorted talents. Its graduates are just one more example of the value Minnesota has always placed on both education in general and the arts in particular. And I think it would be a great shame if that legacy were snuffed out, just to plug less than a half of one percent of that gaping hole in our state budget.

But that's just me. If you disagree - if you think the economic woes we're facing as a state and a nation are just too great to justify investing in anything more than bare-bones K-12 education at the moment - that's fine. I get that argument, and I don't share the traditional liberal view that fiscal conservatives are monsters who want to deprive children of a well-rounded education.

Still, I'll say this. A cut like the one facing the Perpich Center is very likely to get lost in the shuffle in a budget cycle like this, so if you don't think it ought to happen, well, it might be time to sit down and tap out an e-mail to your reps in St. Paul. They won't know how you feel unless you tell them, and believe me, they've got a lot of voices shouting in their ears right now.

Oh Kaplan, My Kaplan

There's a good chance that you've never heard of Gilbert Kaplan, even if you follow the music world pretty closely. On the other hand, if you're a devoted Mahler fan, the type who has more than one complete set of his symphonies and strong opinions on the issue of Claudio Abbado vs. George Szell in the matter of Mahler's 6th, you likely know exactly who Gilbert Kaplan is. (Yes, Spartacus, I see you waving.)

Kaplan is an extremely rare bird in the orchestra world - an amateur musician and Mahler devotee who, some years ago, decided to devote himself to learning how to conduct Mahler's Resurrection Symphony, and to do so more accurately and convincingly than anyone else. Never mind that Kaplan isn't and never has been a professional conductor - he has passion, and intellect, and drive, and isn't that supposed to be all it takes to achieve our dreams in America?

So, for some time now, Kaplan has been traveling the world, conducting Mahler's 2nd (and only Mahler's 2nd) with orchestras large and small. By and large, he's been received with great enthusiasm by critics, who have latched onto his fascinating narrative and penned profile after profile of the eccentric and obsessive Mahlerian.

There's just one problem: Kaplan is apparently a terrible conductor, at least according to the New York Philharmonic, which just performed the Resurrection under his baton. According to a story running on the front page of the New York Times' arts section today, the Phil was so horrified by Kaplan's lack of stick-waving ability that the musicians called an emergency meeting with their CEO the day of the concert to vent their frustrations. The next week, one of the orchestra's trombonists took to his personal blog to lay out a devastatingly specific takedown of Kaplan, and by extension, of anyone who actually thinks the job of a conductor is so unimportant that a complete novice should be allowed to stand in front of one of the world's great orchestras.

So, before I wade any deeper into this obviously prickly story, 3 statements:

1) I have never worked under Kaplan, nor have I ever heard a performance he has led, so I won't be making any attempt to assess his abilities here.

2) I'm actually stunned that the NY Phil, which (like so many orchestras) is normally fastidious about controlling all information in and out of its organization, has been as forthcoming about the whole thing as they have, with a spokesman actually acknowledging to the Times that Kaplan won't be asked back, and (so far as I can tell,) no internal attempt to muzzle David Finlayson's blog writings. Good on the Phil!

3) Not that Finlayson (who I've never met) needs my help in defending his writing, but I noticed that one angry commenter on his blog accused the Phil musicians of whining after they'd already agreed to be conducted by Kaplan. This needs clarification, because it's probably a common belief that musicians pick their guest conductors. We don't - while we can always provide individual feedback on specific conductors who appear in front of us, and that feedback may hold some sway on occasion, decisions on who leads our concerts are made well above our pay grade.

Now, since I've already said I'm not going to talk about Kaplan specifically, let's talk about the larger issue here, which is the all-too-frequent gulf between what critics and audiences think of a conductor, and what musicians think of the same conductor. Without getting specific, I can confidently say that there are conductors of some considerable reputation, who have appeared to critical acclaim in front of the Minnesota Orchestra, who we in the orchestra consider to be utter frauds. I can't count the number of times that I've sweated my way through a concert that is just barely staying on the rails because of the incompetence emanating from the podium, only to open the paper the next morning and see the conductor lavished with praise for his "elegant turns of phrase" or some such nonsense.

Now, part of the problem is simply that, for a critic writing about a single concert, for which s/he has not been allowed or had the time to attend any of the rehearsals, it's almost impossible to truly judge what elements of a performance are happening because the conductor ordered them, and what elements the orchestra is simply playing on it's own initiative. So most critics stick to the time-honored tradition of holding the conductor responsible for more or less everything, good or bad. It's not a great tradition, but it's better than guessing at who was responsible for what.

The larger problem, I think, is that audiences, critics, and musicians all have different expectations of what a conductor should be. Most audience members, beyond simply wanting to hear an engaging concert, want a conductor who gives them some visual sense of what they're hearing, a sort of physical guide to the music. Critics often seem to want a conductor who reminds them of their favorite conductors from yesteryear, and they also prize those who manage to look interesting without showboating. (Critics also love conductors who physically reach out to the orchestra, and get the players to react physically as well. Exhibit A at the moment would be all the cooing over Gustavo Dudamel getting his Venezuelan youth orchestra to dance in their chairs, which admittedly is pretty cool.)

Musicians basically want two things from a conductor: a) a clear, precise beat, and b) clear, precise rehearsal instructions backed up by an obvious knowledge of the score. Beyond that, we don't really care how physical our leader is, or whether s/he scowls or grins on the podium, or whether s/he has a nifty life story.

So who's right? Well, I'm obviously biased, and I'll preface this by saying that I don't think any of the above viewpoints are wrong, exactly. But it seems to me that unless you have the two elements that the musicians are looking for, you will not have a truly great concert. You could have a good concert, or an exciting but obviously flawed concert, but it won't be one of those mind-blowing experiences that you tell your friends about. And at the prices we charge, I feel like we ought to be striving to provide those experiences as often as humanly possible.

The problem with the critical viewpoint is that critics, like all journalists, are tasked with setting the world around them to an engaging storyline, and conductors and the concerts they lead don't always come with a neat or salacious narrative. So critics naturally gravitate to the ones that do, the same way that sportswriters gravitate to Sean Avery every time he opens his stupid mouth, while ignoring quiet production machines like Mikko Koivu. I don't think music critics deliberately snub quietly efficient conductors in favor of demonstrative ego factories, but I also know that the latter do tend to attract a lot more press than the former. And that's how you end up with the NY Phil's dirty laundry splashed all over the pages of America's leading daily...

Late addendum: I only just noticed that this post is our 300th entry here at the ItC blog. During the relatively brief period that we've been blogging, Sarah and I have filled this little wad of bandwidth with just over 157,000 words, which works out to something close to 300 pages in your typical Word doc. I don't actually know whether that has any significance at all in the greater blog world, but considering that we've been open for business for a mere 14 months, I'm calling it a milestone. Happy tricentennial (or whatever) to us, and let's hope there's a lot more silliness and pot-stirring to come!

Brazen Tactics

2009 is shaping up to be one of those years at the Minnesota Legislature, and at legislatures across the country, as well. Most states are predicting massive deficits (I said most,) and since, unlike the federal government, states aren't allowed to run deficits, taxes have either got to be raised, or important programs have to be cut. And guess which option tends to be more politically palatable to your elected representatives?

Yeah, you got that right. Raising taxes in the midst of a deep recession might be an economically sound move, but no way is the Distinguished Gentleman From Lyon County (or wherever) gonna have that particular vote on his record when the 2010 elections roll around. (And truth be told, since the stock market tanked, I haven't seen many of those Happy To Pay For A Better Minnesota yard signs that were so popular with Twin Cities liberals a few years back.) So stuff is gonna get cut. Lots of stuff. To the bone. And that means that, over the next several months, we can more or less expect interest group after interest group to truck out to the Capitol, hats in hand, begging for the cuts to be less severe than they're expecting.

The arts are always one of the first things to get slashed in this sort of environment, mainly because it's all too easy for grandstanding politicians to imply (implicitly or explicitly) that only rich robber barons care about the symphony or the thea-tah, and that cutting them is actually a boon to ordinary, hard-working Americans who like monster truck rallies and apple pie. (Never mind that it's the musicians and actors working in the symphonies and theaters of America who have largely rallied to provide low-cost or no-cost educational options to kids whose schools have had all their funding for such things yanked by the very same politicians who now want to step on the throat of the arts.)

Making things worse this year is the fact that Minnesotans just voted fairly overwhelmingly to pass the Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment, which, while controversial, demonstrated pretty dramatically that the residents of this state continue to place a very high value on the things that separate us from, say, Delaware - wide open spaces, beautiful lakes and rivers, and cultural offerings far out of proportion to our size as a populace. Trouble is, this statement by voters isn't being seen by those at the Lege as a sign of where their constituents' priorities lie. No, it's being taken as a slap in the face, a repudiation of the legislative branch as the holder of the governmental pursestrings, and most ominously, a clear guide to what programs they ought to cut first.

Yup, that's the logic at work over in certain corners of the Capitol. Because the residents of the state just voted in huge numbers to fund the arts, the outdoors, and the environment whether the Lege has the guts to agree or not, a number of legislators are now openly proclaiming that every existing program focusing on one of those three areas that they still have control over ought to be axed, or at least severely cut back. Never mind that the new funding wasn't meant to replace existing funds, but to supplement them - it's all about political expediency, and the noise machine that is talk radio and the blogosphere should provide just enough political cover to prevent there from being any real consequences for defying the fairly obvious will of the electorate.

Interestingly, one legislator says that there might be a way to prevent the seemingly inevitable slashing and burning of the nonprofit sector that's likely to be on the way in the 2009 session: just demand more than you got last year, and do it with a straight face...

"Did the Wall Street lobbyists stop lobbying for the $700 billion bailout? Did the auto industry people stop lobbying and say, 'Oh please, don't cut us!'... You have to have the confidence to do what the big players do—which is ask for more."

It's a brilliant strategy when you think about it, and it'll be interesting to see whether any of Minnesota's non-profit leaders have the gall to actually try it. I suspect that, for it to work, it would take a coalition of many groups all working in concert, and even then, the Lege might simply shrug and cut away. But it's a better idea than any other I've heard lately, and in this year, in this state, it strikes me that our actions, or lack thereof, could go a long way towards determining whether Minnesota continues to sport one of the highest qualities of life in America, or decides that good enough is just gonna have to be good enough, which I believe is the state motto of Nebraska. What was that about a cold Omaha...?

(Disclaimers and disclosures: the Minnesota Orchestral Association contributed $15,000 towards statewide lobbying efforts to pass the Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment, although no one in the MOA ever asked me what I thought about it. Secondly, contrary to popular perception, the Minnesota Orchestra is not funded by the government, but by individual and corporate donors as well as by funds drawn from our various endowments, all of which were built with private money. It is my understanding that the orchestra could wind up receiving funds from the proceeds raised by the new amendment, but where that money will go, and in what amounts, has not yet been officially determined. Finally, as stated in our Blog Policies, the views expressed in this and all other posts are not necessarily those of the MOA, its staff, or 97 of the 98 musicians of the orchestra.)

Behavior Modification

Chicago-area violinist Holly Mulcahy has an article up over at The Partial Observer that has been making me cringe all week. The title is "How to Alienate Your Audience In 10 Easy Steps," and it's a full frontal assault on the subculture of professional orchestral musicians. Among the sins Mulcahy outlines: glaring at audience members rude enough to cough or shuffle during concerts, rolling eyes when a colleague on stage makes a mistake, refusing to smile (ever), deflecting compliments from the audience, and noticably sneering at anyone who enjoys "light" classics or pops.

It's a difficult article for me to read, because I've seen everything on Mulcahy's list go on in orchestras I've played in (the Minnesota Orchestra included) on a regular basis, and for most of my career, I've wondered how exactly we as an industry get away with it. More than that, I've wondered why I often feel like the only one who thinks it's a problem. (I'm sure I'm not the only one, but you'd be amazed how many musicians become hugely offended when told, even politely, that their onstage comportment could stand to be improved.)

So why is it that members of symphony orchestras seem to think that it's perfectly all right to look sour, glare at the audience, or hold involved conversations while standing to acknowledge the audience's applause? (That last one's a personal pet peeve of mine.) I've been thinking about it for a while, and I've come up with two theories.

The first is that we do it because we literally don't know any better. Musicians, alone among performing arts professionals, are never, at any point in their training, taught to be performers. We're taught how to play music, and how to take direction. No one ever teaches us the tricks that actors, dancers, and singers learn, such as how to make the whole auditorium feel like you're looking at them, how to walk across a stage without ever putting your back to the audience, or how to take a curtain call. The full extent of our exposure to the choreography of the stage is that, at some point, we'll probably be told of the tradition that, if you are a man, and you are performing with one or more women, you should allow them to leave the stage ahead of you. (I don't know why we still do this, actually, but pretty much all of us do in solo and chamber music situations.) But we've simply never learned about how one goes about looking engaged while on stage. (Important note: looking engaged is very different than actually being engaged. Either one is possible without the other.)

But many of the same musicians I've seen sporting wrinkled, stained tuxedo shirts and looking like they just ate a lemon during the bows wouldn't think of dressing or acting this way for a string quartet performance, and that goes to my second theory, which is that there's actually something about playing in an orchestra that leads to a lack of awareness of how one's behavior might be perceived.

Bear with me, here. While most of us who play in orchestras for a living love our jobs, it is a very different profession than many people imagine it to be. While musicians now have much greater control over workplace conditions than we used to (thanks to collective bargaining,) we still have essentially zero control over moment-to-moment artistic decisionmaking. The conductor, regardless of whether s/he is a genius or a moron, has absolute power over how we shape every phrase, whether we follow the directions in the score to the letter, what speed we play each piece, and countless other minutiae that, in any other musical situation, would be the province of the people holding the instruments.

Now, of course, there's a very good reason for this, and it's that you can't reasonably give 98 people an equal voice in these things without chaos erupting, so someone's got to be in charge. But the lack of artistic control does lead some musicians to feel like little more than cogs in a huge machine. (This is exactly why some musicians wouldn't join an orchestra for anything.) The sheer size of the ensemble also makes you feel pretty small and insignificant at times, especially if you're a string player surrounded by 10-15 other people playing exactly the same notes that you are. You can grow to feel downright invisible, in fact, and that, I think, is what leads some musicians to believe that they can do whatever they want to do on stage, because no one's really looking at them, specifically.

This is an industry-wide issue, and I've never seen a professional orchestra that really seemed to have the problem licked. In fact, orchestra managers and staffers frequently throw up their hands when asked about it, believing that musicians will be so resistant to any attempt to change our comportment that it's not even worth wading into the muck. And while I'm not going to deny that there are a few musicians out there so disconnected from reality that they don't think the audience has the right to expect anything but pretty notes from them, the vast majority of us are horrified when we hear that we've offended the people who paid good money to come see us.

Here's the bottom line: if there's one thing that orchestra musicians are good at, it's following directions. We may be a bunch of prima donnas at heart, but when we're given an order from someone in authority, we grumble and snarl... and then we do as we're told. If an orchestra, any orchestra, wanted to change the way we look and act during bows, all it would take is for someone in authority to make it a new rule - no different from the rules that control what we wear for our concerts and what time the rehearsals start. And someone ought to.

Through the ages

The hand-wringing over the "graying of classical music audiences" seems to crop up fairly cyclically - as it has this month, in various print and online publications. An interesting back and forth has been going on, spurred by Leon Botstein's Wall Street Journal article from a few weeks back. To summarize the most salient point:

Classical music has always appealed to older adults who, with the passing of years, tend to contemplate the kind of daily life conundrums that are freighted with ambiguity and complexity. The average classical listener has historically hovered around middle age. This is encouraging, as there is no shortage of baby boomers on the horizon.

The rest of the article discusses conservatories packed with students, the existence of more youth and professional orchestras than ever, and the rising interest in Western Classical music Asia and South America.

Then comes Greg Sandow's counter-argument over on ArtsJournal. Sandow, in a nutshell:

Studies from 1937, 1955, and 1966 show an audience with a median age in its thirties, and in the first two studies in its early thirties. Studies done in the 1970s, which I haven't talked about here, show an audience older than that, but nowhere near as old as it is now. Studies by the National Endowment for the Arts show the audience growing older between 1982 and 2002.

His other issues center around Botstein's use of statistics (with which I tend to side with Sandow - pointing to an uptick in ticket sale income between two seasons (04-05 to 05-06) as a harbinger of good times for the industry in no way takes into account larger factors; for instance, if 03-04 was simply a particularly dismal year. Statistics used out of context can paint any picture you want them to) as well as the overall financial status of classical music organizations.

The refutation to Sandow's assertions come from Matthew Guerrieri over at Soho the Dog. His most interesting bit is summarized in this graph:



Which basically tells us:

Notice that the linear trendlines for life expectancy and audience age track almost exactly—and that the average first-marriage age has been rising even faster since 1970 or so. (You can find a similar rise in average first-birth age among women over the same period.) Which circles back around to Botstein's point—classical music has historically played to an adult audience, it's just that the passage into adulthood—as indicated by first-marriage age—has been getting later and later, and the length of adulthood—as indicated by life expectancy—has been getting longer and longer.

Essentially, Guerrieri's point is that Sandow has used statistics out of context as well - and now, all we have to do is wait for someone to point out a glitch in Guerrieri's analysis...although I agree with his particular line of reasoning.

From my understanding of the information available (a combination statistical data, various analyses and a dash of anecdotal evidence), classical music audiences - particularly subscribers - skew older because of the privileges of age; greater financial stability/disposable income (although in these rocky economic times, this is not necessarily a given), empty nests (although adult children are living with their parents in record numbers - more on that in a minute), increased free time, and a deepening in personal aesthetic tastes (this last one is a bit nebulous, but then again, think of how people develop tastes for, say, fine wine). In other words, at a certain point in life, people have the time, means and inclination to become more involved in concert-going.

I'm careful to stipulate "point in life" because this harks back to Guerrieri's assertion that age can only be analyzed in direct correlation to both lifespan and important life milestones. Which reminds me of a fairly recent article in Newsweek about delayed adulthood (the article focuses on men, although I think the same could be said about women).

The notion of not just audiences, but specifically subscribers, is a whole can of worms unto itself - a topic for another time.