Friday, June 26, 2009
corwinchristie talks about what we get paid
Do you remember the last time you met a romantically desperate person?
It wasn’t really a turn-on, was it? This can happen to physically beautiful people, to the same effect.
Romance aside, desperation is poison to friendships and business. It’s not really a character fault, but a perversion of a basic need. Deprive someone of the love and acceptance they desire, and they will begin to yearn for it in uncontrollable ways.
Well, classical music is like a really hot chick with a bad case of desperation. She’s got the goods, personality, cute laugh, good T-zone skin, but she’s so caught up in proving her self-worth that she’s become a desperate tramp who wants to please everyone.
When did we become beggars? When did art become medicine - something that you tolerate, because it’s *good for you*? HEY. Wake up call. You know what? WE’VE GOT THE GOODS. WE ARE THE SHIT. WE MAKE SOMETHING THAT NOBODY ELSE CAN MAKE.
WE ARE THE MUSIC MAKERS, AND WE ARE THE DREAMERS OF THE DREAMS.
It’s time for the world to come to us. And I don’t mean it’s time to retreat into ivory towers. We’re taking our ball and leaving the playground to go smoke behind the bleachers.
We’re not holier than thou, we’re just fuckin cooler than you.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Poker faces
"It is exceedingly rare to see orchestral musicians exhibiting feelings onstage, especially feelings for conductors; the code of the profession demands a poker face under almost all circumstances." -by Alex Ross, May 4, 2009
"Because orchestral musician are transformed from their artistic selves into douche bags via the oppressive machinery of the institution, whose mission is guided by the fear of offending." -FCM, 4/30/2009
"Because orchestral musician are transformed from their artistic selves into douche bags via the oppressive machinery of the institution, whose mission is guided by the fear of offending." -FCM, 4/30/2009
Monday, April 13, 2009
Our "Gelded Age"
This is my reply in the comments of a post from the Minnesota Orchestra Blog
Minnesota Orchestra Blog
Friday April 10th
My response:
I'm sorry if my post was taken personally. The sarcasm about Gershwin was not directed towards you or your esteemed colleagues, but towards our industry as a whole. (And I'm sorry if anybody reading loves Gershwin, but...well...nevermind, I won't even address that softpedalling towards "mass appeal")
Artistic integrity IS central, germane, and relevant to a discussion of the business model. How could it not be? It's the *Raison d'Etre* of business model that supports it! This supposed 'firewall' between 'talent' and 'administration' is a plague upon us.
100 bored-as-hell musicians might be a crass way to put it, but let me ask, when is the last time you were able to take an artistic chance on stage? I mean, a chance that put your artistic capital at DIRECT risk? A situation, where say, you developed a personal artistic statement/product/interpretation that varied from 100 years of precedent, but which you believed in, and which you believed shed light on a facet of the work you were dealing with. Only one person on stage can do that, practically speaking.
Symphonic music has a particular divinity that can't be achieved without the synergistic euphony of 100 highly talented instrumentalists. But like anything, it can be overdone. The individualistic sacrifice required to achieve this artistic product forces musicians to play it safe AS ARTISTS. That small amount of Safety is stored in the body, like mercury, and becomes a narcotic in the doses that the American symphony orchestra administers.
It's why orchestras are unionized and string quartets are not. (For the record, I believe that in concept, unions are very necessary, and a symptom, not cause, of deeper conflicts)
How about this:
Wouldn't you rather be part of a healthy ecosystem of solo playing, chamber playing, orchestral playing, and teaching? (yes, operas, cantatas, and more) Wouldn't you rather see your salary go towards these diversified activities? (That's an honest question, not rhetorical.)
Why don't orchestras give their musicians "20 Percent Time" like we see at Google? Yes, it's a silly question given the current status quo. But I think it illustrates the vast chasm between the notion of individualism, cherished and forever embedded in American myth, lore, and practice, and the clashing of that notion with the internal culture of our symphonies.
BTW, nobody likes to see a chicken little screaming his little head off about how "classical music is dying." No need to kick that fossilized, equestrian corpse. But let me say this, the real chicken little, should have been screaming during our recent "Gilded Decades" of finance and the generation of enormous private wealth (i.e., did philanthropy increase correspondingly?) Because now, ALL non-profits may be looking at riding it on down the "Gelded Decade."
To Recap:
I love music. I love symphonies. I love musicians. I love chocolate. I think the way our system incorporates these things, ultimately, blows donky balls.
PS, @ Mauskapf:
A Harvard composer (unnamed) once described the american conservatory system as a ponzi scheme. When you consider that the culture fosters the widespread idea of education as a "backup" or "safety net" (can we just call it bastard stepchild?) to performance, the description becomes quite unfortunately apt.
PPS,
Symphonies aren't generally known for their progressive tendancies:
from Ross's (Ross'? Ross's's? Rosssessss) recent NYer article:
Miles Davis used harsher language when he explained why he gave up studying trumpet at Juilliard: “No white symphony orchestra was going to hire a little black motherfucker like me.”
Minnesota Orchestra Blog
Friday April 10th
My response:
I'm sorry if my post was taken personally. The sarcasm about Gershwin was not directed towards you or your esteemed colleagues, but towards our industry as a whole. (And I'm sorry if anybody reading loves Gershwin, but...well...nevermind, I won't even address that softpedalling towards "mass appeal")
Artistic integrity IS central, germane, and relevant to a discussion of the business model. How could it not be? It's the *Raison d'Etre* of business model that supports it! This supposed 'firewall' between 'talent' and 'administration' is a plague upon us.
100 bored-as-hell musicians might be a crass way to put it, but let me ask, when is the last time you were able to take an artistic chance on stage? I mean, a chance that put your artistic capital at DIRECT risk? A situation, where say, you developed a personal artistic statement/product/interpretation that varied from 100 years of precedent, but which you believed in, and which you believed shed light on a facet of the work you were dealing with. Only one person on stage can do that, practically speaking.
Symphonic music has a particular divinity that can't be achieved without the synergistic euphony of 100 highly talented instrumentalists. But like anything, it can be overdone. The individualistic sacrifice required to achieve this artistic product forces musicians to play it safe AS ARTISTS. That small amount of Safety is stored in the body, like mercury, and becomes a narcotic in the doses that the American symphony orchestra administers.
It's why orchestras are unionized and string quartets are not. (For the record, I believe that in concept, unions are very necessary, and a symptom, not cause, of deeper conflicts)
How about this:
Wouldn't you rather be part of a healthy ecosystem of solo playing, chamber playing, orchestral playing, and teaching? (yes, operas, cantatas, and more) Wouldn't you rather see your salary go towards these diversified activities? (That's an honest question, not rhetorical.)
Why don't orchestras give their musicians "20 Percent Time" like we see at Google? Yes, it's a silly question given the current status quo. But I think it illustrates the vast chasm between the notion of individualism, cherished and forever embedded in American myth, lore, and practice, and the clashing of that notion with the internal culture of our symphonies.
BTW, nobody likes to see a chicken little screaming his little head off about how "classical music is dying." No need to kick that fossilized, equestrian corpse. But let me say this, the real chicken little, should have been screaming during our recent "Gilded Decades" of finance and the generation of enormous private wealth (i.e., did philanthropy increase correspondingly?) Because now, ALL non-profits may be looking at riding it on down the "Gelded Decade."
To Recap:
I love music. I love symphonies. I love musicians. I love chocolate. I think the way our system incorporates these things, ultimately, blows donky balls.
PS, @ Mauskapf:
A Harvard composer (unnamed) once described the american conservatory system as a ponzi scheme. When you consider that the culture fosters the widespread idea of education as a "backup" or "safety net" (can we just call it bastard stepchild?) to performance, the description becomes quite unfortunately apt.
PPS,
Symphonies aren't generally known for their progressive tendancies:
from Ross's (Ross'? Ross's's? Rosssessss) recent NYer article:
Miles Davis used harsher language when he explained why he gave up studying trumpet at Juilliard: “No white symphony orchestra was going to hire a little black motherfucker like me.”
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
New World Symphony does fast and cheap.
From NPR
Classical Music in Miami: Fast and Cheap
This is interesting. Why fight the shrinkage of attention spans, eh?
I wonder how it is, that in our world of such diverse pieces, that there is a sort of consensus of concert durations, that is prevalent throughout the country. (and world?
Classical Music in Miami: Fast and Cheap
This is interesting. Why fight the shrinkage of attention spans, eh?
I wonder how it is, that in our world of such diverse pieces, that there is a sort of consensus of concert durations, that is prevalent throughout the country. (and world?
Monday, April 6, 2009
Scaring children
This is poignant.
Get lost, damn kids!
From the UK Guardian:
Another thing: I've noticed that bus and train stations now pipe canned classical music, day-in, day-out, through their speakers as a way of stopping young people hanging around. So toxic have the associations become, that this experiment actually works: there is evidence that playing Beethoven and Mahler has reduced antisocial behaviour on the transport network.
END QUOTE
If that is true. Well.... what can you say......
Waitaminute. What would Fuck Classical Music do in a situation like this? I KNOW! We'll play agro punk death thrash gabber at classical music concerts to scare away all the conservative old people. (Not the old people, the conservative old people.)
How about this. How about we mount a campaign to take back our fucking music. Putting good music onto elevators and shopping centers and phone hold-lines is like prostituting that shit. Background music is the equivalent of aural pornography. You're taking something beautiful and forcing it to lay flat for an unfulfilling ritual of the unresourced.
Anybody who puts our music out as background music is pimping that shit on the streets.
Anybody want to play an entire concert with porn projected behind the whole thing, to make this point? What's that? Subjugation of women? Fine, gay porn.
Get lost, damn kids!
From the UK Guardian:
Another thing: I've noticed that bus and train stations now pipe canned classical music, day-in, day-out, through their speakers as a way of stopping young people hanging around. So toxic have the associations become, that this experiment actually works: there is evidence that playing Beethoven and Mahler has reduced antisocial behaviour on the transport network.
END QUOTE
If that is true. Well.... what can you say......
Waitaminute. What would Fuck Classical Music do in a situation like this? I KNOW! We'll play agro punk death thrash gabber at classical music concerts to scare away all the conservative old people. (Not the old people, the conservative old people.)
How about this. How about we mount a campaign to take back our fucking music. Putting good music onto elevators and shopping centers and phone hold-lines is like prostituting that shit. Background music is the equivalent of aural pornography. You're taking something beautiful and forcing it to lay flat for an unfulfilling ritual of the unresourced.
Anybody who puts our music out as background music is pimping that shit on the streets.
Anybody want to play an entire concert with porn projected behind the whole thing, to make this point? What's that? Subjugation of women? Fine, gay porn.
Friday, April 3, 2009
I'm starting to get this funny feeling..
I'm starting to get this funny feeling.. like, I'm going to have to let go of the idea that the music has to be good. Any red lights going off in your head? Slippery slope, right?
What I never liked about Fluxus or Dada is that, the music, the PRODUCT, the TITS were just too weak. Cut up. Street level crap. When all I want is pure columbian.
Just hearing a little blurb that Fred Ho said (w/ Oteri on NewMusicBox) about the weight of the CLASSICAL CANON. THE CANON.
We've see how the product, the music, can be commodified to the nth degree. I mean, check this out: pressing a million different versions of Beeth 9 doesn't diminish the quality of the work, right? It only invites more opportunity for people to experience it, right? But let's be real here, has the public's involvment with music been comensurate to the proliferation of recordings? Don't ask me for a fucking Pew funded chart: it hasn't. I think it's actually easier to shuffle that piece away, thinking, "oh yeah, i've seen that everywhere a million times." Like the Carol King Tapestry record that I saw in every used record store I entered. (Anybody who's browsed vinyl knows what I mean) I never wanted to listen to it, it looked like musical wallpaper to me. (How ignorant of me! I don't know a thing about this lady!)
I have sort of always liked the idea of encountering a phenomenon (a piece of music) that is totally transcendant of it's surroudings. Like, just golden music, whipered down from God's doves into Greg's ears, and to hear it is like looking back up a fiberoptic shaft of light, straight into gods balls, to see the swirling gestation of future universes.
The idea that this phenomenon is distilled from the mundanities of daily life makes it so intoxicating.
But maybe it can be too distilled. Maybe what makes it so seductive is also a poison to our mindfulness of the present. A desperate attempt to fulfill a 19th century ideal of virtuosic genius. Someone once said that every man is trying to either live up to his father's expectations or make up for his father's mistakes.
Maybe this pursuit has devolved into a blinding fetish that sends us stumbling into the woods, trying to catch the horizon.
But, to cast aside the hard-earned, cultivated understanding of SOUND. Is it too precious, like the ego? Does it put us in danger of becoming rambling renegade monks?
It's scary to think about throwing that compass down a ravine.
What I never liked about Fluxus or Dada is that, the music, the PRODUCT, the TITS were just too weak. Cut up. Street level crap. When all I want is pure columbian.
Just hearing a little blurb that Fred Ho said (w/ Oteri on NewMusicBox) about the weight of the CLASSICAL CANON. THE CANON.
We've see how the product, the music, can be commodified to the nth degree. I mean, check this out: pressing a million different versions of Beeth 9 doesn't diminish the quality of the work, right? It only invites more opportunity for people to experience it, right? But let's be real here, has the public's involvment with music been comensurate to the proliferation of recordings? Don't ask me for a fucking Pew funded chart: it hasn't. I think it's actually easier to shuffle that piece away, thinking, "oh yeah, i've seen that everywhere a million times." Like the Carol King Tapestry record that I saw in every used record store I entered. (Anybody who's browsed vinyl knows what I mean) I never wanted to listen to it, it looked like musical wallpaper to me. (How ignorant of me! I don't know a thing about this lady!)
I have sort of always liked the idea of encountering a phenomenon (a piece of music) that is totally transcendant of it's surroudings. Like, just golden music, whipered down from God's doves into Greg's ears, and to hear it is like looking back up a fiberoptic shaft of light, straight into gods balls, to see the swirling gestation of future universes.
The idea that this phenomenon is distilled from the mundanities of daily life makes it so intoxicating.
But maybe it can be too distilled. Maybe what makes it so seductive is also a poison to our mindfulness of the present. A desperate attempt to fulfill a 19th century ideal of virtuosic genius. Someone once said that every man is trying to either live up to his father's expectations or make up for his father's mistakes.
Maybe this pursuit has devolved into a blinding fetish that sends us stumbling into the woods, trying to catch the horizon.
But, to cast aside the hard-earned, cultivated understanding of SOUND. Is it too precious, like the ego? Does it put us in danger of becoming rambling renegade monks?
It's scary to think about throwing that compass down a ravine.
Fred Ho.
http://www.newmusicbox.org/article.nmbx?id=5785
I like this dude.
FRED HO:
We don't have think tanks or summits of our own artists trying to figure out these questions. We're still letting the industry wonks determine the agenda, because what we always say is that we have to be artists first. But I've always felt that we can't separate being producers and our own entrepreneurs, and being masters of our own artistic destiny. It's inextricable. To have the artistic freedom to do what we really want to do—particularly the more transgressive and the more "out" it is—requires us to be even better in terms of management, organization, and entrepreneurship.
END QUOTE.
I like this dude.
FRED HO:
We don't have think tanks or summits of our own artists trying to figure out these questions. We're still letting the industry wonks determine the agenda, because what we always say is that we have to be artists first. But I've always felt that we can't separate being producers and our own entrepreneurs, and being masters of our own artistic destiny. It's inextricable. To have the artistic freedom to do what we really want to do—particularly the more transgressive and the more "out" it is—requires us to be even better in terms of management, organization, and entrepreneurship.
END QUOTE.
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