Classical Music

Chamber Music, Classical Music, Composers, Concerts, Contemporary Classical, Downtown, Experimental Music, Improv, New York

Interpretations Season 20: Artist Blog #1 — Michael Lipsey

This Fall marks the twentieth season of provocative programming in New York City brought to you by Interpretations. Founded and curated by baritone Thomas Buckner in 1989, Interpretations focuses on the relationship between contemporary composers from both jazz and classical backgrounds and their interpreters, whether the composers themselves or performers who specialize in new music. To celebrate, Jerry Bowles has invited the artists involved in this season’s concerts to blog about their Interpretations experiences. Our first concert this season on 2 October, features the Myra Melford Quartet and Henry Threadgill’s Zooid + Talujon Percussion Ensemble. Michael Lipsey of Talujon has volunteered to write about how his group worked with the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust to commission a new work from Henry Threadgill:

Contemporary music is exciting. People are trying new things, creating new works, involving new audiences members. The division between genres is the most open it has ever been. With that in mind, Talujon Percussion, Henry Threadgill and Zooid have teamed up to play on the Interpretations Series in honor of the series’ 20th season.

Henry Threadgill is one of the most unique voices in contemporary improvisatory music. His resume is breath-taking, his skills are immense and his interests are wide and varied. About two years ago, Henry called me up a day before a Talujon concert. He told me he was interested in the group and wanted to come to our performance. We were happy to meet him and honored that he would come to one of our performances.

A few days after the performance, Henry again called and asked if we would be willing to work on a new work. The answer was, of course, “Yes”. Henry decided to write a piece for Talujon and his ensemble, Zooid. We ended up applying to the Mary Flagler Carey Trust for the commission. We have used that commissioning vehicle in the past. Through this organization we were also able to commission a work for 4 drum sets by Julia Wolfe.

After meeting with Henry, he decided to compose a piece for each individual in Talujon.
We all gave Henry our wishlist of instruments. Henry then used our strengths in his composition. The piece that came out of this process uses four of our members, each with our own set-up. The piece is called “Fate Cues”.

We start rehearsals tomorrow and we are all excited. If you listen to Henry’s works you find that he is a fluid composer. He is continually asking more from the players. The charts are difficult, but that is not the emphasis of his works. He wants the musicians to move through the piece together as a strict unit. Each voice in individually created but maintaining its own presence. The rehearsal process is key.

Talujon is a group that has 18 seasons of unity. We know each other and feel very comfortable with each other. Much like any ensemble, we can feel our musical relationships and know how to support one another. We like to experiment and have practiced improvisation many, many times. Jazz improvisation is different than what we are used to. First, we just need to get past feeling uncomfortable about improvising in front of these great jazz masters in Zooid. I think that part will be ok. All the members have been in these situations before and as a group; Talujon thrives on making the uncomfortable, comfortable.
We like challenges and Henry is open and excited about the challenge.

It should be fun 🙂

*****

Myra Melford Quartet: Happy Whistlings; Henry Threadgill’s Zooid + Talujon: Fate Cues

Thursday October 2, 2008, 8pm at Roulette.

more information / Interpretations

by Michael Lipsey
CDs, Classical Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical, Orchestral, Piano, Violin

Anders Koppel: Festivity back in the concert hall

How does it sound – a double concerto written by a musician weaned on Beethoven, salsa, Stravinsky and Bulgarian folk music? In short – like nothing else!

The Danish composer Anders Koppel (b. 1947) is himself. “My music consists of the life I have lived,” is as close as he gets to a definition of his style.

Anders Koppel grew up with music all day long. His father, Herman D. Koppel, was one of Denmark’s leading composers and pianists, and worked in the living room at home. Anders and his siblings were eye-witnesses to all aspects of the musical creative process and got to know about the smallest components of music. As adults all four became some of the most prominent Danish musicians.

The key words for Anders’ music are energy, collectivity and festivity. After one of the most versatile careers in Danish music, which still includes intense improvisations on Hammond organ, Anders Koppel is now concentrating on writing classical solo concertos. He has written over 20 since the mid-1990s, most recently also a couple of double concertos.

On two CDs from Dacapo you can hear Anders’ mixture of vital energy and classical forms. On one CD his son Benjamin is the soloist in his Saxophone Concertos 1 and 2, and on the other you can hear Anders Koppel’s double concertos: one is for violin and accordion with a definite touch of tango. The other is for saxophone and piano and drags Beethoven along to a nightclub. There are inserted improvisations that give the music freedom and personality – a good indication of the attitude of this congenial composer, who was one of Denmark’s best known hippies in the 1960s and is still a passionate representative of breadth of taste and a zest for life.

by Jens Cornelius
Bang on a Can, Classical Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical

New Haven, Before and After One Arrives

Big Ups to David Lang and Christopher Theofanidis who have just been appointed to the faculty of the Yale School of Music. They will teach graduate students in the school’s composition program as well as teach courses and participate in the performances of their works. Both earned masters and DMA degrees from the Yale School of Music before embarking on their illustrious careers.

Lang, professor of composition (adjunct), is the most recent winner of the Pulitzer Prize in music. Theofanidis, associate professor of composition (adjunct), is both a frequently-performed composer and a respected educator.

The composition appointments were announced at the same time as faculty appointments in four other disciplines: Jana Baty, mezzo soprano, assistant professor (adjunct) of voice; Richard Holzer, Ph.D., associate professor (adjunct) of music history; Tiffany Kuo, assistant professor (adjunct) of hearing; and Michael Roylance, lecturer in tuba.

Meanwhile, David Shifrin, who has served as professor of clarinet at the Yale School of Music since 1987, will assume full-time responsibilities.  He will continue his studio teaching and will play a leading role as advisor to the School’s highly regarded chamber music program. He will also serve as artistic director of both the Chamber Music Society at Yale and the School’s concert series at Carnegie Hall.

by Jerry Bowles
Classical Music, Metropolitan Opera, Opera

The Right Kind of Advertising

Ben Rosen, former Board Member of the Met, has a fascinating post at his blog about the Met’s turnaround under the leadership of Peter Gelb. (Thanks to Alex Ross for pointing it out.) The whole essay is worth reading if you have any interest in the future of the classical music business or in the fortunes of the Met, but I want to highlight one passage in particular, concerning the marketing of Philip Glass’s opera “Satyagraha.” Apparently, prior to Gelb’s arrival the Met had no marketing team–marketing wasn’t seen as necessary with the number of sold-out performances they were playing. But in 2002, after years of steadily running at around 92% box office capacity, box office collapsed to 82% and began a steady decline to 77% in 2006. Rosen says that in the 90s the Met was selling out most nights, but in 2006 they sold out only 10% of performances.

As the 2007-08 season began, here’s what happened: Seven performances of Satyagraha was scheduled for the spring of 2008. Many subscribers who found Satyagraha included in their series decided to opt out of the Glass opera — they traded in their seats for other operas. And single-ticker buyers turned out to be equally cool to the prospect of watching a Sanskrit work. Normally, as a season progresses, single-ticket sales start out filling up the house. But a funny thing happened in this case. The forecasted box office of Satyagraha started declining, and at an alarming rate. The more time that passed, the worse the box office ahead looked. If this continued, there was a chance the opera would play to near-empty houses.

So a marketing task force was put together. For a modest budget, aided by contributions from a board member, the team was able to create dozens of different marketing initiatives designed to attract specialized audiences. New-age magazines yoga groups, anti-apartheid organizations, India groups, South African organizations, et al.

It worked. By the end of its run, Satyagraha had sold out its run. (By the way, it was a terrific production. I like to quip that Satyagraha is now my favorite Sanskrit opera.) Next year, the same team will have an opportunity to apply its narrow-focus marketing techniques to selling the John Adams opera, Doctor Atomic — a contemporary work about the creation of the atomic bomb.

Classical music organizations often fear that contemporary music scares away subscribers, and in this case it was true. The solution, usually, is either to program less new music or to essentially subsidise the new music performances with revenue (ticket sales and fundraising) from other more “audience-friendly” performances. But in this case all that was needed was an intelligent marketing campaign. Too few organizations do any real marketing efforts, and many of the ones that do focus on existing audiences. Note that the advertising strategy for Satyagraha wasn’t to push the opera harder to the existing audience base or to try to find an existing base of new-music fans–they targeted their advertising to people interested in the themes of the opera. Note also that the advertising matched a specific program with specific groups of people rather than trying to sell the organization or classical music in general to specific groups or to a general audience, or worrying about selling the specific program to a general audience. We don’t think of new age magazines or anti-apartheid groups as full of classical music lovers or potential classical music converts, and so we don’t advertise to them, but it turns out that when the program has direct relevance to their affinity advertising pays off handsomely. We shouldn’t be surprised–this is how modern marketing works–and yet I see very little of it in classical music.

My secondary point is that the success of the Satyagraha marketing campaign illustrates an important feature of industry trends. The subscription model of ticket sales is failing, and the main reason is simply that people have many options for entertainment and prefer to diversify. Attempts to salvage the subscription model may show short-term success (in fact, Met subscriptions are back up do to the fact that subscribers get first dibs on shows that are likely to sell out) but are doomed to failure over the long term. The solution, however, isn’t to appeal to the mythical “general audience,” it’s to use modern marketing strategies to pitch specific events to specific populations. I look forward to seeing how the marketing stratgy for “Doctor Atomic” plays out.

by Galen H. Brown
Classical Music, Composers

Do You Come From the Other Land Down Under?

John PsathasMarvin Rosen has a very special program coming up this Wednesday on his always brilliant radio program.   John Psathas, one of New Zealand’s leading composers, will join Marvin live in the WPRB studio on  April 23, 2008, from 8:30 am ET until 11:00 am ET during a special extended edition of Classical Discoveries. The entire five hour program starting at 6:00 am ET is titled: “In The Land Of Kiwi” will be totally devoted to music from New Zealand.  The program can be listened to on line at www.wprb.com

Quick, without looking it up, name 5 New Zealand composers.

Here’s a video of the late and sorely missed Michael Brecker premiering Psathas’ Sax Concerto:

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by Jerry Bowles
Classical Music, Contemporary Classical

Oh, Canada

Last week, the CBC  announced that the CBC Radio Orchestra, a fixture in Canadian musical life for 70 years,  would give its final concert in November.   This is a sign that:

1) Classical music has failed to engage the attention of younger listeners and has become irrelevant to the lives of most people.  This is mainly the fault of dreary programming and unimaginative presentation by unenlightened gatekeepers;

2) Yet another depressing sign that Canada is becoming more like the United States–a pop culturized, winner-take-all society in which competition for attention is fueled solely by ratings and money.  

3) Something else?

by Jerry Bowles
Classical Music, Contemporary Classical

“Music is life, and, like life, inextinguishable.”

Alex Ross has a splendid piece titled Inextinguishable  about Carl Nielsen in the New Yorker (yes, the New Yorker) this week.  I must confess that I had not paid a lot of attention to Nielsen until Alex tagged him as “most underrated” in the comments section here a couple of years.  Since then, a series of wonderful new recordings–including the opera Maskarade and Thomas Dausgaard and the Danish National Symphony Orchestra/DR’s recording of Nielsen’s orchestral works–have been released by the Danish national recording label Dacapo    I have found myself playing them every few days for months now and I always hear something fresh and new.  I owe you one, Alex.  

On the subject of record labels, Pliable points to a review in the Guardian by Andrew Clements which begins with the provocative sentence:  “Considering how much third-rate music has been included in Naxos’s American Classics series, Elliott Carter has so far been poorly served by the budget-price label…” 

Granted some of the stuff that Naxos has packaged in that series has been less than distinguished but operating in a cultural establishment where critics treat every cow patty ever dropped by the likes of Alwyn and Bax and Finzi and Michael Tippitt as if it were fois gras, Clements is hardly in a position to fling merde.

by Jerry Bowles
Classical Music, Contemporary Classical, Grammy, Recordings

Owww, Canada

Growing up in a podunk, nil-culture, border-ish town in Washington State, half of my classical education came by way of drifty, static-filled, late-night AM listening to the CBC. Not only work by Stravinsky, Boulez, and Xenakis, but a whole raft of amazingly strong Canadian composers: R. Murray Schafer, John Rea, Claude Vivier and the like. Many of these recordings were CBC productions, and were something that gave me an early admiration of our northern neighbor’s commitment to the arts.

But now comes word that the CBC may be essentially shuttering its recording production; what little may remain will likely be committed to the more “relevant” world of pop. Happening just in the wake of the Grammy win of violinist James Ehnes and the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra under Bramwell Tovey, of their disc of concertos by Walton, Korngold and Barber, it all seems especially ironic and bitter.

by Steve Layton
Classical Music, Composers, Contemporary Classical, San Francisco

You Can Trust Your Car to the Man Who Wears a Star

filling.jpgDance is always about music, and music is, more often than not, about dance. But how does dance animate music, and music animate dance? This seemed to be the central question when I caught Program 1 of the San Francisco Ballet’s 75th anniversary season at the War Memorial Opera House February 9th. Classical ballet and modern dance sometimes plays against and even ignores the music’s rhythmic structure which would never happen in the deservedly popular Dancing With The Stars. But we rightly or wrongly cut the highbrow forms a bit more slack.  

Virgil Thomson’s music for SF Ballet’s founding choreographer Lew Christensen’s Filling Station (1938) brought these thoughts center stage. And though the composer has defined his score as a collection of waltzes, tangos, a fugue, a Big Apple, a hold up, a chase, and a funeral, one was barely aware of these disparate forms. Instead, what caught the ear and eye was the happy disjunction between these elements, not their literalness. But that’s odd when you consider how this ballet, to a story by Lincoln Kirstein, is routinely described as a pop piece.

Well, maybe, but one which uses vernacular movement — way before the Judson Church crowd did it — in still fresh, even startling ways. The moves for James Sofranko’s filling station attendant Mac were exaggerated but somewhat naturalistic too. But the gestures Christensen devised for the other dancers, like the hilariously bombed Rich Girl Erin McNulty, tended to be more stylized, as Thomson’s music shifted gears — jubilant one moment, deadly serious the next — as in his viola-dominated tango for her, which didn’t make rational, but emotional sense. Thomson was always a subtle and sly composer, and his clever but utterly sincere moves were on full display here, and. Martin West’s orchestra made the music go on many levels. Thomson once told me that everybody’s after freshness and this score couldn’t have been more fresh, and perfectly modern because of that. 

Modernist choreographers have tried their hand at setting dances on Bach’s music, with Balanchine’s Concerto Barocco being one of the most famous. SF Ballet Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson, who’s sometimes been too much of a Balanchine acolyte, seemed to break free of the master in his 7 For Eight (200 ), to music from Bach keyboard concertos composed between 1729 and 1741, and the music’s mathematical lucidity and calmly ordered sequences seemed to make him go further and deeper than he usually does.

Bach is regularly advertised as peerless and one certainly felt that here in Tomasson’s 7 sequences for 8 dancers which were as contained and deeply expressive as the music, with 3 duos alternating with 1 trio, 1 quartets, and 1 solo.

Company star Joan Boada shone, but so did all the other dancers here who negotiated Tomasson’s from a classical vocabulary moves with both elegance and gravity. David Finn’s subtly modulated lighting scheme of mostly bluish greys and off blacks made the stage pictures both beautiful and highly suggestive ,which the costumes by Sandra Woodall — who dressed Kronos years ago — unobtrusively complemented The expert piano soloist here was Michael McGraw. 

Would that Balanchine’s 1967 mostly general dance, Diamonds, from Jewels, were as successful or interesting as the two dances which preceded it. Instead it came off as a kind of white on white version of Balanchine’s hommage to Sousa; The Stars and Stripes, with the stage almost always full of the 32 member corps executing endless formations and deformations with lots of chandelier-like port-a-bras, which though meant to look elegant ended up being cloying, with 4 of the 5 movements of Tchaikovksy’s 3rd Symphony serving as the score. Balanchine was as much as an entertainer as a high art guy–his long association with Stravinsky– but this just seemed like admirably danced fluff. Martin West’s pit band accompanied with effortless grace,well-judged tempos, and transparent ensemble throughout. And in none of the 3 pieces did he ever encourage his orchestra to push. This is a deservedly acclaimed company with a very fine orchestra.     

by Michael McDonagh