CBC 110: Lawrence Wolfe interview
We’re featuring the first part of our interview with Boston Symphony Assistant Principal Bass Lawrence Wolfe this week on Contrabass Conversations. I had a chance to check out a wonderful master class that Mr. Wolfe did at Northwestern in the fall of 2008, and I did a summary/synopsis of some of the concepts and ideas covered in this class as well. I’m really looking forward to chatting with Larry–he’s one of my favorite bassists, and listening endlessly to his solo record really shaped how I approach the double bass when I was in college.
Larry is one of the most influential bass players in the United States, having taught countless players during his years at New England Conservatory and other Boston academic institutions who are now in major orchestras or pursuing other successful musical endeavors.
We’re also featuring the first movement of the Arpeggione Sonata from Larry’s solo album, which you’re really going to enjoy. Larry will be doing a presentation at this summer’s International Society of Bassists convention, which I am definitely looking forward to checking out. Be sure to check out Larry’s website (which he is in the process of revamping – listen to the interview to learn more about this), and stay tuned for the rest of this engaging conversation in the coming weeks!
The Classical Music Twitterverse is Expanding
I’ve been an enthusiastic Twitterer for the past two years (you can find me at twitter.com/jasonheath), learning about the service through the numerous tech podcasts that I consume like digital candy, and while I initially resisted the idea of getting on myself (another service to update….great….and who would I tweet to?), once I got into it I never really looked back, realizing that it could function as a mini-blog within my main blog.
For the first year (or even more), I basically tweeted to myself, not caring too much about what was happening in the “Twitterverse” per se, but using the service’s ability to provide a more regular update stream within my main blog and serving as my Facebook status updater. These two functions were reason enough to keep using the service.
Twitter – My Real Blog
As my life kept churning past several important milestones (marriage, vacation, school) a funny thing started to happen: all these little random bits of 140 character digital scraps I’d been leaving all over the place started to make sense to me. They actually weren’t random….well, they were random, but…they had actually become my blog. I don’t mean doublebassblog.org, I mean my blog, my own personal blog. My bass blog had long ago morphed into a business and community site, and looking through the archives over the past five years of blogging left me with a strong impression of what I’d published but not much about the actual ups and downs of my life. On the other hand, my Twitter feed, despite all its silly little quips about “eating burritos,” “petting cats,” and “going for a run” was probably the closest thing I had to a diary.
Getting into the Community of Twitter
It probably wasn’t until I picked up an iPhone (I skipped the first generation of the super phone and got a 3G phone in July of 2008) that I really started to read what others were tweeting about on Twitter. I’d built up a lot of Twitter friends–being on since 2007 helped with that–but I hadn’t really done a lot of following along with Twitter happenings.
I quickly started to realize a few things:
1. Twitter was more than what I was eating for lunch – I’d been using Twitter as a way to keep a personal blog, but other folks were using it for much more than that, using it as an amalgamation of instant messaging, email, and blog functionality. It was all of those things and yet none of those things, something that combined previous technologies in a way that rendered them entirely new.
2. Twitter was a wicked way to share links – Discovering Twitpic was a revelation for me, and I quickly began tweeting photos of things I was doing, loving how it brought another dimension to my tweets. But that wasn’t all–I couldn’t help but notice how many people were putting links into their tweets, and many of these links were pretty darn cool! I wouldn’t be very likely to recieve these links from these particular people were it not for Twitter, and I began to follow more and more interesting linkers. As I did this, I began putting out more links of my own in my tweets and getting positive responses from followers. This was cool!
3. Twitter was kind of like the next generation of RSS – Is RSS dead? I often tell my less tech-obsessed friends that blogs are dead, and they look at me with incomprehension–they’ve only recently figured out what a blog actually is, and the concept of RSS was still hazy and confusing. What am I talking about, blogging is dead? Don’t I have a blog? Isn’t this a stupid thing to think?
Blogging is Dead?
I don’t mean, of course, that blogging is really dead, but I do think that the notion of using an RSS reader to aggregate news is quickly shifting to social sharing sites like Twitter and Facebook. For example, I now subscribe to about a dozen Twitter feeds from major news sources, and I find that the links I get are real-time and easier to parse than in an RSS reader. Things tend to get clogged up in an RSS reader, like stacks of moldy old newspapers, while Twitter is a stream of information that I can dip into, real-time, whenever I want to see what’s happening in the world.
Here are some of the news streams that I subscribe to through Twitter. If you click on many of these (including the New York Times) you’ll find that they actually have many feeds for different subjects, so you can follow NYT Science, NYT Books, etc.:
Some of these news sources just facelessly pump out their stories on Twitter, but others (especially the Chicago Sun-Times!) actually are real people who’ll interact with you.
The Power of Twitter
As I’ve gotten more into the complete Twitter experience, I’ve really started to get more out of it. There’s something to this–I just can’t quite articulate it, and judging from the countless other posts out there like the one you’re reading right now, many people feel the same about it as I do. This is something new and something powerful, and I’d encourage you to experiment with it and keep your eyes open to see how this develops in the next 1,2,5, and 10 years.
Classical Music Twitterers
Though still small (we classical music people always seem to be slow to the table with these new technologies), there is a rapidly growing community of classical music organizations, performers, bloggers, and fans on Twitter. This presence, I firmly believe, will ultimately be much more powerful than any mailing list could possibly be, and it’s great to see organizations like the Chicago Symphony (with whom I’ve directly communicated through Twitter) embracing this new technology in such a progressive fashion:
- Chicago Symphony
- Toronto Symphony
- Aspen Music Festival
- Greg Sandow
- Campbell Vertesi
- Patty Mitchell – oboeinsight
- Chris Foley – Collaborative Piano Blog
- Drew McManus – Adaptistration
- Classical Music News
- Chicago Lyric Opera
- Naxos
- Stan Haskins – Glued to the String
- Joe Lewis – San Be Ji
- Matt Wengerd
TweetDeck and Parsing Twitter Data
One of the problems of Twiter is that it can feel like a disorganized fire hose of random information, and, to be honest, that’s kind of what it is! Finding some way to parse all this data can really add a lot of functionality to this service, which is where, for me, TweetDeck comes in.
TweetDeck allows you to organize people you follow into groups, search for particular keywords, and even see what topics are particularly hot on Twitter at that moment. Hugely useful.
Twitter clients I use
I currently use TweetDeck (free) on the desktop and Tweetie ($2.99) on the iPhone, which is a truly awesome Twitter interface for a mobile device–highly recommended.
I’ve also used the following programs, with various degrees of success:
- Twitterific (iPhone)
- Twinkle (iPhone)
- Twitterfon (iPhone)
- twhirl (desktop)
Other Classical Music Twitterers?
Are you a classical music person on Twitter? Let me know, and follow me at twitter.com/jasonheath!
Eclectic Bass 4 – Leon Bosch
We’re featuring two tracks from U.K. bassist Leon Bosch’s new solo album The Russian Double Bass, which was released on Meridian Records this month. Leon has been a musical guest on the podcast twice before, and I really hope you enjoy this all-music episode of excellent music played by this wonderful musician.
Tracks Featured:
- Rachmaninoff Vocalise
- Glière Tarantella
Daily bass pic – bass and guitar getting cozy
Check out that sweet five string! Hopefully no one walked too close to this precarious setup.
You! Peon! Work for Free!
Here’s an exchange I was forwarded (on condition of anonymity) that, while being both aggravating and darkly amusing, reminds me how easily non-musician administrators forget that we performers are actually trying to make a living from this kind of work. It’s a job–honest!
With Administrators like These….
I’m chalking up the attitude exhibited by the administrators in this email exchange to ignorance of the actual economic situation of their musician employees. This institution also happens to pay quite a meager per-hour scale to their employees, require unpaid meetings on a regular basis, and do a host of others things that make me think that this is an attitude that is unfortunately ingrained in this particular institution. I’ve changed names and omitted any revealing references (though I’d love to expose the school I’m actually talking about….I’ll be good….). This correspondence, while only bouncing between a few individuals, was also sent to the entire institution’s faculty, which is how I got it….and no, I don’t work at this place! Never have. Also, I couldn’t help editorializing just a bit–my remarks are in italics during the exchange.
Do you have any contractors you work with, music school or otherwise, who ask for “favors” like these? Leave a comment and let us know!
You Play Now!
Administrator: On _______, 2008, [Retail Outfit #1] is celebrating [Random Anniversary]. In honor of this milestone, there will be a concert in the store on _________ from 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM — first floor by the fountain. A grand piano will be available.
[Retail Outfit #1] has invited [Anonymous Music School] faculty members to perform– string ensembles, piano trios, solo piano, singers… etc. This will not include any student performances—it is strictly for professional musicians.
If you have any interest in participating in this community event, please email me so I can give you contact information.
Musician #1: Is there any pay offered to musicians for this event? If not, I would think it would be a disservice to the music profession to have professional musicians provide free entertainment to solely benefit a for-profit business.
Note the “crafty dodge” employed in the response–a classic administrative deflection tactic intended to befuddle the poor helpless simpleton musician mind:
Administrator: Dear [Musician #1],
As I have told all of the musicians who have expressed interest in this event, you will need to contact [Random Administrator #2] to find out about compensation. She never mentioned any type of stipend to me, and as I stated in my email, it is a community service event for the patrons of the store.
While the event does benefit [Retail Store #1], the excellent visibility helps create greater awareness of our faculty and of [Anonymous Music School] for those same patrons. Hopefully, that awareness translates into inquiries and future registrations. While I agree with you that compensation seems appropriate, I am sure [Retail Store #1] sees it as a way for musicians to serve the community, while promoting their talent and their school. I suspect she invited other community music school faculty too.
[Musician #1], please contact [Random Administrator #2] to get more information about the event. Thanks.
What’s that? It’ll create “excellent visibility” for the institution? Yippee! So do concerts…and I get paid for those. “Serving the community,” you say? Are the caterers volunteering their services? How about the security guards? The store employees working late?
Pay up, cheapskates. By neither securing payment from the store or offering up some compensation yourselves, you’re sending a message: our faculty have nothing better to do than to drive to downtown Chicago and play for free, with some possible…exposure? For what–some more random young students at this music school, which, by the way (this is lovely!), takes OVER 50% of what parents pay the school for lessons as “administrative costs.”
You take over 50% of all lesson payment for these “administrative fees,” yet you can’t cough up $100 as an honorarium for musicians for an event that will benefit your institution? Classy….and you make this guy to yet more unpaid busywork to even find out about compensation? You can’t just do it yourself? OK…gotta cool down…NOW I remember why I vowed never to work for these guys….
Musician #1: I called [Random Administrator #2] and she said that there is NO compensation – not even parking or a gift certificate. While I also believe in promoting the awesome faculty of [Anonymous Music School], this is an inappropriate way to do this. [Retail Store #1] would not think of asking a practice of doctors to come and provide free medical assistance to their employees, nor would they ask an accountant firm to perform services for free. They would not ask secretarial students to file receipts or ask that bartenders and wait-staff to work for free just because it is their [Random Anniversary].
Music teachers have bills to pay and families to support. Our teachers have spent tens of thousands of dollars on their musical education and spent way over that amount in practice hours honing their craft. If we are a music school, we need to teach our faculty as well as our students that our craft is worth a price.
Musician #2: I completely agree with [Musician #1] on this. The public at large does tend to subscribe to the notion that musicians will work for nothing for the publicity. If [Retail Store #1] wants musicians to entertain their patrons, or if [Anonymous Music School] wants musicians to entertain at [Retail Store #1] for the benefit of [Anonymous Music School], then someone should provide compensation. In no profession, outside the performing arts, are professionals expected, or even asked, on a regular basis to perform their professional duties free of charge. Personally, I do a lot to provide community service, but I do not subscribe to the notion that musicians should perform for nothing. Unfortunately, there are still too many professional musicians willing to work for nothing. So the public continues to subscribe to this notion.
Think they got paid?
Nope.
We’re Lower than Dirt, Huh?
During my educational certification program these past few years, I’ve had the opportunity to learn more about the differences between a professional (doctor, lawyer) career path and a paraprofessional (paralegal paramedic) career path, focusing on how teaching is in some aspects a true profession (highly regimented, standardized, governing boards, re-certification at regular intervals) and in other aspects a paraprofession (not self-regulated, practitioners held in lower esteem than other professionals, debatable body of unique knowledge). We’ve discussed this profession/paraprofession dichotomy endlessly in class, writing papers and considering how exactly teaching fits into these two paradigms.
Well, guess what? My other career of musician apparently isn’t even a paraprofession by many people’s standards! So, then, what is it? Some sort of circus freak show? Why are we treated like trained monkeys by our own administrators, the very people who should be advocating for us?
What bothers me most about this interchange is the callous nonchalance demonstrated by the administrator I quoted. Believe it or not, there actually is a way to approach musicians and ask them to play for free. It’s not this approach! Also, this kind of event, which is not a benefit/fundraiser but really just a gig, contracted out by a retail chain (and it’s one of the biggest chains in the country, by the way) trying to “cheap out” and hire musicians from the local music school. After all, it’ll be a noisy event, and these musicians are really serving as window dressing, like dancing bears in a toy store; who cares how the musicians sounds, and why ay them if you can get a bunch of warm bodies for free?
An Anomaly?
Is this encounter just an anomaly…or have you had similar experiences? Let us know!
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