Recently, I’ve been writing a series of posts entitled “What kind of Classical Music Should I Write?” Part of the reason for this series is to better understand the quest to be heard. Putting black dots on a piece of paper isn’t music unless those dots get transformed into something audible.

In this digital world, where anyone can post a YouTube video, or put their music up on a music sharing website it’s easier than ever to get music into the hands (or ears) of listeners. Classical Music is seeing a boom in online sales by virtue of the virtual world.  There are few composers I know that don’t have some sort of musical presence on the internet – and justifiably this is just one way for them to market themselves. My own website, chipmichael.com, has gotten me more than one performance by allowing a way to get samples and pdf scores into the hands of potential performers as part of the consideration process. But before any of that can happen, the music has to first be performed.

Complete post here

Losing my Anonymity – I think that down deep I always knew that telling ‘tales out of school’ like I do each week on the blog would eventually come back to bite me where the sun don’t shine. Like the code of silence found among musicians (at least until the Penn & Teller era!), most musicians realize that they shouldn’t tell every salacious detail about what happens behind the scenes of a performance, and eventually the karmic balance would come back to haunt me. An unspoken covenant therefore exists among ensemble members about not revealing too much about how things actually went.

Symphony on the Swamp – Some places just aren’t built for classical music concerts. This story is about a curious tradition of the Spoleto USA Festival–an evening concert on the edge of a massive swamp. Darkness…bright lights…giant swamp…read the story to find out what kind of a horror show these factors produce when combined.

They All Started Laughing at Me – Be careful what kind of trivial activities you put on your resume. These innocuous details can come back and bite you when you least expect it. This story is about an incident that caused the entire arts and communication faculty to laugh at me when I was hired for my first university job. And no, they weren’t laughing WITH me…they were laughing AT me!

My Big Stupid Mouth – I rarely speak up or complain on gigs. This story is about a time when I decided to speak up, gripe, and complain, and the awkward situation that resulted. The moral? Never speak up until you get home from the gig–you never know if you may be complaining to the wrong person!

Flowers for Linda Eder – My focus shattered, I looked up from my music and all around me. Where was that yelling coming from? We were just starting the second half of an orchestral pops concert in a vast arena-like theater out by the airport in metro Chicago, playing to a near-capacity crowd of fans.

You’ll Never Play in This Orchestra Again! – A colleague of mine passed along this entertaining (and true!) tale from a concert in a local per-service gig orchestra. I know a lot of musicians who perform in this orchestra (which I’ll refrain from naming here), which makes it even funnier to me.

They Locked Me Inside and Made Me Conduct Violas! – You never know what’s going to happen to you when you go into a school setting. Be prepared for anything, and realize that students can be like sharks circling in the water when put in a room with a substitute teacher.

Auditioning is a Rotten Pastime – This is a story about my experience auditioning for the San Jose Symphony. This audition was a total disaster in every respect, and it is a great example of just how badly this process can be run. This story was featured in the Winter 2007 edition of Double Bassist magazine.

Massive Musical Disaster in the Nutcracker Pit – Musical performances are always at risk of having a train wreck–that’s part of the excitement of live performance. But rarely do performances derail this badly, and in as humorous a way as what is recollected in this story. Have you ever heard an audience of 1500 laugh at a musician’s mistake? We had this happen in the Nutcracker Pit for the Milwaukee Ballet.

Panic on the Podium – When you think about it, isn’t it amazing that a group of musicians can ever play together in a symphonic setting? Honestly, having all those different instruments, from tuba to tympani, with all those methods of sound production, from blowing to plucking, situated across either a vast resonant expanse of stage or a subterranean pit does not exactly make for a cohesive product out of the gate. Couple this disparity in instrument size, style, and location with having to watch a guy on a box with a little white stick, and it’s a wonder that we ever play one thing together. (read more)

Grant Park Symphony Audition Story – I heard this great audition story a few years ago firsthand from the people who were involved. This was one of the rare times where I actually knew both the committee members and the audition candidate in this story.

Messing with the Trumpets is Fun – I was thinking recently about a funny and masterful prank pulled by the principal bass of a very high-quality orchestra while performing Mahler’s First Symphony several years ago….(more)

They’re throwing knives at us in the pit! – No matter how you cut it, pit musicians are an easy target for falling debris (whether confetti, props from the stage, or even singers sometimes!). After all, we are crammed shoulder to shoulder in a small dark space, with a stage full of (gasp!) singers emoting onstage without necessarily watching out for that pit.

I Have No Pants – Sending a bass section into a hysterical fit of the giggles during a performance is not exactly the hardest thing to do, but I remember a moment a few years ago that will definitely stay with me for years to come.

Falling Off The Stage – The orchestra was silent, everyone looking in surprise and horror at what had just happened. The conductor had, mid-sentence, fallen clear off the stage!

The Babbling Conductor – I’m skating on thin ice with this post! The classical music world is surprisingly small, after all, and anydisparaging talk about conductors, even in the most anonymous terms, is likely to trickle back to the source.

Ripping Off Your Teachers – When I was getting started as a freelance musician at the tail end of my masters degree, I was quaking in my boots about my future prospects. After all, I was regularly buying CDs at Borders and Barnes and Noble from former Northwestern doctoral music students. If the best they could do was retail bookstore work after getting a doctoral degree, what were my prospects going to look like?

Bye Bye Basses – Hydraulic stages are both a blessing and a curse! I’ve played on them in a variety of venues, and while they’re usually a blessing for stage and pit logistics in multi-use halls, they can yield some amusing (and potentially disastrous) unintended results.

My Car Caught Fire and Exploded! – In what may quite possibly be the worst gig story ever, I attempt to recall a very surreal night several years ago in words and hand-drawn pictures. Sometimes you drive home from a gig listening to the radio and smiling. Sometimes your car starts on fire and exploded on the south side of Chicago as you run screaming down the Interstate. This story is about the latter.

• double bass blog – #1
• car caught fire – #4
• cats and basses – #2
• Jason Heath – #1 (check out the link for #3 on that page, from which Google excerpts “Jason Heath is not “a facilitator of the Zionist plot to overthrow the Palestinians.” Yet after he posted a decidedly nonpolitical interview …” This link has always made me nervous!
• double bass – #11 (this generally bounces around between #2 and #15 depending on whatever nebulous google factors are in play that week)
• DePaul bass – #2
• International Society of Bassists – #10
• Northwestern University School of Music – #7 (I love that this article of mine on NU comes up so high–this article still rings true after many years–the photos still are accurate!)
• Evanston cat walking – #5 (and not because I offer this as a service!)
• road warrior expense account – #1 (and most of the other results on that page as well–funny, I’d have thought that this would be a more popular saying)
• driving for dollars music – #1 (and #2, etc.)

It seems that a number of folks throughout the culture blogging community are taking issue with what could perhaps best be described as the Chicken Little Think Tank, or the group of voices within the field that seem determined to convince all of us that resistance is futile. Apparently, these efforts have pushed some over the edge of discontent to the point where they are not just resisting, but pulling some serious punches of their own…

First up is an article from 5/11/2011 by Robert Levine titled A crisis of analysis. I’m not entirely certain the term vivisect can apply to blog post but it sure seems like that’s precisely what Levine does to Tony Woodcock’s article American Orchestras: Yes, it’s a crisis in a way that can best be described as, well, Levinian. Levine drills in on more than a dozen of Woodcock’s points and although it’s a long piece, it’s worth the time investment.

Read the complete post here.