CBC 146: Music in the Digital Age
The following podcast is a recording of a panel discussion on the future of music from the 2009 International Society of Bassists Convention. It features:
Enjoy!
Making music with Eighth Blackbird
I’ve had the opportunity to perform with new music ensemble Eighth Blackbird with the IRIS Orchestra in Memphis, Tennessee, several years ago (former Contrabass Conversations guest Scott Best–my stand partner in this orchestra–went to school with the members of the ensemble at Oberlin), and I’ve always enjoyed checking out their highly creative endeavors. They also performed for the opening breakfast at the Midwest Clinic last December (playing a piece that involved one of the musicians running full-bore across the stage–startling to say the least on the morning of a long day of conference sessions!), and they certainly seem to be wonderful examples of what 21st-century musicians should aspire toward: performing new music written specifically for their unique instrumentation and redefining “art music” with each new project:
Grand Rapids Symphony in peril
I’ve been corresponding with Paul Austin, a musician with the Grand Rapids Symphony and Co-Chair of the Negotiating Committee for this orchestra and Vice President of the Regional Orchestra Players’ Association (ROPA), and organization to which my Elgin Symphony also belongs.
The Grand Rapids Symphony musicians are facing an extreme situation, and at present the hope for an amenable resolution appears bleak, as you can see from the articles below:
Grand Rapids Symphony musicians reject ‘last, best and final offer’ contract, call it ‘insulting’
by Jeffrey Kaczmarczyk | The Grand Rapids Press
Friday September 04, 2009, 7:10 PM
Grand Rapids Symphony musicians, calling a proposed contact “insulting,” have overwhelmingly rejected a collective bargaining agreement for the orchestra’s 2009-10 season.
Musicians informed management Friday they had voted 63-2 Thursday evening to reject a two-year pact that would have cut three weeks from their 42-week season, transformed two weeks of paid vacation into unpaid furlough, suspended 401k pension contributions, and raised employee contributions to medical insurance to 25 percent.
“What they proposed as their ‘last, best and final offer’ is insulting to the musicians,” said Dan Mattson, co-lead negotiator for the Grand Rapids Federation of Musicians.
Symphony president Peter Kjome said the proposed 2009-10 budget reflects to the 15-year average of spending 44.5 percent of the budget on the musicians. Read more
The Unsung Success of Live Classical Music
Contrabass Conversations co-host John Grillo pointed an article out to me last fall about the demise (or lack thereof) of live classical music, but my insane schedule at that time left me no time for digesting much of anything blog-related, so it wasn’t until I was cleaning out my bookmarks this summer that I ended up taking time to digest it.
Written by Leon Botstein (my conductor for the American-Russian Youth Orchestra a decade ago), it describes a classical music scene that, rather than undergoing a painful demise, is actually thriving:
Nothing can reproduce the sonic and emotional power of live performance. But looking out at the audience at most classical music concerts in the United States, one sees a crowd that is largely middle-aged, verging on the geriatric. This has set off alarms within the music community, whose members are quick to blame the loss of a younger generation of listeners for the sorry state of classical music, waning ticket sales and a record market that has all but disappeared.
Memories are deceptive. Classical music has never been the passion of the young. It is an acquired taste that requires both encouragement and education, like voting or drinking Scotch. And in fact, more young people today are playing classical instruments than ever before, according to conservatory enrollments. More surprising, the classical music world has never been healthier; since the early 1970s the growth has been robust.
In this article, Botstein points out that classical music was once a profitable business but is no longer so. He refutes this claim, instead showing how the decades of the late 19th century and the rise of the recording industry were mere anomalies of profitability, and that classical music has historically been based on philanthropic giving and patronage. I make a similar assertion in my Road Warrior Without An Expense Account book, and Botstein’s description of this phenomena and the events of the latter half of the 20th century make for interesting and illuminating reading.
I also have to wonder if the economic downturn (which had started at the publication of this article but has greatly accelerated in the intervening months) has tamped down the “thriving scene” that Botstein describes. I have seen a lot of smaller companies
down in Champaign-Urbana for a talk
I’m down at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana today to do a talk about setting up a private teaching studio. Being the neurotic musician that I am, I arrived extremely early, knowing that where there’s a music school, there can’t be a coffee shop too far away. That turned out to be the case, of course, and I’m hanging out at Espresso Royale right now, getting juiced up on a dark roast brew and doing some blogging for the next few weeks.
Contributor posts this past week
National Symphony bassist Jeff Weisner wrote a wonderful post this week about the “no-hire” audition situation that happens, unfortunately, at all too many auditions. It’s great to hear the perspective of someone in a major orchestra who, while being on the committee side of things during his NSO tenure, also was on the receiving end of many of these “no-hire” auditions. Check his post out if you haven’t yet.
Phillip Serna has also recently put out a couple of early music posts, and Peter Tambroni has contributed several posts recently as well. In addition to being regular doublebassblog.org contributors, both of these gents have been Contrabass Conversations guests as well (Pete’s interview link – Phillip’s interview link).
More good stuff for Contrabass Conversations coming up
We’re also putting out several all-music episodes on the podcast in the next couple of weeks, including one featuring Indiana University student Ben Jensen and another with the very cool bass-centric Los Angeles band Haberdashery. We’re also continuing our interviews with Mark Morton and Lawrence Wolfe, and we have a few funny and thought-provoking special episodes in the can from bassists David Cardon and John Grillo. Whew!
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