rehearsals; greg sandow; crisis in classical music
we had a great rehearsal last night. our two new players, pam gadaire and diane barkauskas fit in very well. one of the problems of having a 9-member group is you always are having subs or replacing members. last night was like they always had been with us.
everybody came prepared and instead of introducing 2+ hours of new music, we picked up where we left off last june. i can’t wait until our next rehearsal sunday, and i found out there is a chance that we might play the october surprise event in highland park.
the critical conversations blog/event was a great discussion of what is happening with classical and new music. i found it interesting that few would comment about orchestra as an institution. there is a great amount of insightful observations about the “the next big thing”. but nobody seemed to want to talk about whether the orchestra is relevant anymore. i think that the crux of their argument is that the main problem is ideas not institutions. they are looking at how to fix it; advertising, programming, better music… oh well, as critics employed by major publications, maybe they don’t want to bite the hand that feeds them, or maybe they really don’t see the same problems.
besides these differences i really have enjoyed reading the following blog post by greg sandow. he uses the old platonic method of asking questions to illustrate his points:
Why isn’t the audience more active in the classical music world?
Why don’t people inside classical music institutions talk about music more?
Why do we advertise classical music so badly?
What do we ourselves get from all these concerts?
Why doesn’t classical music get closer to pop?
Why don’t we play more new music?
Why aren’t we part of contemporary life?
these are great questions and his answers/descriptions are more concise than i could ever hope, and they offer a nice blueprint to contemplate. i still think the answers are all symptoms of the bigger problem.
after last nights rehearsal i felt incredible. i can live off that feeling for weeks, happy to go back to being a wage slave. part of the journey making great music with great musicians, and the other is to help the music that i love find its audience.
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