access to the audience
kyle gann’s recent post that quoted cornelius cardew got me thinking about this whole alt-classical thing.
“access to [the] audience (the artist’s real means of production) is controlled by the state.”
for the past 5 years playing and composing outside the mainstream has had a lot of advantages:
1. i write what i want and for who i want
2. the time from composition to rehearsal is usually a matter of days
3. i get everything played that i write (the good and the bad)
4. i perform with who i want and where i want
cardew’s statement implies that gaining access to the concert halls (the means of production which is controlled by the state) is the primary path to gaining access to the audience. while i prefer to play in non-traditional venues it has some limitations:
1. concert halls are definitely not a priority, but it is any art music composers main access to press and reviews. its kinda ironic that we don’t really matter until we play a concert hall though our best shows and crowds are occur in the alt-venues.
2. playing in clubs works the best, but in los angeles the problem isn’t about finding a place to play, but to find other groups who share a similar aesthetic sensibility to put on a decent show. booking a show can easily devolve into a vaudeville act.
3. galleries can be great place to play, but if they don’t already host musical events getting an audience to come out to a new venue takes time.
4. of course there is no money playing these alt-venues, and the freedom that i have to write our own shows and work out my material on a consistent basis (like any rock band or standup comedian)
5. if i wanted to have a paying “career” as a composer then my options of “making a living” are all clearly controlled by the state. if i took this path i would have to embrace the “work for hire” attitude and become a plumbers of art music taking whatever commissions and projects that came my way.
there are some pretty obvious limitations to the whole alt-classical thing. this is not a path you choose to pay the bills. i was lucky to learn early when i was playing at disney that making money doing your art can be highly problematic and have embraced the model as composer as musician and educator (much like bach and vivaldi).
these days we might have the we have the power to self publish, record and perform our own music.
fall 07 del.icio.us links
fall notable reads (things you might have missed and are worth checking out) Music That Thinks Outside the Chamber, Anne Midgette“For Gil Morgenstern, a violinist and concert presenter, the epiphany came when an acquaintance informed him that the two most boring words in the English language were “chamber music.” her suggestion: alternative classical? i wish [...]
two birds with one stone
one of the great reasons of living in los angeles is sheer amount of interesting things to do. if i had the time (unfortunately i do not) i could have attended two readings of books that have simultaneously found their way to my nightstand. its some pretty great scheduling that both oliver sacks and alex [...]
carrot or sticks?
on august 16th 2007 michael pena was killed. the police still don’t have a suspect or a motive in his death, but what is clear in the la times article by sam quinones, is that michael led a double life as a los angeles high school music student and tagger who recently dropped out of [...]
how wonderful is brian ferneyhough?
so this is the post where i’m supposed to give you some special reason to come to our next show on tuesday september 25th. i just got back from a really great rehearsal and ready to start spreading the propaganda.
with the traffic in southern cal i know it takes a special kind of person to drive anywhere after a long day of work. the real question is why is this concert worth attending? first off we are sharing the concert with the new kids on the block of new music (NKOTBNM or as they liked to be called real quiet) the nyc based chamber group is making its first los angeles/oc appearance the just released their new album tight sweater (featuring the music of marc mellits)which is pretty frakkin’ great. besides mellits music they are playing music of phil kline, and annie gosfield.
as for the pbe. i’m kinda surprised that we are even playing this show. last may it looked like curtains for the us, carl, ryan and bruce would all be leaving the pbe after graduation. thankfully bruce decided to stay for the time being and our original bass player matt menaged moved back into town this summer. this lineup is a powerhouse and has gelled quite nicely. i’d say its pbe 3.o.
so what about the show? or as they used to say “where’s the beef?”our goals are very consistent and simple. we want to entertain you, we want to make you think and we want to have a great time performing music that we wouldn’t get to play anywhere else. entertainment wise, its the strongest set we have yet played. as a show its got something for everybody; garage band jam’s, covers, vocal fun and some modular improvisation. so go ahead see for yourself…
cheap admiration-
its technically a harmonic deconstruction of johann pezel’s sonata ciacona in B. its a great introduction to what we do and always lets the audience know we are more garage band than chamber group.
fearless leader-
this tune has had more versions than a cat has lives. it started very unsuccessfully as an ambitious modular experiment that failed miserably in a live reviewed performance at whittier college (thanks again to the oc register’s tim mangan for a really polite review of that debacle). over time it became more of an orchestration study. its not a perfect piece, but at the time i think i was creatively blocked and i looked at finishing it as a challenge to overcome. i keep asking the group if they want to take it out of the set, but they seem to like it more than me.
eye for optical theory
this probably has to be one of my favorite michael nyman tunes. i have never been able to find a score of it, so one summer i decided to write it down. its based on a repeated ground bass (kind of like fearless leader) and about halfway through i realized his “trick” is that he only was using combination of about 8-9 repeated melodies. my version plays on this and i just started with my sheet of melodies and hooked them together like lego’s to make my own version. in last nights rehearsal i added a call and response introduction where our keyboard player eric plays one of the antecedent licks and we play its consequent answer. we play this game until he wants to start the piece and then plays the first line in octaves to let us know to go on. its fun way to bring a little life to one of our fluffier pieces. i also strongly feel that a night of any one composers music can be pretty exhausting. a little nyman along the way sets up the rest of the show really well.
life’s too short
this is the showpiece of the night. its one of the few compositions that i have written that came out effortlessly fully composed and orchestrated. in our first rehearsal we played it head to toe without stopping once. its a pretty damn good piece and i’m still couldn’t tell you how i wrote it. what is it about? self actualization through nihilism, nietzsche meet tony robbins. its in english. you will be able to understand the text. its over the top. its funny. its in your face.
in many ways i think its a conceptually a reaction of going to a very well performed master chorale concert in which all the music was by american composers but none of it was in english. everything was well written and orchestrated, but the concept of having your audience sit and listen to some “secret code” was insane. scanning the crowd from the back row of disney hall this performances seemed more dehumanizing as the evening wore on. the audience wanted to like it, and seemed desperate to connect with the music. (it was beautiful) but what kind of conversation goes on for an two hours in a variety of assorted foriegn languages? sitting in the audience felt like a strange ritual listening to an evening of recently composed choral music without theater or narrative.
anytime you add vocalists to anything its like hearding cats. on most nights the energy they add to an instrumental show can be hard to control. when they come on stage its easy for me to forget my job (the cues and conducting) because i really love to hear them sing. over time i realized that once i get them to the middle of most pieces we loosen up and have a lot of fun on the back end.
principle of sufficient irritation (11/25/05)
this is probably or favorite piece. its written in a modular style with a variety pre-composed melodic syncopated and ostinato lines. (terry riley’s in C is the most famous example). overall its more similar to the improvisational process used in tv shows like curb your enthusiasm or any of christopher guest’s wonderful movies. the piece has a very clear beginning middle and end and we all know our responsibilities in each section. for instance i play some melody in the first section, lead the group into the canon in the middle, and play ostinatos in the third. how and what i’ll play i can choose every night. over time there are happy accidents that turn the piece in new directions. each new player that comes in also brings their own personality into the piece. one of the good things about 11/25 is that its got a nice rhythmic/melodic turn when it we start moving from the submediant to the tonic moving from a hard charging 6/8 to 3/4. (and back to the original opening statement) while it serves as a very energetic totem that no matter how the evening is going that once we get rolling towards that ‘turn’ its a very simple engine that creates quite a lot of energy. some nights we even feel like we can levitate the stage during this section which is the whole reason i got into th
yle=”font-size:100%;”>is racket.
are you sold yet? still skeptical? i know i have been to more bad new music concerts than i count. please don’t hold that against me. i hated them also. how about if i sweeten the deal with a guarantee (of course i can’t really afford to give you a money back offer… i’m only public employee) if you don’t like the show i’ll buy you a beer, i just don’t want to hear about how wonderful brian ferneyhough is.
been there done that
i’m usually pretty good at staying out of the direct gaze of the spectacle. the 24-hour cycle cultural, religious and political maneuvering usually takes up more time than i am willing to invest in. unfortunately summer its easy to get pulled into the latest ‘war’. the summer the hulabaloo of the moment is ‘securing our [...]
upgrade
i got a somewhat surprising phone call from a friend this weekend wondering how i liked my new iPhone. most people know i am a gadget phreak, but i have to say i was never really interested in this phone. i have a great phone gadget (treo 680) that does everything that i need. i’m [...]
mother tongue
just to start this off on the right foot let me point out that i really like going to la master chorale concerts. i’m really glad they tackle so much new music and i thought the concert was very well performed. i’m not sure why i’m so snippy about this gig, but here are my [...]
looking for you
shane cadman (illustrious theatre orchestra/new music impresario) is looking for an southern california based “art music” composer/performer (solo or ensemble) to perform for approximately 30 minutes on his realnewmusicfestival in whittier on june 23rd. More info can be found at www.realnewmusic.com, or can also contact him for more info. when i was helping shane look [...]
showtime
tonight, 8pm csuf recital hall‘decent into formalism‘ lloyd rodgers group with john glenn, electric bass; gary hung,violin; melissa rodgers, trumpet; bruno cilloniz, vibraphone and percussion;luigi cilloniz, marimba and percussion; and lloyd rodgers, keyboard.‘rodgers’ ensemble was the most artsy (and technically accomplished), with acertain pretense to grandeur” — Timothy Mangan, OCREGISTER.COM sat oct 28th, 8pm lincoln [...]
outside the box
although my wife is in training to become a social worker/therapist, she still works days as a middle school pe/dance teacher in los angeles. obviously the job is thankless and i’d thought share a little bit of how she gets through her day. Most Honorable Randy, I spoke with Mr. Watson this morning about something [...]
busy fall
things are going well but by this time on tuesday nights i can barely think straight. this fall has been moving so fast and i’m really excited about it except one problem… i’m too tired to keep this blog updated. the biggest change is that the wife has started her internship as a therapist. the [...]
weddings and funerals
i think i had my 20yr hs reunion last night? i’m still not quite sure how to process it? last night we shared a show with a long forgotten friend (from kansas) that turned out to be much more than i ever expected. you only expect to run into people like this at weddings and [...]
minimalist jukebox, part I
this past saturday night i attended what was the first of the five concerts (that i’m going to) in the minimalist jukebox festival taking place here in los angeles. i had mixed feelings for the evening, mostly because the first night featured steve reich. its not that i don’t like his music, but that i like it a great deal. variations for winds, strings and keyboards, and three movements for orchestra were the first two minimalist pieces that was introduced to. having to wait almost 20 years to hear them live is pretty bittersweet and sums up my feelings about much of this festival.
since i’m not a critic i’m not going try and organize my thoughts into a complete narrative and instead share them as they come:
flipping through my program i found it curious that their fearless leader esa-pekka salonen declined to conduct anything in this festival. i know he needs to travel and guest conduct to promote himself, but is conducting beethoven’s 5th one more time that important?
update: its been pointed out to me that essa pekka was premiering a new opera by kaaja sarajaho in paris this week.
overall the performance was transcendent. the tempos of both the variations and three movements were a bit on the slow side for my taste, but the effect in the variations was very similar to watching the sun come up. reich is minimalist with a capital M, giving each section of the orchestra only one job to do. the strings and brass are the sustain, the woodwinds and keyboards are the ostinato machine.
the hall is still not very good match for any amplified music (reich seems to come off the worst), but the amplified keyboards in the first half were the most successful blend that i had heard.
the crowd was pretty light with many of the subscription seats empty and i really despise having to sit in the dark during concerts.
the amplification became most disconcerting during tehillim (although better than the premier performance of you are) the vocalists were amplified through the house and made the orchestra seem weak and feeble. its like listening to your headphones only with only the treble. after a while i got used to it, but the hand percussion(clapping and shakers) couldn’t compete. i would have changed all of the clapping to claves to get a better ictus and tighten up the ensemble on stage.
i think the best solution is to keep all amplification limited to amps or a small pa on the stage. then the sounds at least match and blend with the ensemble. this worked much better with the keyboard and amp grant gershon used to accompany meredith monk and the master chorale on sunday night.
synergy vocals gave a fine performance, especially once the soprano (amy haworth?) voice warmed up, but the opening and closing syncopation counterpoint sounded pretty muddy.
their outfits didn’t quite match the evening, when they came out in spangled tops the first thing i thought was swingle singers. once i read their bio, i understood that is were their founder is from.
the final result? i was under whelmed, but i cannot really fault the performers. if this music hadn’t been a part of my dna i would have probably been thrilled. the memory is usually better than the moment.
sunday night was an infinitely better. it started off with grant gershon’s customary introduction to the evenings music. his descriptions are clear and simple to the point that even my mother would be interested in attending the concert. the mood was more upbeat than saturday, the crowd almost full and the house lights were on just enough to read the program.
both part’s works the beatitudes and by the waters of bablyon we sat and wept accent all the best elements of disney hall. even though i’m basically agnostic, the organ and chorus of the beatitudes probably point to some kind of intelligent design.
i didn’t know what to expect of the meredith monk pieces that followed. i hadn’t seen her perform live before (although i had the chance) and most opinions were that she was a minor minimalist, probably a few rungs below reich, glass and riley. i had listened to some of her music in school and more recently from ubuweb , but you have to see it live to get it.
it was the most human musical performance i have attended, but let me digress a little.
overall i enjoy disney hall for its architecture and great acoustics for “classical” music performances. it is a cathedral of and for music that most of the time overwhelms the performers who cannot quite rise above the building they are performing in. sometimes it even has that tomblike quality of what it must have felt like being buried alive with the pharaoh in the pyramids. “hey this sucks being buried alive, but the architecture is grand”
so with all that being said, meredith’s monks music was the first performance to surpass the architecture (that i have seen). she adapted her movement and music to fit the master chorale vocalists and it came off very well. i usually hate any movement with vocals. peter sellars staging and movement in john adams el nino was not the worst, but was very similar to the choreography you can see with any high school colorguard/flag team in competition. monk’s movement brought out inherent repetitions and patterns and destroyed the high art concept of ensemble. there wasn’t an orchestra or chorus on the stage, only people expressing themselves through movement and voice. i just kick myself for not seeing her live earlier. mea culpa!
after the incredible first half, i knew the second half was the compromise of the evening. i’m sure not many people would consider michael torke a minimalist in any sense, only that his music is rhythmic and toe-tapping. my wife started singing along to magnificent seven during his copeland-esque introduction to the book of proverbs. in terms of orchestration, a maximalist would be a better description (but not a totalist in the definition of kyle gann). my main gripes with torke’s work was the orchestrational blinders he must use while composing. did he want to write an orchestra piece or a sax quartet with string accompaniment? the filigree transitions either are very poorly written or show a lack of interest in the actual performance of the work. it looked like the audience was confused also, there were probably 10-15 walkouts during the piece and yet it received the largest applause and standing ovation with two curtain calls.
although my wife was pretty upset after the second half (this is the first concert she ever left burning mad, mostly because of the second half music was not anywhere as good at what preceded it), i’m not sure why anybody would walkout during the torke, especially after the sitting through the part or monk? maybe they are the same people who leave the dodger games after the 7th inning to beat traffic?
next: tonight i’m off to see my guitarist dave kurutz perform the glenn branca
R+R
some people thing break is about rest and relaxation, but i think its all about rehearsal and recording. rehearsal went well today. we started sifting through a wide variety of music that we might “cover”this spring. we looked at music composed by lasso, bach, satie, rodgers, as well as one of my new modular pieces. [...]
lloyd rodgers group at occca, fri nov 18th-arroyo arts collective music festival and discovery tour, sunday nov 20th
the lloyd rodgers group is performing their new video/music theater spectacle this friday at the orange county center for contemporary art (occca) at 9pm. guns into mexico is a reworking of catastrophe of meaning, (2001) a collaboration of lloyd rodgers and video artist paul greenhaw. mp3s can be found on the website. the pbe is [...]
composer camp
just finished my composer camp victory lap with my pitbull pal javi. we took a very scenic walk through the hills above my house where you can see the jpl campus, mt. baldi, the hollywood sign, downtown los angeles skyline and catalina(on a clear day which today was!). victory laps are reserved for sunday nights [...]
music by micahel welsh and scooter pietsch
its kinda like i found out i have older cousins i have never met.
i was catching up on email and found out two of the more successful reality tv and film composers are putting on a concert at colburn school/zipper hall today. vic called yestereday afternoon and said he was playing and i should check it out. it turns out that michael and scooter studied with lloyd rodgers at csuf about 10 years earlier.
its probably too late for most of you to attend but here is the info:
you can find out more on scooter pietsch’s music at his website and blog
CONCERT OF NEW MUSIC FOR MULTIPLE SOLOISTS AND STRING ORCHESTRA
by MICHAEL WELSH and SCOOTER PIETSCH
Sunday, May 29, 2005 – 2:00PM – Zipper Concert Hall
MICHAEL SWEENEY bassoon, DAVID JOHNSON vibraphone and percussion
ANGELI DUO: JULIE GIGANTE and SARA PARKINS violins
MULHOLLAND STRING QUARTET
RALPH MORRISON violin, RICHARD ALTENBACH violin,
SIMON OSWELL viola, ANDREW SHULMAN cello
BRENT McMUNN conductor
Noted Los Angeles television and film composers SCOOTER PIETSCH and
MICHAEL WELSH have teamed up for a concert of their art music. They
are dedicated to getting new music played and heard in Los Angeles.
Michael and Scooter have been friends since their college days at
California State University, Fullerton, where they both studied with
composer LLOYD RODGERS. The following week, the artists go into the
studio to record the pieces for CD release.
Aficionados will immediately recognize the artists as this area’s top
players from the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Chamber
Orchestra, the USC Thornton School of Music, CalArts, and the motion
picture and television studios. MICHAEL SWEENEY is principal
bassoonist of the Toronto Symphony.
Tickets: $20 at the box office. Reception following.
bad blogger
me bad blogger me no post for two weeks me very busy american composers forum, los angeles salon live performance mp3′s q+a, hosted by alex shapiro(mp3) recording session with vocalists rehearsals for realnewmusic festival @whittier college (june 17th)ap music theory exam viewpoint school benefit dinner dance busy… off to dinner with vic and and his [...]
paul bailey ensemble @ musicmatch.com and itunes
you can now buy individual tracks from the cd “music from summerland” at musicmatch. the album is for sale for a big $5.49. and you can also find “music from summerland” and “live at occca” at itunes for $9.99. the easy read alternative classical version of the program notes (for the pbe part of the [...]
not your mother's string quartet
kyle gann introduces the west coast to ethel (ny based string quartet). they are playing at the Southern California Institute of Architecture this saturday feb 26th at 3pm . mikel rouse’s new piece music for minorities is coming to ucla live/royce hall march 16-19 (kyle, are you writing his feature also?) CLASSICAL MUSIC A bold [...]
paul cummings, bass
paul cummings, bass, originally uploaded by pbailey. introducing one of the newest members of the group, bass (vocalist) Paul Cummings. blog bio: Hey there, I’m a choral/solo singer who also teaches using Orff schulwerk process to k-8 children. I have a bachelors in music education and a masters in voice performance. I’m on a bunch [...]
nicole baker, mezzo soprano
nicole is mostly responsible for the creation of the new vocal extravaganza, retrace our steps. she is great singer, collaborator and supporter (and she brought me other great singers also), i would a poor shlub without her. so step right up…. singing nightly in the la, but commuting daily to the oc and maintaining a [...]
marlon luna, recording engineer
marlon luna, recording engineer, originally uploaded by pbailey. name Marlon Luna occupation(s) Sound Engineer/Producer training California State University of Los Angeles (Los Angeles, CA), Musician’s Institute (Hollywood, CA), SwingHouse Rehearsal and Studio (Hollywood, CA) current projects Paul Bailey Ensemble, Year Long Disaster upcoming concerts CSULA Wind Ensemble (March), CSULA Concert Choir (March) favorite performance My [...]
