Note: I started writing this last week and then got detained. Henry Fogel's blog went down last week, not this week. Anyway.
For some reason, I happened to check a blog that I like but haven't examined in some time - Henry Fogel's on the record - only to find out that Mr. Fogel is discontinuing his blog as of this week. In the spirit of carrying on Mr. Vogel's mission, and trying to solve the problems of the orchestra, or at least, thinking about orchestras in general, I'd like to quickly offer my suggestion with regard to the kind of conference that Fogel suggests here:
One retired orchestra administrator recently posited that there should be a big national meeting about the future of orchestras, and that anyone who ever managed an orchestra should be barred from attending, because we can't keep doing the same old things. While I agree that we must seriously consider change, that is clearly too drastic a way to do it. People who have managed orchestras do, in fact, know a lot. However, it may well be time to bring people who have managed orchestras together with a wide range of experts from other areas of life in America. That might include those in universities who study the consumption of culture in our country, and in universities that are educating the next generation of citizens. And it might include representatives from other art forms, as well as from areas of popular culture at whom some of us may instinctively (and wrongly) turn up our noses--areas such as broadcasting, electronic media, films, and the sports world. What's needed is an ongoing dialogue among all voices, exploring all ideas with an open mind, with provocative and even weird thinking to prod that dialogue.
I might ask whether it's possible for any cultural entity that could possibly have its administrators take for granted that their colleagues will "turn up their noses" at "broadcasting, electronic media, films, and the sports world" (!!! X 1000) can possibly survive anything, today. I don't mean that as a rebuke to Vogel - if he thinks that his colleagues would react that way, he's just being honest, and is actually sort of taking them to task, here, for that attitude. But really guys, step one would be "don't be total snobs about absolutely everything." Still, what's drawing me to the above paragraph is not the antiquated notion of cultural elitism that he's mentioning (and rebutting). Instead, I think that a more interesting question is why orchestras consistently fail to examine the immediate musical vicinity that surrounds them.
If you're going to have a big meeting about the future of orchestras, who would you invite to this meeting? Strangely, I've been invited to such a meeting, in fact, and I was invited as a result of my participation in non-orchestral musical activities - specifically, NOW Ensemble. The meeting in question was not quite of the Grand Council of the Sanhedrin variety, but was specifically centered around a set of rubrics that we were tasked with creating. I don't want to get into those right now, but I do want to say that I was impressed that the organizers thought that it would be a good idea to have a musician who was not an orchestral administrator present at the meeting. How can you possibly hope to generate new ideas by perpetuating an inbred intellectual and creative community? It's such a basic flaw in the operational procedure for any field; there's low-hanging fruit to be had in the realm of ideas, but you need someone who can recognize that the orange thing on the tree over there isn't a malformed apple or a poisonous berry, it's a delicious peach, and why don't you try it?
Orchestras get way too much attention in the classical community, for my taste, but I do think that a renaissance of the orchestra (capitalize if you like) is possible. As I've said before about the NY Philharmonic, orchestras would benefit greatly by operating as the Big Chief of their local classical communities, working with smaller organizations to develop a ground-up fanbase for their big ensemble. There are plenty of people who come to NOW Ensemble concerts who wouldn't think to go to an orchestral show, but who might be tempted if they were offered tickets through their contact with us, a familiar organization. Orchestra managers don't seem to think about audiences this way. As I understand it, the whole idea is that people with a musical education go to hear orchestras, and everyone else is just a failure of the system. If the public schools had good music programs, every product of the system would go to hear Beethoven, but since they don't, well, there's not much that can be done about it. This is a caricature, to be sure, but I don't think it's too far off the mark. As it turns out, though, there are plenty of people who go to hear interesting music all the time - people who could be potential orchestra attendees - who need to encounter the orchestra through something more familiar to them. You're not going to pick up too many orchestral fans from the NOW audience, but if you multiply those few people by the hundreds or thousands of interesting musical organizations at work in this city, you've got a substantial and sustainable new front in the battle to build your audience.
It's really astonishing to have just gone through the process of applying for non-profit status for New Amsterdam, in which we had to ensure that there would be no conflicts of interest (or Conflicts-of-Interest, perhaps) between a majority of the Board of Directors and those benefiting from our tax-exempt status, and then to read this:
Yesterday, Sen. Evan Bayh joined his colleague Joe Lieberman in suggesting that he may oppose health-care reform, citing concerns about the deficit. Bayh has long been one of the more conservative members of the Democratic caucus. But is his stance also affected by the fact that his wife has reportedly earned at least $2 million over the last six years as a member of the board of a major health insurer?
Susan Bayh's affiliation with Indianapolis-based WellPoint isn't news. But a new report on TheStreet digs into the details. It also finds that last year, Susan Bayh sat on four other corporate boards, in addition to WellPoint's. She received over $656,0000 in cash and stock for all her board work, around half of which came from WellPoint.
As the site puts it: "Susan Bayh's corporate directorships provide a significant chunk of the Bayh family income."
New Amsterdam should have a diverse Board, to be sure, and we should not be in a position where we should be able to avoid accountability, etc. etc. - but shouldn't the same regulations that keep a non-taxed entity from having conflicts of interest also keep major government officials from having much more blatant and harmful conflicts? From the perspective of the IRS, being a spouse to a director is too close of a relationship for board membership - you can be on the Board, of course, but it's not looked upon as an "uninterested" vote. The assumption is that you'd vote in the same way your spouse would, should an issue where you have direct self-interest (read: a financial stake) come into play.
Can you get any more of a financial stake in a matter than having both A) your stock portfolio tied to legislation on which you are voting, and B) your wife on the Boards of major industry players in an industry you're supposed to be regulating? How is this even close to acceptable?
Or, to repeat a phrase I've been quoting a lot, lately, in various contexts: Who Watches the Watchmen?
I'm having a big show on Friday at the beautiful Galapagos Art Space in Brooklyn. This June, I was in residence at Mass MoCA in North Adams, MA, with a new vocal octet called Roomful of Teeth. The group is, in their own description, "a vocal ensemble that studies and incorporates non-classical vocal practices, combines them with western styles, and develops new compositions using the fullest possible range of vocal techniques." The singers worked with international experts in a wide range of vocal techniques - throat singers Ayan-ool Sam and Sean Quirk of Alash, belting coach Gayle Lockwood, and master yodeler Kerry Christensen. Then we arrived - myself and the ever-brilliant Rinde Eckert - to work with the singers, learning what they could do, and writing music that exploited the incredible range of techniques they'd mastered, as well as their general skill as an amazingly virtuosic group of seasoned vocal artists.
The result was a series of works that don't really sound like much else, as you can imagine! I'm having three works done on Friday, and here's one of them (listen through to the end if you can; I'm particularly happy with the way the piece builds to its conclusion):
The concert is at 8:00 PM, and tickets are available by clicking here (enter the discount code NEWAM to lower the ticket price to $10 from $15, available only on web pre-orders). The show is part of Archipelago, a new series being curated by New Amsterdam Records, and will also feature Due East, an incredibly talented duo of flute (Erin Lesser) and percussion (Greg Beyer). They're playing a major work by my friend John Supko, with a new video accompaniment by Kristine Marx, as well as a New York premiere by recent Pulitzer Prize-winner, David Lang.
Get a ticket and I'll hope to see some of you on Friday.
I was pleased to see a very positive (if quite poorly-written) review, today, of Thomas Bradshaw's The Bereaved, in the New York Times. Bradshaw is an artist who seems utterly and perpetually afraid of boredom - not so much for "the audience", but for himself. The cadences of the play feel familiar in their quickly flowing, almost television sitcom-like pace, and the surprises come regularly and brutally. As for those surprises - the images and circumstances they involve are not for the easily offended (or maybe they specifically are!).
Critically (all artists who deal with time-based work, take note), neither the pace nor the shocking elements serve only to keep us engaged; rather, they fuel our appreciation for these characters and their actions. These are not sluggish people. They are cokeheads and rape fantasists, and they play suggests that perhaps such people are not as distant from ourselves, our authentic selves, as we might like to think. That's a familiar goal but Bradshaw succeeds where others fail by never giving us more than we need, or less. Seeing how far these characters are willing to go, ultimately to please one another, pulls off the trick of being both depraved and touching. It's strange to think back and find the play ultimately heartwarming, but that's where my emotional self ultimately comes down.
I was in Washington, D.C. this weekend for my good friends' baby shower. Last night, I was having drinks at a ludicrous bar of the kind that I never, ever attend in New York. It seems that in the Summer, going out in D.C. often entails being surrounded by hordes of interns in their early 20s, and we'd wound up at some hot spot for this clientele. We'd snagged a big table in a bay window, right near the entrance, and thereby got to look at literally every single person who walked into the club, like some sort of pre-screening committee. Best moment: this guy started pointing and giving me a "thumbs-up" at my recently-acquired (he didn't know that) Moog Prodigy t-shirt, and when I pointed at him and pantomimed "playing synthesizer", with a questioning look on my face, he and his presumed girlfriend both started nodding and rocking out on the Air Keys. That is an amazing response for someone wearing a recently acquired synthesizer t-shirt to receive - total, awesome validation.
Anyway, while having these drinks, one of my friends, who is far far far from a musician, but is very very very smart and thoughtful, asked me about my upcoming projects. I told him about The Yehudim, and he asked, "is this music that you're writing for yourself, or to make money?" Come again?! I gave him some sort of answer along the lines of "for myself, but I think it could be a pretty successful record, by our weird indie classical standards", and that was that - until this morning, when he brought up that exchange again, over breakfast. He said that he had not meant to imply that there was a weight towards moneymaking as "the right answer" in his question, which is funny because in the music circles in which I travel, and especially in the more academic circles where I used to travel, that's exactly the opposite of how the question would come across. Basically, are you trying to make money, you little bastard, or are you a real artist? But he was explaining away the possible interpretation of "is this serious, by which I mean, will it make money?"
That whole conversation led me to realize that there's a real difference between the way that most of my friends' jobs are aligned, with respect to their income, and how artists' jobs tend to be aligned. Most of my non-artist friends have one job, and one source of income. I have many kinds of activities that I do to make money, from getting commissions to writing film scores to teaching to doing stuff for various organizations to playing shows and more and more. This won't surprise anyone who's an artist and reading this, but it's just not the way most people break down their lives. It's like being a handyman, or a tinkerer, or perhaps a down-on-his-luck drifter or even a hired goon (they must have multiple sources of income). And so for people with normal jobs, these questions about particular projects don't come up in the same way, not because people don't have different aspects or duties of their job that might be more or less rewarding, or more or less in line with their life-goals or aspirations, but simply because those different aspects or duties are not compensated separately from any others. It's all on one paycheck. So if I signed up for a job called "independent composer" and it paid me a (terrible) salary and included all the scattered work I currently do, any of the "good" things (like writing for The Yehudim) would be linked up with the presumably "bad" things (like writing music for a movie - not actually that bad). That's The Job - take it or leave it. But of course that's not how it is, and I could theoretically take away the things that I less like doing, while keeping the other things in place. And then? Then I would be completely broke. But the point is, you see, I have a choice!
It's useful to step back and look holistically at one's career, when it's so scattered among different activities. I think artists tend to think of the decisions they make as discrete, unconnected to the broader threads of their life, and sometimes people beat themselves up for it. If you look at all your activities as part of what it means to be "an artist", or whatever you call yourself, then it all makes more sense, and starts to look more familiar.
This line of thought intersects with another interesting conversation I had last week, in which I was asked to defend the following position: it is good to release albums that will not cover their own costs through sales. My perspective is that an album, in today's world of the music business, cannot be seen as an isolated product that itself must be profitable. Nor does that mean that an album is, to go back to my D.C. friend's unfortunately imposed binary, "for yourself". It's "for" the people who might enjoy your music, and you don't know who they are. It's certainly "for" the people who you want to come to your live shows, and it's also "for" the people who might commission you to write new work or hire you to perform in some other context. Taking those audiences out of the equation, and thinking of an album's worth only in terms of its ability to turn a profit, is inaccurate and unproductive for most artists' careers. There's an interesting follow-up question, though, and it gets at something that Malcolm Gladwell wrote about recently in The New Yorker. Should we be giving more of this music away for free? I don't know the answer to that question, but it's something that I think more artists, including New Amsterdam artists, should and will consider. More than anything, the goal of making a good recording is to have as many interested people as possible hear that recording, and thereby become impressed with you. If giving music away achieves that end, there's a strong case to be made in favor of that approach. On the other hand, while our artists don't necessarily make a lot of money from their records, they make some, and as the scene grows, they'll make (presumably) more. Is that worth giving up? And is there anything to be said for not "devaluing" an artistic product this way?
Food for thought...
One more point to make. There was recently an article in NewMusicBox about record labels, and one of the labels they discussed was New Amsterdam. Bill was quoted as saying the following:
"When I got out of school, I wanted to spend all day writing music and anything else was a distraction. But coming into the office every day, even on my flexible schedule, has been great for me as a composer. It keeps me in touch and bombarded by great ideas. And there's a healthy sense of competition because you'll hear a great record by a friend and it helps you stay in reality, and to know what it takes to really get something out there in the market place. You've got to pack up a van [for a gig] but also pack up recordings and mail them."
I really like that. The title of this post is "what's my job", and the easy answer is that my "job" is to write music, and therefore anything else is ancillary or merely supportive in the income-generating sense. And it's true that, like a rat in a cage with a food-providing lever to press, if given the option, I'd probably spend much more (or all) my time writing music. But helping to create NOW Ensemble and New Amsterdam have been rewarding, not for financial reasons, but because they are uses of my time that I believe tangibly effect change, both in the relationship between my own music and listening audiences, and in that relationship for many other musicians. I am happy to have a healthy balance in my life between the vague world of art-making and the tangible world of art-supporting, and Bill's right when he says that this balance winds up having unexpected positive consequences for our artmaking, too.
Do you remember What White Men Look Like? I do! With that in mind, how happy was I today to receive a new photo spread from the New York Philharmonic with no white men in it at all. And it's even a photo spread about photo spreads. Witness:
In place of White Men, we have a) a sunset, b) wine and shoes, c) an Asian Family, and d) a dog with cheese and strawberries. I wonder if any of these will be seen on stage at Avery Fisher this year? ("join us for a landmark performance of Mahler's Symphony No. 5, featuring the New York Philharmonic podium debut of the Lee Family", or "rediscover the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto in a stunning new interpretation by a Dog With Cheese and Strawberries", etc.)
I'm actually a little bit excited to see the winners of the "Best NYC Moment" category. What's YOUR "Best NYC Moment"? This can be a reader's poll.
OK, as promised, some annotated pictures are here. Let me point out where I am, to further highlight what a bad photographer I am - in the previous post's sense of the term (i.e. I always forget to bring my camera or use it in appropriate settings). I am in Williamstown, staying with Brad for a Works-In-Progress residency where I am a composer-in-residence at Mass MoCA. Brad has an amazing new choir called Roomful of Teeth, and I've been commissioned to hang out with the choir and write them some new repertoire, along with the always-incredible Rinde Eckert, as well as one of Brad's students and a few members of the ensemble. The idea of Roomful of Teeth is to be a vocal ensemble that incorporates vocal techniques from all different cultures in the world, and across different styles of music, into a discrete chamber choir. Holy shit, right? As it turns out, the experience has been different than we anticipated - there's simply too much that's new for us (or me, at least) to successfully internalize all the styles that this vocal ensemble is capable of producing - in theory, the entire gamut of human vocal technique - in such a short period of time. Which isn't to say that we haven't been able to make some awesome music. My two new pieces are hot, and they are really fresh to my ears. As I said to Brad tonight, if I had had more time to work with the singers to find what I wanted, I probably would have stayed closer to home, musically. But since I had to work with where they are, now - and they have just come together in the past three weeks to learn these different techniques and work with one another - we are all in the same position, learning what these instruments can do. It's a great, great experience and I will be writing a lot more for the group. Send them a check if you like the idea - they are a non-profit and they will use the money well.
Anyway, I have ZERO pictures of the group in action! Amazing, right? Tomorrow I will take some (or so I say now). Instead, I have tons of pictures of dogs. To be fair, there's an epic meeting that's taken place this week. Brad was the one who introduced me to Rinde, as he's been a fan of Rinde's for years. So much so, in fact, that his family named their dog after him. So I knew Dog-Rinde before I knew Man-Rinde. (When I met Man-Rinde, at Steve and Sarah's wedding, I told him, "I'm used to saying your name in a command voice, like 'Rinde, get out of there!'" I think he was amused by this. And this week, we finally got to see the meeting of the two Rindes (Margot, Man-Rinde's dog, is the golden retriever; Rinde is in the foreground):
For some reason, most of my pics are of Rinde (Man) and Margot (Dog). For example, here's a nice one at Mass MoCA:
Margot has a very funny way of sitting, sometimes, where she splays out like a bearskin rug and uses a stuffed animal, held in her jaws, as a pillow - she props up her face on the pillow in her mouth. Like so:
Dogs are not the only animals in Brad's house. Here is Bela the kitten, who has been wreaking havoc all week, taking a moment of rest in a very inconvenient but cute location (that's mine, yes):
We have also been doing some cooking. Tonight I made Adzuki beans with Kale, along with some sauteed mushrooms. I almost got Brad and Betsey's son, Wilder (my main man), to eat them, but I think I used a little too much vinegar. Mae (their wonderful, beyond-precocious daughter) enjoyed them, though. Here are the pre-soak beans, one of my favorite sights, and somehow, quintessentially Japanese in appearance:
I know I promised some Pig Roast pictures but mine are terrible. Seriously. Like, here's Eliza in the car:
Great. And here's Abi at the house:
Elucidating, I'm sure. Enough. So, finally, my favorite time of day, from a house where some supportive music fans/board members had us all over for dinner:
I will strive to take better pictures, going forward.
I think Twitter is fine and all but I won't do it. I don't have time, and I already have enough outlets for expression. Like, you know, in music and stuff, and also right here. However, everyonceinawhile I have a strange need to tell everyone something very very small, like this that will follow, something so music-nerdy and so unimportant to most people that I feel almost ashamed of my excitement. And it feels like that is What Twitter Is For. Ready?
I cannot believe that Sibelius does not have a Filter Lyric shortcut, and that I had to just make one! But having made it (option-L), life just became much, much easier.
That is today's big announcement. Also, I just got a new camera and it immediately broke, due to no fault of my own. I have not yet mastered the art of taking pictures, which is not to say "I am a bad camera operator", though I am, but to say that I do not remember that I own a camera, and so after spending a weekend at my annual Pig Roast in the gorgeous hills of central Vermont, I have 7 pictures to show from the trip, all taken in the car ride out. Granted, some of the events of the weekend are much better off not having been photographed, but I think that there will be some good pictures coming from my friends who actually remembered to take them.
I will post some bad pictures from the past week, though. Next post.
So now I'm 30, and feeling fine. What a depressing post that last one (not the one about the dance concerts, this one, before it) was! Let's chalk it up to "pre-turning-30 blues". That stretch, leading up to a societally-defined-as-the-end-of-something occasion, is kind of terrifying. You feel like you are in some weird ritual sacrifice, with people in masks on either side of the long road on which you are slowly walking, as drums and chanting dictate the pace of your gait, and you can't see the end but you know you're going to be strapped down to an altar and have whatever it is that represents your youth and vitality and relevance stripped out and served whole and beating to the Gods. And then you walk the many, countless steps to the top of the pyramid and when you get there, there's a platform that you walk through, and then a kind lady points you to an escalator, and you get on, and in like 2 minutes you're back on the ground, in your life again, and feel a little ridiculous for being afraid at all, back there in whatever that was that happened. So here I am, having just taken the escalator down. Hey everyone!
This has been an odd week, almost like the end of something. One amazing thing that happened was that I was interviewed by one of my absolute favorite musicians, Hilary Hahn, for a podcast series that's going to appear later this year. I used the word "amazing" not just because it's one of my go-to action words, but because I really was amazed by it. People in the Arts tend to be very protective of their image, especially when that image has been managed and cultivated and they have a huge public persona. Hilary could easily be one of these people, since she's a major touring artist who flies all over the world giving recitals and playing with orchestras, and she won a Grammy and she was Artist of the Year in Gramophone or something, and she is generally considered one of the best Classical musicians in the world. This has Potential Diva written all over it. But no, instead, here are some things that she does: she keeps a blog from the road, talking about the life of a classical touring artist; she has a Twitter feed that's written from the perspective of her violin case; she won her Grammy by recording one of the hardest, thorniest violin concerti from the 20th century, by Arnold Schoenberg; she's currently championing the work of Charles Ives in a very thoughtful and profound way; and yes, she interviews composers (or is starting to), in what I perceive (based on her questions to me) to be an effort to make contemporary composers seem approachable and interesting to her more conservative, Classical fan base. Um, yes. Why this is amazing is not just that it's quirky and charming and really positive from a social and educational and being-open-minded perspective, but it's also a set of behavior that undermines the potential for a kind of Elusive Distance that many celebrated classical musicians seem to want, and which Artists often demand. Hilary Hahn is making herself available as a resource to her fans and to the broader musical community, not merely as a great musician who stands on a pedestal, playing the violin, but as a real-life human being who has experiences and thoughts and emotions. That is awesome and my 18-year-old self who totally had a music crush on her back in the day would be really psyched to find out that she is cool in real life, too. And yes, she continues to be rather exceptional at playing That There Violin.
Taking this kind of open, light, constructive approach towards one's public image is not only refreshing but also seems to be more and more common. I think that a lot of this has to do with the fact that artists like Hilary can take more direct control over the interface(s) between themselves and the public. Nico is the same way - where else would we be experiencing this, if not via the Magick of the Blogg? Last night, he and Nadia and I recorded the first-ever Bourbon Roundtable for New Amsterdam, moderated by our smart and super-capable intern, Ellis. I won't go into what was said, since it's going to exist in another medium, soon enough, but it was a free-flowing conversation among friends that yielded insights and descriptions and other such things that could not have been possible if it were anything but a conversation among friends. If you need a magazine to come interview you in order to have a public persona, it's going to wind up being more cultivated and distanced than if you are talking directly to Your People through Your Website, or talking with your friends through a trusted quasi-3rd-party outlet. The kind of mediation that used to be necessary for artists to have a robust public life is not entirely gone, of course, but it's severely diminished by the direct communication outlets that are now available. And with that, artists are letting down their defenses a bit, and being less standoffish or withholding. I just realized that a precursor to this kind of new relationship is Glenn Gould - his writings and his films and all his weird stuff were a way for him to circumvent the usual means-of-interaction between him and the listening public. I bet that Gould would have had a totally awesome blog if he had been alive in the Internet Era.
One interesting note here is that in all the cases I'm describing, it's not as if there's no mediation at all - instead, it's a replacement of mediation-by-Media (yikes, sorry) with mediation-by-self. What imposes mediation as necessary in a relationship? Are all relationships mediated, or just those that begin - and perhaps end - with artwork, or something else beyond the personal domain? I'll leave that as a thought-question for now, but it has been interesting to meet a number of famous people in the course of the past few years, people whose relationships with the public are necessarily highly mediated, and to find that any celebrity-intrigue that I may have once had (not that there was ever much) has truly and utterly disappeared. Perhaps it's just that I'm really very happy with my own work, and with the group of incredible artists who I am privileged to call my colleagues and friends, such that I have no striving for something beyond the life that I'm currently living. When the people whose work you care most about are already your friends, and when you are confident in your own abilities and direction as an artist, you really have no need to put anyone on a pedestal. That is healthy and I'm glad to find myself there as I enter my fourth decade.
On Thursday, Friday, and Saturday of this week, I'll be having my work, The Night Gatherers, performed at Grace Church Van Voorst in Jersey City. The concert will be given by Con Vivo, with special guest Nadia Sirota, and will be presented by the amazing dancers of Nimbus Dance Works. You can check out my calendar page for a map and directions - it should be a really good show, and it's not far from the city. This is the first time that my work has been presented with dance since, I believe, my sister Lael danced to a MIDI composition I wrote, called "Green Blues", back in the early 1990s. I doubt that this performance will be as cute as that one, but the level of professionalism should be at least as high.
Even by my lofty standards of checking-out, this space has been neglected for way too long. The escalating par of busy-ness - which those looking for a culprit in The Case of Judd's Non-Posting might look to as a key suspect - is a serious concern for me these days. I had a thought while walking around, recently: am I becoming a more boring person? Certainly, to some extent, this is the case. The question is, to what extent? And the follow-up is, can I do anything about it? The reason that I am becoming more boring is simply that more of my life, as a percentage, is occupied with fewer things than ever before. This is a function of moving on in life, and focusing one's interests and priorities, but many people find ways to maintain a breadth of knowledge and interests beyond their vocation or even their passion. I might even say that most people do this, or at least, most people I know. My consumption of non-musical cultural products is way down, and my ability to cultivate moderate fluency in topics outside of my vocation is minimal. I rarely finish books or see movies or watch good TV or even find new things on the internet. It's rare for me to hit up a museum or a gallery, and my dance and theater exposure is pretty much limited to friends' productions. I read a number of blogs and good magazines religiously, but these are starting to feel more like a tether to the outside world than a series of information sources that can be put into play with a variety of others.
One of my goals for 2009 was to do more "stuff", like, not just going to concerts, but returning to earlier (for me) forms of cultural and social activity - going to museums, films, lectures, readings, etc. So far, 2009 has been a disaster from this perspective, with no real increase in any of those activities. And so, I am becoming more boring. I know a lot about music, and about the logistics of my segment of the music industry, and I like to ask questions and talk about other people's interests and knowledge, so it's not hopeless, but - I palpably feel my lack of interesting experience when I enter into conversations these days, and it is a sickening, sinking feeling. Is this what the next phase of life will look like? A self-aware, hand-tied diminishing of intellectual and cultural engagement? Is that Mary Martin I hear singing, off in the distance?
Anyway, this somewhat depressing post is my entryway back into the world of public discourse, which will hopefully include some writing about those highly focused experiences that I have had. And perhaps that will prod me into having some new kinds of experience. Let's go!
So much going on right now. Actually, right now I am sitting in JFK Terminal 5, drifting on about 3 hours of sleep, waiting to get on a flight to Chicago, as Cedric the Entertainer yells on the overhead TV that he's about to "own this city". I'm sort of reminded of that scene in Sleeper where they're showing Woody Allen some clips of TV from his time, asking what various things were used for, and the only explanation they can come up with for Howard Cosell is that he was shown as punishment to convicted criminals.
Last night, Nadia and friends - I'm one of them - put on a show to celebrate the release of her CD on New Amsterdam, first things first. It went amazingly well, and was exactly the big-group-hug that befits Nadia and the CD itself. I debuted a new work for Moog and viola, and the Chiara String Quartet joined Nadia to play The Night Gatherers. All in all, it was a really special and memorable evening.
Lots more to write about but I have to board a plane, and happily take leave of Mr. The Entertainer.
Sometimes it's fun to feel like you're "in America". That's certainly how I felt a couple of hours ago, when I took a walk around the large shopping complex in Kingston, NY, a complex (is that the right word?) that includes the hotel in which I am staying, while up at Bard for this choral/compositional workshop with Dawn Upshaw and Osvaldo Golijov. Sometimes the sidewalk ends quite dramatically, and not in the Silversteinian sense - when you run out of big-box stores, there's no more pedestrian option. Just the automobiles: thus, America! New York never really feels like "America" to me, but then I go to Jackson Heights and I remember that there's no more genuinely American place in the entire country, if you take America in its best possible sense.
Everyone here is pretty awesome, including Dawn and Osvaldo. The singers with whom I am working are incredible, as is the band, and I think this is the best piece I've ever written. I have also been hanging with David, and Paola Prestini and her adorable son, as well two of my new favorite musicians, Jeremy and Olga, who are doing a project together on the same show as mine, this Sunday at Zankel. And many other great people. I am too lazy to look up any of the relevant links but come to the show, it will be very wonderful (click "when" and the links should magically present themselves). Actually, I am not "lazy", I need to go work on some very pressing matters which will present themselves soon.
But first - how awesome is this? Our two new releases comprise two of the three Soundcheck picks of the week, and the third is St. Vincent's new album (which, by the way, I can't wait to hear)? This is the kind of thing that makes me proud of my friends and happy for certain often-very-stress-causing decisions I have made in the last few years.
I strongly disagree with much of what this essay (which includes a review of the NOW Ensemble show at MATA last month) has to say, but it's incredibly well-written and thought-provoking, and definitely worth a read. This is the kind of writing that I would hold up as a perfect example of why blogs are not merely fun and interesting, but also serious and important.
I meant to post this a few weeks ago, on April 10, but then I got caught up in a few things. OK, a lot of things. Here's my announcement that I just sent out to my e-mail list, which I imagine most of you reading this are on:
It would be hard for me to overstate the significance of the next month, as a culmination of this year's activities. I hope that you'll be able to join me for some of the very exciting events that will be taking place.
First, I hope that everyone is aware of the Undiscovered Islands festival that New Amsterdam Records and Galapagos Art Space are co-presenting. This has been the main focus of my work life this year, and the results have frankly surpassed even my own expectations, going in. I highly recommend all the shows, which are Friday nights from May 8 through May 29, and can be read about in detail here. You'll recognize many of the names there, including NOW Ensemble, which is premiering a huge, amazing work by composer Missy Mazzoli and filmmaker Stephen Taylor, with soprano Abigail Fischer, on May 29. That night also has the preview premiere of Bill's new project, Television Landscape. You're not going to go to THAT? Or are you telling me you're going to skip the premiere of Sarah Kirkland Snider's beautiful Penelope, with the incredible new music mini-orchestra, Signal? Or So Percussion? Or the record release for Darcy James Argue's Infernal Machines, which was just written up in Newsweek? (I make an appearance in that article, as well.)
In terms of my own musical involvement with the festival, May 15 is the record release of Nadia Sirota'sfirst things first, an album that I co-produced and which features debut recordings of two works that are very important to me, along with music by my friends Marcos Balter and Nico Muhly. I obviously recommend the album, which you'll be able to purchase at the show, or afterwards on the New Amsterdam site and elsewhere. Nadia is an incredible player and the album is simultaneously diverse in its soundworlds and unified in its spirit. The release show itself will be quite spectacular, including a host of special guest appearances by the Chiara Quartet, performing my own The Night Gatherers with Nadia, as well as itsnotyouitsme, Clarice Jensen, and Nico. As if this weren't all crazy enough, I'll be debuting some new music for Nadia and me performing on my Moog. So I'll see you there. Get your tickets here.
Next: one week from this Sunday, on the fine afternoon of May 10, at 3:00 post meridian, I invite you to Zankel Hall (the sleek and modern-ish new music space in the Carnegie Hall family) for the premiere of Vayomer Shlomo, my big new work for 3 singers, violin, 2 cellos, electric guitar, electric bass, piano and 2 percussion. Ready for the boring-sounding premise? Vayomer Shlomo is a philosophical/musical rumination on the meaning of the King Solomon story, and the texts ascribed to him by later writers. OK, wake up. The thing is, it's also my most successful integration of a number of musical influences - Afro Beat, 70s Steve Reich, and western vocal technique. Doesn't that sound a lot more interesting? Seriously, this piece is no joke. It's my new style and it doesn't sound like anything I've ever written. Come check it out (tickets here). This show is part of the Carnegie Hall Professional Training workshop, with Dawn Upshaw and Osvaldo Golijov, and there are actually 2 shows with different works on both - so you should go to the previous night's concert, as well, since it has some really good composers, including my friend David Little.
OK, one more thing for now (though I warn you that there will be much more coming in June). Remember REWIND and TRACES? Now, from the same creative organization, comes FLECTION, a very different kind of show. FLECTION will feature the world premiere of my first orchestral compositions in five years, in a specific context: the show as a whole is a kind of refraction of Samuel Barber's Adagio, with me, Paul Fowler, and Paul Haas all writing works in response to that composition. The works are presented twice: first, within the structure of the Barber itself, and then as a continuous, new work. It's an admittedly strange concept, in some ways even more so than the past Sympho shows. But I think it will produce really compelling results. The music is all extremely dramatic, and the new compositions speak to the Barber and to each other in a compelling fashion. Paul Haas always makes these events into seriously engaging shows, and Le Poisson Rouge, while not as majestic as Angel Orensanz, is certainly a vibrant place to hear orchestral music. Tickets are not cheap but not any more crazy than other orchestral concerts, and may be obtained on the Sympho website, which also has lots more information about the show. Student tickets are also available for the 2nd night.
June will include a dance performance, a big series of vocal works for a very exciting new ensemble, and more. Summer features some live shows and my first-ever appearance at the Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music. And the Fall will just change everything, for me, at least. But that's way ahead of where we are now. Enjoy the Spring and avoid the piggy flu!
Bill and I have been looking at a lot of sites, sorting out the possible future for New Amsterdam with regards to distribution. I'll tell ya, it's a crazy world out there, folks. You see things like this (this is an actual record cover):
In the world of classical music record labels, I have to say that New Amsterdam seems a bit like Bob Dylan in Don't Look Back. That's not an analogy that I would use lightly, but I think it's appropriate. Still, I very much like the idea of "mainstreaming" New Amsterdam, and that has to come from the classical and non-classical sides. It's been great to see groups like itsnotyouitsme and QQQ reach wider, non-classical audiences, but our core fan base is still on the classical side right now, which is also cool.
I just played a show with Young Lions on Tuesday, and now I'm working on a film score. More details on that as we move closer to release. Meanwhile, people have been asking me about the Carnegie Hall concerts on May 9 and 10, and I am sorry to say that I still do not know which day my piece will be played. i promise that an announcement will come out as soon as I have more information. But given the caliber of the composers involved, you should come both days, anyway!
Come to the NOW Ensemble show this Friday night (7:30)! I won't be having a piece played, but the show will be really excellent. It's at le Poisson Rouge, and tickets may be purchased here.
In one of Rachel Maddow's shows this week, journalist Matt Taibbi was briefly on to talk about his new article in Rolling Stone, in which he describes the power grab being untaken by Wall Street insiders. In the course of the interview, this exchange took place:
Rachel Maddow: Is the solution, broadly speaking, to stop believing that Wall Street guys, like Goldman Sachs guys, are the only ones who have the expertise to fix this? To just not defer our oversight to people who say that we ought to trust them?
Matt Taibbi: I think it can be proven with scientific certainty that the one group of people that we know, absolutely, is not competent to lead us out of this crisis is that group of people. They got us into this mess, and they've proven, time and time again, that their solutions to all these problems are not the right solutions.
He goes on to rightly say that we need new ideas, new people at the table, and so on. All true, and I don't disagree with the general, important points that he and others have made. Read his article; it's a little sketched but is worth a look. What he's describing will shock anyone who thinks that business interests work on behalf of the American people; the reason that any of us think that is because those interests have been so successful at bringing that message to us in subtle and unsubtle ways. Of course, I doubt that anyone, at this point, still believes such a message, but Taibbi's article brings the Disaster Capitalism idea a little closer to home. A lot closer, actually.
But this isn't what I find interesting, at the moment. What bugs me about Taibbi's comment is that it reflects a strangely illogical idea that's been floating around, namely that the business leaders and financial experts who created the current predicament are the least qualified people to extricate ourselves from it. This notion confuses ability with incentive, and assumes that the incentives of those business leaders and financial experts were aligned in such a way as to lead them to sustainably grow the American economy. Obviously, they were not. Their goals were to make themselves rich, which is more or less what you'd expect from people who go into business in the first place. Why expect otherwise? The next question is, were these people skilled and successful at the goals that they set out to achieve? Absolutely. They brought massive wealth gains to themselves and to their associates. But if their incentive structure had been aligned differently, or (more likely) if there had been a system in place that herded their behavior in directions that ultimately benefited the American economy and people, there's good reason to believe that these people would be among the most qualified - assuming certain things, like the continuity of the Capitalism system.
The main point is that there's a distinction that needs to made about systems and individuals. Our media landscape is about as individual-obsessed as can be, and there's been a near-total loss of public discourse about systems, until the collapse of our System-comma-Global-Financial. Even here, though, people like Taibbi are focusing, whether they realize it or not, on the individual actions of the people who "got us into this mess", rather than the systemic failure. This is the same problem that we've seen in various Obama issues, as his supporters trust him too much, and ignore the responsibilities to fixing the system that he is abdicating. As Gleen Greenwald has said, time and time again, even if you believe that Obama is himself 100% devoted only to the best possible course of action, you don't want him to leave office without fixing the system in such a way that future, less positively-inclined leaders are constrained from doing things like, you know, torturing people, or spying on Americans without warrants, or anything else that would have caused our Founding Fathers to bite their thumb at you.
In the case of the financial mess, it may very well be that the individuals who got us in are the best people to get us out - again, I say for the benefit of my Lefty friends, assuming we're talking about continuing to work within the same capitalist system as before. Look, is Gollum the best person to get Frodo to Mordor? Totally. But he has an incentive problem - he wants the ring. One get the sense that he was eminently capable of leading Frodo around that giant spider, but he deliberately set the stage for what he hoped would be Frodo's murder, because he wanted the spider to leave behind His Precious. If you could step back from the story and fix elements of it to help Frodo, you'd want to constrain the system of his journey in such a way so that even if Gollum wanted to lead him to death, there would be safeguards preventing him from doing so. This is not an unfamiliar concept - it's what we call "law". Or, in the case of financial systems and other such large-scale enterprise, "regulation".
So do I like Larry Summers and his Goldman cronies? No. Do I think they are corrupt? Yes, insofar as they work within the system to maximize profits for themselves and their friends. Do I think there are people who would do otherwise in that position? Yes. But do I want to rely on having people like that - altruistic individuals - in positions of authority, in order for the system not to fuck us again? Absolutely not. I want a robust regulatory framework that would function more or less fine with even Bernie Madoff at the helm. And then I would like to put, at said helm, some people who really really really understand how the system works. For better or for worse, that description certainly applies to many of the people so vilified by Taibbi, et al. I understand the sentiment he's expressing, the anger and the frustration, and I share it, but the logic doesn't add up.
Did anyone else see the lead picture in this New York Times article and think it was amusing? Maybe I'm just overly enamored with A) maps and B) the absurdity of media culture, but this picture is almost an archetype for a certain kind of image that you see a lot in newspapers and magazines. The headline here is "A Web Site's For-Profit Approach to World News", and it's in the Business section, so the keywords are For-Profit and World News. Well, what better to illustrate this idea than, you know, putting a couple of guys in business-y attire (one Old and Traditional, one Young and Modern), in front of a world map?! Is this actually a part of their work day? Do they use this Big Map to decide where their 65 journalists should be stationed? If someone can guarantee that this is the case, I will strongly consider becoming a Passport subscriber (read the article, it's actually an interesting model).
Relating this slightly to my own life, the reason this feels archetypical is that it's something you see even in Arts coverage. The photographer will come to your studio or your show or whatever it is, and will have a very limited grasp of what is going on. All they know is that their picture should illustrate the concepts that they have been given - so in this case, they're like, hey, why don't you stand in front of that map over there. And look like you're talking about something. Or maybe they actually were talking about something in front of the map and then the photographer was like, "this is it!" and snapped a dozen shots and here we are today.
I have a whole thing that I want to say about media culture, but I also have a whole "April 1 deadline" so that's not for right now.
But PS: after Alex kindly linked to my post about John Adams's comments re: young composers, a number of people were like "I didn't know you had a blog", or "why don't you have comments", or "why does your blog look like it's from some earlier form of the Internet". All these things are connected. I am committed to the layout and design of my website, which Sam designed for me back in 2004. I wrote him a piece and took him out to dinner, he made me a nice website. (What a country!) This was, mind you, before the Wordpress craze, before blogger.com, etc. etc., and we didn't build a blog, in the new sense of the term, into our website design. Now, I would love to add all those Fancy Features to my site, but I don't want to create an external blog. If there is a kind soul out there who can painlessly design a blog-gy page that still looks like Sam's design, with the Who/What/etc. headers, and the Yellow, then please e-mail me and maybe I will take you to dinner or write you a piece or something, too!
Self-perception is a topic that has come up a lot for me, in the past few years. A good friend of mine has an advanced degree in social psychology, and would for a time send me studies about self-perception (among other things) that were simultaneously obvious and startling. I of course can't remember any right now, and if I go a-hunting I will get lost in the vortex of E-mails Past, but the general gist of the thing was usually "we are totally wrong about everything that we think about ourselves". One of the Findings in Harper's last month was something like "we are all less attractive than we think we are", or some such example of that general rule about self-perception.
What brought this topic presently to mind was being sent this video, which you must watch in its entirety for the point to be fully made (it's only like a minute and half long, but do not fast forward or anything).
update: I have taken down the embedded video that was here before, because it had a bad tendency to automatically start playing, and that was annoying. Expert Village, please clean up your act, you just cost yourself an embedded video!
What's happening here? Does the guy actually believe that he has just done what he set out to do? Does he view the tape and somehow does his brain edit out the train wreck that occurs? I cannot believe that anyone could tape that, watch it, and think anything other than "you know what, I'm just going to do that one over again," if not "I am totally unqualified to do what I am aiming and purporting to do in this video series."
This is obviously not something totally exceptional. Half of the things I am sent via the magic of the Internet are examples of how-could-this-be-happening behavior, such as, I don't know, this (HT Miss Modal). But of course, that example I just sent is something ridiculous where you get the sense that the person making it is either A) in-the-know about how strange this is, or B) harmlessly insane. You could have a candid conversation with him about why he thought it was a good idea to be making a fool of himself, and he would say, I am not making a fool of myself, I am showing the world how to reach your potential, and that would pretty much be that. Whereas with our pianist friend, above, the question is open, as to how that conversation would go. Is it a matter of him just not really giving a damn? Or is it a gap in perception? Is his self-perception so bad that we could all do him the favor of explaining how his work looks to everyone else?
What's new with the internet is that people "post" things, whatever that means in a given case, and unlike in real life (where you don't know when you have spinach in your teeth, or your pants fit you badly, or whatever), they put themselves in the same position as spectators that everyone else is in. If I make a massive typo in this blog entry and then leave it unfixed, you know that it wasn't an issue of my not being able to see it - it's up there for everyone to see, myself included. Art has always been the way that the internet is, now. I make art, and I more or less have the same vantage point on it as my audience, unless I need to be on stage, performing, for it to happen. Certainly, composers and painters and filmmakers and playwrights can all sit or stand and take in their work in the same exact way as the general audience - except for our experience making the work, which complicates that relationship. But this is part of the point: one of the marks of a good artist is being able to separate your experience in making work from the made product, itself. It's still something that I'm getting better at, and it's easier in some pieces than in others. Conceptual artists often avoid this problem by making their process part of the work. This is much less interesting to me, but obviously some great work has resulted from it (arguably, this is the origin of "Minimalist" music, though I might dispute such a claim).
I often find that my response to new music, specifically of the "classical" variety, resembles my response to the piano video, above. I hear it, and it's not that I think, "what a train wreck" - more often, I simply think, "why did you think that this needed to be written?" Or "how could you be satisfied with that result?" Those questions sound incredibly cruel, and if put to the artist, they would be, but I am being honest about what is often going through my head, as a very sincere question. I'm not saying that the work necessarily does not need to be in the world, or that it could not be satisfying to some listener, but I am perplexed by the perceptual gap between me and the artist (or, to be charitable, between me and the intended community of listeners). In other words, it's a question about the self-perception of art by the artist. It's not really akin to the piano video, where the guy simply fails at what he says he is trying to do, but there's an insidiousness to the impossibility of that kind of failure, in art - perhaps now, more than ever, when the possibilities of art are limitless, the boundaries are exploded, and everything is subjective. The elephant in the room is that most of the art being made is really bad - and anyone would probably acknowledge this, as a simple statistical probability, but it's never addressed or used as ammunition for saying that a work of art "fails" in the way that the piano video does. We are so protective of the freedom to make art that we let the dilution of the artistic community (or communities) run unchecked. And what have we reaped, as a result? A world of art that resembles nothing so much as the savannah without predators, a limitless field of massive resource scarcity and survival of everyone, not just the fittest.
With this image and description in mind, it's tempting to say that I would like to see some people fail, not through the slow attrition of poverty and lack of acclaim, but by being cut off earlier in the process, by being told, you should not be a professional artist. But then, we all love the stories of now-famous artists being told they were no good: of Ravel never receiving the Prix de Rome, of the Slonimsky Lexicon, of various responses to Modernism, and back through the ages. The moral? Always: critics and audiences know nothing, and true artists persist through the struggle and failure and find a way to make their work. Whether or not that is a worthy narrative, the more significant critique would be the obvious question of who would be cut off, and who would do the deciding. After all, bored as I may get at too-many concerts, we all know that the cutting edge is here and here and here, and I don't see New Amsterdam Records on that list, so I guess I should go to law school. I always think back to the story of my friend, whose music I love, going to June in Buffalo at some point in the early 90s and being asked by some hostile composers of dreary music if he really cared about composing, if he really loved his music, if this really meant something to him. Those are the guys I'd vote off the island but then, they'd vote me off, too.
So I don't advocate anything rash, and it may be that the predator-free savannah is, in fact, the best of all possible worlds. Despite the glut of mediocrity, and the sense that everyone might be implicated as such by someone else, at least we are free enough to make art at all. But I still wonder how these works, which I find totally devoid of interest, look and sound to the artists who made them. It would be fascinating to know.....if anyone who hates my music wants to get my perspective on a particularly reviled piece of mine, please send me a note and we can correspond. I'm sure I hate your music, too!
So I was doing some research on Hans-Peter Lindstrøm, the Norwegian disco producer, and I found the following reference:
A relative newcomer to the Norwegian dance music scene, this self-professed shy guy and studio recluse caught the disco bug at an early age. "I was 10 years old and my first cassette I found on the street," remembers Lindstrøm. "It was a Boney M album, the one with the naked women on the cover and it's still one of my all-time favorites in terms of production." But Lindstrøm wasn't always so eager to share his disco passion. As a musically talented teen growing up on the rock 'n' roll dominated west coast of Norway, Lindstrøm had to keep his disco jones in check. "At the time I was playing keyboards in a heavy metal band," he recalls, "and they really made fun of me for the disco thing."
OK, so the end of that story is funny for a number of reasons - for one thing, of course, the only genre as ridiculous as disco (and I say this as a giant disco fan) is heavy metal. It's always good when ridiculous people are making fun of someone cool for their "bad taste". Especially in the "rock and roll dominated west coast of Norway". Was disco big on the east coast? And also, why are you playing keyboards in a heavy metal band? What patch were you using? So many questions.
But the most important question here, clearly, is a simple question: who is Boney M?
Who is Boney M...
Imagine, for a second, that you have been taken to an unmarked bar on a side street in Chihuahua, Mexico. And imagine that there is a screen up, playing music videos. And imagine, please imagine, how you would react if this came on:
You'd spit your queso fundido and Indio all over the place, that's what you'd do. I mean, to be fair, the context in which it came on involved so many amazing things, including this (imagine Logan's response):
But anyway, moral of the story = I need to get some Boney M. And Norwegians and Mexicans LOVE BONEY M. Kate Bush is more of a Chihuahua thing.
There are a handful of people who complain when I don't write. It's obviously a nice response, the complaint, but the funny thing is that usually, I have written hundreds of words and not published them because I don't reach the right conclusion; it's a bit like writing music in that way. For example, It took until Draft 18 - that's 18 folders worth of different material, some just sketch-like, some with minutes of music, often fully worked-out with good counterpoint and voiceleading and all the things I care about - before I found something that worked for this Barber-influenced Sympho orchestra piece I'm writing. In other words, that's 17 folders of detritus. Many if not most of my pieces are that way; folders of pencil and paper sketches that go nowhere, discarded looseleaf sheets, folder upon folder of computer drafts. And then, the thing. Now it's been almost a week since I started down that successful, Draft-18 road, and I'm killing myself trying to finish quickly because I need to get on to finishing this Carnegie Hall commission that I started in the Fall. The one nice thing about having lots of drafts is that when the right one comes, you're really primed to write a lot of music, very fast. It's like taking a good warmup jog, getting the muscles in shape. The problem comes if you wind up burning yourself out before the game has even begun.
All of this leads me to a question that I've been pondering, lately, and which was asked of me directly just last weekend: is my writing suffering because of all the commitments I've taken on? Do New Amsterdam and NOW take up so much space and energy that I have become a less good composer? It's a complicated question for the same reason that trying to evaluate any decision one makes, in life, is complicated. I can look back to some spot in my life when I really liked a girl and say, you idiot, why didn't you do something about it - just to choose a classic example - but when I think about it now, I'm imagining either that A) my life now would be better, but not worse, for having made the move, or B) my life now would be exactly the same, but I would simply lose the regret of having passed up a possibility. It's like Steve Mackey says about composers - everyone sees what other people do that they themselves can't, but no one sees what they themselves do well, because they do it without thinking. If I imagine, in my life today, having more time to compose, I think that it would be foolish not to imagine that my works could be a little tighter, slightly more worked-through, a bit more efficient in some places, ornamented in others. Unfortunately, since at least Beethoven's time, we have this idea that a Work can only be "right" in one exact way. We analyze the Work after the fact of its creation, and we find all the perfections contained within. Those perfections would no longer be perfect if they were altered, and so the Work is "correct" as it is, and would be "incorrect" otherwise. This is, of course, total nonsense. A work, in the course of its creation, can go in many different directions that are "right". To look at a work after the fact is like looking at a ciabatta and saying "those ingredients could ONLY have made ciabatta, and thus this was made perfectly." Well, no - the ciabatta may be wonderful, but it was one of many things that could be made with flour, water, yeast, milk. Too much of music history is colored falsely with hindsight - which is why those who cease making music themselves need to check in with those of us who do, from time to time. But I'm digressing because it's late.
To quickly wrap up the point, so I can get to bed - my music is not written to be "right". If I had more time, I would work things out in different ways, and I would get different results. I don't believe they would be uniformly better or worse. Some of my favorite works were written very quickly, and others took a long time to make. Some had massive interruptions in the middle, while others were worked out straight through. I don't see much correlation between any specific aspect of my writing conditions and my own perception of the works' various levels of qualities. So, with more time, I would definitely be less stressed, I would definitely get more exercise, I would probably be happier in the short run, but would the music be better? I can't say. And would it be worth the sacrifice of the institutions I'm building? No, not at all. At this point, even if I were to die tomorrow, I'm very happy to have built New Amsterdam and NOW into the robust organizations they've become. I think they will serve the indie classical community for many years in the future, and as long as I'm around, I will benefit greatly from that - as will my music.
Last night, I went to Miller Theatre to hear the "Composer Portrait" of composer Jefferson Friedman. I know Jeff - he and I are friendly - but that's not why I went to the show. I went because I consider him among the best composers working today, and I was excited to hear a concert of his music - especially given the lineup, which included my very good friends Sam and Eric of Yesaroun' Duo, the incredible Chiara Quartet, and of course, the ever-outstanding ACME, playing with Jeff's old bandmate Craig Wedren. The show did not disappoint, and the really great surprise (not a surprise, I guess, but "new thing") was the total awesomeness of the new songs that Jeff wrote with Wedren. They are fantastic and I can't wait to hear more of them (they are writing more), and if I can get out tonight, I may go to hear them again. They are doing the songs, along with a whole big pile of other things (more of Wedren, more of Jefferson, and...Workers' Union, for some reason), at LPR, and I highly recommend going.
I don't have time to do a full "review" of last night's show, but I will say that any fans of things that are heavy should definitely purchase the new Yesaroun' album, which includes Jefferson's remarkable Crom-Tech songs. I'm listening to it right now and it is kicking my ass, in a good way, though it is hard to write words while Sam screams something that sounds like "aracunda" at the top of his lungs.
Anyway, off to work. Go to the show! Or go to Lisa's.
This is crazy! "Indulgences": that term itself brings me straight back to the decrepit halls of my high school, learning about European history from textbooks that were many years out of date but still did the job, more or less. And part of that job was to teach us that "indulgences" were the root of the great rift that drove apart Europe in the 16th century and for centuries thereafter, between Catholics and Protestants. It is not every day that something so historically important comes and rears its head in these uninteresting times....wait. But "interesting" as these times might, in fact, be, it is still quite rare to encounter a blast from the historical past in that way. I'm trying to think what else has that kind of resonance - or at least, what that is not totally tasteless to joke about might qualify. Seriously, most of the things that are as historically important as "indulgences" are really, really bad, or aren't really topics that could recur - like the cotton gin, or for that matter, the wheel. Are we going to have a rise in idol worship? A tulip craze? These jokes fall flat because, let's face it, there's nothing like indulgences. We all know it. And that's why it's so great to have them back in our lives! (The closest that I ever personally came to this particular historical thread was when I tried to order a Black Bush in a bar and was told that they didn't serve Protestant whiskey. This happened, I'll note, before a similar scene appeared on The Wire. Just saying.)
So it's a non-trivial thing in history, these indulgences. And they were sort of gone, and now they're sort of back, and while you can't buy them (Martin Luther's famous beef), you can get them for a "donation" plus some other good deeds. Is that like how we give wine away for a "suggested donation" at certain music events? This is strange stuff to even discuss, because it's a direct connection between the most and least spiritual and ineffable subjects: the most being heaven and hell and purgatory, and the least being, like, cold hard cash. I guess The Times was a little uncomfortable with the whole thing, so they went down Euphemism Road:
According to church teaching, even after sinners are absolved in the confessional and say their Our Fathers or Hail Marys as penance, they still face punishment after death, in Purgatory, before they can enter heaven. In exchange for certain prayers, devotions or pilgrimages in special years, a Catholic can receive an indulgence, which reduces or erases that punishment instantly, with no formal ceremony or sacrament.
There are partial indulgences, which reduce purgatorial time by a certain number of days or years, and plenary indulgences, which eliminate all of it, until another sin is committed. You can get one for yourself, or for someone who is dead. You cannot buy one - the church outlawed the sale of indulgences in 1567 - but charitable contributions, combined with other acts, can help you earn one. There is a limit of one plenary indulgence per sinner per day.
It has no currency in the bad place.
That reminds me of the scene from Twin Peaks (Missy and I have been watching it - confirming my belief that it is one of the best things ever done, no matter the flaws) in which Mike, the one-armed man, gets off his meds, and is being questioned by Cooper and the cops. He speaks in this odd, affected voice, intoning things with great solemnity and exaggerating most of his words for dramatic effect. He's a great character. One odd moment, though, is what I'm thinking of: they ask him about Bob, and he points to the flyer they've drawn, saying "This is his true face. Few can see it. The gifted....AND THE DAMNED." When my CAPS come in, the camera cuts in close to his face, and he intones the words with the greatest possible gravitas. It's an unintentionally hilarious moment, and I wish that I could hear the NY Times writer take a stab at "it has no currency....IN THE BAD PLACE", because that would be amusing and fitting.
Speaking of unintentional hilarity, I was directed to this, and please do not miss the customer reviews, especially this one (check out the object first).
I'm not sure what's been going on in the past year or so, but there has been a rash of unnecessarily tawdry New Music concert advertisements. First there was this, which set the bar pretty high (not least because of the inclusion of Derek's Coming Together, which I don't think is "about that"):
The word above "music" is "SEX", in case you can't read it. Wait, am I allowed to print that word??
Then there was, more recently, this show, which I attended, and was more racy at the show itself than on the flier:
But today, this one showed up at my house, and I had to scan it because it's just so strange. I really don't understand.
One might wonder, as a good friend of mine did, why none of these concerts about sex have any female composers on them at all, or a host of other things, but I just want to make sure that everyone gets the reference in my subject heading.
Greg Sandow critiques the idea of including arts funding in the stimulus bill, saying that 1) the arts are less important than anything else we might fund, and 2) since people believe point #1, even if you don't, they will respond poorly and initiate a backlash against "the arts" if government tries to give money. Bill likes to talk about how ridiculous it is that when people talk about non-classical music, they inevitably turn to "Britney Spears" as the example, as if top-40 shlock is representative of all music that might fall under the "pop" umbrella. Well, Sandow here is falling into the opposite trap, of presuming that "the arts" need to be represented by major orchestras, opera companies, and other such high-end, totally glam representatives of the music non-profit kingdom. Commenter "GKD" makes the right point:
As Brian pointed out, perhaps in our focus on requests for government funding we ignore an opportunity to evaluate the financial and budgetary culture within prominent arts organizations. Just as the government should hold the banks to certain standards of frugality and reform (and it is not yet holding them to high enough standards), we should expect arts organizations to withhold the bloated salaries that administrators and top-tier performers have come to expect. That they are not comparable to hedge-fund managers' salaries is no excuse for leniency. The fact that Joe Polisi, Jane Gottlieb, Veda Kaplinski and other Juilliard administrators make high 6-figure salaries, and the school undertakes a dubiously necessary 100 billion dollar surface renovation project while students amass monster loans to pay their tuition bills is absurd. This smacks of the opulence and elitism that the public at large has come to associate with the arts. Conductors who profit in the millions while their "nonprofit" organizations seek government funding to pay them is another example of the madness. Never mind that the quality of our work at the highest-profile institutions is too often substandard. We artists cannot in good conscience request outside aid until we have our own houses in order.
I can't add anything to that point, except to say that discussion of "funding the arts" shouldn't hold up the absolutely most egregious examples of over-compensation, pretending that they are the norm. It's incredibly easy to say that "the arts" are frivolous when you're talking about MTT making 1.6 million instead of 2 million. But what if that $400,000, instead of being used to conceptually fund part of MTT's salary, is used to conceptually fund 20 arts education programs for urban centers where arts funding has been slashed in public schools? Or what if it's used to pay security guards to keep the museums open until their usual closing times, rather than reducing the hours to make up for budget cuts? Or what if it's used to fund small arts ensembles that might otherwise go under, as their directors would no longer able to pay their bills and run the organization? These seem like good examples to use - these three - because they illustrate what non-frivolous arts spending looks like. It looks like the growth of vital programs. It looks like the maintenance of basic operational norms. It looks like the continuation of small-scale cultural institutions. And it looks like the immediate, trickle-down economic benefits of funding any business - security guards, cleaning crews, support staff, lunches, dinners, etc., etc. That is what "funding the arts" looks like, in my view.
And then there's point #2, made by Sandow: artists need to be careful, lest our desire for funding provoke a public backlash. Here's an example he gives: "In November, a writer in the San Francisco Weekly scathingly denounced lavish spending by large San Francisco arts organizations, focusing, for instance, on what Michael Tilson Thomas gets paid -- more than $2 million each year, the article said. In response, the president of the Board of Supervisors vowed to cut the symphony's funding." Besides agreeing with the SF Weekly writer and the president of the Board of Supervisors, I'm not sure I see the point here. Oh, wait - it's the same point as #1! Again, we have the inflated salaries and funding structures and donor bases of the major institutions, which, were we to draw attention to them in these difficult economic times, would be exposed as the overinflated prima donna institutions that they are. This all reminds me of those stories of Depression-era fat cats who would dress down and let their houses fall into slight cosmetic disrepair, so as to avoid the undue appearance of flaunting their wealth. In other words: fear of the poor. [Note: an otherwise completely mindless and uninsightful comment from "ariel" on the Sandow post does contain this echo of my own point: "Maybe
the symphony orchestra players should go around in tattered clothes
and look hungry and unshaven"...unfortunately, she uses this to decry the "elitist" notion that arts should be publicly funded, a notion that is certainly fueled by discussions like the one Sandow initiates.]
I didn't realize how gross this all was when I started writing this post, honestly. I was more struck by the oddity of only focusing on orchestras and opera houses, as well as the standard Liberal Cowardly Lion argument that Sandow makes, wanting to preempt a backlash by watering down good policy, much like our current Democrats are rolling over in their efforts to appear palatable to Fox News or other such media outlets. The argument that "we need to be careful when we ask for what we want, because it will get attacked in the press" was one that I always associated with asking for things like the retraction of tax cuts or the drawdown of troops in foreign lands. My response? DON'T BE A CHILD - find a way to make the argument, because you're making the right one. If you can't do that, find another job.
But this is actually much worse. This is a case where the argument itself - not for arts funding, as it ought to be, but "arts funding" as it is, with (as Sandow points out) the top institutions taking most of the money, in a near-replica of our American system of top-heavy wealth accrual - is horribly problematic, and the problem is not one of framing the truth but of framing a formerly unscrutinized fiction that everything is ok. The good commenter, above, says that "We artists cannot in good conscience request outside aid until we have our own houses in order." Well, I think we can do both at once, and I do not feel tied down to the MTTs of the world when I say that I think NOW Ensemble (to pick a random example) should get the money that we have been assigned by the State of New York, instead of having our governor take it away because arts funding is the easiest funding to remove.
To his credit, Sandow seems to understand that there is a distinction to be drawn between different kinds of arts funding, ending his post on a "let's recreate the WPA" note after spending the entire post reinforcing the prevailing notion of elitism. As I wrote below, there are points to be made for and against some kind of new government initiative on the arts, though I don't think that a massive performance subsidy is the answer. Whatever direction we go, there are two steps that I think really need to be taken to fundamentally change the nature of this tired debate, and move it away from the kind of perspective that Sandow is rehashing. The first is the obvious one: we have to look at art as a vital public service, and measure the impact of arts funding in a substantive way that doesn't always favor redundant firehouses (like the kind Bloomberg took heat for trying to close in 2002) or more missiles or ineffective food programs over critical and successful artistic endeavors.
All that points to the second step that needs to be taken: we need to stop seeing non-profit funding, in general, only in terms of the end-user of the allocation. In other words, who is more valuable to society, a third assistant development coordinator at a homeless advocacy institute, or the sole curator of an innovative community arts space? Even if we take as a given that homelessness is a bigger problem than the quality of art that most Americans encounter, and even if we take for granted that cultural institutions have no impact on issues like homelessness through the projects that they run (which could include, say, an exhibition of art about homelessness), there's still a strong case to be made - a convincing one, to me - that the return on investing in an impassioned and committed arts administrator is far higher than that of creating another non-profit job for just-out-of-college liberal arts students who want to "do good in the world" but have yet to fall back on law or business school. Obviously, I'm tremendously biased, here, but what do you expect from a post on my website?
With that in mind, I will say this about myself: it's incredibly hard to gauge the value to society of the music I make, or the music or art that anyone makes. It's incredibly subjective, and it's unclear that the void that would be left in my absence, or the absence of any other artist, would not simply be filled by someone else. I don't really believe that this is exactly true, but I have to grant the pure subjectivity and uncertainty of this position. On the other hand, I am quite confident that without the institutional support that I received from Princeton University for four years, and without some well-timed commissions, I would not have been able to keep building NOW Ensemble or to form New Amsterdam or to start (and end) VIM: TriBeCa or anything else along those lines. I would have taken some job that ate up all that time, and spent the rest of my limited time writing music. My years at Princeton were completely anomalous, relative both to my experience before and after, and especially to the conditions in which most artists and art administrators find themselves. I believe that the institutions that I've helped to build are incredibly valuable, certainly to artists but ultimately (if we do our job right) to society as a whole. If I'm right, then I have value to society as an administrator, and it would be beneficial to society for me to be supported in that capacity. I'm hardly alone in this, and the point is that "funding the arts" does not just mean giving money to violinists or conductors or ballerinas, it means giving money to starving institutions with highly dedicated people running them. That is, in my mind, an extremely efficient use of funds, and I would like to see the dialogue around non-profit funding reflect that, both in terms of how money is spent within fields, and across them.
The recent, embarrassing partisan wrangling in the Senate (to say nothing of the House) has brought my thoughts back to an incredible series of lectures that I attended in 2005, delivered by the great legal scholar, Ronald Dworkin. I have held his thoughts and theories in high esteem - as high as it gets, for me - since encountering his work in college, with his landmark Taking Rights Seriously. The lecture series that he delivered in Princeton was called Is Democracy Possible Here?, and while it answered the posed question in the affirmative, the outlook at the time seemed somewhat grim. Today, although the new, post-partisan political reality that was ambitiously promised by Obama has not quite settled in, and (in fact) doesn't look to manifest itself any time soon, things definitely are more hopeful now than they were for liberals like Dworkin (and me) in 2005. It's not clear whether anything can, at this point, defuse the bedrock partisanship that is at the core of our system; Democrats and Republicans alike have strong incentives to keep hitting the buttons that paint the other side as irresponsible, in the eyes of their base voters, so what would really be to gain by finding common ground?
Dworkin wrote a book, based on the lecture series I attended, which I have not read but which I feel confident recommending. You can purchase it here.
I also wrote Mr. Dworkin a letter; he responded in agreement, which definitely made my day (and then some). I've reprinted the letter below because it makes points that, while they are really just faint echoes of Dworkin's own insights, might be new to some readers, and are worth considering.
Professor Dworkin,
I'm a PhD candidate in the Music department at Princeton University, and I
was in attendance at your excellent lecture series here last Spring. It
was truly one of the more memorable lecture experiences I've had, so let
me first thank you for giving the talks. They were not merely refreshing;
they were, in fact, vital. I have been an admirer of your written work
since College, when Taking Rights Seriously was the cornerstone of a class
I took on American legal philosophy.
I was recently revisiting the topic you presented in your lecture series,
as I was discussing the anti-majoritarian nature of the Senate with my
friend Gabe (a PhD candidate in Philosphy who had asked you about civil
disobedience in the Q&A portion of one of your talks), and he rightly
noted that the Constitution leaves the judiciary as the last resort
against the majoritarian view of Democracy. The Senate, as much as it may
have partially anti-majoritarian elements built into it, was considered
for that task but rejected by the Founders. And so the courts have become
the battleground for various regulations, be they civil rights or
anti-corporate or otherwise, that could not withstand the forces of money
and influence in the elected bodies.
I've always been uncomfortable with the reliance, by the Left, on the
courts to enact civil rights and other regulations, but I've never been
able to understand why until I heard your talk. You suggest that the
proper interpretation of Democracy is as a sort of enterprise of
deliberation - your second model - where the goal is to collectively
create conditions that support equality and personal liberty. I'm enamored
with this definition, though it hardly resembles our government.
The problem, I think, is that as the Left has come to rely on the courts
(perhaps at the institutional "urging" of the Founders) to be the venue
for that deliberation of what is right to do, rather than what is in the
interests of power to do, the Left has let the other branches of
government slip into a majoritarian state of reasoning. Although the
courts were left as the last resort against majoritarianism, I don't
interpret that (and I'm mostly getting this from your theory, with which I
agree) as an abdication of that responsibility in the other branches. In
other words, Congress and, ideally, the Executive branch, should engage
the issues they face in the same way that the Courts (sometimes) have:
with regard to improving the nation, based on the fundamental values of
our society. They should follow a deliberative model, rather than a
majoritarian one.
With the politicization of the Court, and the threats to end the
filibuster in the Senate, it seems that the tide is pushing in quite the
opposite direction from what I'm describing. What I wonder is whether the
emphasis on the Court being the home for a "special" kind of deliberative
process has in some way opened the door for the majoritarianism that is
threatening to tear apart the last remnants of our deliberative history.
Rather than having public debates about the nature of the Court, and its
function, perhaps the focus of the debate should be, more broadly, the
entire government, and its failure to engage in the type of deliberation
that was certainly intended to be the backbone of our political
decision-making. Perhaps we should be pushing the Senate, at the least, to
be more like the Court - for Senators to see themselves as custodians of
our most fundamental principles.
Thanks for reading this far. If you have the time to reply, I would be
most interested in hearing what you have to say.
As anyone who knows me is aware, I love John Adams, though I am uncomfortable with his role as "greatest living composer" or whatever. His output is inconsistent and I've critiqued Doctor Atomic in this space, but his big hits (for me) have been some of the most important works in my life and I am glad that so many people dig his music.
So what is up with this bizarre interview in Newsweek? The first part involves him saying, more or less, nothing, in response to a number of clear, interesting, and reasonable questions. Like, what do you think about the idea of a Secretary of the Arts? (Note: I answered this one below.) Adams's answer: give a little funding to the NEA. Okay...how about, how do we get new listeners in concert halls? Adams's answer: teach kids about classical music. Fine. Boring responses, but whatever....
And then we get to this strange and horrible exchange:
Isn't that changing, to some degree? Aren't composers who cross streams with "indie" or experimental rock - people like Nico Muhly or Caleb Burhans - bringing non-instrumentalists into the concert hall?
But both of those guys, they're highly trained musicians.
Yes, but their fans aren't, necessarily.
Possibly. But there's another side to that. Some of the music that these composers are producing is so simple that it's in danger of dumbing-down. Not necessarily Nico and Caleb. But there are a lot of young composers in their 20s and 30s who are very anxious to appeal to the same audience that would listen to indie rock. But they are creating a level of musical discourse that's just really bland. I don't think it will have a very long shelf life. The bottom line is art really can't be made easy and palatable without simply losing its meaning and importance. I had this conversation with the new executive director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. We all went out to dinner and this fellow said, "I think we should make concerts interactive." Here I am, someone who's always been the renegade. "Wait a minute," I said. "You can't listen to a really important piece of music and have people banging on their BlackBerrys." (my emphasis)
I am dying to know who John Adams is talking about. Seriously, I wish I could know this. When I was a fledgling Master's student at Yale, John Adams came to talk to our composition colloquium, and he volunteered to speak with some of us - students - to check out our work and have a chat. We met in groups of 3, 4, 5 students, playing him our best work and hearing what he had to say. In my group - which may have included my quite-talented friends Dan Kellogg and Nathan Williamson, but I'm not sure exactly - Adams was nothing but supportive, telling us all that our work was great, that he was excited about this next generation of composers, etc. etc., and I really believed (and still do) that he meant it. Then, when he was asked to curate something or another at Carnegie Hall, he asked Nico to do a show of his music, and (I guess) signed off on the wacky but amazingly awesome plan that Nico concocted, to interweave his own works with music by Byrd and other composers of the English Renaisssance. In other words, Adams has been, in various areas of my life, super-supportive and generally awesome towards young composers, in addition to the fact of his general greatness as a composer.
So what's up with this? Frankly, it's an irresponsible comment, to say that some unnamed young composers are not taking music seriously. I don't need to tell John Adams that plenty of composers from his own generation generally shat the bed when it came to writing music; were they "serious"? I think so. Were they "anxious to appeal to the same audience that would listen to indie rock"? No, but they were "anxious to appeal to the same audience that would listen to Ligeti" or "to Penderecki" or "to Carter" or whatever the Cool Kids were listening to back in 1973. The point is, there are always bad composers who write music that trends in one direction or another, and the fallacy is to presume that a generation is in any way defined by the bad ones. The question posed to John Adams was, more or less, "are composers who write music that is part of the broader musical dialogue, outside of classical music alone, helping to bring new audiences to classical music?" The answer to that question - and I recognize that much of my life's work to date hangs in the balance right now, so color me biased - is emphatically YES. Nico and Caleb are great examples of that, and it's irresponsible to cheapen the impact that they are having, and that the scene that-I-count-myself-as-lucky-to-be-a-part-of is having as a whole, by pointing to some unnamed "bland" composers as problematic trendsetters in the field. And then he cites some nonsense about Blackberrys and loses me, while unfortunately justifying his later comment that he sounds "like an old crank now". John, rejoin us! We love you, man.
You can tell I have a piece to finish because I'm writing so much on this space. Anyway, I'll hopefully have more time to write about this experience soon, but until then, here's a shot of our recent band recording session - this is my setup, along with Andrea and Mark, in the studio down in Princeton. Needless to say, I felt very at home. More on that, soon, too.
Perhaps I'm missing something, but this seems like a really, really terrible idea. It's not exactly shocking that, if this is going to happen somewhere, it's going to happen in Pittsburgh, but I do have to say that Milwaukee would have been my first guess:
Oh, I almost forgot! As a follow-up to my frustrated rant about the New York Philharmonic, below, here's something lovely from the season's highlights page on the Philharmonic website. I used this page as a reference for many of the stunningly innovative initiatives that they announced for the coming season, but it also serves a parallel function. Do you know what White Men look like? They can look many different ways. Here are some examples of What White Men Look Like, brought to you by the New York Philharmonic:
It's like that photo series in Guns, Germs, and Steel, only less interesting and with all kinds of question-raising embedded within.
2/03/09
Update/clarification: I did not make this montage myself. This is stolen as-is from the NY Philharmonic website, thank you very much. That is, as they say, "the point".
A number of people have been sending around this petition, which quotes the great Quincy Jones, suggesting that Obama should appoint a "Secretary of Arts". I've also heard the term "Secretary of Culture" thrown into the mix, and I've heard about some proposal to give artists health insurance and a stipend in exchange for some public service.
The last of these sounds like a classic "better than nothing" trap; it frustrates me to no end when artists, of all people, start acting like a protected class and demand things beyond what other members of society are given. I love unions and all, but the idea that one would apply to be a State Artist and thereby get some pittance and a clinic in exchange for mural-painting or musical theater-composing is an entirely different class of arrangement. Which elements of "what artists deserve" are different from "what people deserve"? Insurance? A place to live? A reasonable job that employs their skills in a non-demeaning fashion? Does four years of conservatory training give you this right, instead of someone else? I don't see why, or how. The point is not that artists should not have these things, it's that separating the idea that we should from the broader notion that everyone should is, frankly, immoral. And counterproductive; our lobbying power is strongest if we all find a way to reexamine the foundational notions of society, not if we break apart by vocational demographics.
As for a Secretary of Culture...I have yet to hear how this idea would actually play out in a positive fashion. On the one hand, you have people who are deluding themselves into thinking that public funding for the arts is a panacea, and that by making a national position, it will herald a new dawn of arts appreciation. I don't even know where to begin on that one; it's probably easiest to start with the subtractive model, as in, a quick glance at Europe, where public arts budgets are being slashed right and left, as artists protest and the public generally yawns in the face of their own, more pressing problems. Dare I mention that, you know, European art, compared to our free-market variety over here, kind of sucks? (What did he say? Come again?) Anyway, regardless of whether you like Helmut Lachenmann and his publicly-funded freshness, the point is, you're not going to see public arts funding come anywhere near the layouts by private donors, nor should you want to. Private funding is much more reliable, it seems, in the long run, in part because it has the huge benefit of being tied to decisions made by actual human beings, rather than elected politicians. I live in the nexus of public arts funding - New York City, New York State, USA - and even here (particularly here), the public stuff is a drop in the bucket compared to the private. We at NOW Ensemble, along with many other groups, have had our entire State funding allotment slashed by Mr. Governor (p.s. Thank You David), but we're going to pull through because public support is a relatively small portion of our budget as a whole (though yes, it still sucks; please drop me a line if you'd like to contribute, we could really use the help). Note that the Governor could just crush the arts on a moment's notice; this is unlikely to happen with private funding, at least not in that fashion.
I said "on the one hand". On the other, you have people who are afraid of the position because of its older connotations. I see the worst result of such a position's creation - not that it's going to happen, people, but anyway - is a creeping laziness on the part of those organizations that grow too comfortable at the public teat. The big scary predecessors that some folks have been citing as reasons not to go in that direction are all red herrings; the reason that people were locked in the Gulag for writing bad music wasn't because there was a Secretary of Culture, it's because Stalin was the leader. If we get to the point where we actually have public censorship on that level - and even during our recent 8-year national travesty, it never got near there, or even to the level of 1950s America - there will be big signals that things are terribly wrong, and the existence of a Secretary or lack thereof will not really be the issue at hand that needs fixin'.
So where do I come down? If, by some strange chance, such a position is created, I think that the first thing Mister or Madame Secretary should do is abolish national funding for artists, and focus all allocated resources to infrastructure-building. Let's make public-private partnerships to build Awesome Green Versions of Lincoln Center or the Musiekgebouw or the Milwaukee Art Museum in cities around the country, and/or (I choose "and") build Slick Little Green Performance and Exhibition Spaces in small towns in between. How amazing would this be? How in-line is it with Obama's priorities? I am getting dizzy with joy, imagining quasi-Joe's-Pubs around America, or coffeehouses, or little museums. Look at Mass MoCA as another great example. There will be fighting eventually about who should occupy those spaces, once they're built, but just building them will be one of this century's great achievements. Make it happen!
here's a letter that I wrote to my friend, who's a super-smart public policy guy. we have a disagreement about whether Obama should open the door to legal investigations of the Bush clan; he says no (it's bad for the country because it will make it difficult for Obama to do the really important things he wants to do), I say yes (for the reasons given below). my policy position is largely informed by Scott Horton and Glenn Greenwald, among others. as I say in the letter, I respect my friend's position, too, I just think I'm right (of course).
Just to be clear, it has nothing to do with vengeance. and I don't think that the practical issue is as cut and dry as you make it seem. if he abdicates his legal responsibility in this case, it will have negative repercussions in at least three very "pragmatic" ways: 1) the international community will continue to distrust the US, making it harder (especially with Europe) to form meaningful alliances, 2) the left will quickly grow disenchanted with Obama, and will move from a "move the center" kind of pragmatism to the same kind of anti-everything zealotry that was practiced during the late Clinton years, and obviously into the Bush years, and 3) it will contribute to an overall cynicism about the political process, something that's hard to measure but which we have seen take hold in our own lifetimes.
The Clinton years fostered such a cynicism about politics that it led to many of my friends seeing no practical difference between Gore and Bush - an astonishing idea, in retrospect. People rush to blame Nader, but (beyond the short-sightedness of blaming a rare new entrant into the political fray) it was the cynicism of the Clinton years, more than anything, that opened the door for his candidacy, and suppressed the Democrat vote enough (from its already tenuous position, sans Perot) to cost the election. My great fear isn't a Republican filibuster, it's a return to the politics of cynicism that we've seen for too long. You can argue, reasonably, that the practical gains that you mention outweigh the practical gains that I bring up, so I'm not trying to convince you (necessarily), and I respect where you're coming from. But I don't think you've framed my position accurately. It's not merely about my conscience and again, it has nothing to do with vengeance. Do you really think that's the only function of a legal framework? I know you don't....the point is to establish a norm of conduct that dissuades similar future behavior. Maybe that won't be necessary, if Obama is a saint and we only have Good People running the country from now on, but I can't help noticing that the same asinine Dems who brought us FISA Pt. 2 and signed off on torture are still there on Capitol Hill.
Note: I sat on this post for a while, longer than I meant to, because it contains some very strong words against the decisions of an organization that I greatly respect and admire. The Internet is good for nothing, if not self-career-destruction, but I feel like I've gotten where I am today (which is to say, nearly broke but able to live as a composer and musican in New York City, while steering some cool institutions into the hopefully bright future ahead) by saying what I think, and having the consequences play out behind closed doors. For this one, it's probably not a huge deal, since I was fairly unlikely to be commissioned by the NY Philharmonic anytime soon. Still, I did want to make sure that, after a little space and time, I stood by these thoughts. I do, so here they are.
Last week, the New York Philharmonic announced their Big Plans for next year. The context for this announcement, of course, is that 2009-2010 will be the first year of Alan Gilbert's directorship at the orchestra. I wrote positively about this hire when it was announced, a year and a half ago, and my views on the topic of what-should-the-NY Phil-do haven't really changed much since then. I maintain the following, regarding the possibility of restoring the Philharmonic's place of prominence in American music and in New York's cultural landscape:
It's a tall task, especially in New York. The most successful orchestras in the country tend to either be the best classical show in town (Cleveland, Boston, Chicago, Philly, Washington, D.C., Saint Louis, and Baltimore come to mind, and there are no doubt many others), or they take a leadership role in the broader music community (L.A. for sure, and possibly San Francisco and Minnesota - though I'm not 100% sure about any besides L.A.). The New York Philharmonic will have a hard time doing either of these, without serious competition. You can't be the undisputedly best classical show in town when the Met is next door, and Carnegie brings top-notch programs from every great orchestra in the world on a regular basis, not to mention all the other amazing classical artists who visit that hall and others. As for being a leader, the NY music community is so vast and varied that this is another nearly-impossible task. The L.A. Phil puts on festivals and has its own chamber group devoted to new works. If the NY Phil did either of those things, they'd be one of many high-level festivals or ensembles in the city, and while they'd be welcome additions, I don't think that they would cause a particularly big splash.
With this in mind, a glance at the 2009-2010 New York Philharmonic season reveals that they have managed to fall into every trap that I mentioned as possibilities in that post from 2008. One way to look at the season is that they have taken the incredibly bold step of imitating the L.A. Philharmonic in a city that has completely different cultural needs. So now we, too, can have a composer-in-residence (in a city that has more composers-in-residence than it can sustain), a visiting artist (one of hundreds of top-tier performers to come through our city each year, in classical music alone), a new music ensemble (to add to the roster of dozens of already-existing high-level important ones, and dozens more that are less so), and a slate of "festivals" involving such unheralded composers as Mozart and Stravinsky.
I just don't get it, I really don't. Steve Smith, one of the better critics around, wrote on the Time Out New York blog: "Speculation had run high ever since the Phil named Alan Gilbert its music director designate in July 2007 that his inaugural season would see a marked upturn in innovative programming and contemporary music. The question was always just how far the orchestra's commitment to such initiatives would go. The answer? Considerably further than most observers might dare have imagined." Since Steve has his finger much more firmly on New York's cultural pulse than I do, I have to assume that's he's right, but that's a depressing thought. This is further than most people might dare have imagined?! I suppose that when the bar is set as low as it had been during the Maazel years, there's a lot of low-hanging fruit (see this scathing mini-review of the preposterous festival that kicked off the 2007 season, "The Tchaikovsky Experience", for just one example - sorry, I can't resist reprinting Allan Kozinn's incredibly well-put critique, which hearkened back to the Grand Old Days of classical music criticism: "The Tchaikovsky symphonies, concertos and ballet scores are some of the most ubiquitous works in the classical canon, and if there's a stack of music that doesn't need the extra attention a festival can bring, this is it. But then the same can be said of the Beethoven and Brahms orchestral works, and in recent seasons the New York Philharmonic has built festivals around them. Considered in that context, this season's festival, 'The Tchaikovsky Experience,' makes complete sense. The Philharmonic is clearly intent on seizing every opportunity to pretend that the commonplace is exceptional, and a Tchaikovsky festival was the obvious next installment. With its predecessors, it will help define Lorin Maazel's tenure as music director as the most retrograde and unimaginative in the Philharmonic's history.") (my boldface.)
I will grant that an opening night concert featuring a Magnus Lindberg premiere, plus Messiaen and Berlioz, is a pretty far cry from the usual Philharmonic fare, and is a bold statement (and a potentially awesome show). And I will also note that Lindberg is an excellent choice; for my money, he's easily the best of the world-famous composers working in Europe today (along with Dalbavie and Rautavaara), and the performance of his Clarinet Concerto will be a must-see event. As will, it must also be said, the New York premiere of Le Grand Macabre, the opera by the vastly-overrated but still-sometimes-great composer György Ligeti. These are all good things. But...BUT.... well, here are three critiques, out of more that could be made:
1) The museum/laboratory description that Gilbert puts forward is, at a minimum, highly problematic. Alan Gilbert said that his vision of the museum was as being "both museum and laboratory". The implication that I take from this is that a "museum" is a stable, unchanging repository for Great Works, standing in contrast to the wacky Laboratory, where Dr. Wizard tries out his experiments with New Music, Zany Juxtapositions, and Performances of Works By Composers You Haven't Heard Of, or perhaps Performances of Great Works By Composers Whose Names Won't Sell Tickets. The museum is for the Work that has proven itself, through the trials of time and ticket sales, and the Laboratory is for....everything else. The New York Philharmonic wants to be both at once, but what would this mean? Is there a laboratory in the museum?
Classical music people who only encounter new music through the eyes of academic composers seem to think that what contemporary composers want, more than anything, is "freedom". They think that we need to be unencumbered by the pressures of selling tickets, the dirty marketplace, where we would be held up against the unimpeachable Giants of the classical canon, only to be crushed by the burden. Thus, the laboratory; in a lab, the scientist is King, and can try whatever needs to be tried, in the name of Science. Our musical laboratory, like a real laboratory, must be kept a pristine environment, and therefore insulated from the outside world, lest anyone get hurt. So we get to be free, as composers, to do what we need to do, in the name of progress, and we can do so in a safe environment where wealthy patrons do not have to risk being hurt by the dangerous music we produce. This is a wonderful arrangement for everyone!
I don't want to speak for museum curators, but I can't imagine that they want to be cast in the role of merely representing stability or resistance to experimentation (except perhaps the good people at the Frick, God bless 'em). I do feel comfortable speaking for composers, though, and I know that few of us - I can't say "none" - want to work in the laboratory. We want to be in the museum! And we don't want our work to be pitched as some crazy new thing, we want it to be seen as a vital part of our contemporary culture, and culture as broadly defined. [Note: if it sounds like I'm rehashing the academic/non-academic composer discussion, for the 45 billionth time, it's because, apparently, "no matter where you go, there you are."]
And this brings me to my next critique:
2) The New Music series is a terrible idea. I stand by most of what I said in my hypothetical comments about the New York Phil, reposted above, but there's one retraction/change that I need to make: I don't actually think that this new music series is a "welcome addition". Why not? I hadn't considered that it would replace the actual commissioning and programming of new works on the Philharmonic's regular orchestral series. It's not 100% clear that that is, in fact, what's happening, but if it is, it's a flat-out disaster. I am sure that the well-meaning people at the New York Philharmonic had a series of very important meetings, in which they discussed the state of the orchestra, and what was working in the world of orchestral management. And I'm sure they looked at the L.A. Philharmonic as the hottest thang out there, which it is right now, and said "how can we be more like that?" The thing is, as I've said before, New York is not L.A., where there are very few groups playing contemporary music, and for which the L.A. Phil giving their stamp of approval to a new series represents a cultural sea change. This is New York, with tons of great new music all the time. Why do we need another slate of concerts at Symphony Space (of all places), with a roster of composers who are already widely-commissioned and well-represented at other High Culture venues around the city? Obviously, I'm happy for these composers to have more opportunities - and yes, I will go hear Nico's piece, of course - and I am well aware that I am potentially looking a gift horse in the mouth, since this is going to be an ensemble that continually commissions new works, which will inevitably include my friends and possibly even me (before I decided to write this rant). Fine. But I am genuinely angry at the orchestra for thinking that it is a good idea to start a new, redundant ensemble instead of actually bringing a reasonable number of new orchestra works into the world. What do we need in New York? A great orchestra - and the New York Philharmonic, despite critiques and claims to the contrary, is certainly one - that is willing to bring new work into being, and champion it, and to treat it NOT like it belongs in the laboratory (see "Space, Symphony"), but in the museum, in the best possible sense of that metaphor-that-I-am-trying-to-spin-positively. What do we not need in New York? More ghettoized new music programming that looks inward to an established subscription base, or tries to cannibalize other new music subscription bases.
This whole concept smacks of giving lip service to contemporary music, commissioning on the cheap (not sure about the fees, but it's much cheaper to commission chamber works and pay a small ensemble than to spend valuable orchestra time on a premiere) instead of DOING YOUR JOB and being an orchestra that is a part of the broader culture in which we live. There it is, I said it. And that brings me to my third critique - the final one, because I have to get back to work:
3) The New York Philharmonic sees itself as an island, not a leader. How else to explain the excitement they are trying to generate by bringing cultural figures like Lindberg or singer Thomas Hampson to a city that already has an incredible variety of performers and composers? This is not innovation, it's a drop in the bucket. Of course, this sounds more bitter than is warranted. Is it good to bring a great singer and composer to New York? Yes. It would be sad if the New York Philharmonic suddenly disbanded, or if they even decided not to bring these people to New York - but much more the former than the latter, which is the point: this is an orchestra and should be doing work that only an orchestra can do. In any case, "it's better than nothing" cannot possibly be the right way to think about how to evaluate the decisions made by an enormous cultural organization like the Philharmonic. It's always better to bring things than to not bring things. But that doesn't diminish the fact that the way in which they are operating is incredibly insular, from these special guests to the new music ensemble to the "festivals". They act as if they should be treated as the only game in town, and evaluated against that backdrop.
Imagine if the New York Philharmonic decided to be a cultural leader in New York. Imagine if, instead of starting their own new music ensemble, they commissioned a series of works for ensembles around the city, and had those works performed before NY Phil subscription concerts - perhaps even concerts that featured orchestral works by those composers. Or imagine if they commissioned works by composers and then worked in tandem with a variety of ensembles to put on concerts that provided a context for those commissions. This is what Carnegie Hall does with its composers-in-residence, though even they are somewhat lacking in terms of reaching out to a breadth of New York ensembles, preferring to stay within their roster of freelance musicians. Imagine if the New York Philharmonic, instead of partnering with Lincoln Center (does that even mean anything? it's like Mom partnering with Dad on a new parenting initiative) to present a recital of Thomas Hampson at - wait for it - Alice Tully Hall, and then pretending that anyone anywhere would notice any difference between this recital and any other great vocal recital at that venue, presented this work at BAM, as a cross-presentation with an expanded vocal series that the two organizations co-curated. Imagine if that vocal series included singers in a wide variety of styles, and from around the world, and imagine if the New York Philharmonic found creative ways of bringing itself, as champion of the Western classical tradition, into dialogue with those other singers. Imagine that.
I like using my imagination, but it seems that no one at the Philharmonic derives a similar pleasure. That's actually the less cynical way of looking at the situation. Is it really a lack of imagination that keeps the ideas I just mentioned from happening, and countless others (including many that are, no doubt, better than mine)? Or is it a desire to be that island, rather than a leader, to make your wealthy subscription base believe that there is no other game in town, by satisfying their perceived needs in one convenient package? The New York Philharmonic can pat themselves on the back for all these new things they are bringing to the table - their commitment to being that museum and that laboratory - without any fear of being challenged in those assertions. They can throw a budget that surpasses an entire year of NOW Ensemble at any one of their "innovative" programming ideas. I'm sure that CONTACT (the New Music series) is already a much larger organization, taken alone, than New Amsterdam Records. And they don't have to worry about having a huge portion of their budget axed because New York State zeroed out their arts funding for the rest of the year - thanks to the subscribers who good-heartedly but blindly see support for the New York Philharmonic as support for classical music, or music in general.
Non-profit organizations are really not so different from for-profit ones; they compete with one another for audience, for grants, and for audience, and attention. I love me my Free Market as much or more than most of my socialist friends (that's what going to an investment banker mill for undergrad will do to you), and a healthy competition is a fine thing that weeds out the weak and lazy and supports the strong. This is terrifying if taken in isolation but it is a good beginning of policy, whether it's cultural or societal at large (a story for another day). And so the New York Philharmonic, in some sense, has no obligation to be anything BUT that island, protected by a bubble that's painted on the inside like open ocean, so that any donors who look out for what else might be nearby see no alternatives. (Except, you know, Lincoln Center.) I am not suggesting that the IRS revoke the non-profit status of the New York Philharmonic because they are not behaving in the best interest of the public. Even at their worst, they provide an excellent service. Instead, I'm doing what my favorite writers and public intellectuals do, in the face of bad policy: they write about it, in the hope (in my case, vain) that someone will start a movement behind the controversy they suggest exists. If anyone from the New York Philharmonic is reading this, I encourage you to e-mail me and I will happily engage in a conversation about the decisions made by your institution. Do please ask those nice people down at the solicitations office to cool it a bit, though - I have received more phone calls from your orchestra than from anyone without the last name "Greenstein" this year. I guess they don't believe me when I say I'm too broke to help....
I just went tonight to see Removable Parts, the incredible theater/music piece by Corey Dargel, with Kathleen Supove, at the HERE Arts Center. It's really one of the best things I've seen this year. Ha ha ha ha ha. OK, but seriously, it's one of the best things I've seen this season - inventive and witty, moving and thought-provoking, and with a great variety of beautiful songs. It's just an excellent show, all-around. You should go, and I have been authorized to pass along a little discount: go to www.here.org, navigate to the "buy tickets" section of "Removable Parts," select the performance you want, and then use the code COR16 to get your discount, which lowers the price to $16 from $20. The remaining shows are Thursday and Friday at 7pm, Saturday at 7pm and 10pm, and Sunday at 1pm and 5pm. Really, you should go. You'll be out in under an hour and a half and you will be much better off for it. People are always asking me what they should hear or see and this is exactly the kind of show that makes me glad to live in New York.
While I am plugging Corey, I have to say that any year-end list that I would make (and I unfortunately don't have the time to make a proper one at the moment) would include, at or near the top, his album, Other People's Love Songs. Yes, it's out on New Amsterdam, and yes, I'm invested in it, but seriously, this is one of the best albums of 2008. I say that with confidence and sincerity and I urge you to go buy a copy - or at least listen to the free streaming tracks. It's the kind of thing where once you get into it, you're hooked; thus, we had people buying copies for all of their friends, which is easy to spot when we're sending out giant envelopes filled with multiples of one CD. With much more clarity than I can summon, friend-of-good-music Dan Johnson writes eloquently about Corey's disc, so go read what he has to say.
Buy the album, see the show, you won't regret either. And more posting to come, soon - happy new year!
So it's official: the United States committed war crimes in our use of torture against detainees. Before you discount me as a shrieking, hysterical Communist, please note the source: a stunning, bipartisan report - stunning, if not surprising, to anyone who's been following the developing story as it's unfolded over the last 6 years - from the Senate Armed Services Committee, chaired by Carl Levin and sponsored by John McCain. Here's a quote:
The abuse of detainees in U.S. custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of "a few bad apples" acting on their own. The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees. Those efforts damaged our ability to collect accurate intelligence that could save lives, strengthened the hand of our enemies, and compromised our moral authority.
Note the phrase "appearance of their legality"; that's a clincher. Because what is the implication of granting the actions only the "appearance" of legality? It's that the actions were not, in fact, legal, making them crimes. This should be clear on its face, to anyone who reads about, hears about, or views what has taken place in detainee prisons. And, in fact, those crimes were prosecuted, against some of those "bad apples". The finding of this report is that those senior officials are the ones responsible for the actions that have, in some cases, already been criminally prosecuted! I haven't taken a logic class in a long time, but this feels a lot like the transitive property (if a=b and b=c, then a=c), to me. If you sense excitement in my voice, it's only because I get giddy when I imagine a world in which people who commit malicious, evil acts are actually held accountable for them, and can't hide behind their cloaks of power, wealth, and privilege.
Unfortunately, when I click on Google News, I see the following stories: Blagojevich, Treasury Bonds, Caroline Kennedy, Mac OS X release, Tom Cruise, Rafael Furcal, something about colonoscopies, the Iraqi shoe thrower getting 'beaten in custody' (almost what I'm looking for, but not quite), and something about Madoff. Also In The News, apparently, are Rhys Jones, Electoral College, Donovan McNabb, Reggie Theus, Salvation Army, Ken Salazar, Illinois House, Blackburn Rovers, Red Wings, and last but not least, Santa Claus.
Is it too much to ask that a bipartisan report from our government's most powerful branch, detailing the exact course by which high-ranking government officials illegally bended the rule of law to commit inhuman acts against our captives, acts which were not only reprehensible from the standpoint of humanity but which were also harmful to American soldiers and civilians abroad (and ultimately, at home), would merit some coverage? Whatever your personal answer to that rhetorical question, you should at least read the report, which is here, and here are commentaries from Greenwald (noting the absurdity of the contrast between press coverage of the Blagojevich scandal, and this war crime report) and Scott Horton.
But I'm sure that President Obama will clean this all up, right?
Sometimes, as I think I just said, you feel like an idiot for not having owned an album earlier. The Sound of Silver is one of those albums. I mean, yes, I've heard many of these songs before, from my friends and in bars and wherever else, and I knew that it was supposed to be a good album, and I liked the first album (which I also own). But this connects so many dots with so much skill. It reminds me of nothing so much as Remain In Light, transported to 2007 without ignoring or distancing itself from the musical sounds that emerged between the two eras. I'm incredibly impressed.
I should say - despite my profession (composer) and my other related occupations (music producer, record label "executive", ensemble director), or perhaps because of them, I don't get to hear nearly as much music as people usually think I do. Especially not right when it comes out. I hear a lot of live music, because going to shows is part of the job, but people aren't sending me stacks of recordings to comb through (except for NewAm submissions, of course). So I've only heard maybe a handful of records that came out this year, and I'm just catching up to some of 2007's hits. The things that impressed me the most this year are generally things that impressed a lot of other people, because for most of the music world, my sources of information are just like everyone else's. The exceptions, of course, are the indie classical standouts that no one knows about, and which are some of my favorite records of the year. I can't wait until the day - not long off, I'm sure - when more people know about our scene, and the top lists that come out include albums like Other People's Love Songs and Mohair Time Warp. I'm thrilled, of course, to see NOW mentioned as one of Alex's top CDs of 2008, and to see itsnotyouitsme get tapped by Allan Kozinn. But for most of the albums that are less cleanly "classical", it's going to require an extra push to get them into the mainstream. That's what 2009 is for!
Tomorrow morning (Thursday December 4), I'll be interviewed by Susanna Mendlow as part of the Morning Classical program on WKCR, 89.9 FM in New York. You can listen here, or for those of you in New York who don't live at their computers, you can turn on that dial-laden thing in your living room, the one with the red band that moves to the left and right...yeah, that thing. It will catch the magical voices that are floating in the air and bring them into your home or car or place of work. My voice, from about 9:30 until 11:00 tomorrow morning, will be one of them. Whatever your method, if you listen in, you will hear me play some music and discuss it. I'm thinking of playing a more obscure piece of mine, as well as some more (relatively) well-known works. Any requests?
I went to see Doctor Atomic last night, with Josh and Eve and Josh's mom - and ran into Darcy and his friend Isaac, and Farnoosh and her friend Julie. The opera is one of those works of art that gives you a thousand ways into a discussion; you can talk about the music and the staging and the singers and the direction, or you can talk about the politics, or the poetry, or the various conceptual decisions that were made on the macro or micro levels. I say this because I sometimes forget how fun it is to go to a show, run into people, and just start gabbing with them on a purely "so what do you think?" level. I don't do that as often as you might expect.
So what do I think? My thoughts are scattered right now, but here are a few:
Whatever else I might say about the opera, it's an incredible work, powerful and gripping. The concept is terrific - using the Doctor Faust story, but making the bomb essentially into the devil, works very well, as do the use of the Bhagavad Gita and the other literary allusions, like Baudelaire and Donne. The interior psychological space of the Camp is extremely well articulated (even by the much-maligned sets), and the metaphor of the bomb hanging over the heads of the participants is striking (one woman behind me said, "it's like the Death Star up there"). I appreciate that they really "go for it" in the complexity and richness of the concept.
I wonder, though, if the concept didn't at times overtake and overshadow the flow of the unfolding drama itself. Specifically, there's a lot of characters standing still on the stage, singing poetry over beautiful orchestral textures, but without a sense of musical direction. Time and time again, we are taken out of the narrative space of the opera and placed into the interior psychological space of the characters, through these quasi-arias or interruptions. As I said, it's a conceptually strong maneuver, but difficult to pull off for 3.5 hours. And I don't think that Adams quite succeeds. In general, my critique of his mostly-brilliant score is that there's not quite enough in the way of melodic hooks to ground such a huge work. When they come - in "Am I In Your Light" (sung incredibly by my friend Sasha, who gets a big "Brava" from me and - happily - from many many others in attendance last night!), or even in Oppenheimer's terrifying aria that closes the first half - they are certainly made more remarkable for their infrequency. If Adams wanted to set off those moments by placing them in a sea of floating. ambiguous melodic material, he succeeded, but I think the cost was too high. I think back to last year's Peter Grimes, which never "floated" in that way; what Britten achieves in his orchestral writing, and which Adams does not, is to make his textures have melodic interest embedded in them. I'm thinking of the "sea" gesture that recurs in Grimes - one of the best. things. ever. - and I can't help considering how much that ties together the score. Even Adams' best moments in the Atomic score never reach that level of transcendence, nor do they serve that function. I suppose it's an unfair comparison, except that Adams has written works that I'd put at that highest level, so fair or not, that's where the bar stands.
There's one musical idea that nearly serves this function, but in isolation, it's not quite enough. That's this driving, percussive, brass-heavy texture that occurs at the end of Act I, and again towards the end of the opera, and in smaller versions at various points throughout. When I heard it, I thought, "Harmonielehre!" - which is Adams's orchestral masterpiece from 1984. The end of Harmonielehre is this gigantic buildup with huge brass chords, one of the more memorable orchestral passages I know. It's also incredibly uplifting and positive. In Atomic, the material is similar, but it's given a devastating minor turn that - especially in combination with Oppenheimer's terrifying aria - is well-suited to the material. When that material recurs, it's memorable, to be sure.
There's a lot more I'd like to say about this idea of melody in large-scale structure; it's a topic that I find really important. But I don't have time at the moment. I will say that I didn't find the set to be as problematic as some people did (just as in Grimes, I liked the claustrophobia), but I did think that some of the decisions at the end were made in error. The terror of atomic weapons is strong enough without introducing shock-tactics that felt intended to heighten the drama beyond even where the organic development of the work could take it. Is this necessary when that drama is already so successful, and the stage has been kept so consistent throughout the duration of the play? I would say no, and I hope that future productions keep in mind that they have built something durable over the course of the work's duration, and should not treat it lightly for the sake of turning our stomachs one final time at the end.
I'm curating (on behalf of New Amsterdam Records) a show next Wednesday at Issue Project Room, in Brooklyn (3rd Ave. and 3rd St., in Gowanus), featuring Nadia Sirota and Andrew McKenna Lee, entitled "The NEW New Virtuosity". I posted an essay on the MATA: Interval Blog about this, which is reprinted below.
The indie classical scene, in New York and beyond, has a handful of what we might call "values" that underpin it, put there by no one but nevertheless constitutive of the scene's character. One is the value of Community; artists in our scene are genuinely supportive of each other, and interested in and open to new ideas and ways of working. The pinball-like quality of interactions in New York, where different artists collaborate with and feed off of one another, is critical to the open nature of the scene and the broad-minded approach to music-making that is inherent in its participants. Closed-minded people who have no interest in working with others are generally not part of the scene - it's a self-selecting process! Another value is History, the idea that we are connected, as musicians, to the figures that have come before, and that while we may all have different key musicians from the past who we count as our personal heroes, the cumulative force of history and body of historical work is something to be celebrated and studied, in many forms, different for each and every person. Community and History provide the context for all the work that we do, both as composers and as performers, as well as for me, Bill, and Sarah, as the directors of the label.
A third value that underpins our scene, but which is less-frequently discussed, is Virtuosity. New Amsterdam artists do not fit the stereotype of "the virtuoso"; Lang Lang does not appear on our albums, nor are we sending our people into battle for Guitar God supremacy with the Steve Vais of the world - although (as I'll discuss shortly) we have some incredible guitarists and pianists and, yes, violists on our roster. Despite avoiding these obvious categories, there's no doubt that the performers of New Amsterdam Records are virtuosos, in various, often idiosyncratic ways. This Interval concert is, in part, an effort to help to define that term for our community.
I'll begin working toward a definition by talking about the name of the concert: The NEW New Virtuosity. This is, self-evidently, a cumbersome and awkward title. Doesn't New Amsterdam purport to be an organization that has kept up with current approaches to marketing and style, and don't I therefore know that many people will find the name to be at best a mouthful, and at worst a pedantic mess? Yes, and yes! It pains me to think that we would be anything but stylish in our nomenclature. But "virtuosity" is too broad a term for us to claim ownership, and simply using the naked word itself would imply a potential overreach: "this is what virtuosity looks like today" is not my claim. There are many ways to be a virtuoso in 2008; some of those ways apply to our community, and those are the ones we're seeking. I do think that the New Amsterdam version of virtuosity is a new one; certainly, we're not talking about the same kind of virtuosity that is reflected in the works of, say, Paganini and Liszt, or Vivaldi and Frescobaldi, or even Ravel and Prokofiev. There are similarities - virtuosity has always been about surpassing the imagined limits of performance, and this is the thread that binds our artists to those from the past. As I said, History is an always-present concern for us, so those threads are more than welcome; they are celebrated. But this concert is also a reflection of a different approach to the term - a New Virtuosity.
It is History, then, that demands this level of specificity, distinguishing the present approaches from those that came before, while nodding in the direction of those precursors. And History proves to be even more demanding, as it turns out that the name "The New Virtosity" has been used in at least two prior eras, to describe what was happening in those times. The first appearance, the one that birthed the name, was in the 1960s, with the performers who took it upon themselves to learn new ("extended") techniques on their instruments and their voices, and who, in so doing, allowed an entire generation of composers to redefine the musical landscape in their notated pieces. The name came back in the 1980s, surfacing in a much more haphazard fashion, and centered mainly around the Downtown scene that further expanded the sonic palette; this generation largely distinguished itself from the prior one through the use of electronics, but also (quite significantly) in the rise of composer-performers who created their own, idiosyncratic languages for both composition and performance.
This Interval concert, and the New Amsterdam style of Virtuosity more generally, encompasses both of those "New Virtuosity" traditions. Nadia Sirota is a violist who can, quite literally, "play anything"; from a purely technical standpoint, she is one of those rare musicians who sets the standard for possibility in what she can or cannot do. Part of that standard-setting comes from a simple willingness to make the effort, to never reject what is asked before seeing if it can be done, and putting in significant effort to make it so. Nadia is not a composer herself, but she reaches out and challenges her composer friends to broaden the repertoire for her instrument, both in the sense of writing new viola pieces, and in the sense of having those pieces bring something truly new to the table. I'll look forward to reading Nadia's discussion of the pieces themselves in her blog entry, but suffice it to say for now: I believe that Nico, Marcos and I have risen to that challenge. In my case, I have offered Escape to quite a few violists who have eagerly asked to see the score, having heard Nadia's live performances, but no one has yet stepped up to the challenge besides Nadia herself. I say that not to criticize those violists (at all!) but merely to let the anecdote suggest the difficulty of the work.
Nadia therefore represents, in her own way, a continuation of the earlier, 1960s thread of "New Virtuosity": she is a non-composing performer who broadens the possibilities of her instrument through collaboration with composers. Andrew McKenna Lee, on the other hand, is equally skilled as a guitarist and a composer; in both these capacities, his work is a reflection of his varied and passionate influences, most notably Baroque music and Classic Rock. Andrew's virtuosity comes through as a guitarist in his own music (though his performances of Bach are stunning in their own right) - the pieces he writes are specially and specifically crafted for Andrew, The Instrument, and he makes them feel less like written compositions than like free improvisations that somehow yield works with immaculate form and multi-layered detail across their span. Andrew has developed his own technique on the acoustic and electric guitars, broadening the possibilities of the instruments through composing for them. In that sense, he represents a continuation of the later thread of "New Virtuosity".
In the ways I've discussed, Nadia and Andrew are connected to earlier conceptions of "New Virtuosity", Andrew through writing compositions for himself to play, and Nadia through her close collaborations with peer composers. But this is not the end of the story. Both Nadia and Andrew, and the many other virtuosic performers in the New Amsterdam community and beyond, reflect a genuinely new development in our generation of classically-trained musicians. As with earlier generations, our technical training, as composers and performers, has continued to be heavily weighted toward the music of the past. What has changed, I believe, is the relationship between classical and non-classical musics, and the internalized relationship that performers must have with the wider world of music in our time. Put in another way, Virtuosity in the early 21st century is not only about the expansion of technique in the realm of the Classical, but is also about the ability of performers to negotiate the contemporary sound of a polyglot world, reflected in the compositions of younger composers working today.
To understand this Virtuosity, it's necessary to understand the context for contemporary composition and performance. To pick an example for examination, much has been of the iPod, and specifically, its "Shuffle" feature, wherein one can allow the random impulses of the machine to move, scattershot, around one's musical collection. While cultural critics continue to be fascinated by the boundary-breaking mythology of the Shuffle function, seeing it as a revolutionary Tool of Progress that liberates music from genre, those of us who actually make music in the world recognize that the "liberation" they reference was itself a precursor to the technological innovation, not a result of it. In other words, young people like using Shuffle because they already reject rigid genre distinctions, not the other way around. In the indie classical scene, genre is still a presence, but only in terms of its practical implications - will a piece be amplified? Will it be played in a club, or in a concert hall? What kind of musician is needed to pull off a performance of a given work - do they have to be able to read music, for example? And are these "works", at all, or is the creative process more collaborative, as in a traditional rock band format, among countless others? These are very real questions that imply genre, but the genre distinctions themselves are not the defining and controlling influence that they were in earlier eras.
For younger composers working in this environment, ours is not an era of "influence upon" but, rather, is one of "incorporation into"; the chocolate chips, as it were, have been melted into the cookie batter. Unless we want them to still be chips - in which case, it's a deliberate choice to leave them there! What this implies, for performers working in our community, is that their Virtuosity needs to extend to the realm of musical awareness and understanding. They must be flexible and adaptable enough to understand the "feel" of a given passage that finds its roots in one of any number of other musics - much like a classical piano virtuoso must know what "dolce" means in Chopin, versus what it means in Brahms, and so on. If those distinctions, between composers from a similar era, represent an X axis of interpretive depth, and if the distinctions between different eras of composition - Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and so on - represent the Y axis, then today's Virtuosos must also understand the Z axis, wherein the boundaries across genre and geography are similarly transcended. For Andrew, this process happens seamlessly, as he is a composer who has digested his influences and incorporated them into his own unique and powerful voice. For Nadia, the process of learning new styles and approaches happens through her introduction to new compositional voices; she is like a sponge for styles that are new to her, and has the ability to quickly and seamlessly reproduce those new concepts to which she is introduced. In these ways, Nadia and Andrew represent a New, New Virtuosity, an extension of what has come before, and a reflection of the musical moment in which we live.
My daily pendulum swing continues; after voicing some concerns about Summers, et al, at dinner last night, my friend Ben suggested that I was off base. I must admit that this is a pretty sensible column. I still think that Summers will prove to be too indebted to the lure of a deregulated market, but it sounds like he's quite open to exploring a relatively wide range of options, and has his priorities in order. Since I have no expertise here, nor any power or sway, that's the last I'll write on this topic for a while.
Just in case my post below doesn't express this clearly enough, I am very, very, VERY happy about this week's outcome. Which is obvious, if you've ever met me or read anything I've written, or probably even if you've even just heard my music. I'm simply a forward-thinking person and I'm already on to the next bit.
That sobriety shouldn't overshadow the historic importance of this election result, for many many reasons, but I am afraid that the result will overshadow the importance of keeping the fight alive even as good people take over the government. That's all. Digby, as usual, explains it well.
Why does history have to fade into the background so quickly? Like most of my friends and even acquaintances, I would happily live in the late hours of November 4 and into the morning of November 5 for quite a long while. There's nothing that I can add to that sentiment that has not already been said, though there are, of course, personal perspectives that might rise up at a later point. But right now, I'm thinking of something I said in the late summer, when Obama was up in the polls, and it looked like he was really going to do it (before it looked like he wasn't, and then once again like he really, really was). I realized that I was starting to turn my attention to Obama-as-President, and being critical of him from The Left. A presidential candidate is something of an idealized figure; he or she will say things that they don't mean, but which please you, and they'll say plenty of things that you pretend they don't mean, because you imagine that they're just trying to please someone else. Then they get into office, and they start to disappoint you, and that's when the dream fades, and reality sets in. Or, you check yourself, much earlier, and remember that that's how it works. Or, they snap you out of it with their actions, three months before they are even going to be President.
Rahm Emanuel? Really? And now I read, as my more radical-Left friends warned and predicted, that the White House is going to be filled with Clinton Administration people like Emanuel. And his economic leadership meeting included folks like Lawrence Summers, which Dean Baker said "would be a bit like turning to Osama Bin Laden for aid in the war on terrorism." Ha ha ha....eh. Obviously, the fact is that even a repeat of Clinton-era politics would make Obama look like Ralph Nader in comparison to the Bush regime. There's no question that we're going to see improvements in literally every area of government, which is astonishing and also something that I genuinely believe. But that doesn't mean that a wholesale return to playing the losing game of Find The Center is going to be sufficient in dealing with the problems that we face as a country. Blaming credit markets for the failures of capitalism only ensures that you're going to open the door to the next unregulated area, the next bubble, and the next crash. It's going to happen. The dialogue surrounding the role of government in our lives needs to change, and I just don't see people like Summers and Emanuel - who was one of the huge proponents of NAFTA on the Democratic side in Clinton's regime - having anything to do with that change. While I'm glad that Obama is bringing all voices to the table, Rahm Emanuel sitting at the head doesn't make any sense to me, and doesn't bode well for the future.
With all that in mind, I offer the following classic track from Blackalicious. Hey Mr. President - congratulations, oh my god, you did it, now "don't let money change you!"
So I am totally, 100% addicted to these videos, posted by a very wonderful YouTube user named aseagris, who has taken it upon himself/herself to go ahead and catalogue a scene. Aren't these the best people in the world? Don't you get the sense that if everyone just got obsessive about something and really went with it, things would just be, you know, better? Anyway, the obsession in this case is with the late 80s and early 90s local Detroit television program, The New Dance Show, featuring Detroit's finest dancers strutting their stuff in a setting that simply could not exist today, all backed by classic cuts from a classic genre of music. For example:
Some of my friends may, upon hearing this song, may recall instances in our time together wherein I have said the word "bass" in a rhythmic, "sampled" fashion. This is the source song! Of course, Basstronic isn't the only song to use the classic "bass" sample, but I'm pretty damn sure it's the most famous, and it's also the originator of my personal use of the word. Detroit techno is one of those background musics in my life that's never quite gotten enough due (by me). I'm obviously all about hip hop, and house music was my #1 genre for a while, and of course disco and funk and soul have seats at the dais of my musical collection. But the Detroit sound? Or even techno, in general? When I was 18 or so, I got a cheap-o compilation of classic techno, in four volumes, that came out in 1991 and is like a quick walk through some classic 1980s tracks. Later in college, when I was obsessed with dance music, there were some great internet resources that catalogued various histories of various electronic dance musics, and I got incredibly invested in that research for some time. In the end, I gravitated towards the more disco/house side of things, but that soulful, 1980s techno sound is making a comeback in my own music these days and I totally welcome it.
Watching all this dancing, with these incredible outfits, brings me back to a sort of forgotten time in music and style: that weird, late-80s and early-90s era in Black culture that's hard to fully describe or encapsulate. Seeing flattops and fades on the guys in the dance videos does, in some way, sum it up, especially when the attire isn't the incredible 80s jumpsuit-and-leather look, but is instead the A Different World/In Living Color vibe that really was the main "African American look" for a good 5 years or so - in all its diversity. Yeah, there was the thug culture that was coming up in that time, and of course it's reductionist to say that anything was "The Look", but I think that anyone who was around then, and was invested in Black culture, knows what I'm talking about. I say this as an outsider, of course, though that's exactly the period when I was sitting at home, age 10, 11, 12, 13 and so on, writing beats on whatever I could find around the house, writing rhymes about my imaginary crew, and making ridiculous but heartfelt recordings of songs like "Feel The Beat", "Posse", and "358" (because, you know, the big crew in my neighborhood at the time was 357 - so, naturally...!).
So maybe that era could be seen as a sort of post-Huxtable period, when Black Culture was totally taking over, but before the co-opting of things by corporate America. That is a huge and messy claim that I don't want to back up right now - I'm just positing it, as an aside! I think I will call this era the "Fly Era" for short, going forward. What's important at this moment is that you watch all those videos. I have to turn off my internet so I can't watch more, since I've got to go grade midterms!
One more (what a ridiculously dope track, that bassline is out of control):
Big concert tonight at LPR. Here's the announcement I sent to the NOW Ensemble list:
Tonight, October 29 at 9:30 PM (9:00 doors), NOW Ensemble and composer/vocalist Corey Dargel will come together for a special New York record release event at Le Poisson Rouge.
NOW Ensemble will join Corey to play special live arrangements of songs from his new album, Other People's Love Songs (out this week on New Amsterdam Records), along with accordionist/vocalist Kamala Sankaram. NOW will also play a set of our own, with music by Patrick Burke (All Together Now), Mark Dancigers (Cloudbank), and Judd Greenstein (Free Speech Zone). You can buy tickets for that event by clicking here.
The show has received critics' picks and highlighted previews in all major New York City publications this week, including the New York Times, New York Magazine, Time Out New York and The New Yorker, which said, "Corey Dargel's ingenious nouveau art songs revel in the teasing triviality of pop but have enough classical discipline to keep them from going too far."
Please join us for this exciting concert, tonight at 9:30 PM!
Le Poisson Rouge is located at 158 Bleecker Street (between Sullivan and Thompson) in Manhattan, 3 blocks from the West 4th St. subway stop (map).
Um, good morning, and what is this, now? Oh, it's the Wall Street Journal publishing a highly disingenuous and misleading article about the trends of the wealth gap in the United States. The article seems to pretend that it's the local trends that matter, rather than the broader trends, which clearly show a linear increase in the wealth gap. it is disingenuous to point out the temporary lessening due to the recession without noting the broader trend in which that lessening is contextualized. It's exactly the same argument as that used by the people who argue against global warming on the basis of "it was hotter last year". Saying that the wealth gap is decreasing supports McCain's position - just look at this paragraph:
"But the debate over rich versus poor ignores the changes likely to result from the financial crisis. If history is any guide, the upheaval already is shrinking inequality and could continue to narrow the wealth gap."
So by that measure, "history" is on the side of McCain's argument, which is against redistributive policies. But in fact, if you look at the broader "history", it supports Obama's position.
Did everyone know about this? What a crazy and fairly awesome thing! Not, as some cynics might suggest, because it affirms either A) the primacy of Western Classical Music, whatever that might mean, or B) the primacy of my own decisions to get mad educated in music, but rather, because C) it shows someone not being ashamed to take the somewhat humbling steps that the rest of us take to get to know what we know, even after that someone has had a life that might seem to render such humbling steps unnecessary or even distasteful. I didn't know that Flea was behind the remarkable Silverlake Conservatory. Thanks to MR for posting that - and everyone should read her blog, it's really really good.
I saw a pretty great show last night - Fred Sherry and Peter Serkin at the Guggenheim Museum, playing works by Charles Wuorinen and L.V. Beethoven. Long-time readers of this space may be spitting out their coffee right now, hearing me suggest praise for Mr. Wuorinen. I apologize for any ruined rugs or stained shirts.
First of all, let me be clear: I still think that this interview is totally crazy, and suggests that Mr. Wuorinen and I exist on different planets, or at least, have totally distinct and possibly opposed views on what constitutes "art" or "music" or "being a functional member of society". For example, there is this line: "Well, the composer's role is to write music. I don't think the composer has any social obligation whatsoever. Those people who have social causes in their minds - let them do whatever they want, whether it's musical or otherwise, to pursue these. I don't, because I'm interested in the work and I don't regard people as members of groups, but as individuals, so it would be very difficult for me to embrace a social cause, although I probably could be persuaded into one or two of them." I am very happy to live in a world in which people can think about things in very different ways. Suffice it to say, though, that I do not share any of that perspective, nor do I even understand what it might mean for an artist not to have a social obligation, given that what we do, as artists, is communicate - the most social of functions.
As for "the music itself", Wuorinen is a composer to whom I've never warmed, at all; his works from the 1970s, one of which was played last night, have a harmonic language that I find very difficult to follow. Given that I'm a composer and a listener whose ear is chiefly attuned to harmony and melody, it's not easy for me to get down with music that avoids easy hierarchization of pitch material. That is: if you use major and minor and other chords as the basis of your harmonic language, you're implying a strong and audible hierarchy between different notes (C is the most important note in a C major scale, or a C major triad, for example). That's the basis of the communicative power of tonal, or tonally-oriented music. I have no doubt that there are complicated relationships and processes at work in the notes that are presented in Wuorinen's music, but my ear can't make sense of them, and after some time, the music is reduced (in the absence of other parseable information) to the simplest audible parameters: fast/slow, dense/sparse, loud/soft. The writing is incredibly skillful, of course, for what it is - he's a brilliant composer, and when I'm able to grab some pseudo-melody it's very rewarding - but I don't find much to actually like there. If any show was going to convince me otherwise, it was last night's; I was there to hear Fred, who's one of New York's finest performers and an incredible champion of new music, and who's had something like 10 or 12 works written for him by Mr. Wuorinen. Serkin, of course, is a legendary new music performer, and to hear the two of them together, performing music that they love and which they are uniquely suited to play, is a rare treat. It also helped that they only played two Wuorinen pieces, giving my ears and brain a chance to get into the music, without the fatigue that comes from merely looking ahead in the program to an additional hour of highly complicated sound structures.
So how was it? Wuorinen and Fred spoke after the first half, and Wuorinen said that the pieces were played exactly as he intended for them to be, which is obviously a huge compliment. I think that any music, played by people who love it and have spent countless hours exploring and learning it, would be rewarding to hear. And this was no exception. There's something greatly satisfying about hearing a performance, at the highest level, of work that you feel keeps you at a distance; even when I was not engaged with the music itself, I was engaged with the performers' engagement. And some of the music did break through, particularly in the first, more recent work, An Orbicle of Jasp, which I would genuinely like to hear again - if played by Fred (or Clarice Jensen, actually - I bet she'd be amazing on this piece). I had been told by Ryan Streber, a big Wuorinen fan, that he'd really gotten "almost Romantic" as he got older, which I thought was kind of a strange thing to say, but this concert definitely suggested as much. The older work - Fast Fantasy (?) - was broader in scope, but less tight in its argument, and less varied in its harmonic approach. Again, that's a death blow for me, but on the other hand, my friend Eugenie (who kindly brought me to the concert) preferred that work, and so there was evidently something for everyone.
Maybe I was just in a good mood, who knows. And, I have to say, when they played Beethoven Opus 102 on the second half, I was reminded of the world-outside-Modernism, a world that includes the many elements of music that Modernist music either excludes or obfuscates. I think of the austere beauty of the Beethoven's second movement, in the end giving way to the unbridled joy of the third movement; if these have a place in Wuorinen's language, I don't know where to find them. And I don't think that's wrong, given that he says, from that same interview, about critics:
"There's no embarrassment about using the most primitive forms of description and in committing every form of that basic fallacy which says, "My reaction to a composition, or any artwork, is a property of that work. So, if I think a piece is ugly - if my response to a piece is 'It is ugly,' then it is, objectively." That's an impossibility, it just is! I thought we had been through that, many, many decades, not to say centuries, ago, but now it's all back. And so, "If I think a piece is sad, then it has the property of sadness." That's asinine!"
Maybe, or maybe not. In the end, it seems like composers such as Wuorinen went too far with this idea, for my taste, conflating the task of composers - to find a personal voice that expresses the universal - with that of audience members and critics, who only have a responsibility (if they have any at all) to be present, and to make their opinions known. For critics, I would hope that those opinions would be both informed, and tempered by a self-awareness that brought forward the difference between objective and subjective qualities. In my own, limited writing (such as this rambling thing in which I'm currently engaged), I try to make that awareness clear. And, returning to that quote above, it's not that I think that everyone should find the same things to be sad, but I do think that there's something incredibly special about a roomful of people being uplifted by the same passage of music, as certainly happened at the end of the Beethoven, and which I do not think happens very often at the ends or otherwise in performances of Mr. Wuorinen's compositions. That having been said, it was a pleasure to hear his work in the best context, and I feel a little wiser for the experience.
Tonight's debate has the feeling of Game 3 of a 7-game series, with one team having obliterated the other in the first two. The series can't be decided tonight, but a victory - here defined as anything but McCain somehow achieving what Nate Silver calls "a resounding victory, the sort that leaves the spin room gasping for air" - will pretty much seal the deal. Of course, as I know all too well, nothing is ever certain.
I am so ready for October, for the cool and cold months ahead, the sweaters and the hoodies and fewer leaves and shorter days. This weekend I'm going up to the Berkshires for a Fall weekend, the first time I've done that in years. I'm going up with two of my best friends, and I think one of them wants to hit up a tag sale or ten, the idea of which brings back the nostalgia full-on. When I was a kid, October weekends in the Berkshires were a regular feature of my life - they're one of the few things I remember from my childhood, the selection pumpkins to bring back to the city, the apple picking and football-watching. What's better than that? I think the days were colder then; I remember occasional snow around Halloween, and certainly some very chilly weather. The pictures I have bear this out - I'm rocking a little knit hat and a down vest with foliage in the background. Those days - October snow - are probably gone until long after anyone reading this has died. Meanwhile, this has been a long, hot, busy summer, with lots of travel and way too many weddings, and I'm ready to get into a steady rhythm. Part of that, I'm starting to understand, is finding times to get away, and I'm glad for this weekend to be one of those.
This is probably the busiest I've ever been. At least two major, important projects in my life are currently sitting on the back burner - not a good place for them. But what's the choice? My days now are split between managing NOW and New Amsterdam, teaching down at Princeton, and pulling together a few composition projects. Left hanging are my larger compositional work - a major project that I'll be premiering this Spring - and my dissertation. Right now, as I write this, I've been listening through the GZA's Beneath the Surface, an incredible tour-de-force of flow, one of the last great efforts put forth by the classic Wu-Tang crew. Wu was the dark matter lying behind hip hop in the 1990s. People talk about the gigantic shadows of Tupac and Biggie, Nas and Jay Z coming up, Common and De La, the Rawkus and Def Jux underground, the rise of the Dirty South led by OutKast and UGK, and of course the utter dominance of Dre on one coast and trashy gangsta rap on the other - all true, but the Wu crew put out so many incredible albums and absolutely revolutionized the entire conceptual framework of both flow and production, sounding like nothing else ever did, or ever would, or ever does now. I bring this up because that's my dissertation topic - figuring out why at least some of these figures were so artistically important, and doing so in a different way than others have asked the question. Rest assured that Wu will get a chapter or so.
My friend just sent me an interesting article from the Wall Street Journal, about how the failure of the Federal government to bail out Lehman led to a panic that precipitated this current, much more substantial and frightening crisis. Actually, the article was interesting not for making that obvious point, but for detailing - in an hour-by-hour fashion - the process by which the panic and subsequent crisis unfolded. It's a good article, but the problem I have with it, and with others like it that I've read, is that it uses an incredibly small window to suggest the efficacy of government policy. "Not bailing out Lehman leads to panic, and therefore we should initiate a bailout for the present crisis, because panic is bad." Well, of course, panic is bad - but this is a climate in which all scenarios are bad. We're choosing between bad roads, but the question should be - and leading economists disagree on the answer to this question, I recognize - looking ahead, what will the impact of various policies be? If we had bailed out Lehman, what would that have done to actually mitigate the inevitable crunch that we're now in as a result of the housing bubble? Forestall it? Delay it for how long? On the one hand, you have the actual result of not bailing out Lehman, which (along with a host of other factors, not the least of which - one might speculate - is the coziness between Paulson, et al, and the people who would directly benefit the most from the bailout) had tangibly bad consequences (initiating a panic), but on the other hand, you only have the speculative problems, the what-might-have-beens, or what-might-come-to-be scenarios that play out from our current decisions.
With that in mind, I'm not sure how I feel about Nouriel Roubini, but he does at least offer some historical context for the present condition. Relevant? Maybe, maybe not. But we can't allow the pain of the recent months to overly guide our policy, which must be focused on the future. Business people are supposed to be good at this - except, of course, when it's their own livelihood that's on the line.
