MUSIC 101, MULTIMEDIA VERSION

posted by James Reel

    Tim Smith of the Baltimore Sun offers high praise for the latest entrant into what Virgil Thomson used to call the “music appreciation racket.” Here's the nutgraf:

    If the thoroughly uninitiated, or just moderately interested, could be coaxed into spending some time with The NPR Listener's Encyclopedia of Classical Music (Workman Publishing, 979 pages, $19.95), a whole wave of new fans might be generated.
    Author Ted Libbey has created the reader-friendliest, yet fully substantive, publication of its type I've seen come along yet. … In addition to the quality of the text, there's an unusual extra: access to a Web site of 527 musical examples, adding up to a good 75 hours of recordings.

ABOUT THOSE DONUT HOLES

posted by James Reel

    Arts administration consultant Drew McManus maintains a provocative blog called Adaptistration, documenting how orchestra managers are and are not adapting to America’s changing cultural and economic environments. I read it regularly without linking to it because I’ve assumed it might be a bit too specialized for general readers. I’m changing my mind about that, especially now that Drew has had some very nice things to say about what I wrote about the Tucson Symphony in the current Tucson Weekly.
    What’s more important than Drew’s kind words are some points he’s made in an e-mail to me:

    I'm glad to see that you sense there's more behind those ASOL figures than they project because that hunch is dead on. Reportedly, the League is supposed to release some new figures about subscription sales in the near future but whether or not they release the pure data or something through a spin filter is yet to be seen. If I had to bet, I’d go for the latter.
    In the TSO's case I would also point out that their finances have been temporarily boosted by the large salary and work rule concessions from the musicians. That's an artificial revenue enhancer the administration and board will need to fill before they can launch a capital campaign. Whether or not a fundraising timeline set by the board will be acceptable to the players has yet to be seen.
    [TSO executive director Susan] Franano's sense of accomplishment over the 1% of the local community participating in concerts is fairly shocking since the Knight Foundation’s Consumer Segmentation Study (part of their Magic of Music project) determined that, on average, about 4% of any given community participates in live classical music concerts. If you believe that statistic (and I think they did a good job researching it) then Tucson is lagging behind.

    I knew about those concessions from the musicians and meant to write something about that last year, but never got around to it, and completely forgot about it by the time I started the present article. Thanks to Drew for jogging my faulty memory, and for bringing up some other good points.

BUT DOESN'T EVERY DONUT HAVE A HOLE?

posted by James Reel

    Speaking of the Tucson Weekly (see below), my contribution this week is a surprisingly uncynical look at the upcoming Tucson Symphony season, placed in the national context.

    At the Tucson Symphony Orchestra, the situation is not so dismal, although it's sufficiently tense that music director George Hanson told me a couple of months ago that his intention when programming the 2006-2007 season was to concoct something that's "economically responsible and draws an audience." That formula usually leads to a stinkbomb of moldy oldies, but Hanson has tried to put together a fairly diverse season, even though it relies heavily on audience pleasers that don't require a lot of extra musicians, rental fees or increased rehearsal.
    "This is probably as tight and efficient a season as any we've produced," Hanson said. "Dollars to donuts, we're getting a lot of donuts."

    You can read the rest here.

PAYING FOR REVIEWS?

posted by James Reel

    The blogosphere is beginning to rumble over allegations that Fanfare, to which I contribute, gives preferential treatment to the recordings of advertisers. Not that it sells positive reviews, but a disc is more likely to get reviewed if the label buys an ad. It’s not my place to comment—I’ll leave that to the editor and publisher, Joel Flegler, if anybody asks him—but I do marvel at the innocence of the American reading public. If you want to restrict your subscriptions to magazines whose editorial content is wholly untouched by advertising, paid junkets and other “special considerations,” I hope you’ll get much pleasure from Consumer Reports, which will be the only item left in your rack.
    That’s not the case for newspapers and alternative weeklies, much as people distrust them. As an editor at the Arizona Daily Star and the Tucson Weekly, I loved it when someone would call me to complain about some article and declare, “I’m going to stop advertising.” My response: “I really don’t care.” The sales directors were probably happy to see me go.

MAHLERIA

posted by James Reel

    Kyle Gann has figured out why Mahler appeals to some of us much more than Shostakovich does:

I spent all day writing program notes for the Shostakovich Eleventh Symphony, and I finally pinpointed why I can't love his music as much as I do Mahler's. It often demonstrates the same contrapuntal saturation, timbral variety, and rhythmic drive as Mahler, but it lacks meaningful background harmonic movement.

    If the explanation that follows in Gann’s post is too technical for your taste, allow me to direct you to Benjamin Zander’s Mahler cycle on Telarc. Not only are Zander’s performances among the most compelling and insightful in the catalog (and I’m not forgetting Leonard Bernstein’s), but each release comes with a bonus disc in which Zander spends an hour and a quarter discussing the technical aspects of the symphony in great detail, without ever speaking over the heads of average music lovers. He employs generous musical excerpts to illuminate his remarks, and he never makes the common music-appreciation mistake of assuming his listeners aren't as intelligent and curious as he is. Go forth and listen.

HOW TO BE INTERVIEWED

posted by James Reel

    Timothy Mangan of the Orange County Register offers some tips to interviewees that I wish would be heeded by the people I interview.