THE POST OFFICE IS KILLING OUR MAGAZINES

posted by James Reel

Magazines are in financial trouble, and part of the situation—but only part of it—is described in an Associated Press article that includes this information:

Newsstand sales of U.S. magazines fell 6.3 percent in the first half of 2008, an industry group said Monday, as rising gas and food costs led consumers to cut back on nonessential spending. … Publishers redouble efforts to sign up subscribers during economic slowdowns because they know newsstand sales will ebb, which they need to offset because advertising rates are based on minimum circulation targets. Newsstand sales are far more lucrative than subscriptions, though, meaning circulation revenue is dropping at most titles. … Overall magazine circulation, which includes subscription and newsstand sales, was flat at 349.9 million copies in the period, as paid subscriptions edged higher to 290.2 million copies, the Audit Bureau of Circulations reported in its biannual tally. Single-copy magazine sales in the six months ended June 30 fell to 44.1 million copies from 47.1 million a year ago. The survey included 467 titles that reported results in both periods.

Single-copy sales are a problem, but there’s also an insidious threat to subscription copies: the U.S. Postal Service. Here’s part of an e-mail that Joel Flegler, editor and publisher of Fanfare, sent to his staff (including me) last weekend:

Originally I had intended to publish a 500+page Nov/Dec issue, but I discovered a few weeks ago that the USPS recently instituted a ruling that a magazine won't qualify for bulk rate mailing if it exceeds 3/4". If it's over the limit, it means that I would have to mail each copy as a parcel, which would be prohibitively expensive, at least $10,000 more per issue. After discussing the situation with Fanfare's printer, who investigated the various types of paper that we could use and still maintain quality, it's now clear that Fanfare can never exceed 416 pages unless the USPS changes its requirements. (There have been numerous articles published about how the USPS seems determined to drive small publishers out of business. The apparently annual increase for mailings is bad enough, but service is also deteriorating at an alarming rate, with subscriber copies often arriving three or four weeks late as well as many copies being lost in the mail.) Because of the significantly larger-than-average number of reviews for the Nov/Dec issue and the unexpected restriction on the size I can publish, I have to face the regrettable decision of postponing many reviews until the Jan/Feb issue. This will certainly have an impact on the quantity of new releases that I'll be assigning for the Oct. 1 deadline.

Bad service from the post office, and from the distributors that provide magazines to bookstores, is perhaps as great a danger to American magazines as any other, more widely discussed factor.

UAPRESENTS CONTINUES ITS RECOVERY

posted by James Reel

In the latest Tucson Weekly, you’ll find in the Mailbag section a noble defense of yours truly by a reader I swear I do not know. More pertinent to the self-aggrandizing, self-promoting nature of this blog is my own contribution, checking in with UApresents:

After accumulating a $1 million deficit in 2006, campus impresario UApresents has finished its second consecutive positive fiscal year with more than a $90,000 surplus and a 12 percent uptick in advance-ticket sales. Part of the turnaround can be attributed to shedding some staff members over the past couple of years, and part is linked to more aggressive fundraising within the community (ticket sales now are expected to cover only 55 percent of costs, as opposed to as much as 85 percent in the past). The rest of the turnaround is due to refocused programming: more attractions with immediate name recognition that are relatively inexpensive to engage. Keep expenses down; maintain ticket prices and fundraising at a healthy level; add some state funding; and if all goes well, the result is a balanced budget.

The rest of the story awaits you here.

FOXY

posted by James Reel

Yesterday I stayed home in the morning to fend off a cold, but I had to rally sufficiently to attend an afternoon meeting with Jim Williams, the new executive director of the Fox Tucson Theatre. We’re trying to work out a co-production with the Arizona Friends of Chamber Music, of which I’m the vice-president. As of this morning it looks like that show might not happen because of a sudden change of itinerary of the touring ensemble we were going to present, but talking with Jim and his staff was an interesting experience. This project was first discussed toward the end of the tenure of Williams’ predecessor, Herb Stratford, when it was all very informal with a “Hey, kids, let’s put on a show in the barn” atmosphere. Not with Williams.

With his thinning gray hair and ponytail, he looks like an old hippie, but don’t be deceived by the bohemian appearance (which, after all, you really need if you’re working downtown). The first thing he wanted was a detailed budget and revenue projection (which, after all, you really need if you’re a serious manager). The Fox is a glorious art-deco 1930 movie palace, sparkling under a $13 million renovation, but since it reopened in 2005 it has struggled to break even. The place needs to do better than that: Once it starts turning a profit, it has to begin repaying a $5.6 million city loan that allowed the Fox to complete its renovation. If there’s no payment by 2011, the Fox will have to come up with $1.5, or else. I suspect “or else” means the city will take over the non-profit organization and its lovely theater.

So Williams has some hard work ahead of him. Based on the single hour I’ve spent with him, I’d say he has the right mindset for the job.

ANTHEMS

posted by James Reel

Alex Marshall of The Guardian girded his loins and listened to the national anthem of every country represented at the Olympics right now. He detests most of ’em, and with good reason (musical reasons, which he explains; he doesn’t comment much on the lyrics). Marshall doesn’t mention the anthem of his own land (somehow simultaneously stirring and stuffy), nor that of American (a truly horrid abomination, derived from an old English drinking song and suitable for singing only when one is drunk). But he does list some that meet his approval, with links to YouTube performances. These don’t always present the anthems to their best advantage—a couple are synthesizer jobs, and several are played by pop bands in concert—but they’ll give you an idea of what’s possible when a composer thinks outside the box step. Of those listed, my favorites are the anthems of Nepal and Bangladesh.

ORPHANED ORCHESTRA

posted by James Reel

In the 1990s, I saw a lot of little local arts groups collapse when they lost their founders/leaders. There just wasn’t enough of an administrative infrastructure or shared artistic vision to sustain the organizations once their charismatic leaders burned out or moved on. Now, the Tucson Chamber Orchestra is facing life after the departure of its founder, but I think that this group just might survive. From the latest Tucson Weekly:

Last April, just days before a high-profile concert at the Fox Tucson Theatre, Enrique Lasansky unexpectedly announced that the upcoming performance would be his last with the Tucson Chamber Orchestra, which he had founded 17 years before. His e-mail surprised his musicians and board. "Enrique's leaving left a real void for me as a new board member," says Madeline Bosma. "Now I don't have the same kind of enthusiasm about promoting the orchestra that I had formerly, but I really love classical music, so because of that, I will do what I can to help it." Lasansky didn't exactly leave the orchestra in an artistic void. A guest conductor had already been engaged for the season finale in June, and concertmaster Ellen Chamberlain is serving as interim music director for the coming season, during which four local conductors will audition to replace Lasansky. "Artistically, we're in a very good place," Chamberlain says. "The players have really stepped up, taking control of a lot of things so everything runs smoothly. A lot of my colleagues from the Tucson Symphony and chamber opportunities I've had have renewed interest in the orchestra, so we're getting more fully professional talent into the group. We're getting stronger players, and because of that, we'll be able to do a more challenging repertoire." Board president Patrick Gibbons says, "We're looking forward to having more of a player-driven organization. That can either kill an orchestra or make it better, but we're pretty hopeful."

You can find my full article here.

Also this week, I review Chris’ Café in La Placita, and the key sentences are these: “There's nothing experimental or surprising at Chris', except for the surprise that the people behind the counter remain pleasant no matter how busy they get. Cautious eaters will feel perfectly safe here with the traditional fare.” Learn more here.

PROKOFIEV AND GANDOLFI

posted by James Reel

Here are two more reviews I wrote earlier this year for Fanfare ... one devoted to a 20th-century Russian, the other to a 21st-century American.

PROKOFIEV Symphony No. 5; Lieutenant Kijé Suite * Paavo Järvi, cond; Cincinnati SO * TELARC SACD 60683 (Hybrid multichannel SACD: 64:25)

Paavo Järvi’s recording of Prokofiev’s Fifth reminds me of Leonard Slatkin’s recording of Elgar’s Enigma Variations: an essentially dark, somber view of music in which we’re accustomed to hearing more variety. Like Slatkin’s Elgar, Järvi’s Fifth is at least consistent and coherent and, indeed, valid, so it can’t be dismissed simply because we’ve come to expect more bite or more humor.

In the first movement, Järvi interprets the Andante marking as a leisurely walk, in the manner of Ormandy’s classic recording, instead of the brisk stroll we’ve been getting more recently, and rather than deflate the score, this tempo builds the music’s cumulative power. On the debit side, the second subject seems a bit impersonal. Järvi and the Telarc engineers maintain a very clear delineation of the orchestral sections, with the low brass being especially clear without being terribly heavy. At the same time, though, higher-pitched instruments, including trumpet and violins, seem reluctant to come forward in the mix, in ensemble passages as well as in woodwind and brass solos. This balance deepens the grayness of Järvi’s interpretation. All this holds true for the third movement as well. Järvi brings a brighter sound to the second and fourth movements, both benefiting from excellent clarity of articulation; the Scherzo truly scampers, despite the undercurrent of menace. A low-grade nervousness suffuses the final movement; the final section borders on the frantic and desperate, without turning shrill.

There’s less to report on the Kijé Suite; it gets a crisp, thumping performance, full of wit and flair, and not at all controversial. The performance of the Fifth, on the other hand, is strictly for people who can tolerate an anti-heroic approach to a work that is usually thought to be, at least in the end, celebratory. James Reel

GANDOLFI The Garden of Cosmic Speculation * Robert Spano, cond; Atlanta SO * TELARC SACD-60696 (Hybrid multichannel SACD: 67:36)

The universe is expanding, and so is Michael Gandolfi’s The Garden of Cosmic Speculation. The work began in 2004 as a four-movement orchestral suite inspired by features of a unique “physics garden” in southern Scotland. Robert Spano’s performances of that with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra were so successful that the organization asked Gandolfi to make it bigger, and seven more movements had emerged by 2007. This now amounts to more than an hour of music, but Gandolfi suggests that performers may extract whatever sequences that make sense to them for public performance. Spano and his orchestra here present the complete score.

The original Garden of Cosmic Speculation was created in 1988 by architect Charles Jencks, as a sort of visual embodiment of the concepts of wave theory, sub-atomic particles, string theory and such. Involving sculpture and landscape architecture, it’s a cross between the English formal gardens of the past and the theoretical physics of today. The park is apparently opened to visitors only one day a year, but Jencks published a book about the property, which is what initially caught Gandolfi’s attention. (Preparing the expanded version of his suite, he visited the garden in person.)

Gandolfi is a faculty member of the New England Conservatory and the Tanglewood Music Center, but he’s not one of the high Modernists that his Boston cultural neighbor, James Levine, is so fond of. Gandolfi’s music is readily accessible (at least to anyone who enjoys the sort of composers Spano promotes, such as Jennifer Higdon and Osvaldo Golijov), and quite eclectic … sometimes, perhaps, too eclectic to allow the composer to establish his own profile.

That eclecticism is fully intentional in the movement “The Universal Cascade,” which in the course of six and a half minutes quotes 28 pieces, mostly pre-Baroque, but including Bach, Stravinsky and Miles Davis. This is followed by “The Garden of Senses Suite,” which quotes Bach themes and forms (a different Baroque dance style or chorale corresponds to each of the senses, including the sixth, intuition). There’s minimalist pulsation and vibration, like mid-period John Adams, in the work’s first movement, “The Zeroroom,” and he adopts a rather French aesthetic, but with American openness and sweep (and sometimes syncopation), in the hurtling scherzo “Symmetry Break Terrace/Black Hole Terrace.” The score as a whole can be dynamic and exciting, witty, at times wonderfully still, and always offers plenty of internal variety, with care for color and clarity, but on the basis of this one 67-minute work, I’m having trouble identifying Gandolfi’s own voice. Even so, I’d like to continue the effort by hearing more of his music.

Telarc’s surround sound is exactly what this score needs: clear, detailed and spatially precise. The Scottish park atmosphere is evoked at the beginning and end by birdsong emerging from all the speakers, but otherwise the balance maintains a normal concert hall perspective. James Reel