GEOGRAPHY 101, POLYGLOT EDITION

posted by James Reel

    I was reading an item in the (Manchester) Guardian quoting the German publication Der Tagesspiegel on the overabundance of music festivals, and suddenly felt lost. According to the Guardian’s translation, Der Tagesspiegel posits that “the festivals in Bayreuth and Salzburg are the most prominent examples of an increasingly close network of festivals that now stretch across Europe from the south Pole to Andalusia.” And sure enough, in the original German it’s “das sich in Europa inzwischen vom südlichen Polarkreis ins heißeste, hinterste Andalusien spannt.”
    From the South Pole to Andalusia? Hmm. Those would be festivals stretching across Africa, not Europe. Hey, guys—the North Pole is the one at the top of the map.

CAITLIN BY COINCIDENCE

posted by James Reel

    This past spring, the day after I interviewed young violinist Caitlin Tully for Strings magazine, I went over to the Tucson Symphony office to find out what they had lined up for the 2006-07 season. Guest soloists included … Caitlin Tully. I was so pleased to be able to sit there with George Hanson and pronounce Caitlin’s name correctly (not the way it looks). Here’s how the article begins:

    Now that she’s mastered 25 concertos, performed with orchestras from Dallas to Toronto, designed much of her own concert clothing, and celebrated her 18th birthday, Caitlin Tully is ready to try something different: college.
    All she has to do is figure out how she can keep her studies at Princeton University, beginning this fall, where she is as yet undecided on a major, from interfering with her concert career.
    Besides all the concerto work, she has a recital in Paris coming up in spring 2007, and she has to make time for her lessons with Itzhak Perlman.
    “It’s kind of neat to do music as a job already and realize, yeah, I do like it,” she says. “Now I want to figure out how to turn that into being a well-rounded adult, which is why I’m going to college while doing music as my career. How do I build a career and perform in the places and with the kinds of musicians I really want to, and not have school be detrimental in terms of scheduling? I don’t know if I can do it.
    “Talk to me in four years.”

    You can read the rest—and learn how she pronounces her name—here.

BAD CELLIST

posted by James Reel

    ABC News reports that a model college student and cellist faces sentencing for bank robbery:

    On Dec. 9, 2005, … [Greg Hogan Jr.] walked into an Allentown, Pa., Wachovia bank and handed a teller a note that said he had a gun and demanded money.
    The frightened teller gave Hogan $2,800. Hogan then went with friends to see The Chronicles of Narnia and have pizza. Later that day, police caught up with him as he went to play cello for the school orchestra.

    What an idiot. No cellist-bank robber needs to use a gun. All he has to do is brandish his endpin.

BRITISH BOOSTERIMS, PARTE THE SECONDE

posted by James Reel

    Kyle Gann presents further evidence of the parochialism of Brit-oriented music critics. Gann is aghast that The Pimlico Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Composers (1999), by Mark Morris, contains full essays on such rather marginal English figures as William Alwyn, Ivor Gurney, Daniel Jenkyn Jones, Elizabeth Maconchy and Grace Williams, but barely mentions the more influential but American-based Morton Feldman—and that's just one example of its Anglocentric tendencies. You can find Gann’s full post here, and while you’re at it, you might care to review my own intemperate remarks on the general subject of British music criticism here.
    PS: I like Alwyn's music, actually, but still, the English have been puffed with self-importance ever since they contrived to run the 0-degree longitude through Greenwich.

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.