Blah Blah…4000+ empty words and there is a REAL problem with the league conference

Cutting to the chase, the bottom line with the 4000 + words of “thesaurial” prowess from Philip Kennicott, is that we should stop doing what isn’t working now, and go back to what wasn’t working before…Huh?

save-the-orchestraHand Philip Kennicott another Pulitzer,  just like they did to Gene Weingarten for his Pearls before Breakfast tome on the argument that people who actually believe in getting to work on time  instead of stopping to watch Joshua Bell play in the subway  (it was done at rush hour on a week day) proves that people don’t make time for great artistry! Ridiculous since it was set up to fail, so that he could write 4000+ words.   In Philips’s New Republic article “Orchestra’s in Crisis” (or my title: Welcome to 5 years ago!), he goes to great lengths to try and convince us all that outreach efforts are failing, new music sucks and Orchestra concerts should should all have a church like atmosphere.  Here’s an excerpt (bold my emphasis):

When Twain recounted his European travels to American audiences, one thing he noted approvingly about the musical experience in Germany was the audiences: they were quiet, well-behaved, and reverential, unlike American audiences, which still enjoyed classical music as if in a beer hall.3But the appeal to history does not end there. American orchestras got better and taste grew more refined. With an influx of European Jewish musicians in the 1930s and 1940s, American orchestras achieved a sophistication second to none in the Old World. The concert format became settled, audience members began to respect each other’s right to listen attentively, and (like so many other cultural institutions in America) the whole thing took on a pseudo-historical aura of sacredness. Advocates for blowing up the current concert experience—which in the orchestral world is seen as the proper progressive approach—view this period as an aberration, a pompous deviation from the true trajectory of American musical history

Actually I don’t know anyone who wants to blow up the current concert experience or who views this period as an aberration.  The fact is that  (in his words) the “Current concert experience” is still current!  An orchestra’s bread and butter will always be the traditional concert format (it’s peanut butter and jelly is a successful pops series) because people still want to experience the masterpieces in an optimal way.  If he cared to glance at all the major orchestra’s seasons that are getting under way, this format is still front and center.  The other thing overlooked and/or ignored by him are the success stories from outreach…but that would be yet another inconvenient truth!

The reality is that for most orchestras who are teetering or who just always have to operate in crisis mode is that it’s no longer enough to rely solely on that format to make ends meet.  There has to be development to get the non traditional audience, an effort to be good citizens of the community and a mission to provide an educational outlet so that a wide relevance can be achieved.  You get the large donors and repeat season ticket holders from lifelong cultivation and a deep seated love for the orchestra and Classical music, but you get the “now” donors and single ticket buyers by being relevant.

Entertainment and cultural experiences are vast and diverse, as are the audiences that now have so much more to choose from, and it would be foolish to think that our audiences don’t have any other cultural interests other than Orchestral music.  There are a plethora (now there’s a Pulitzer word) of examples of  artists successfully crossing over into popular genres, check out Time for Three.  This is not new though, composers throughout history would travel to find music that was popular to inspire them to compose (Brahms Hungarian Dances for instance).  Now composers are becoming even more political and so at the League Conference Kennicott disparages the St Louis Youth Symphony’s performance of a contemporary work, not the orchestra but the fact that they had to play it:

More telling for the future was a piece that the group performed, a composition by Ingram Marshall called “Kingdom Come.” The quarter-hour symphonic mood sketch uses recorded sounds from churches in the former Yugoslavia to dramatize the Bosnian conflict. Over an electronic soundtrack of bells and choral sounds, the orchestra performs in a simple post-minimalist style, somewhat akin to the music of Arvo Pärt. The piece checks all the currently fashionable boxes for new classical works: it is harmonically and melodically accessible and socially topical, it mixes media, and it draws on musical cultures outside the concert hall.

But it doesn’t work. One admired the young players performing it, but felt embarrassed to watch them subservient to the electronic musical enhancement.

They were samples of actual sounds of the conflict (I was in the audience) which were powerful, and I wonder if he went back in time to hear the first performance of Beethoven’s Eroica, would he have criticized the politicization, the new experimental sounds and non-traditional forms? Or how about the use of electronically reproduced bird sounds in Respighi’s Pines of Rome (1924). WE should feel embarrassed for them for having to play it? No, it was actually riveting because they were so young and playing something so new (David Robertson himself conducted).  I wasn’t that crazy about the piece, but I was so proud that they performed it.  We can’t close off young talent to the new, many of them won’t become professional musicians and instead to do other things, but there is a good chance opening up their minds to the new right now  might instill a desire for them to try and consume adventurous programming later in life (audiences for new music), because of that experience ….oh wait he doesn’t want that!

Much of his article railed against the league and the conference and how he thought it was all pretty delusional:

No surprise, then, that many of the attendees at the recent annual meeting of the League of American Orchestras seemed in the grip of a strange mania, a mix of bitter gloom and hysterical optimism.

Why is that a problem?  To be fair to the conference, they wanted everyone there, those who are in trouble, those who are not, and everyone in between so that we might learn from one another, does he want us to be either gloomy or optimistic?

Now I need to disclose that I was there for only the first day, but there was a real problem with the conference that I personally experienced.  With the education sessions offered, I will admit that I was not that interested in attending the one for conductors.  I wanted to go to the one for artistic administrators who were talking about pops and in particular hits and misses in programming.  At most regional positions conductors (at least in my personal experience) are the artistic administrators and do all the programming!  It would be very valuable to listen to artistic administrators.   However at lunch when I mentioned this to 2 conductors sitting near me, I was told that this would be “frowned upon”, that I would not be welcomed, someone else even suggesting that artistic administrators feel possessive about their programming.  Seriously???? Not that I didn’t get something out of the session for conductors, but I found this to be troubling.  I remember at the Fundraising Conference I attended in April (see my last post) we were told at the beginning that we could attend anything we wanted, no matter what our position in our organization is.  It should be the same at the league, about learning from each other.The problem is that we are not diverse or inclusive enough within ourselves to be able to promote diversity and inclusiveness with our offerings in a sincere way, since only a few people (often with little experience) get to have input or make decisions.

Back to the article though, neither Kennicott’s  or Weingarten’s amount to anything close to real journalism or objectivity.  Instead they set up manufactured scenarios combined with emotionally charged hyperbole to be able to come to a conclusion based on what they thought before they started writing.  They confused truth with belief.   If these were submitted as scientific papers they wouldn’t get published for lack of evidence, but I guess the Pulitzer committee doesn’t care so long as it’s well written!

4 thoughts on “Blah Blah…4000+ empty words and there is a REAL problem with the league conference”

  1. I’m unlurking for a moment to comment…

    So, why didn’t you attend the sessions for AAs anyway? I’m a “board member,” but our board does all of the actual work of administrating in addition to fundraising and policy. As a first-timer, the nice lady at the check-in desk told me I could go to whatever sessions I wanted. So I did — I went to ED, development and marketing sessions, and got plenty of confirmation that I was trying to lead (feels more like pushing, though) my colleagues in the right direction. So I did. I listened. And reflected. And I learned a lot. Best money anyone ever spent on my behalf.

    I was rather confused by Kennicott’s article. He and I obviously had much different experiences at the conference.

  2. It sounds like a gullible audience, the Kennicott fans. This should dissipate when they get more informed, maybe email each other and/or visit each other’s symphony performances? I remember an article sent to me from The Nation in about 1982 (Skaneateles Festival year 2) that ranted about elitism and snobbery at summer chambermusic festivals. It was very nasty in tone; seems like it was the magic wand touching the idea-chambermusic festivals proliferated and thrived everywhere from that moment on.

  3. Very good post. I’m coming to it quite late, but I agree–Kennicott has a very personal view of the issues, and those views seem to exist without looking at a wide-spectrum of orchestras and situations. That is, to be sure, how most of us approach problems. That’s why conferences, blogs, and various outlets of discussing ideas are important.

    The sad part is, those high enough up, like Kennicott, often don’t engage in a real dialogue. They look down and say “this is how it is! And I don’t like it.” It’s a serious issue. Stubbornness is already a trait inherent in many people (myself included), but add in a little power and prestige, and now there is only “one way” as presented by the rhetoric.

    Hopefully, with more eyes looking at the classical music world, people will start to see how a more nuanced and collective structure is the best to move forward. And the best advocates for our music is ourselves, especially in America where there is a glaring hole in general music education due to massive budget cuts. It’s all about a general philosophy–bottom up or top down. If you believe in building from the bottom up, outreach is of utmost importance.

    But as Minnesota, NYC Opera, and all the other strikes have taught us, the biggest dangers to orchestras are really the inability of people to sit down and actually figure out the problems and hammer out answers…I guess I should lump in the US Congress as well.

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