This week (and next) I am going to wrap up my Audience Connections Class by grading their papers right here plus showing my gratitude for some recent experiences. Traveling today to Syracuse for concerts though, I couldn’t resist adding to Bill’s Airport Post. I say yes, a phenomenal idea and I think we don’t have to limit it to just airports……
Programming
Challenge = Opportunity part 5: Better Orchestra = Less Rehearsing!..
Orchestras improve with more performances not more rehearsals! The act of being at your best happens at the point of contact with an audience. The challenge is:
How do we perform more with expenses rising and budgets stagnating?
Simple, if you have good musicians, TRUST THEM and don’t rehearse them to death! In fact by cutting rehearsals an orchestra can become better and fast!!…..
Introducing the Electric Celestetophone
This past weekend in the middle of conducting “The Nutcracker” a thought occurred to me. Didn’t composers try to use new instruments as soon as they became available? Case in point the Celeste. We hear Sugar Plum now and the first thought from conductors and musicians is probably Great only 10 minutes till the end of the ballet! Seriously though, when it was first heard it would have been like hearing an Electric Guitar in the orchestra today the sound was so new…
Programming: It’s all about ME!!!
One question I always seem to get when I’m out guest conducting is “Who put the program together?” To be honest, by the time I get to a concert I rarely remember how the program was assembled. If we’re doing one of my party charts then I probably suggested it. If I see something I haven’t done before odds are I asked the question “what holes do you need filled in your season?” But what to do when you are confronted by the following?
Save the Wails…..
We think we have it bad when it comes to support and attendance. Compared to us there is another art form that quite frankly is under siege, existing in a sea of indifference after helping to build our American cultural identity. The city where it was still thriving is struggling too, through no fault of it’s own, and we lament our situation?
The Greatest piece you’ve never heard……..
I have two firm and fast rules of music:
1. There are no undiscovered masterpieces – if someone starts waxing poetic about the symphonies of Arnold Bax just nod and move on.
2. Everyone – you, me, the average Joe/Jane on the street – gets to nominate one, and only one piece, that they can claim as their own personal Undiscovered Masterpiece. Here is my choice:
Out of the Shadows……
I could not be more excited about this opportunity, it is both an honor to be invited in by Drew and to share a blog with Bill. For the record my wife Lisa and I are legal immigrants from Australia. My title refers to the fact that now having space on a blog means that I wont just be leaving hit and run comments like I have on Drew’s and many other blogs over the past two years. It is time to step up to the mike and state my position, and to take some hits myself!
Here goes…….