NoDak Reflections

Today marks a blogospheric rite of passage for yours truly as I have the opportunity to blog about a tour for the first time (minus the photos and itineraries of course, as it's company policy 'round these parts not to waste precious bytes and pixels on personal stuff that y'all could care less about, or should).

On September 29, the Copper Street Brass Quintet embarked on a 10-day, 7-city tour of North Dakota, performing 7 concerts and innumerable workshops and masterclasses throughout the state. This was my first tour as part of a professional (rather than a student) ensemble, and predictably, I have a newfound appreciation for touring musicians who are able to bring it night after night under less than ideal conditions, although I have to admit that I've been witness to such relentless bitching from colleagues and teachers over the years that the experience was more one of elucidation than pure shock.

A pre-existing and significantly more acute misgiving about touring (i.e. the fact that it involves burning petroleum) which I brought along with me is documented more extensively here. Rather than focusing on that, though, I want to say a bit about the differences between performing in a metropolitan area of 3 million as opposed to rural towns of 6,000 (or even 600). While I can't be absolutely sure that I'm perceiving things correctly, it certainly seemed to me that many of these small town residents were significantly more appreciative of hearing something they can't just choose to go out and hear any night of the week (or year) than would be a city dweller who has the luxury of taking such concerts for granted.

That's not to say that there are no appreciative listeners whatsoever in the city, or that our group doesn't have something unique about it that elicited such a reception. I'd like to think that both of those things are true. Nonetheless, it's safe to say that the audience for concert music everywhere is not only small, but increasingly fatigued by the barrage of phone calls, e-mails, social networking invites, and fundraising campaigns that musicians and institutions heave at them, and hence, that being on the heaving end of this relationship, it's easy to feel like no one really cares, even if they do but are just to busy or too frazzled to respond.

In light of this dynamic, what this tour has taught me is that there's real value to touring to remote areas after all, both for the performers and the audience, and whether this is the result of quality, novelty, or simple lack of competition doesn't particularly concern me. I felt more appreciated in the last 2 weeks than I normally do in a year. That sounds like I'm seriously trashing my hometown...I certainly have a love/hate relationship with the place, but I'm wondering if this dynamic isn't inevitable given the conditions that exist. It's as simple as supply and demand: having many groups in town creates a buyers' market for concerts, and if this has attendance and revenue implications for musicians, why wouldn't it have social ones as well?

We know that a buyers' market for concerts can't sustain musicians financially, but tend to assume that buyers who don't show up to our particular concert nonetheless value what we do in some generic, relativistic fashion (and in a place like the Twin Cities, they would certainly say they do, and in that very fashion to boot). What if that's not the case? I'm by no means equating financial support with moral support, but wondering whether oversupply of the product might not, in fact, have the exact same effect on both. As a friend of mine who shall remain anonymous once said, "Even smoking weed on the beach in Hawaii gets old after a while." Similarly, at what point does our breathtakingly transcendent musical product or service cease to matter to anyone simply because it's abundant? Or does audiences' seeming inability to distinguish among performances of widely variable quality simply lead to an undue perception of abundance? Don't answer that.

There were, of course, both successes and failures in the attendance category throughout the course of this tour, but there were some very appreciative (and occasionally even well-informed) people in each and every group, which, for me, made the whole thing worthwhile. I've written at least a dozen times in this space that I'd much rather play for one person who cares than for 100 who don't. That's just my opinion, and I know not everyone feels that way, and for a variety of noble and not-so-noble reasons at that. While we certainly would have liked to play exclusively to packed houses, it was gratifying nonetheless (for me, at least) to know that we reached someone each night, dare I say in a way that I'm not sure many of my performances in town have attained over the last few years. The differences in accessibility and marketing between this and the other groups I'm in have a lot to do with this, but so, I think, does location, which has me looking at touring in a slightly more wholesome light, at least for the moment.

Prodigy

There's nothing remarkable about prodigal talent. What's remarkable is when someone manages to recognize its existence.

Just Call Us "Other"

You can't make this stuff up...

From the Department of Poorly Written Program Notes, co-presented with the Department of Inadvertently Displayed Ignorance, and with promotional consideration provided by the Department of Midwestern Artsy-Fartsy Cuteness, I give you the blurb on George Benjamin's At First Light from the SPCO's "Program at a Glance," the condensed program notes that accompany the regular length program notes so that people who kind of care but kind of don't can learn something about the noise that is about to be foisted on them without taking too much time away from coughing and whispering to each other about how much they hate new music:


GEORGE BENJAMIN
At First Light

This piece, written when Benjamin was 22, was inspired by Turner's painting Norham Castle, Sunrise, an early precursor to impressionism. The music is itself a pastiche of gestures and abstractions. Fourteen musicians play more than 30 colorful instruments, including a bass trombone, whip, and a large newspaper.


Where to start? The appeal to age-based novelty is hardly uncommon, nor is the use of the term "gesture" as a backhanded compliment to a piece of new music, nor is the gratuitous use of an adjective such as "colorful" to distract listeners from the dissonance they're about to encounter. The crown jewel of this blurb, however, is the implication that the bass trombone is on par for novelty with a whip. A whip?!

It's true, I'm a low brass player myself, and hence a but biased, maybe even more than a bit insecure about our always tenuous status as "standard" members of the orchestra. That point aside, to categorize the bass trombone as novel is one thing, but to lump it in with whips and newspapers is completely absurd and ignorant. Not that I have anything against whips and newspapers (or rocks or sirens or bowed crotales...actually, I do have something against bowed crotales, but that story will have to wait for another time) being used as musical instruments, but I don't think its a stretch to say that the bass trombone has historically played a more significant role in the orchestra than they have.

In larger orchestras, the instrument is quite standardly used as the 3rd trombone, even if "bass" trombone was not specified by the composer. In case those of you who write program notes haven't ever actually been down to a concert since people got audacious enough to start sticking valves on trombones some several decades ago, this is because it sounds pretty damn close to a tenor trombone most of the time, and sounds even better in the lower registers by virtue of its larger bore, this despite being pitched in the same key as the tenor.

When one refers to a bass tuba, people are often curious as to how and why anyone would make a tuba that was even lower than normal, not realizing, of course, that the tubas they've seen and heard were, in most cases, contrabass tubas, and that bass tubas are actually smaller, not larger, than the instruments they're most familiar with. I suspect that, although the bass trombone is, in fact, larger than the the more commonly encountered tenor, the same dynamic is on display here, namely that the modifier is what catches people's attention first, along with the expectation that a bass version of an already low-pitched and heavily caricatured instrument must be something to behold. When this comes up in conversation with an avowed novice, I'm always happy to offer clarification, along with a good-natured, self-depricating low brass joke to help the medicine go down. When I read something like this in program notes supplied by a first-rate professional orchestra, the good-naturedness takes a hike. Writing program notes ought to consist of more than merely scanning the instrumentation for novelties, but when it must, a good handle on what exactly constitutes novelty in the first place is a must.

The poetic justice here? The trombonist played the entire part on his tenor (or, strictly speaking, "tenor-bass" trombone, a tenor trombone with one valve which lowers the pitch a perfect fourth, or less if the slide is out further at the time). Sorry, folks, you didn't get to hear bass trombone after all. If it's any consolation, at least you got to hear a nearly identical sound coming out of a nearly identical instrument, and at least the piece was actually written by a 22 year-old, albeit a 22 year-old who is now nearly 50. As for my consolation, I, probably alone, got to have a good chuckle at the status (or lack thereof) enjoyed by those of us who blow into big metal things that no one can name. It's not the first time, and I suspect it won't be the last.

Zander @ TED

As further evidence that if classical music is dying it may well be at the hands of its own advocates and practitioners, I give you this lecture from the TED conference by Benjamin Zander, who commits therein what are, in my mind, three of the deadliest sins of classical music proselytizing: attempting to use analysis to synthesize experience, arbitrarily imposing a narrative on a piece of abstract instrumental music, and appealing to novelty in place of substance. I'll examine them one by one:

(1) Attempting To Use Analysis To Synthesize Experience

Much of the talk seems to be preparatory in nature, getting the audience ready for the final, complete performance of the piece under discussion at which time they are expected to suddenly "get it" by virtue of their recently acquired experience. Zander ensures that they hear the piece (or at least fragments of it) several times throughout the course of the talk, a worthwhile effort as repeated hearings of the same piece heighten the experience for many listeners. Unfortunately, when Schoenberg wrote that in order to like a piece one must first be able to remember it, he wasn't talking about 10 minutes ago; more like ten months or years. The mechanism by which memory becomes an asset rather than a liability to the listener takes longer and cannot be synthesized quickly. It also cannot be done by simply telling people what they're supposed to be listening for. Describing music verbally cannot possibly give the recipient any idea what it actually sounds like, but more importantly, one should never expect that every audience member would describe it the same way were they asked to do so themselves. Analysis cannot stand in for experience because the latter is unique and personal. It cannot be formed on one's behalf by someone else simply rhapsodizing on a piece's structure.

Zander avoids the pitfall of imposing an overly technical analysis on what one must assume is an audience that lacks an academic musical background, but what he performs is analysis nonetheless, taking elements of the piece out of time and explaining "what's really going on." When it comes to the aesthetic experience, educating listeners into conformity in this way is impossible, but even if it were possible, it would not be desirable. There is a certain biodiversity that makes the musical ecosystem run, exemplified by creative musicians who draw on a wide range of influences, as well as certain strains of pedagogical tradition that encourage this (it's no coincidence that the terms "inbreeding," "incestuousness," and "cannibalization" are often used figuratively in this way by musicians, including those steeped in the classical tradition).

(2) Arbitrarily Imposing a Narrative on a Piece of Abstract Instrumental Music

This favorite pastime of Musicologists everywhere is no more useful in outreach than it is in scholarship. On a personal level, I make no bones about the fact that I have absolutely no interest in engaging in this pursuit, and that doing so detracts from rather than enriches the experience for me. Nevertheless, I think there are some more objective critiques to be made here. One could argue that prescribing a narrative for the audience robs them of the opportunity to form their own, the latter option being, I would think, the preferred outcome for those who enjoy such activities. One could also assume that even if the technique is wildly successful here, there's no guarantee (in fact, it's rather unlikely) that anyone in this audience will be able to reproduce the same results in themselves when confronted with an unfamiliar piece in absence of Mr. Zander's coaching.

I would go even further and argue that Zander does more harm than good here. To tell a roomful of novices that the key to listening to music is coming up with the right story to accompany it is to tell them that the art of music is weak, dependent, intellectually murky, and aesthetically frail; it is to trivialize the art form as one which cannot stand on its own, painting its greatest exponents as mere taunters and its greatest works as somehow incomplete; and it does the greatest of all disservices to those composers who actively oppose(d) this attitude and its consequences for their work. To repeat this blasphemy in front of an impressionable audience is to sell out one's own art form as a mere component part of some grander scheme. Conversely, the greatest gift one can give such an audience is the experience of music as an autonomous art form; music at its most powerful, unencumbered, and aesthetically unique, the way every musician, academic, and listener who has ever been inspired on a spiritual level by a piece of music has experienced it at one time or another in their lives. This experience is absolutely for everybody; anything less sells the audience and the art form dreadfully short.

(3) Appealing to Novelty In Place of Substance

That the TED conference specializes in "infotainment" is no secret, nor is it anything to be ashamed of assuming that both the info- and the -tainment are adequately represented. In this case, however, I see a classic case of sheer entertainment value diverting attention from the fact that next to nothing has actually been accomplished. Novelty is everywhere in this presentation: the white tennis shoes paired with a sport coat, the theatrical manner, and the elementary school bathroom humor form the bulk of it (the phrase "one buttock playing" sets the presenter up for a ruthless parody about "half-assing" it, but we'll save that for later). Zander can't help it that he's enough of a musician to perform his own musical examples, or that he has a foreign accent, but these novel features only contribute further.

Of course, whether there is in fact any "substance" to what Zander is saying here depends on your opinion of his methods. Some people believe that the problem with instrumental music is that there's nothing more to latch on to but the sound itself; I, on the other hand, see that as its greatest attribute. Some people believe that listening to music is a skill that must be taught and learned in an objective and quantifiable way; I happen to think that individual human beings are too different for this ever to be effective, and that even if it were, it would rob us of our individuality. Despite the romanticized folklore about divine inspiration that surrounds many great classical composers, we know from experience that the lifeblood of musical creativity is the unique impression the same piece of music might make on each listener, this being the mechanism by which stylistically diverse musicians often cite common influences. As musicians, our individuality is all that we have, and its expression is intractably mediated by how we see (or in this case hear) the world around us. Take that away and the party is over.

You might label my position that of an "aesthetic libertarian." I believe that if one's favorite music is not very popular, giving a lecture about why it is so great is neither an effective nor a valid way of attempting to improve its standing. Standardizing our perception means standardizing our art, both in creation and reception. I don't want that, you don't want that, and I have a hard time believing that Mr. Zander wants that either. He has had an experience and he wants dearly to replicate that experience in others, which is exactly how most of us feel about whatever music it is we are passionate about. Unfortunately, there's nothing we can actually do to make this happen, and among all the methods yet devised of attempting such a thing (lecture-recitals for captive dinner guests, making mix tapes for friends, etc.), the Saving Classical Music Proselytizing Tour '08 is the one I find the most misguided. Rather than making a mix tape and sending you on your way to draw your own conclusions, imagine that friend of yours putting on a dog and pony show aimed at revealing once and for all why what he/she likes is actually the best. Chances are your response would fall somewhere between boredom and resentment, no matter how well-groomed the dogs and ponies are.

In the middle of a conference where cutting edge ideas about neuroscience, innate human violence, and space colonization are being tossed around left and right, a funny little man dancing around in white tennis shoes and playing the piano is going to go over well no matter what. It's a good way to take a break from the more apocalyptically-themed presentations and increase the audience's intellectual street cred at the same time (listening to classical music is one thing, but to "love and understand" it earns even more points). Meanwhile, in the presentation's second life here in the online world, classical musicians everywhere are thrilled to see their medium occupying such a central place at a conference otherwise devoted to such "serious" topics, since this undoubtedly proves that what they do is important regardless of how well they do it (see the overgrown comments section to the video, where the gallery dutifully repeats a litany of pop culture clichés and fallacies about music that would make Greg Sandow blush). It's a symbiotic relationship if there ever was one, a quid pro quo, tit-for-tat, rigor-for-glamour, info-for-tainment type of deal. It's not surprising, then, that the talk gets a reception from both worlds something like President Bush gets from FOX News; it is, however, earned in exactly the same way.

Some may see in this talk a harmless, lightweight attempt to have some fun with an often unappreciated art form, a pursuit that has many benefits if it succeeds and few drawbacks if it fails. I see in it all the worst things that everyday folk like to accuse classical music of being: bourgeois, conformist, and elitist. It's not for nothing that classical musicians have had this latter term tossed at them with impunity by just about everyone else. As a group, we appear to others to have made our minds up that if everyone else doesn't just love what we do, there must be something wrong with them. Letting people make their own minds up apparently being bad for business, we'd seemingly rather make their minds up for them, as in, "It's not really an experiment because I know the outcome," or, "The other thing I want to do is to tell you about you." If the problem is that lots of people are turned off by classical music, I'd say that with this talk, Mr. Zander has become part of the very problem he seeks to address, leaving his audience as weaker listeners than they were before, and leaving those in the trenches with little to draw upon the next time the e-word is trotted out.

There's Still Time

In researching the Minnesota Orchestra's website for the previous missive, I stumbled upon this promo for an upcoming concert, excerpted below:

He wowed the audience in January when he performed here with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. In this concert, the 28-year-old Sean Jones joins with other rising stars to bring you fresh arrangements of jazz standards.

I know nothing about Mr. Jones and by no means wish to drag his name through the mud by saying this, but I'm suddenly comforted by the fact that whoever wrote this blurb seems to believe that the potential for age-based novelty still exists in a musician who is nearly 30 years old. That I have at least 3 more years to do something spectacular relative to my age is an entirely unexpected yet altogether pleasant surprise, even if it means temporarily forfeiting the right to be jealous of Eldar (disclaimer: shall I to fail to accomplish anything whatsoever these next 3 years, I reserve the right to reclaim this jealousy with all its privileges and obligations).

Of course, the 3-year window applies only to my tuba playing, since we all know that 50 is still young in composer-years. It's good to know that a press release fawning over "47-year old composer Stefan Kac" is not entirely out of the question. I might just write it now while the ideas are still fresh in my head and there are still 22 years left to double check spelling and grammar. Unfortunately, I won't be able to make it to Orchestra Hall on June 26 to see what all the fuss is about. You see, I'll be out of town that week playing at the International Tuba Euphonium Conference...even though I'm only 25.