Interesting reality check for singers

musicprnt
Sat, 07 Jan 2012 10:36:45 +0000

I don’t think Mick Jagger should be adjudicating the Queen Elizabeth competition or whatever, but if he did a music program that had instrumentalists, then yeah, why not? Even if the person on the violin who won wasn’t at the level of Hillary Hahn it would get people realizing that ‘classical’ music had the potential to touch them, move them, etc, that it isn’t what the popular perception of classical music and opera is, a stuffy pursuit for the superannuated.

I talk to a lot of younger people where I work, and there is a lot of curiousity there about classical music and opera, and I have gotten some of them to go to performances I thought they might enjoy, and they did, but the barriers were high. I am not suggesting that classical music or opera should degrade itself to the level of pop music, where they need to use autotune to bring them into any kind of tonality, but that doesn’t mean that orchestras and operas cannot take ideas from popular music. It is funny, I was just reading something about the premiere of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in blue, where Paul Whiteman a jazz band impresario, put together an evening of ‘experimental’ music, there were something like 23 pieces played that night and because Whiteman was doing it, they drew a large audience, while the classical purists of the day sneered that this was a ‘jazz concert’ and some of which was deriding Gershwin’s and the other music as an ethnic slur…

What is kind of funny about Opera is if you look at the stories, if you look at the settings and the costumes, it is kind of hard not to have cognitive dissonance, because the stories and such are so over the top, especially when you get to Wagnerian Opera, bold music, over the top singers, etc, Opera and soap operas are pretty closely aligned, yet it became in effect soap opera for the 1% to use a popular conception. Peter Gelb of the Met knew that, when he decided to simulcast performances the purists grumbled, that it was going to turn Opera stagecraft to be aimed at the HD video, that things like how the performers looked or acted would matter more then musical purity and so forth, and know what? The guy hit on something, they have an audience about 3 million people viewing the operas each season, versus maybe 100,000 in the house at most… Opera is theater, and when Broadway musicals cast their musicals they do so on many bases, how well someone sings and dances and also stage presence/believability in the role. You wouldn’t cast Patti Lupone as Fantine in Les Miz, why would you cast someone as a starving artist who weighs 300 pounds or a consumptive with similar size, it makes no sense, putting someone out on the stage simply because they sing perfectly according to technical standards, the old ‘plant and sing’ and so forth isn’t going to fly (and yes, Opera has changed, you have people like Nebtrenko, Ramon Vargas, Placido Domingo, Susan Graham, etc, etc who have the whole package).

Make fun of Andre Rieu and his program, which combines a lot of different things but guess what, he fills arenas with 20,000 people of all ages and so forth…but it is getting people to listen to music they never listen to.

It is ironic but in a sense the die was cast about 100 years ago (thanks again to the wonderful book on conductors I found for a couple of bucks, written c 1941). In effect, to be able to artistically be able to program what they wanted, orchestras went to the model of building huge endownments and not relying on ticket sales (the Chicago symphony was one of the first) to keep themselves afloat and to remain artists and so forth…the problem with that is when you do that, you can become isolated from your audience, you stop in effect trying to build one or appeal to them. Opera and Classical music were never mass appeal forms in the US, but over the decades a variety of factors have made it dwindle. The cold war era didn’t help much, when the US decided the arts was part of the cold war, government funding further isolated the performing groups, as did the large corporate giving to the arts…and now they alll are struggling and trying to build audiences.

I hear all kinds of solutions, that we need to program “new music”, a lot of which is not audience friendly, that if we had music education in the schools it would build audiences, etc…and like anything, it is a multi faceted approach and anything that can help is potentially worthwhile. Joshua Bell and Lang Lang are often derided for their theatrics on stage, but want to know something? When either of them play, they draw large audiences (as can Yo Yo Ma, in part because of his visibility) and while are both technically at the best levels and are playing ‘real’ music, they also have audience appeal. This idea of “Ars Gratia Artis” (art to please artists) is great, but probably more people were attracted to music by Bugs Bunny and Fantasia then anything else…

And I agree, I think that going down the road musicians and performing groups are going to need to be a lot more flexible, they are going to be managing their own careers and finding their own audience, there is no doubt. The recording industry is morphing and changing, orchestras and opera companies are learning they have to change or die, and the old ‘managed career’ nonsense where you get an agent and solor, or careers in an orchestra or permanent group has become much more difficult, and musicians are going to be more and more their own agent, their own contractor, whatever you call it and in one sense that isn’t a bad thing because it forces musicians and music to adapt, there is a lot more sense of needing an audience, etc. When you are a member of the NY Phil, make 150k a year, when it is funded by huge endowments and so forth, you are isolated from the audience, if you are a musician or ensemble trying to build an audience, you have to find ways to attract it. That is why you are seeing ‘classical’ music being done in clubs and other unusual venues, it is why more and more ‘classical’ artists are not afraid to try more popular forms and so forth. Nigel Kennedy still holds the record for a classical recording, he sold 3 million copies of his version of the 4 seasons, and to a large extent it was because he was a maverick, was in the public eye…Sarah Chang, doing it much more conventionally, releases a version of the 4 seasons recently and sold maybe 10,000 copies…