But where, many shocked tango aficionados may ask, is Argentina—land of the tango—in all of this? Tango today reaches far beyond its birthplace in the late 19th century slums and outskirts of Buenos Aires, the then thriving immigrant center of Argentina, but has never lost touch with the global roots that made tango what it is. Carlos Gardel, tango singer extraordinaire, longs for his “beloved Buenos Aires” (“Mi Buenos Aires Querido”) in the same way that Algerian singer Lili Boniche laments his lonely, dried-up wandering in Allah’s land (“Ana El Owerke”) or that Finnish singer Sanna Pietiäinen yearns for the “happy isles…over the high seas” (“Satumaa”). Tango Voices explores the human elements that make tango translatable almost anywhere.

Cohen’s tango journey begins with the diverse mix of ethnicities and cultures that populated Buenos Aires around the turn of the 20th century. Many of the tango cancións, or tango songs, in Tango Voices capture the historical moment through their lyrics, a prime reason editor and compiler Cohen chose to focus his tango study on the vocal aspects. “Lyrics are an insight into a culture,” he says. “Words reflect the people, thought, environment. It is also true of tangos in other parts of the world. It’s a picture of how the world was to them at the time”.

It’s how “Papirosn” found its way into the book. Not intending to include a Yiddish tango, Cohen couldn’t resist when he heard a rare tango version of this Polish-Yiddish song—originally a dance tune—by Zully Goldfarb. Papirosn is the Russian, Polish, and Yiddish word for “cigarettes” and the song tells of a poor boy trying desperately to sell his meager stock of cigarettes and matches. But the word “papirusa”, adopted from the same source, also means “beautiful woman” in the lunfardo dialect, a mysterious linguistic mixture of immigrant languages and native slang in Buenos Aires connected with the lower classes, most likely referring to the beautiful, mainly Polish immigrant women that worked in Buenos Aires as bar hostesses and prostitutes in those early days.

Other songs paint vivid pictures of daily life in the outskirts, from the tale of lost love in “Caminito”, one of the most well-known Argentine tangos, to the desperate, hard-fought struggles for existence in “Yira, Yira” or “El Bazar de los Juguetes”, to the sordid lives of pimps, prostitutes and drinking in “Mi Noche Triste.” Cohen says that these gritty, aural biographies bear some resemblance to other “port musics” of the world, including fado, New Orleans jazz, and Greek bouzouki music: “All of these musical forms started out in the docks, the houses of ill repute, the bordellos, the little mean bars.” And they were all “made respectable. There is a relationship between all of them.”

Though he doesn’t dance tango, Cohen is no stranger to exploring linkages between popular on-the-street music forms. He’s been doing it for decades, from his discovery of foreign and American folk music as a youngster in New York City, which led to his exploration of country-western recordings, and then on to his collection of early African-American recordings. In California, he continued this exploration with Greek, Spanish, Yiddish, Russian and Yugoslav songs. He eventually took up the guitar while studying in California, and continued mining musical gold, performing with various international folk ensembles and, on occasion, participating in informal events in which prominent folk performers might appear, such as Guy Carawan, Woody Guthrie, and Odetta. He subsequently spent several years teaching guitar at UCLA, as well as privately.

While at UCLA Cohen performed with the folk music and dance group that would evolve into the popular Aman Folk Ensemble and later played major folk and blues clubs, accompanying prominent performers in concert and dates in celebrated venues such as the famous Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach.

His discovery of tango is thanks to the Argentinean side of his family. His mother migrated to America when she was only 14, and though Cohen never visited Argentina as a child, he knew that she and the older generation in his family loved tango. While visiting there for the first time as a lawyer, relatives (one of whom was a leading impresario who helped book everything from Rolling Stones to Disney shows in Argentina and also launched Mercedes Sosa’s return from exile) introduced him to some great old tango recordings. It was then that he knew there was much more to tango than dance, much more than even most die-hard tango lovers outside Argentina knew about.

Yes, Astor Piazzolla, Carlos Gardel, and the seductive styles of the dance form may forever solely represent tango in the minds of many. But as for the many other tango greats, Tango Voices exposes the humanity behind them. There is the shy, 16-year old Uruguayan student who sold his rights to a march he composed, not realizing that it would go on to become one of the most widely recognized tangos of all time; the Viennese lyricist who likely marched to his execution at a Nazi concentration camp to the strains of his own tango (thanks to an earlier global tango craze that had even stormed Germany); the mysterious, as-yet undiscovered object of affection in “Malena”; and the celebrated tango vocalist who left the profession after a bitter breakup with her married lover to become a secluded nun. By compellingly telling these little-known stories (accompanied with historic audio recordings and eye-catching photographs for the fan and music scores for the aficionado), Tango Voices tells the musical and global side of the genre like never before. Forget the dance shoes, there’s enough behind-the-scenes drama here for even the most ardent of lovers.


Provided by World Music News Wire | April 19, 2010
Weblink: http://www.soundsandcolours.com/

The orchestra played several more numbers before Baghboudarian invited acclaimed Palestinian oud player Simon Shaheen on stage. The audience visibly perked up.

For the next 40 minutes, the orchestra and Shaheen blended the classical music of Europe with traditional Arab sounds, violins and French horns against an oud and a tambourine.

It practically brought the house down.

Baghboudarian is leading the effort to bring classical music to Syria, and even if he has to throw in some Arabic sounds to engage his audience, it looks as though he’s succeeding.

“My experience with the Syrian audience,” he said, “is that they’re very open, very elastic. They’re curious to hear things they haven’t heard before.”

As interest in classical music has grown, so too has the competition to join the orchestra.

The opera house occupies a prominent spot in a central Damascus square. Behind high walls, it shares a campus with the High Institute of Music, which, since 1993, has fed the National Symphony Orchestra nearly all of its musicians.

The first class of 43 students entered the institute in 1990. Only 16 graduated from the five-year program.

Today, the institute has a level of selectivity that would make most U.S. colleges envious. According to the institute’s vice dean, Hussam Eddin Brimo, about 200 students apply annually for only 30 spots.

The institute limits enrollment in large part, said Baghboudarian, because there just aren’t enough professional outlets for classically trained musicians in Syria.

The National Symphony Orchestra, which is the only one of its kind in Syria, provides the most significant employment opportunity.

The orchestra puts on about 20 shows a year under Baghboudarian’s direction. The performances used to be free, as part of a broad effort to bring the Syrian population into the classical fold. Today, though, the orchestra charges for tickets — and still plays to full houses.

Two of the most loyal patrons are Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his wife Asma.

“There is direct support from His Excellency, our president, and his wife,” Baghboudarian said, “which is not only for the music but for all the art. It’s important to see them supporting the music because it shows the public that this is something serious.”

Neither Baghboudarian nor Brimo hides the fact that they believe the orchestra can serve in an ambassadorial role for a country that sometimes finds itself on the diplomatic fringe.

Both men tell different stories of performances in Europe in which they were approached and asked how a “terrorist” (they both used the word) country can have an orchestra. Stories like these act only to intensify their efforts to spread their music.

Despite limited negative perceptions, Baghboudarian fields dozens of invitations every year to take his orchestra around the world. The orchestra has performed throughout the Arab world and Europe, but Baghboudarian is loath to over-commit because his priority every year is to tour domestically and bring the orchestra’s sound to Syria’s many corners.

Last year, Baghboudarian accepted a request to take a few soloists to the United States to perform alongside the Pacific Symphony Orchestra in Orange County, Calif. In addition to performing, the visiting Syrians also held classes to introduce interested parties to the music and instruments of the Arab world.

“We are interested in making a big bridge with the American people and the American culture,” Brimo said. “And we hope to make that bridge by music.”

For the orchestra to reach new heights, Baghboudarian says it needs to move off its current campus, where it is pressed for rehearsal space alongside the students of the High Institute of Music.

Preliminary plans are already in the works to find the orchestra a new space so, say both Baghboudarian and Brimo, that it can compete to become one of the world’s premier musical bodies.


Theodore May | May 10, 2010
Weblink: http://mobile.globalpost.com/

“Any member of the Internet community can help to write the libretto, compose the music, design the sets and costumes — from beginning to end,” organisers of the festival, one of Finland’s most popular summer attractions, said in a statement.

“Through this project we (hope to) tempt new people into the … world of opera,” they said.

All of the opera’s personnel — soloists, a chorus of 80, a symphony orchestra and production crew — can be used by contributors, who can access the project at www.operabyyou.com. Early story proposals on the site include a tale about a blacksmith who helps local farmers rise up against tyrannical lords, while another has suggested a story about a knight who “gets sucked through space and time” into the 1500s.

Some 60,000 people visit Savonlinna every summer for the festival, held some 330 km (205 miles) northeast of Helsinki in a castle built in 1475.


Brett Young | May 6, 2010
Weblink: http://www.reuters.com/

“I combine both,” Mr. Savall, 68, said recently by Skype from his home in Bellaterra, Spain, outside Barcelona. “Reality is always somewhere between theory and practice. It’s difficult to know.”

Many specialties of his — songs of the troubadours, say — require as much intuition as scholarship. What exactly do the notes on parchment mean? How much is unwritten? How much room is there for personal flourishes?

The chronicle of Mr. Savall’s voyages of discovery is written in the discography of Alia Vox, a label founded in 1998 to produce and release his recordings and those of his circle of like-minded adventurers: his wife, the crystalline soprano Montserrat Figueras; their children, Arianna and Ferran Savall, instrumentalists and singers; the vocal consort La Capella Reial de Catalunya; and the period-instrument ensembles Hespèrion XXI and Le Concert des Nations.

The large catalog is as spiked with curiosities as a Renaissance prince’s cabinet of wonders. One album is dedicated to chants of the Sibyl, another to “Don Quixote.” “Lachrimae Caravaggio,” composed by Mr. Savall, evokes canvases of that revolutionary Italian painter. Other entries commemorate historic personalities like Charles V and Christopher Columbus. Travelogues in music capture impressions of the Silk Road, the Sephardic diaspora, Istanbul. Operatic rarities run from “Il Farnace,” by Vivaldi, to “Una Cosa Rara,” by Vicente Martín y Soler. A historic tribute to Ireland and Scotland (“The Celtic Viol”) jostles Arvo Pärt’s 21st-century prayer for peace “Da Pacem.”

It would be futile to seek some hidden figure in the carpet. “One aspect certainly is to recover music that has been unjustly forgotten,” Mr. Savall said. “But our recordings of Handel’s ‘Water Music’ and ‘Music for the Royal Fireworks’ have sold more iTunes downloads than any other. We have done Bach’s ‘Brandenburg’ Concertos, Haydn’s ‘Seven Last Words,’ the Mozart Requiem, Beethoven’s ‘Eroica.’ ”

For the thematic projects the CDs are often packaged in the covers of multilingual hardcover books of several hundred pages. Examples include the new “Forgotten Kingdom: The Albigensian Crusade,” recalling a half-century of savagery of Christian against Christian, and a forthcoming portrait (15 years in the making) of the carpetbagging dynasty of the Borgias, who just so happened to be great patrons of sublime musicians.

But the project that may illustrate Mr. Savall’s vision at its most majestic is “Jerusalem,” a homage, in the words of the liner notes, to “the city endlessly built and destroyed by man in his quest for the sacred and for spiritual power.”

According to a contested etymology, the name Jerusalem translates as “City of the Twofold Peace,” referring to peace on earth and in heaven. But through century after century of crusade and jihad, that peace has existed more as a wish than as a reality. In more than two and a half hours of music on two CDs the transcendental longings of Jew, Christian and Muslim are accorded equal dignity, with distinguished guests from Israel, Palestinan territories, Armenia, Greece, Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Morocco and Afghanistan enhancing the exotic palette. The printed material appears in eight languages, including Arabic, Hebrew and, as always, Mr. Savall’s native Catalan. The album forms the basis for a concert, “Jerusalem,” to be presented by Great Performers at Lincoln Center in the Rose Theater on Monday night. (This follows a more intimate evening, “Orient-Occident: A Dialogue of Cultures” on Sunday in the Allen Room.)

“For believers the earthly Jerusalem was always the mirror of the heavenly Jerusalem,” Mr. Savall said. “When the earthly city was destroyed, they thought the heavenly city still existed. At the beginning of the recording we represent the heavenly aspect of Jerusalem by three different prophecies of the Last Judgment, which all three religions predict will take place there. That’s why the cemetery space is so expensive.”

Characteristically, the elegiac, transparent tone of Mr. Savall’s performances evokes candlelight, contemplation, distant thunder. Here the program opens with the rumble of thunder up close, followed by the squall of a fanfare for shofars.

The zealotry, xenophobia and aggression that have scarred the history of Jerusalem never blaze forth from the fresco, but in a smothered way the evidence is there. Songs that fall gently on the ear advocate the slaughter of the depraved. As a matter of historic conscience, Mr. Savall also incorporates Pope Urban II’s call to arms of 1095, which set off the crusades. But the delivery of the text, in French, is bland, and the fire and brimstone will be lost on listeners who fail to read along.

Mr. Savall set out on a life in music as a boy soprano in the chorus of the Escola Pia in his native Igualada, in a remote corner of the province of Barcelona. When his voice broke, he took up the cello. He found his true medium in the viol, a Renaissance string instrument that has frets, like a guitar, but is played with a bow and held between the knees, like a cello. The viol is far from showy by nature, yet in the right hands it speaks with rare eloquence.

Mr. Savall stepped onto the early-music scene as a scholar and virtuoso four decades ago; his broader celebrity dates from 1992 and the release of Alain Corneau’s film “Tous les Matins du Monde.” It revolved around the French Baroque composer Marin Marais, whose austere meditations for viol are among the glories of a long-forgotten repertory. On screen Gérard Depardieu mimed the aged Marais at his instrument, but Mr. Savall’s hand drew the bow off camera. The soundtrack remains the No. 1 seller in the Alia Vox catalog, with 130,000 copies sold, a formidable figure in the niche within a niche of early music. Authenticity, in the sense of a materially accurate reconstruction of a past beyond recall, is seldom if ever Mr. Savall’s objective. “Music doesn’t have any lasting existence,” he said. “You can only play music of today.”

For the Jerusalem project he and his collaborators gathered musical impressions in the city’s synagogues and churches and in the Arab quarters. For “The Forgotten Kingdom” they traveled to Carcassonne and Montaillou in southern France, centers of the radically spiritual, ruthlessly suppressed Cathar faith.

“Real life plays as important a role in our work as what we discover in libraries,” Mr. Savall said. “Real places help us understand many things that are not written in books. The process of discovery takes a long time. With study you can get close to ancient times, to feel how people sang and improvised long ago. But when we put all that together with our musicality, our taste, our fantasy, what you hear is something contemporary, the same as when you see living actors in a scene from ‘Hamlet.’ ”

The Argentine-born composer Osvaldo Golijov — no antiquarian, a multiculturalist with a vengeance and an avid collector of Alia Vox recordings — takes Mr. Savall’s work in just this spirit.

“I’m honestly not so interested in historical truth,” Mr. Golijov said from Boston. “But I do believe in the kind of poetic truth Aristotle speaks about. As a student I lived in Jerusalem for three years, and my world changed completely. You hear music all the time. The call of a muezzin from a minaret. Beautiful orthodox chants. There are so many monks, Greeks, Armenians. And the Sephardic Jews. All the cultures coexist. Listening to Savall’s recordings is like that, full of connections and differences.”

On another front, Mr. Savall has lately turned his attention to the intricate musicological questions of Bach’s B minor Mass, which he will record next year. Should the choruses be sung by minimal forces, as some have argued? Or are larger numbers appropriate? The Mass was not performed complete in Bach’s lifetime, so we cannot fall back on his practice (which might in any case have been determined by financial constraints as much as by artistic preference). In performances in Spain, Mr. Savall took no either-or position but deployed forces according to the character of the movement.

“Five solo singers singing with wonderful diction can bring an incredible richness of detail and emotion to the lightly scored sections,” he said. “The more heavily scored sections call for the brilliant, powerful sound of a larger ensemble. In the opening and closing numbers the soloists and chorus are combined. The many textures make the music very rich, very beautiful and musically very logical.”

But the joys of the canonical masterpieces will never keep the explorer and time traveler in Mr. Savall grounded for long. “With the B minor Mass or the Monteverdi ‘Vespro Della Beata Vergine,’ everything is decided for you,” he said. “Everything is very concrete. All you can work with is the way you perform it. Making ‘Jerusalem’ or ‘The Forgotten Kingdom’ or ‘Don Quixote’ is more like making a movie or a theater piece or writing a novel.

“Have I told you my dream? To create, with Montserrat and our collaborators, a quarterly magazine on the arts, theater, movies, dance, everything, distributed around the world in 12 languages. Our books are a step towards that reality.”

Matthew Gurewitsch | April 26, 2010
Weblink: http://www.nytimes.com/

Then, in 1973, as the United States began re-establishing diplomatic ties with China, President Nixon sent the Philadelphia Orchestra to Beijing. It was the first time an American symphony orchestra had performed in China since the Communists won the civil war in 1949, and it helped pave the way for a return of Western art and culture to China when the Cultural Revolution ended three years later.

“I was moved and inspired,” Mr. Xia said of the snippets of the performance he heard on the radio. “I would have given anything to be there.”

Mr. Xia was speaking 37 years later, on Tuesday night, in the audience in Beijing as the Philadelphia orchestra played Tchaikovsky’s most well-known (and difficult) Violin Concerto in D major, along with rousing pieces by Rachmaninoff and Ravel. The performance unfolded while a rainstorm doused the grand domed theater off Tiananmen Square commonly called the Egg, or more formally the National Center for the Performing Arts.

It was the opening night of the orchestra’s latest diplomatic mission to China: its performance in Shanghai on Friday, at the Chinese government’s invitation, as the first foreign ensemble to play at the 2010 World Expo.

The China concerts are part of the orchestra’s Asian tour, with stops in South Korea and Japan.

In Beijing, audience members shouted “Bravo!” after Charles Dutoit conducted the first night’s program, the one Mr. Xia attended, and clapped wildly the next night too, after the orchestra performed Stravinsky’s entire “Firebird” ballet and “The Rite of Spring.”

Since the 1973 performance, the orchestra has returned five times to China, most recently in 2008 for a 35th anniversary tour, where it was joined by Lang Lang, China’s celebrity pianist.

For older audience members at the concert on Tuesday, the 1973 performance was on their minds, even if they did not attend it.

“For Chinese music lovers of a certain age, we feel a special emotional connection with the Philadelphia orchestra,” said Yao Ji, who was in his teens at the time. “Listening to classical music was a political activity at the time, it was so difficult to find. But then the orchestra came, and we felt as if spring were almost here.”

The original performance was managed by Mao’s infamous wife, Jiang Qing. She insisted that Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony be swapped out for the Sixth. Eugene Ormandy, the orchestra’s conductor at the time, detested the piece and refused to play it. But after much wrangling, Mr. Ormandy gave in.

Orchestra librarians scurried to find copies of the music in Beijing, and finally additional copies were flown up from Shanghai. There were no orchestras in China at the time the size of Philadelphia’s, so sufficient sheet music was scarce, said Nicholas Platt, an American diplomat on the trip, during a conference at the Asia Society earlier this year.

The copies were full of inconsistencies, but the musicians knew the piece well enough to play it from memory, said Herold Klein, a violinist who was 28 at the time. Mr. Klein is one of eight musicians from the first tour who is still with the orchestra today.

The program in 1973, perhaps surprisingly, included political elements: “Stars and Stripes Forever” and “The Yellow River” piano concerto, a piece composed by China’s Central Orchestral Committee during World War II to rally China’s citizens against the invading Japanese Army.

The audience clapped politely after the concert in 1973. “They looked like they had just heard something completely strange,” Mr. Klein said.

Later, the musicians were riding buses back to the hotel when military vehicles sped past and screeched to a halt, cutting them off in the middle of the road.

“One guy got spooked, I remember,” said Anthony Orlando, a percussionist. “He went screaming off the bus. I guess it was too much Big Brother for him.”

It turned out that Madame Mao had just wanted a photograph with the musicians and to hand them little packets of flowers.

Xiyun Yang | May 7, 2010
Weblink: http://www.nytimes.com/

At first glance, it appears as though the benefits of a culture abundant with music outweigh the drawbacks tenfold—a rich culture has the potential to whet a fan’s appetite for even more, and may further encourage them to become, themselves, creators of culture.

More choice is always a good thing, even if in the end, it adds to the frustration and confusion faced by individual fans. But is that true?

So far, we have only investigated choice overload in culture through the narrow lens of a record store and have yet to explore the digital sphere.  While there are many reasons to believe that the web has created a “paradise of music” for fans, as we’ll soon see, that may not necessarily be the case. It is worth noting that many of the paradoxes of choice overload that I elaborated on in my previous essay were found to be most prevalent in the material domain.  And, while psychologist Barry Schwartz suspected that the paradoxes we experience in culture are quite different, he asserted that the end result might be the same.  That, much like in the material domain, a culture plentiful with music has the potential to lessen the amount of satisfaction that fans get from their choices and increasingly causes them to opt out of the process all together.  In a paper titled Can There Ever Be Too Many Flowers Blooming, Swartz outlines three of the paradoxical effects of choice overload in the cultural domain.

First, when fans are overloaded with cultural alternatives, Schwartz says they will, “Opt for the same old thing as a way to avoid facing unlimited options.”  Similar to the reaction that a consumer has to abundance in the material domain, fans will opt for the same old music for a number of reasons.  For starters, many fans, out of comfort, may not deviate too far from their favorites.  That way, they are free from the disappointment they might experience in listening to music that is dissimilar from their established taste.  So too, fans tend to have a deep memory of being burned.  When purchasing music, they are more prone to remember all the times that the music did not work out as opposed to the times that it did.   Also, fans will stick with what they know because there is instant gratification in that music; it never ceases to fit their mood or remind them of when they were growing up.  Lastly, fans opt for the familiar because they are genre loyal and often have rigid tastes. In music, this paradox can be readily observed every day.  Most passive fans are not interested in the new music, unless it is propped up by commercial radio stations or the clubs they frequent.  For those of previous generations, especially since most of the new songs out there are not targeted at them anyways, they do not want to hear new music nor do they care about it at all.  In effect, older fans would rather just listen to the songs that came out when they were younger. 

“Think about what ‘knowing what you want’ means,” Schwartz challenges.  “It means that you are not so open to cultural diversity or serendipity. Instead, you put blinders on, and walk straight ahead until you find what you’re looking for.”  Indeed, with the explosion of music choice, the splintering of genres into niches and the fracturing of the album format, making a truly informed selection from this plethora of music becomes difficult if not entirely impossible.  They might be able to find out about some of the artists, but not all of them.  In the place of a considered decision, Schwartz says that fans end up falling back on “a variety of labor-saving heuristics which ‘solve’ the choice problem by making them much more passive decision makers.”  His fear is that when a fan is overloaded, they will just stay with the same old music and decide that venturing into the cornucopia of music online is not worth their time.  Since, at least in their minds, they have already done the best they can do.

II. The Filter Problem

Next, Schwartz argues that when fans are overloaded, they rely on “filters rather than on themselves.”  Like many fans, I listen to music on Pandora, and while their suggestions as to what I might enjoy listening to are not always perfect, I do value them.  In effect, I am using Pandora to be my filter—my “professional DJ.”  Pandora will suggest music that is similar to songs I have already heard; its aim is the opposite of diversity.  In essence, what Pandora promotes is micro-specialization; it delves deeper and deeper into Miniature Tigers, Anthem of Silence, and Joe Pug—music I already enjoy—in hopes that it will find a more obscure song that is equally satisfying.  But, unless I feed Pandora a new station, it will never attempt to broaden my taste with a suggestion to listen to a pop or hip-hop song. 

“The twin phenomenon of buying only the culture that you want, or relying on filters to tell you what you should want,” Schwartz believes, “is becoming pervasive…”  This is a response, he further argues, “to overwhelming choice in the world of culture.”  Despite the prognostication of the death of radio by media futurists, this paradox, along with fans opting for the familiar, may explain why radio remains relatively popular.

Yet, the emergence of many sites and services as answers to this plethora of music online tells us something very important.   “Our cultural experiences will only be as diverse as the filters we use to help us select them.  With all that is available to us, unmediated browsing is impossible,” Schwartz forewarns.  “We are more reliant on filters now than we ever were before.”  To which he adds, “But unless people are deliberate about the filters they use, their own cultural experiences will be anything but diverse.”  What is more, based upon what we’ve learned so far about how paralyzing unlimited choice can be, Schwartz’s suspicion is that, “in the realm of culture, the more options there are, the more driven most people will be to settle on the most choice-simplifying filters they can find.”  This is not a good thing.  Remember now, that it was Chris Anderson who made the argument that if this multitude of choice could be organized in the way that was more meaningful, fans would not find it to be oppressive, it would be less overwhelming.   However, what he did not seem to anticipate is that this ‘rearrangement’ of choice could have the effect of making fans even more passive consumers of culture.

III.  Passivity, Not Activity

Third and worse still, a consequence of a culture abundant with music is that it causes fans to become “more passive in their participation in cultural life.” Initially, the plethora of music online has the potential to turn fans into relatively passive decision makers.  In effect, what Schwartz argues is that when choice gets overwhelming for fans, it can turn them from “choosers” to “pickers.”  The distinction between these terms, he writes, “is meant to capture differences in how active and engaged [fans] are as they make their decisions.”  Choosers are the fans who make active choices that revolve around their musical experiences.   They critically evaluate the music they listen to and are willing to take the initiative and attempt to uncover the songs that they will truly like.  Their degree of engagement bears fruit, but it is demanding.  On occasion, they may even come to the conclusion that none of the songs they have discovered will satisfy them, and they will continue searching.  Pickers, on the contrary, are much more passive fans.  Likely, they do not want to take the time or make the effort to seek out their music.  Nor will they ever decide that none of the music they are presented with will do.  “Picking” is what happens when a fan logs onto Amazon and scrolls through the section of “people who bought this album also bought.”   Here, fans are not interrogating their options.  They are merely selecting their favorite albums from the musical conveyer belt that Amazon provides.  Recall again, from Anderson’s argument that too much choice is only “oppressive” when it’s ordered wrong, like in a record store, but “order right” he says, and “it’s liberating.”  Perhaps, the reason fans find this to be so “liberating” is because they are no longer active in the decision-making process, only more passive.

Think about Genius playlists on iTunes, where according to Apple, “perfect mixes come automatically.”  The paradoxical effect of a feature like this is that it does take “pickers”—those who relied upon radio to expose them to music—and make them more engaged and less passive.  On the other hand, it also has the same potential to take “choosers”—those who relied on themselves and sought out music—and make them less engaged and less active.  “My fear is that overwhelming options turn all of us into pickers, at least much of the time,” Schwartz cautions. “If so, it is having an effect that is the opposite of engagement with the life of our society. The paradox is that the more diverse and vibrant cultural offerings become, the more passive and stereotyped the selectors of those offerings become.”

What is even more disconcerting “than the possibility that overwhelming choice turns [fans] into relatively passive decision makers is the additional possibility that this passivity will carry over into the way they interact with whatever they have chosen.” In music fandom, what this relates to is the distinction between casual and true fans, and the orientation that they take to the music they listen to.  Casual fans, by definition, are passive consumers of music; they have little interest in having a relationship with the artist and feel no need to champion their songs to friends.  At the extreme end, it could be said that their experience of music begins and ends with consumption.  True fans, conversely, are actively engaged with the music they experience; “they think about it, they feel it, they talk about it, they bond with one another over it, they interpret it, and they are changed by it.” Adding onto this point, Schwartz reasons, “To the extent that culture has positive effects on a society, it is surely only when people bring a [true fan] orientation to it.”  To be sure though, as Jeremy Schlosberg of Fingertips Music has argued in the past, “popular music depends upon the existence of casual fans [too],” their value is underestimated.  After all, the existence of casual fans is what makes true fans possible.  They are what make the songs of the day a part of our collective identity.  Even if in the end casual fans don’t speak in the language of the tribe and become actively engaged with it, they still facilitate the capacity for a tribe to continue to grow and gain new members.  

When combined, these paradoxical effects of choice overload in culture provide insight into why it is that, by and large, most fans in the digital age are still characterized by their passive consumption of music especially at a time when many artists are trying to provide them with endless opportunities to become actively engaged in their careers.  If the future of the record and music industries depends on increased prevalence of actively engaged fans—as many thought leaders have argued—then it’s worth asking:  Is there such a thing as a “paradise of music?”

V. Paradox or Paradise?

In a research paper published in 2003, Professor Alexander Chernev found that “large choice sets are preferred to small ones when people know what they like and thus know what they are looking for.” This effect, as he called it, is “Preference articulation.”  When a fan enters a record store, if they already know what music they like, or what album they are going to buy, then they just keep searching until they find it, and the more selection that the store has, the more likely it is that one of those albums will match their taste.  “Moreover,” Schwartz writes, “a larger choice set increases the chances that what [they] are looking for actually exists.  And finally, technology has enabled [them] to search through large sets about as rapidly as [they] search through small ones.”  In this case then, it could be argued that for the fans who know specifically what music they like, the web has created a “paradise of music.”  Yet, much of the reason why these paradoxes of choice overload in culture exist is because “the ultimate nature of human taste is irrational and depends on factors impossible to capture with computer systems.” Furthermore, if my thinking is accurate—that the bias of the Internet-era music consumption system is towards personalization, specialization, and relevance, while enabling a much more rapid evolution of taste—then this has the effect of only blurring the preferences of fans further, making them even less sure about the differences between music they like and that which they do not.   Thus, in culture, the effects of overwhelming choice has the potential to cause all fans—at some point—to opt for the same old thing, rely on filters, and become more passive participants in their musical life.  This is not good news.  And if the arguments that Schwartz makes about the effects of abundance in the material domain—those outlined in my previous essay—are true of culture as well, he contends that, “people will also get less satisfaction out of the cultural choices they make, and they will increasingly opt out all together.”

Not long ago, I made the inference that perhaps this occurrence of fans opting out of the decision-making process is related to file sharing.  “Decision paralysis,” in the words ofMade to Stick coauthor Dan Heath, “is a finding from psychology that says:  The more options that we’re exposed to, the more likely we are to kind of freeze up and go with the path of least resistance.”  When a fan is faced with a multitude of options—all of which they deem to be as desirable as the rest—immobilization is possible, and rather than trying to differentiate between the options and deciding which is the best bet (i.e. making a purchase) they either opt out or file share the music they desire instead.  To them, file sharing becomes the “path of least of resistance”—a coping mechanism for decision paralysis—where they can experience all of the options at once and forgo the symptoms that we associate with choice overload.  The problem with this—beyond the legality of file sharing—is that once they do have all the options at their disposal, choice overload doesn’t just go away.  The fan still has to make a decision.  After experiencing all of the options, and probably having considered additional ones, they may still opt out entirely and choose not to choose at all. 

As we’re starting to see, the plethora of music online seems like it is much more of a paradox than a paradise.  Not only does it seem to have the potential to increase the frustration and confusion faced by individual fans, but it also causes them to become more passive participants in their musical experiences—not active.  And if the future of the music industry really is moving towards the creation of a “middle class” of musicians, who market their music and other creative works directly to their fans, they are going to need all of the actively engaged fans that they can get. We may never be sure as to whether or not the web has created a paradise or paradox of music for fans. Nor can we be certain that the benefits of seemingly endless music contribute to society, as a whole, are worth the price of the difficulties fans may experience in making cultural choices. This brings me to my final, yet most important question.  Shouldn’t we also be trying to understand the effects that choice overload has on the satisfaction we get out of the music we already have?  Put differently, does having thousands of songs on our iPod lessen the enjoyment that we get out of the song that is currently playing?  On the iPod, is more music, really less? 

Kyle Bylin | June 23, 2010
Weblink: http://www.musicthinktank.com/

Thousands were dead, and more than half the town’s buildings had been destroyed; his own home was skewed and teetering. But he, his wife, and their 8-month-old baby were uninjured, so the 32-year-old English teacher found two trees, tied ropes between them, and created shelter with a blanket – their home for the next three weeks. Tang considered himself lucky. One neighbor slept under an umbrella.

Few signs of "5.12 Wenchuan" – the 7.9 magnitude earthquake that devastated Sichuan Province’s Wenchuan County on May 12, 2008 – were apparent Monday as Tang led four Philadelphia Orchestra musicians through Du Jiang Yan Tian Ma School, which the orchestra had helped rebuild.

The musicians, led by violinist Phil Kates, were on an Asia-tour free day and had come to Dujiangyan for the dedication of the school’s Philadelphia Orchestra Project Hope Classroom.

The spacious new music room was the fruit of an endeavor begun two years ago, when the orchestra, touring China only weeks after the earthquake, agreed to have one of its concerts televised for relief fund-raising. In addition, individual orchestra members donated $5,000 specifically for the music room. And despite an official government ban on foreigners in the quake-affected region, Kates went a step further, making his way to an area only 20 miles from the epicenter to play impromptu children’s concerts.

On Monday – in a room decorated with Beethoven and Mozart likenesses, and a Philadelphia Orchestra poster with now-retired music director Wolfgang Sawallisch – Kates returned with violinist Paul Roby, percussionist Don Liuzzi, and tuba player Carol Jantsch to play a program of Brahms and Telemann. Exotic percussion instruments were passed to the kids. Local choruses and brass bands played.

"This visit may influence the students for their whole lives," school headmaster Fu Qiang said at lunch after the concert. "The students will work harder on music and English if they know that you’re coming back."

It’s hardly out of the question for Kates. Having played school concerts as a preteen at the urging of his school-principal father, the 51-year-old native Philadelphian has rarely let geography stand in the way of making musical contact with kids. In doing so, he has earned a reputation for taking quixotic travel digressions on tour, often arriving back at concerts barely in the nick of time. (Mention that you’re going along on one of his sojourns, and orchestra members jokingly reply, "It’s been nice knowing ya.")

"This is not something I’d have the courage to do on my own," said violinist Roby.

"What’s the worst that could happen?" says Kates.

Getting stuck in a blizzard on a mountain pass in the Andes between Buenos Aires and Santiago? That incident is part of orchestra lore. Is it true? "Blizzard? Which one?" he says. There have been a few.

The 2008 post-earthquake trip to Dujiangyan was tense even by his standards. Kates wanted to help somehow but wondered if playing music would just get in the way of rescuing and rebuilding. But every inquiry was met with hearty encouragement. The orchestra has a number of Asian players, some with families in China. A cousin of one became Kates’ interpreter, and a friend of a friend was his driver though areas with extremely narrow roads and bicycle gridlock.

The flight to China landed at 10 a.m., and Kates was on his way by noon – the exact moment the anti-foreigner ban took effect. He says he just stayed quietly in the back seat "and tried to look Asian."

Once in Mianzhu, he set up shop in a temporary classroom. The children were quieter and more subdued than other groups he’d played for – understandably, given their trauma. Roughly a third of the local population had died only weeks earlier.

Kates’ approach, then as now, is hands on. One of his standby selections is a waltz by Carl Maria von Weber arranged so every phrase has a pizzicato string that he invites kids to pluck on cue. How much young, rural Asian audiences appreciate Western classical music is beside the point. No matter whom he’s playing to, Kates believes the most important element is eye contact. "Usually while playing, I like to go right up to the one person who’s trying to pretend I’m not there," he says.

Now, in 2010, everything seems back to normal in rural Dujiangyan. People spend the afternoon playing mah-jongg, and joke about how Sichuan Province exports spicy foods and beauty contest winners ("spice girls," of course). Kates samples the local beer after concerts; above all else, he has fun.

His work in China – or at least with the China Youth Development Foundation, which facilitated this visit – would seem to be done for the time being. The only remaining signs of the earthquake are a few cracks in walls and bridges.

The people perhaps have more cracks, but theirs are better disguised. Only in coming months will schoolteacher Tang have a true home again, as opposed to rented rooms. When he tries to describe the aftermath, his struggle with words ends with a barely adequate one: "Difficult."

Who knows what cracks the kids harbor? "I can’t see into their hearts," Kates says.

But he can come back to play music. "When I get so old that I start scaring children, I’ll stop," he says.

David Patrick Stearns | May 4, 2010
Weblink: http://www.philly.com/

At the same time, music-lovers were learning about his background as a product of Venezuela’s innovative, nationwide music education program, called El Sistema, and about his triumph at the first Bamberg Symphony Gustav Mahler Conducting Competition six years ago. With his talent and background, he seemed a natural fit for L.A.’s sprawling, diverse, metropolitan community. Part of his job description was to help invigorate the Philharmonic’s ongoing programs of outreach and educational initiatives.

From the audience perspective, the Philharmonic’s audacious hire of the now-29-year-old maestro has been amply rewarded. Bay Area folks will be able to judge this for themselves when Dudamel leads the orchestra in two concerts, May 10 and 11 at Davies Symphony Hall. But what figure does he cut with the musicians who play under his baton, and with those who work with him on community outreach and youth programs? What’s “The Dudamel Effect” outside the concert hall?

“It’s clear when he’s onstage conducting, and it’s evident when he’s moving in public: Gustavo’s a kind of man of the people. He’s one of us,” violist Minor L. (”Mick”) Wetzel said, responding to the query. “He’s as comfortable with food servers as he is with the mayor of Los Angeles. It has to do with his background, and with his language skills, but most of all with his personality.”

Wetzel commented, too, on Dudamel’s recognition value: “He’ll extend our ‘brand’ to a wider spectrum everywhere, and deeper into the L.A. community.”

Tales of Two Maestros

“Esa-Pekka’s approach was from a different angle,” Wetzel remarked of Dudamel’s also-celebrated predecessor, Esa-Pekka Salonen, “but to the same effect. Who he was and what he did was unusual, unprecedented. But he drew in the audience — and the people kept coming, even when the music was outside the comfort zone for some. It wasn’t just a new reach …”

Stacy Wetzel, Mick’s wife and a first violinist in the orchestra, also commented on other similarities and differences between the two conductors.

“One of the best things carrying over is good rapport and mutual respect [between conductor and musicians]. Esa-Pekka was not a string player, but he turned that to his advantage. His daughter had the same violin teacher I had, and Esa ate it up, trying to gain an understanding of what would and wouldn’t work with string players. With Gustavo, it’s flipped the other way, He’s a good violinist, and has a natural, instinctive way with the string sections, who follow him easily. Both Esa-Pekka and Gustavo have been willing to work with the concertmaster.”

Mick added, “Esa-Pekka is known among musicians for his interpretive skills — rhythmically driven, precise. Gustavo’s MO — and this may be an inside scoop! — is his passion, which is melodically driven. When either wants to demonstrate something, they sing — exactly in key! — and very precisely. It’s interesting that’s where their minds are, not vertical, but skeletal. We were practicing Mahler this morning, and Gustavo turned to the violins and expressed what he wanted by singing. He’ll say something to us like, ‘More vowels, fewer consonants …’ And there he is, scattin’ away on the podium!”

Elizabeth Baker, a Los Angeles native who has known Stacy Wetzel since their teenage years together at Cal Arts’ prep school, has been a violinist with the L.A. Phil since 1987. Before that, she played with the San Francisco Symphony alongside her mother. (“We worked together for about 10 years; then it was time for me to spread my wings,” she said.) She remarked:

Every music director comes with his own particular gifts, his own voice. Esa-Pekka and Gustavo both have distinct qualities, are from two different cultures, which carry with them, but both are very enthusiastic on the podium. Both have their own genius. Esa-Pekka always amazed me, how he could absorb a score, especially contemporary music, or, say, Messiaen. He never made a mistake; he ate it for breakfast. The more complex it was, he’d display it in such a way, he’d make it so easy for us.

Gustavo absorbs the music on an emotional level and lives it out in his body. The rehearsals are intense; it’s hard work, with concentration on focus, sound, phrasing, different aspects of the score, as he understands them. He invites us into that world. He uses imagery, sings when he wants, also tells a story to get across what he wants to portray. I’ve had years of experience with other music directors; this is my first chapter with Gustavo and it’s a page turner, and I want to keep reading. I’m impressed, keep saying, ‘Wow! Anybody who makes Tchaikovsky’s Sixth fresh has something to them!’ It’s my 33rd season, and I’m ready for the ride.

The Wetzels have three children; as parents and musicians, they’re concerned about music in the schools. Both have “done a good amount of time in the education department, which was easy when our kids were little,” Mick said. “We had to bow out more, several years ago. But we’re all in a time that’s critical, especially in a community with the diversity of L.A., in the hotbed of the economic crisis. We have to devote some time to fledgling communities who haven’t been able to explore the arts.”

Connecting With Youth of All Ages

Stacy coaches in Santa Clarita, and has been able to observe Dudamel at work in educational outreach. “He makes it galvanizing for the kids,” she noted. “And of course for fund-raising. So many kids have no idea at all about classical music. In San Francisco our first year [both Wetzels played with the S.F. Symphony from the late 1980s to mid-’90s], there was a survey of how many of the musicians had started on their instruments in public schools. It was over 50 percent. But we can’t just turn to the schools, or even to the government. The Philharmonic has to take on part of the task, has to reach out, including bringing new people into Disney Hall [the Philharmonic’s home base].”

She recalled an outreach session in which “Grandmotherly ladies, who helped raise funds for the programs, were excited to tell us their grandchildren were involved in playing in the string section in school, and in the school play. Another had music education made a regular feature [in a school] again. Usually, it’s after the ‘zero’ period, after school, if at all; but she thought it important enough to make it part of the regular school day, the way it had been.”

Mick picked up the thread: “We’ve taken the pulse of the community, and there’s a hunger for this. … And it’s funny, you know, how the pendulum swings. In San Francisco, we had Edo [De Waart], then [Herbert] Blomstedt, then the opposite: MTT [Michael Tilson Thomas]. That’s not in terms of judgment, but a sense of focus. Esa-Pekka is in the European modern tradition; his paradigm is new music. And you know, with Gustavo, it’s kind of a bummer for us. … It’s the first time in our careers we’ve had a conductor younger than we are! But he handles himself so well among the youth, and with young kids. It’s his age, yes, but not only his age, his personality. It’s a gift.”

Baker, who is involved with the Philharmonic’s Youth Orchestra Partnership program, commented:

I’m very impressed with the commitment of the L.A. Philharmonic to educational outreach. I myself am a product of the L.A. School District, and played in orchestra in high school and junior high school. I hope what’s started here becomes wildly contagious, nationwide. It broke my heart to see music programs leave the schools. It’s been proven that young people have more self-discipline if they’re part of a school program. I jumped in quickly as a child, and have been on the coaching team for the S.F. [Symphony’s] Youth Orchestra, with my mother as a coach, too.

Even before Gustavo came, there was quite a bit of outreach — youth orchestra, concert series for youth, for communities; most orchestras have that kind of involvement with the community. Now, YOLA [Youth Orchestra Los Angeles] is expanding, permeating L.A., its society and different cultures, slowly and steadily expanding.

Baker also teaches privately. “Some students come from youth orchestras,” she observed. “Private direction helps a young person to develop knowledge and style, one on one, and to learn the process of how to be in an orchestra section, which is not always possible in a strictly rehearsal situation.”

New Youth Orchestra Gains Steam

Gretchen Nielsen, director of educational initiatives for the Philharmonic, said that YOLA, now two-and-a-half years old, was a response to “looking at the big landscape of L.A. and realizing that not every child has equal access to music, to music education. She observed:

There’s a big swath of emptiness at the urban core — no music education during or after school. We’re now in partnership with schools, community centers. Gustavo’s mentor, Dr. [Jose Antonio] Abreu [who founded the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra, and El Sistema, in Venezuela, and pioneered its international exchange programs], calls an orchestra the most beautiful metaphor for community. The Expo center [in South Central L.A.] and the Harmony Project have helped us. Even while Deborah Borda [president and CEO of the Philharmonic] was pursuing Gustavo — all over the world! — a small group of L.A. Phil members spent a nucleus of time in Venezuela, and it was a transformative experience. There’s nothing like it anywhere. When children sit in a concert hall, they’re hearing music they’ve played. They know it in their blood.

There were plans in place to bring some of that here before Gustavo was named. I don’t believe there’s been a transfer of the core beliefs, so much as an adaptation to the U.S. Gustavo wouldn’t have chosen to come here if there wasn’t that dedication and commitment. And we made it happen very quickly. We started the kids in YOLA at zero; they were able to play with him at the Hollywood Bowl two years later!

I first saw Gustavo rehearse with YOLA in December 2008, and L.A. Phil musicians who were there turned to me and said, ‘He rehearses with them in exactly the same way he does with us.’ He’s bringing enormous visibility to this work; we couldn’t have done it without the attention, often rather short, of the media. It’s happening to everybody here. There have been high expectations, all mixed with love.

The Instrument-Maker Lends a Hand

Also contributing to Los Angeles’ music efforts for youth is Antonio Rizzo, 83, is a community volunteer with the educational program who has given the old term “in-kind donations” a new twist. Rizzo took up violin making, for which he has since won awards, when he retired from being an engineer. He donated some of his stringed instruments to the Philharmonic’s educational program at the suggestion of Barry Gold, a cellist with the orchestra, whom Rizzo met at the Hollywood Bowl rehearsals he started attending five years ago.

Rizzo later called the educational program and asked who repaired the instruments. Finding out there was no single repairman, Rizzo “thought it over; it’d be a nice thing to do.” Now he attends rehearsals of the youth orchestra. “I enjoy it so much every Saturday morning. I feel like a grandfather with a hundred kids. I see it in their faces, how much they appreciate it,” he said. He’s also tutored a Guatemalan student in instrument-making, via Skype and during a visit she made to Los Angeles.

Of the instruments the student musicians use, Rizzo remarked, “If they have good-sounding instruments, they have that much more incentive to play better. It’s too bad the schools and educational programs are strapped for cash.”

Rizzo hasn’t seen Dudamel conduct the young musicians yet, but he can see the “Dudamel effect”: “He’s impressed all the musicians. They’re so happy to have gotten Dudamel. When he’s mentioned at YOLA rehearsals, the kids light up. Knowing he’ll be conducting next Saturday, the kids are all excited. He’s made a strong impression.”

Ken Bullock | May 4, 2010
Weblink: http://www.sfcv.org/

No doubt about it, Tchaikovsky will be turning in his grave. But contemporary Russia is so different from that of the 19th century, how could one expect anything else?

New classical music is in a period of unpredictability. For much of the 20th century there was the ”right” sort of music to compose, especially within the classical world. If a composer wanted to write a new string quartet, for example, it needed to be of a certain musical language to be taken seriously by the musical establishment.

The exciting thing about new music at the opening of the 21st century is that the barriers to music creation are breaking down. This is having a significant effect on the types of music that composers from all over the world are creating.

For a start, there are more composers writing music now than at any time in history. Numerically speaking, most of the world’s composers are songwriters or electronic musicians, using the incredible growth in technology to record and disseminate their material. They need not know music theory or even how to play an instrument, as computers can facilitate incredible sound worlds in much less time than it takes to learn the clarinet.

If we are willing to forgo the need for live performance, the barrier of geography is no problem, either. Plenty of music is, in fact, being written for online delivery, designed to be consumed at home or on the move rather than in the concert hall. A composer from Lithuania can hear Australian performers playing Australian music from the comfort of his or her living room – and his or her music might then display the influences of the Australian music on the other side of the planet.

We live in a cultural world where anything and everything is possible. This can only be a good thing for artistic expression. In the World New Music Days concerts, these expressions may range from a piano trio from New Zealand referencing French music to a radiophonic piece based on Canadian snowstorms, to a piano ”remix” of Beethoven’s Fur Elise by a Brazilian composer now based in Germany.

The great thing for audiences is that there is more musical choice than ever. Whether I am listening to my students at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, or assessing submissions to the Music Board of the Australia Council, the enormous variety in musical interests of even a small group of people is overwhelming.

This change must also be driven by the change in society. For much of the past 30 years, there have been many complaints about the obscurity and low approachability of new classical music. But I sense that this is now old-fashioned. The white European-based monoculture has been shattered in Australia in a way that composers of the 19th century would find inconceivable. We take for granted the enormous diversity in food, for example. Why would classical music be any different?

So what is the future of classical music? After assessing the 700 submissions for this year’s festival, it is clear that Old Europe no longer has the domination on creativity and innovation. There is no reason why a musician in Korea, Venezuela, Estonia or Australia will not provide the impetus for the next global trend in contemporary music. You may hear a new piece of music that will change your life at the Campbelltown Arts Centre or on your iPod on a downloaded concert from South Africa. It may even be a new work for violin and piano from a young Russian composer.

Matthew Hindson | April 30, 2010
Weblink: smh.com.au

“The idea is to bring together both core classical and crossover artists,” said Lesley Malpas, founder/managing director of Classical Festival Co., which is organizing Serenata. “You need really big, strong acts in your first year.”

Jenkins’ manager, Tara Joseph of Nettwerk Management in London, said she welcomes the approach.

“For the artist it’s another avenue for live (performance), aside from traditional concert shows and picnic concerts,” she said. “It shows how the crossover genre is expanding into new areas. I am confident that these festivals will spread internationally, as there is a huge market (for classical crossover).”

Malpas said sales of the 400 available Serenata Club tickets have been particularly strong since the festival’s official launch April 21. She’s targeting 4,000 ticket sales per day, with an event capacity of 5,000, but said, “We don’t need to make massive profits to go into year two. We’re taking a long-term view.”

NOT EVERYONE CONVINCED

But more established classical outdoor events like the 8,000-capacity Kenwood Summer Proms, which this year features classical crossover starlet Faryl Smith and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, have so far resisted copying their rock counterparts.

“We’ve never considered adopting a camping model,” said Nicola Creed, director of finance and administration at the 512-capacity Garsington Opera, a monthlong series of open-air classical concerts. “We’d anticipate it being a big undertaking in terms of logistics and planning. We work under fairly stringent planning laws as it is, and we operate on a very tight budget.”

But others believe the model is viable, including composer Gabriel Prokofiev, who’s also label director of classical indie Nonclassical and founder of the Nonclassical club nights held in London.

“Something like this is overdue,” said Prokofiev, who also plays classical DJ sets at rock and dance music festivals like Truck Festival and the Big Chill. “I know from my experience that new listeners need to immerse themselves in classical music to appreciate it.”

One man watching developments closely is British conductor Charles Hazlewood, who hosted a two-day, nonresidential outdoor event, Play the Field, last August on his Somerset, England, farm. Play the Field featured performances of Holst’s “The Planets” and Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons” by the Hazlewood-led ensembles Excellent Device and Army of Generals, respectively, as well as other performers.

Hazlewood said he broke even on the event, which was attended by 4,000 people who paid up to 160 pounds ($244) per ticket. He plans to stage the event again in 2011, “with camping, a bigger venue and a bigger bed of investment.”

“It does cost a lot of money to hold a music festival, but people came to mine,” he added. “The demand is definitely there.”

Melvin Benn, managing director of London-based Festival Republic, which organizes events ranging from the 25,000-capacity Latitude to the 82,000-capacity Reading Festival, said he applauds the idea of Serenata, but isn’t convinced it will work.

“My gut tells me it will be tough,” he said. “I am just not sure that the average Russell Watson fan wants to camp in a field for three nights.”

Billboard | May 8, 2010
Weblink: http://www.reuters.com/