Author: Jerry Bowles

Chamber Music

Does the World Need Another Online Music Community?

It’s summer, it’s hot, and the music scene here in the Center of the Universe is fairly slow so I thought it might be a good time to get some feedback on an unfinished “piece” I’ve been working on for a couple of weeks.  It’s a website that looks like this:

Actually, you don’t have to look at the picture;  it’s already up on the web at Chamber Music Now so I guess you might consider this a “beta” launch.   I built it because I love to play with new software and the nice Thracians who make the software I use  on my commercial efforts  (like this one) have just released a brand new version called Wordframe Integra.  They gave me a “sandbox” to play with and I (with constant handholding from Boz, the guy who wrote the Integra program, in Plovdiv) created a new chamber music community site.   Now, I have to figure out what to do with it because, frankly, seriously growing an audience for a web site is hard work and, so far, I’ve been too hot and lazy to even write a proper how-to-use section.

In any event, the site is “live” and the functionality (except for the Profiles which Boz is still feverishly coding) is in place.   If you go there and register, there are a lot of neat things you can do.  You can create a blog post (which will appear on the front page once I approve it), write a CD review, and post information to the Calendar page.  If you already have a blog, you can add it to the front page content flow by adding your RSS feed to the thing called Autopost.  Every time you publish something on your blog, I’ll get a copy of it and, if it’s on target (i.e. about chamber music), I’ll use it on CMN and you’ll get more readers and thus become richer and more famous.  The concept, which is about the only thing I can claim credit for, is that this would be the ultimate DIY music community.

All the stuff that is there now is lifted directly from Sequenza21 but I’ll be recruiting some chamber music groups to add their stuff when I get around to it.

Give it a try.  You’ll notice that there is a lot of segmentation within the front page, CD review and Calendar pages which should make it easier to categorize and find stuff.  I welcome your feedback on both the idea itself and the execution.  If there are functions or features you’d like to see, tell me now while I still have a Bulgarian genius to help me for free.

by Jerry Bowles
Contemporary Classical

My 11 Favorite Movies of the Past Decade

Nothing to do with music, but, hey. Who can add to the list?

1. 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007) Romania – Directed by Cristian Mungiu – Young woman helps friend get abortion in 1980s Romania and discovers the truth of the old saying that no good deed goes unpunished. Not a single wrong note in this tale of friendship abused.

2. Pan’s Labyrinth (2007) Spain – Directed by Guillermo del Toro – Imaginative young girl retreats into a fantasy world in order to deal with the horrors of the Spanish Civil War and a brutal facist stepfather. Magical and heartbreaking.

3. Talk to Her (2002) Spain – Directed by Pedro Almodovar – Love in the time of coma. Almodovar’s bequiling combination of humor, perversion and human nature testify again to the power of love to save and destroy.

4. Venus (2007) England – Directed by Roger Mitchell – Peter O’Toole’s swan song as an aging actor and lothario who finds a final, unlikely muse. Acting students will be watching this one a hundred years from now and marveling at how easy he made it look.

5. No Country for Old Men (2007) U.S. – Coen Brothers – Nobody making movies in America today is better at delivering a combination of high art and pulp entertainment. A nailbiter from beginning to end from filmmakers who know that words matter.

6. A Serious Man (2009) U.S. Coen Brothers – A shaggy dog tale about Jewish dybbuks and family curses that shows what the Coens do when they obviously don’t care if a story has commercial prospects or not. This one doesn’t but it is unlike anything you’ve ever seen and will have future filmmakers scratching their heads for a very long time.

7. The Son (2003) Belgium – Dardenne Brothers – What would you do if the teenager who killed your baby years earlier (and doesn’t recognize you) turned up in your shop looking for an apprenticeship after getting out of jail? The truth is, you don’t know, and it is a tribute to the skill and integrity of Europe’s spiritual heirs to Robert Bresson and the Italian realists that they offer no easy answers.

8. The Secret in their Eyes (2009) Spain Argentina   – Juan José Campanella – Retired prosecutor revisits haunting old case and discovers that there is sometimes justice in this imperfect world.

9. The Lives of Others (2006) Germany – Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck – Stasi agent goes soft on spied upon actress and boy friend with deadly consequences.

10. Lost in Translation (2003) U.S. – Sofia Coppola – Loneliness and alienation in a Tokyo hotel. A few implasibilities in the writing but for anyone who has been there and done that, the mood is right on. Not to mention the opening shot of Scarlett Johansson’s butt.

11. The Barbarian Invasions (2003) French-Canadian – Denys Arcand – The characters from Arcand’s 1986 The Decline of the American Empire have gotten older and one of them is dying. An enchanting fairytale about a son who gives his father the gift of the perfect death.

by Jerry Bowles
Contemporary Classical

And the Winners of the Varese (R)evolution Tickets Are…

…Ross Marshall, who correctly divined that the film whose title reminded me of the Paul Verlaine poem on which Varese’s  1906 piece Un Grand Sommeil Noir is based is Total Eclipse.  Verlaine was played by David Thewlis and Rimbaud was played by Leonardo In Siprio.  Ross also got the bonus question:  Régine Wieniawski a.k.a. Poldowski was the female composer who wrote 21 pieces based on Verlaine poems.

The winner of the second pair of tickets is Robert Thomas, who correctly responded that Varese’s short flute piece is called Density 21.5 because it was written for Georges Barrère’s platinum flute and Varese thought the density of platinum was 21.5,  but, in fact, it is 21.45.  Actually, Dennis Bathory-Kitsz was first with the answer but he can’t go because he’s milking the cows or something that evening and Elaine Fine was second but she won’t be in New York until the following week.  So, Dr. Bob wins by default, but that’s ok.  Elaine added the helpful note that Density 21.5 is a total ripoff of Debussy’s Syrinx, which is also for solo flute.

Others with the correct answer were Tawnie Olson, Jim Supanick, Eric William Lin and Warren Stewart.  Thank you all for playing and we’ll do it again.

by Jerry Bowles
Contemporary Classical

Join Amanda’s Social Media Chat Party

Our adorable amiga Amanda Ameer, the music publicist extraordinaire, is hosting a discussion for Chamber Music America about the ways composers and other artists are using social media to promote themselves and their work and she’d love to have your experiences be part of it.  It starts at 1 pm eastern on Wednesday July 14 (today).

UPDATE: The entire hour-long chat was lively and went well. It’s been archived; for a replay of the whole conversation, Click Here.

by Jerry Bowles
Contemporary Classical

Win Tickets to the Lincoln Center Festival’s Varèse: (R)evolution

As you know if you read Christian Carey’s earlier piece,  Lincoln Center Festival’s Varèse: (R)evolution will present the composer’s entire oeuvre over two concerts on July 19 & 20. Performers include the New York Philharmonic, conductor Alan Gilbert, percussionist Steven Schick, and ICE. We have two pairs of tickets to give away for one of the performances. Because we have so many smart people who read S21 and the first answer is usually right, I’m going to take the names of all the people with the right answer, put them on a slip of paper, and have my unsuspecting next door neighbor pull one out of a Yankees cap.

Here’s your tossup:  Varese’s 1906 Un Grand Sommeil Noir is titled after a poem by Paul Verlaine and suggests (to me, at least) the title of a 1995 film about Rimbaud and Verlaine.   What is the title of that film and who played Verlaine?

You can get your name in the cap twice by answering this bonus question.  What female composer wrote 21 pieces based on Verlaine poems?

by Jerry Bowles
Composers

Jason Robert Brown, Copyright, and Who Wins or Loses from Web Piracy

Jason Robert Brown, composer of Parade and lots of other excellent musical theater music, has a valuable post on his blog today about his attempts to persuade internet “traders” from illegally offering his sheet music for download for free. Brown joined one of the peer-to-peer communities that had a lot of his work listed and contacted about 400 users, politely asking them to stop offering his material. Most complied, some had no idea what he was talking about, and a few resisted. The issue of who benefits and who loses from the widespread distribution of his work is raised in a lengthy exchange he had with a teenage girl named Brenna…ur, Eleanor… which provides some insights into both perspectives of the copyright debate.

I know a lot of composers who are pleased to allow people to download their music free and distribute it to whomever they like because they believe doing so provides exposure to their work and grows their “brand” (to use an overused marketing term). Others believe their music is their intellectual property and they should be paid for any use. Where you stand seems to depend upon how commercially “successful” you are. If you’re relatively unknown and there is little demand for your music, giving it away is a great strategy. If there is a market demand for your work in various forms, it’s not.

Who has thoughts on this topic?

by Jerry Bowles
Composers, Concerts

Xenakis on a Raft or Steven and Doug Go Boating

Not a short order in a Greek coffee shop but the first American open-air performance of Iannis Xenakis’ Persephassa (1969), a thunderous work for six percussionists, including founding member of the Bang on a Can All-Stars Steven Schick and former So Percussion-ist Doug Perkins. The musicians were situated around the Boating Lake in Central Park, with the audience members in the center – in rowboats. Q2, the Internet’s best new classical station, asked its audience to document the event which resulted in a slide show here and a nearly complete video from Liubo Borissov:

persephassa on the lake from liubo on Vimeo.

by Jerry Bowles
Contemporary Classical

Yannick Nézet-Séguin Named Music Director of Philadelphia Orchestra

Yannick Nézet-Séguin has been named as the Philadelphia Orchestra’s next Music Director. His seven-year contract begins immediately, with Nézet-Séguin assuming the title of Music Director Designate for two seasons and taking on the full role of Music Director in the 2012-13 season. He will come to Philadelphia this Friday, June 18, 2010, to celebrate his appointment with The Philadelphia Orchestra and the City of Philadelphia.

With his appointment, Nézet-Séguin joins a distinguished history inclusive of young Music Directors of The Philadelphia Orchestra. When he assumes the Music Director title full time at the age of 37, Mr. Nézet-Séguin will join the ranks of Leopold Stokowski who was 30 years old when he became Music Director of the Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy who assumed the position at age 38, and Riccardo Muti who became Music Director at age 39.

Nézet-Séguin made his acclaimed debut with The Philadelphia Orchestra in December 2008 conducting Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with soloist André Watts and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 (“Pathétique”), and most recently led the Orchestra in Vivier’s Orion, Franck’s Symphony in D minor, and Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with Nicholas Angelich in December 2009. In addition to his position in Philadelphia, Mr. Nézet-Séguin will also remain Music Director of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, Principal Guest Conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the Orchestre Métropolitain (Montreal).

by Jerry Bowles