It’s been a while since I’ve had a chance to explore YouTube. Today, however, I made a discovery that I’m awfully happy about.

Some kind soul has posted a documentary on Frank Zappa called Peefeeyatko in six parts starting here. I’ve only ever really wanted three jobs in my life- to be a cellist in a good string quartet, to be music director of a great orchestra and to play guitar and cello for Frank Zappa.

There are great interview segments with Xenakis, Boulez and Stockhausen (even Matt Groening!), but it’s most interesting to finally hear Frank speak about music free of his public persona.

Everything he says is fascinating, thought-provoking and utterly compelling. It’s time once and for all that the musical establishment lift the rock label from him and acknowledge him as one of the greatest composers of his time.

On the other hand, there’s a part of me that can’t help but feel a certain melancholy at hearing the technical limitations of the technology he was working on in the last decade of his life, in spite of the genius with which he approached it. It’s infectious and inspiring to hear him talking about what he could do with the synclavier, but 20 years on, the tonal palette sometimes sounds sadly pale and badly dated (more so when you hear the work in progress than in the final mixes).

What is the future for this music? Should we live with the recordings Frank left us? Should knew studio brains recreate some of those electronic compositions with better machines? The machines may be better, but there will never be a brain like Frank’s. Does one transcribe the electronic works for acoustic instruments? Is that tampering? I’m tempted to think that his happy experience with the Ensemble Moderne in 1992 show that he would have liked to see more of the synclavier pieces done live, just done well.

I don’t know, I just know that the performer in me feels the same way I always do when listening to music I love, which is that I want to participate. If I listened to Dixieland all the time, I’d be playing that instead of conducting Schumann and Elgar.

Right now, I feel like I’m 20 years old and dreaming of auditioning for Zappa’s band all over again.

c. 2007 Kenneth Woods
 

Of course, I was not alone in my reaction to yesterday’s Guardian piece on the alleged death of the recording industry.
A must read is at The Rest is Noise, where Alex Ross thoroughly and meticulously debunks that whole notion of  dying industry through, wait for it…. actual facts and figures!

At an Overgrown Path, Bob Shingleton reproduces a piece from Naxos UK’s managing director, Anthony Anderson. He points out there were over 1000 new releases from independent labels in 2006, compared with the 100 releases cited in the Martin Kettle article. Pliable also makes a nice wine comparison.

Jen offered a good comment to my previous post on this subject: “Pretty much the “Everything” recording industry is being revolutionized by things like itunes, etc. It’s not the product that needs rethinking, it’s the distribution”

I actually agree and disagree. Let’s go back to beer and wine (my favorite topics, I’m afraid). The genius of modern American master brewers and wine makers, in my opinion, was that they were able to identify the ways in which some of the classic European brands had atrophied. The quality might have been high, but the style had become needlessly limited by tradition- it was too easy to know what a German lager or a Bordeaux was going to be like just by its title.

The success of the HIP movement outside baroque music has shown that there is a commercial opportunity for those who can come up with a new way of playing Beethoven and Brahms. Much as I admire some of their work, I remain skeptical that simply playing fast and without vibrato really counts as a sophisticated and mature aesthetic approach. It is certainly a catchy gimmick, but the current generation of HIPsters are going to have to show that they can take the movement  beyond some of the simplistic and easily discredited orthodoxies of its founders.

Meanwhile, for more than two decades in Budapest, Ivan Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra have been reinventing the institution of the orchestra. Here is an orchestra of world-class musicians who regularly start the day with player-directed warm-ups and sectionals, and who might at any time take time out of rehearsal to play a Bach chorale. Every player is encouraged to play chamber music and have a musical voice in the orchestra. Instead of taking the American approach of “we’ve played Brahms 3 100 times, we don’t need to rehearse it too much,” they BFO say “we’ve played Brahms 3 100 times, so we need to allow ourselves the opportunity to explore it and keep it fresh for ourselves and the audience.”

At the other end of the spectrum is Gergiev’s approach at the Kirov, where they play so much repertoire on so little rehearsal that nobody can every dare to get complacent for a second. I remember a visit to the Proms a few years back when they played Boris Gudonov, a three-hour Gubaidulina choral work and a symphonic program of the 3^rd Prokofiev Piano Concerto and Shostakovich 4 in the space of less than 24 hours. I can’t imagine anyone who saw it wasn’t in awe of their endurance and concentration, and I’ve never heard the fugue in the first movement of Shost 4 played more ferociously. Their approach is a bit like jazz- daring, improvisational, risky, and when it works, pretty exciting.

Nobody could fault the professionalism and polish of any major American orchestra *, but is that really the goal? Nobody every accused Madonna of releasing un-polished records; Top 40 music is turd-polished to within an inch of its life. Also, what is the cost to the individual musician when her beloved art form is reduced to a profession, when the joy of discovery and exploration of music is replaced by the endless grind of churning polished subscription concert after polished subscription concert. One thing I love about the Vienna Philharmonic is that they’re not afraid to play like shit- they’re fearless about taking risks, and more concerned in creating inspired performances than keeping up the appearance of a well-oiled machine.

I’ve written before about the New Queens Hall Orchestra, who are actively trying to form their own approach, which specifically eschews the quest for technical perfection as a goal in itself (although the play at an exceptionally high standard), and who make truly live recordings. Somebody needs to give them a million bucks and hire me to make records with them- it would open a lot of ears (even with some other conductor).
What all of these orchestra’s share is a commitment to excellence, as defined by them. They believe in what they’re doing, and they believe the artistic product is the mission, and that the market success of the orchestra follows their quest for excellence, not their marketting department.

On the other side, here is an article that shows the heartbreaking lack of common sense and vision seen at too many American orchestras these days. An established orchestra has PAID a consultant to tell them to change their name. How much did this consultant get paid to bestow this bit of wisdom on the board? I bet it’s more than any of the players make. I’m reminded of Muriel’s Wedding, when the title character vows to start a new life,  and to through off the shackles of her old life. Freed from the burden of being Muriel, she blossoms in to….. Mariel. Maybe Spinal tap offers the best example “we were called The Orginals, but then it turned out there was another band called The Originals, so we changed our name to The New Originals.”

What’s next, the New York Funharmonic? The Berlin Philharmaniacs? Why not just sell naming rights? We could see a whole generation of Haliburton Symphony’s out there! Maybe the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra will realize there’s more money in calling themselves the Charlotte Church Orchestra.
 

* I want to make absolutely clear that not only am I  not faulting the polish of the US major bands, I’m not faulting them for anything at all. I don’t think even most musicians full understand the awe inspiring amount of talent, musicianship and experience in a group of 100 virtuosos who’ve all survived the traumas of the audition process to be there. However, to be totally honest, even though there are great, great things happening at orchestras all over the US, I’m not convinced that the standard structure from the audition process through the collective bargaining process to the rehearsals and concerts themselves is worthy of the institutions, the musicians or the music these days.

 c. 2007 Kenneth Woods

Hmm… more of this….

Is it just me, or has prognosticating doom for working musicians become a nice little earner for some? I think there might be more honorable trades to ply.

Thirty years ago, if you wanted to make and sell high-quality wine, beer or coffee in the US, you were out of luck. You couldn’t get investors to start the business. You couldn’t get shelf space in the supermarket. You couldn’t get distribution. It was the age of Gallo, the age of Folgers and the age of Pabst. Same for all kinds of food.

Of course, now there are hundreds and hundreds of thriving and profitable microbreweries, wineries and coffee roasters all over the country. They do get space in super markets, and their market share is growing, while that of the giant brands is shrinking.

I’ve made this comparison before, but I’ll make it again. After all, pundits make a living repeating the same hackneyed BS for years at a time. The corporate music world does not discriminate between classical and pop, it discriminates between musical Cheez Wiz and everything else. Mega corporations are going to sell mega crap.

Classical recording will survive or be reborn, just as wine making and cheese making and brewing and roasting all did because people who are passionate about it will get their asses in gear and make and promote great recordings. Some of them will build businesses that become so successful that they’re bought up by larger companies, who will gradually crap-ify them, but that’s normal. Many of the imprints that are now being killed off by major labels started this way- they were a labor of love that became successful, the owner cashed out, the mega corporation took over and gradually replaced all those Palestrina albums with “Kissed by the Classics.”

Imagine the master cheese maker 30 years ago trying to build his business. Surely everyone one told him “dude, that cheez whiz shit is hot, hot, hot. We’ve got to get the younger generation interested in what we do. They don’t want cheese- it’s too stuffy and old fashioned. They want cheez! They want wiz! Forget brie. How about Breez wiz?”

There’s nothing that orchestras can learn about programming and presenting concerts or that recording artists can learn about recording from the world of corporate music.

Any good, creative and thoughtful pop, jazz, folk or world music artist faces the same challenge as the Tackacs Quartet or the Berlin Philharmonic. My pop musician friends are just as depressed about the music business as anyone in classical music. They’d tell you we are “fucking insane” to think about trying to make classical concerts more appealing to the plastic-music listener, and “fucking pathetically stupid” (both direct quotes from a colleague in the rock world) to think that crossover acts are anything more than a lame alternative to elevator music.

There are no lessons on top 40 radio, there are no lessons on the Billboard charts. 

Does anyone care that Screaming Eagle doesn’t sell as many bottles as Gallo (yes, I know they now make some good stuff)? The difference between classical music and the wine business is that people see a small winery as a successful purveyor of a high-quality product- they’re winners, while the media (OUR OWN media, god help us), depict classical music as somehow losing a competitive battle with Brittany Spears- we’re losers. Corporate music’s profits are shrinking- doesn’t that tell us there is an opportunity for classical entrepreneurs to take market share from them?

I don’t know exactly what the model for the next generation of classical recording is, but I know I’m one of many who want to find it. I’m passionate about wanting to make records, as I am passionate about wanting to give concerts. There are a lot of us out there who know that there is room in this world for new recordings and for more and better concerts. We’ll find a way, and we’ll make money out of it when the business matures.

If the pundits want to help, they could start showing investors where there is room for making money in classical music recording, by identifying newly lowered costs, easier methods of distribution and opportunities of scale. They could call more attention to music that deserves to be more widely heard.

Cheez wiz sucks. Cheez wiz is cheez for people who aren’t in to cheese

Crossover sucks. Crossover is elevator music for people who aren’t in to classical music but don’t want to admit that they like elevator music because it would identify them as the tasteless nitwits they are.

Top 40 sucks. Top 40 is music for people who aren’t in to music.

Do we really trust huge multi-national corporations to improve the situation? Is Kraft going to finance the best and brightest cheese makers in the world to come up with new and smelly cheeses? No. If the current generation of artisans had waited for a corporate solution, we’d still be drinking Folgers, instead of my locally roasted, every so tasty cuppa I’m working on now.

Don’t join the crap parade- those people are only marching in one direction, and you know what you end up marching through.c. 2007 Kenneth Woods