Like every other blog on the internet, I get a fair amount of robot spam popping up on this site. Most of it gets caught in the spam filter and I never even read it, but today (after an extended blog absence– sorry!) I logged on to my admin panel to find this comment awaiting moderation:
[Text: I see a lot of interesting posts on your blog. You have to spend a lot of time writing, i know how to save you a lot of time, there is a tool that creates unique, SEO-friendly articles in couple of seconds, just type in google – k2 unlimited content]
I usually wouldn’t waste my time reading spam comments on my little-used blog, but– wait, what? This was a spam robot commenting (ironically, on my post about David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest) complimenting my “interesting articles” and… proposing that I use a an automated tool to write blog posts for me? Even better– “unlimited content”! And best of all, it’s “SEO-friendly”; optimized for being found by search engines. It must be every lazy blogger’s dream!
To gain more recognition and reward for less effort and output– that’s the idea that whoever thought this bit of spam was a good idea assumed I– or at least someone– would buy into. Don’t bother writing your own content, and use search engine optimization to become a star and rake in the dough! If only orchestras could apply the same concept to… oh wait…
Yesterday, the musicians of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra were locked out by their management. In 2012, after a short lockout, the musicians agreed to a 14% pay cut, a reduction in forces and reduction in the length of the season, with a promise that the pay cut was a one-time-only affair meant to balance the budget once and for all. It didn’t work. Now negotiations are back, and the management are out for blood, it seems. The ASO is trying to seize the right to change, at any time, any aspect of the musician’s health care plan or even the orchestra itself. As in, if they decide that the orchestra should consist of a string quartet, amplified chainsaw and electric banjo, then the orchestra is a string quartet, amplified chainsaw and electric banjo. (And them chainsaw players aren’t even in in the union!) No, but in all seriousness, this would be dangerous news for an orchestra during a time in which the buzzword is “new model.”
Q: Use the buzzword “new model” correctly in a sentence.
A: “Our organization plans on thriving in a new model in which we pay an insufficient number of musicians an insufficient amount of money to play an ever-shrinking number of concerts, more and more of which should have nothing whatsoever to do with the actual symphonic repertoire.”
Or, in the words of the ASO president: “While we value the art and the artists of the ASO enormously, we believe we must develop a new model that will allow us to balance our artistic and financial needs. Clearly, that is not the model we have today.”
Is it not? Why not? The ASO management seemed to think that the “new model” would take shape after the 2012 cuts. The players did as they asked, and trusted them to hold up their end of the bargain. Why should anyone believe it this time?
As Scott Chamberlain says on his blog : “No business thrives by diluting and diminishing their core product. And since the musicians are your core product, I would advise changing your frame of reference to reflect that.”
The core, if humble, “product” of this here blog–such as it is– is words written, or arranged and commented upon, by me. Thus, it is clearly nonsensical for my robotic spammer to suggest that the blog would thrive more by containing fewer words written by me, less often. In the same way, it is nonsensical to suggest that the Atlanta Symphony, or any orchestra, will become more successful by having fewer musicians, having them play fewer and smaller concerts, and paying them less for it. You cannot SEO-optimize* music.
Orchestra managements– stop using the techniques of crude internet spammers to try to run your organizations.
Three days ago I played principal on both the Firebird and the Rite of Spring in the final Brott Festival concert– did I do that? hey cool, I actually did!– and then the next day my house began the slow process of de-Hamilton-izing.
This week I’m reading some quintets with some old friends from the Toronto Symphony Youth Orchestra days, playing in the orchestra for TaiwanFest at the Harbourfront Centre, and then going up to teach at the Interprovincial Music Camp for the last week of August!
Last week we had two shows at the Brott festival. On Friday we played The Poulenc double piano concerto, Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy, Beethoven 5, and a premiere of a piece written by one of the professors at the college we were performing at for that concert, Redeemer University College. I played 1st on the two Beethoven pieces and 2nd on the Poulenc and the new work. I had never played or heard the Choral Fantasy before this concert cycle… it’s a very strange piece, which starts with an extended piano solo which then goes into the “Finale” which constitutes most of the piece. About 3/4 of the way through the work, the choir finally comes in, and the main theme is a kind of prototype of Ode to Joy. Verrry strange… also a scary 16th note passage near the beginning for 1st bassoon! It all went great, though, and the concert seemed well-received overall. Here is a review of that show.
Then on Sunday, we played Bruch’s Violin Concerto, a piece called Martlet’s Muse written by the Maestro’s father, Alexander Brott– which, strangely enough, is about McGill University– Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante for violin and viola, and Pines of Rome. I played principal for Pines and second for everything else. I’m pretty sure I nailed the opening lick :P but it’s kind of hard to actually tell! That concert was especially fun because the orchestra had to bring in extra musicians, so there were plenty of new people. I had recommended my friend Kevin, who was in NYO for the past 2 years with me, so he came in to play contra and did a great job. The soloists for the night were Martin Beaver on violin and Nicolò Eugelmi on viola, and they both did masterclasses the next day for the strings. During that same time the brass had a masterclass with horn player Chris Gongos, and the winds had a masterclass with flutist Leslie Newman.
Today we have a day off, and my housemates and I went to this crazy produce place! It’s called Fiddles Wholesale Produce, and it’s operated in this warehouse out back of a residential house. They just have a warehouse floor and two giant walk-in freezers, and you fill a cart and a guy with a calculator figures out how much you owe (cash only). It’s way better quality than the supermarket and about half the price– I didn’t tabulate everything that I got but my housemate Lara did, and for $30 she got: 5 peppers, a bunch of bananas, an avocado, sweet potato, onion, 5 nectarines, an orange, 2 pints of baby tomatoes, basil, grapes, green beans, a kiwi, a pint of blueberries and a big container of raspberries. I got a similar haul, including a giant thing of lettuce that will keep our six-person house well-fed, salad-wise, for quite a while.
For the next week we have a bit of a break on the repertoire, since it’s two pops shows. The first one is Frank Sinatra, and the second is a SECRET. I’m not kidding, I actually can’t tell you. I can tell you to come to the show after that, though, which is Broadway, and the one after that, which is three different versions of the Romeo and Juliet story– Prokofiev’s, Tchaikovsky’s, and the Symphonic Dances from West Side Story. You can browse the concerts here.
After the concert on Friday, we have a four day long weekend with NAO. Most of my housemates went to Toronto for the Pride festivities, but I came to Kitchener instead to visit my partner, my mom and see some concerts at the National Youth Orchestra, which is training at Laurier again. Last night I went to a faculty concert where David Hetherington and the percussion students played Tan Dun’s Snow in June, and the string faculty played Schubert’s Quintet. Today we went to Balzac’s– the coffee shop– with one oboist from Brott and one from NYO, and as we were all walking out we saw a sign for CAFKA-- Community Art Forum, Kitchener and Area– about something called In Search of Abandoned. A guy inside the building, which happens to be the Communitech Hub, came out and asked if we wanted to see it. We said OK, so we went inside and were led through multiple card-access-only doors to something called the HIVE: Hub Interactive Virtual Environment. It seems like a pretty rad place to work. On the way we saw stuff like this:
Inside the HIVE, three of us got normal 3D glasses and one got special “pilot"s glasses”, which had three little extra motion sensor knobs sticking out of each side of the frames. Then we were in the middle of a bunch of virtual mountains. The pilot controls the perspective on the mountains– if they’re looking down, you see them from above– and uses a steering wheel and some ropes to control the speed and direction.
The exhibit ends today, so you probably can’t go see it. Sorry. Suckerrrrrs!
(If you want to see something else cool, I’m going to one of the NYO’s free chamber concerts tomorrow. There’s a Mozart flute quartet, Berio’s Opus Zoo– aka the quintet piece that has always eluded me but I really want to play as soon as I find enough other people who are down for it– Ligeti’s Six Bagatelles, and the Brahms horn trio. You can find the complete list of NYO chamber music, faculty, and full orchestra concerts here.
On Thursday was our first concert with the National Academy Orchestra! We played Mozart’s Jupiter symphony, the Mozart Requiem, and a piece by the director of the choir who came in for the Requiem. This Friday we have our next concert, which is all Beethoven (a celebration of Beethoven in Eb major?) with the Emperor concerto and Eroica symphony. You can find the full list of concerts here: http://www.brottmusic.com/concerts-tickets/2014-concerts/
The last concert, I should add, has the Rite of Spring, the Firebird suite, and three other pieces on the same program…
Since Convocation and my crazy rash of gigs ended, I have been relaxing ’n stuff! Pretty much every day I go to the U of T music school to practice. For the past while the Tafelmusik Baroque Summer Institute has been going on in there, so the practice rooms were open (and exciting people like lutists and baroque oboists were populating them!) Now that’s ended so I’m back to finding someone to open the hallway for me, or if it’s fairly busy just banging on the door. On one hand, I’m not really supposed to be in there. I’m not a U of T student. I’m not any kind of student (yee-haw!) On the other hand, music students from other schools would come visit at McGill all the time, and of course someone who needs a practice room and knows how to put it to good use would always be let in to our practice hallway. It’s just a polite thing to do to offer comrades a practice room when they’re traveling :P So, I don’t feel too bad about imposing on U of T. Besides… It’s June. It’s not like the rooms are in high demand. The only irritating thing is that unlike McGill which has handy counter space and free-floating music stands, U of T just has pianos.
If anyone from U of T is reading this, I promise I’m not spilling reed water all over your pianos! I’m very careful.
I’m working on my music from NAO, as well as the Nussio Variations on a Theme by Pergolesi as a personal project. It’s a bit bizarre working on solo rep with no timeline for it, and not even a weekly check-in with a teacher to measure my progress on it. I have no idea when I’ll get to play it… Nadina did mention something about her doing a masterclass or workshop at NAO, but I don’t think the whole piece will be ready for a public performance by then, and I don’t even know what kind of class it would be in the first place or if that would be a possible venue for my performing it. I’d like to put on some kind of recital some time before I leave for Thunder Bay, in a hospital or church or something, so I would need to chose some more music. I’d like to do some Bach, probably the flute partita in A minor. I really like Bernaud’s Hallucinations as well. Anyway, that’s all far away… In the next few days I just need to move to Hamilton!
Although it feels like longer since I’m not even moved out there yet, the first concert of the Brott Music Festival is actually in only slightly over a week! We’re playing my favourite piece by Mozart– the Requiem– along with the Jupiter symphony and Beckett’s An Offering of Songs. You can buy tickets here: http://www.brottmusic.com/2014/05/mozart-requiemthe-genius-of-amadeus/
Last night I went to a concert by a Toronto group that I had never heard before. The group of 27 (specifically mentioned at the concert– no capital “g” on “group.” Apparently they’re very specific about that.) was playing a “DIY Symphony”. The first half had four symphony options on the menu: Mozart 38, Haydn 83, Schubert 5, and Beethoven 1. The audience chose which movement hey would like to come from each symphony. He first movement was done by applause-o-metre, with students from the orchestra’s outreach program at the Dixon Hall and Regent Park school’s music program helping measure the applause, and we ended up hearing the 1st movement of the Haydn. The 2nd movement was chosen by auction: some lucky kid had his parents pay to let him choose which slow movement he wanted (he chose Schubert) and part of his prize was also that he got to sit in the orchestra for the rest of the first half! The fourth movement was chosen by secret ballot before the show, so the remaining movement was to be whichever composer hadn’t been chosen. When the movement from the Mozart symphony was performed, it was done as a side-by-side with the string players from Dixon Hall and Regent Park. Unlike most side-by-sides (we did one with he Niagara Youth Orchestra just last weekend!) the kids were placed on the outside of the string section, so one of the students got to sit concertmaster!
The second half of the concert was Beethoven 7, which I just played last Sunday with Niagara so it was interesting to hear it again with this orchestra. They sounded great, and significantly more rehearsed than for the first half (part of the concept of the DIY portion was that they were sight-reading the chosen movements.) At the intermission Nadina, who plays principal bassoon and has recorded many concerti with the orchestra, showed me her lefreQue! The lefreQue (I SWEAR THE Q IS CAPITALIZED THAT’S HOW IT’S SPELLED) is a Dutch invention that seems to be catching on among North American wind players. It’s a metal bridge that you place on either side of the joints of your instrument using silicone bands. I admit that I’m a little bit skeptical based solely on the information on the website (http://www.lefreque.com), which contains such mumbo-jumbo as “lefreQue does not add but gives in return” and “On a flute you slide the pieces into each other, thereby effecting a sound breach, which again will be corrected by using the lefreQue.” There isn’t any particular information on what exactly a “sound breach” is or how putting another piece of metal on your instrument is going to correct it. However, I have to put my skepticism aside for the moment because everyone I know who has tried the device loves it and says that they hear a definite difference in the quality of tone! Which is really the only metric that matters, I suppose. Nadina certainly sounded excellent in the concert, although of course I didn’t get to hear the same concert with and without bassoon lefreQue :P
On the whole I really enjoyed the concert and will be back to hear them again if I’m around. I ran into a bunch of people I knew including my elementary school strings teacher! Toronto may be a big city but it’s still a small world!
So for the past little while I’ve pretty much been living the freelance life… by which I mean I haven’t slept in the same place for more than three or so nights in a row since finishing McGill. It’s actually been pretty awesome, and I’m almost done with all the work I have scheduled before the start of the National Academy Orchestra: next week I’m playing second on two pops shows with the Toronto Symphony, and then I’m going back to Montreal for Convocation, and then my lease starts on the house I just signed for with a few other NAO musicians. I don’t (at the moment…) have anything scheduled between when our lease starts on June 1st and when the orchestra starts on the 16th, so I guess I get two weeks’ vacation! NAO goes until mid-August, and then I’ll be up teaching at the Interprovincial Music Camp as per usual. And then I have the whole month of September to get settled in… Thunder Bay! I have been offered a one-year position playing second in the Thunder Bay Symphony for next season! Although I’ve been enjoying a taste of what life would be like as a freelancer in Southern Ontario, it’s amazing to have the stability of a full-time job– even if it is only for a year– right after graduating from my undergrad. Although I would like to go to grad school at some point (okay, there’s one grad school in particular I kind of have my heart set on) I didn’t feel prepared to do a big grad school audition tour while putting together my first-ever recital this year. But I admit I regretted it a little when the acceptances started coming in for everyone in my year who had done that: Juilliard, Colburn, Royal College of Music, and plenty of other exciting and prestigious places where my colleagues from McGill are about to go start the next stage of their musical lives. So for me the fact that I now have a job for next year is validation that I made the right choice for myself by putting off grad school auditions.
