Classical Music and its Slave Orchestras

It was just five years ago that Dr. David Hunter revealed his discovery that Handel repeatedly invested in the Royal African Company, a slave trading company in Britain. A year later, Musicologist Hannah Templeton wrote that some of Leopold Mozart's patrons were likely slavers or heavily invested in plantations in the West Indies. In that …

The Art of Monstrous Men

CN sexual assault In a poignant piece about reconciling enjoyment of art when the producer of that art is known to be morally or criminally suspect Claire Dederer has really gotten to the meat of the issue. While she doesn't end up giving us a definitive answer to whether we should embrace the art while separating …

Low Maintenance Gigging

I once asked a colleague I often work with if they'd be interested in being part of a project I was involved in at the request of another colleague.  My colleague declined stating they were not interested and only really wanted to take low maintenance gigs. This colleague gigs as often as, if not more …

When bands waste time…

I spend so much time reading others' thoughts about the music business that some folks might consider it a waste of time. That's neither what this post is about nor do I think I'm wasting my time doing this kind of reading. Neither is this about all the time not doing music in service of …

Why I don’t release albums

Last Thursday I went to what was the final show at Dreamland and was able to get a copy of the cassette release of Chris Kincaid's Overshot for String Quartet and Electronics (listen to excerpts of it below). This is something I recorded for Chris back in June of last year (as well as an …

Knowing when to leave your band behind

As I book out into 2019, I've been thinking a lot about how I got to this point in my musical life. There's the received wisdom for most artists in any field that until you make it, you should keep your day job so you can have a solid financial foundation while you work at …

What’s it like playing Pop Music when you’re not a Pop Superstar?

Some time ago one of my friends and one of the owners of a local record shop/venue, Modern Cult Records, posed a question (friends only post, unfortunately) on Facebook: Why do so many bands tour directly around Louisville? How can we change this frustrating f**king trend? Do I need to open my own damn venue? …

“If you try to please everyone, you’ll end up pleasing no one.”

The other day, I was thinking about the Aesop's Fable, "The Miller, His Son, and Their Ass", while I was reflecting on the direction my musical career has taken. This was after a nine-day stint of 23 performances across a variety of musical genres.* You are surely familiar with the story--a miller and his son …

Musical Thoughts, Reflections, Questions, and other Ephemera…

As most of you know, I've not been blogging nearly as much as in the past--I go through periods like this. This doesn't mean I haven't been writing/thinking/analyzing things. I was just looking at all the recent drafts I've been working on and decided rather than trying to finish one I'll just post some of …

“…but, does that orchestra make any money?” and Life Cycles of Orchestras

One of frequent questions I'm asked when I point out the immense growth of opera companies, orchestras, and classical music ensembles over the past few decades is what their financial model is and whether that translates to making a livable wage or even whether that translates into the organization being sustainable and able to stay …

Pop Music Attrition

One of the long term research projects I've been working on is the attrition rates of local bands. Over the years I've had many discussions with local musicians about how often bands fold, or how a singer-songwriter will drop off the face of the earth, or how a musician decides to go back to school …

How to raise Orchestra revenue with Live-to-Projection events

Some time ago I read a Silicon Valley Business Journal piece about the Symphony Silicon Valley's Live-to-Projection Lord of the Rings concerts. SSV President, Andrew Bales, expected to sell out the two full runs of the trilogy in their Center for the Performing Arts in San Jose. This would mean selling out 15,000 seats for …

The many types of Orchestras…and how they have evolved

Since I've been collecting data on Orchestras in the US I've come across a bewildering number of types. Contrary to the idea that a Modern Orchestra is simply the culmination of an early-19th/mid-20th century Anglo-European styled large ensemble designed to play repertoire that requires large forces, the orchestra never stopped evolving. My previous post was …

On Faux Musical Quality, Popularity, and Relevance

A few weeks ago I read a clickbait piece on mic.com, "How The Music Industry Is Brainwashing You to Like Bad Pop Songs." It linked to a study showing how the emotion centers of the brain light up in fMRIs when familiar tunes were played to the test subjects. This isn't a particularly surprising result.  …

Essential Tools for the 21st Century Musician: Technology

In my previous post about tools for the 21st Century Musician, I discussed improvisation as probably the most useful tool musicians can be using. In a way, technology is even more indispensable. Unless our voice is our primary or only instrument (and even then there are exceptions), then nearly everything we make music on is …

Walking with Dinosaurs

In a recent Telegraph piece by Hannah Furness we're told that Peter Sellars has called for the end of Mass art forms In a speech about the importance of art, Sellars argued the changing world had left consumers wanting a different experience from simple, traditional mass market. Saying opera had an “irrational beauty” which is …

Casino Gigs, Classical Music, and Younger Audiences

Over the years I've had the opportunity to play a number of casino gigs.  These are often some of the best paying gigs for musicians of any stripe and the competition for getting into a roster of acts for them can be pretty fierce. Last night after filling in for Sweeney Todd at CenterStage here …

The Growth of Classical Music in the 21st Century

One of the running themes here at my blog is how we talk about Classical Music and how that inflects what we know about the field as a whole. This goes back to what's known as a prototype theory of language first articulated by Psychologiest, Eleanor Rosch, back in 1973 as a way to understand …