June 4th, 2008 in Politics | Comment on this Post »
As I was editing the May/June issue of the SCI Newsletter this week, I was struck by a discussion on the SCI listserv concerning the difference between Art and Entertainment. A number of ideas were offered for a way of differentiating the two, including focus audience or the content of the music. Some even offered better terms that would not be so derogatory, such as craft in place of entertainment.
I’m not sure that any of this discussion even matters. As Anthony Cornicello points out, there is such a big disconnect between composers and audiences that the public generally does not even know what a composer does. Conrad Kehn accurately describes the modern market with an incredible amount of entertainment options, with classical music ranking fairly low on the list for an entertaining evening (he mentions the stale, pretentious atmosphere, which forbids speaking and moving for long periods of time). Kyle Gullings made the most salient point in my mind: contemporary classical composers do a poor job of packaging their product.
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May 24th, 2008 in Politics | Comment on this Post »
Electroacoustic composers have a long way to go before they can become friends with audiences and performers (and this is coming from a composer with some success in this medium). Last week, I guest-lectured to college sophomore music majors and found out that only two of them knew any electroacoustic music (one was a composer, the other recently heard my Eastern Pinnacle for Clarinet and CD). This is even more surprising considering they had just had a unit in electroacoustic music in their Music History/Literature course.
Clearly, there is a disconnect between audiences when college music students have troubles naming one piece. The Kronos quartet is a needle in the haystack of mainstream ensembles that has bridged the gap with performances of recent works such as Terry Riley’s The Cusp of Magic and Clint Mansell’s music for Requiem for a Dream.
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May 14th, 2008 in Premieres | Comment on this Post »
The premiere performance took place in Weigel Hall at The Ohio State University on May 6, 2008. Praznik plans to record this piece in the summer.
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May 14th, 2008 in Politics | 2 Comments »
The short answer to this question: I do.
I recently had the premiere of my piano piece The Fall, written for and performed by James Praznik. He decided to perform from memory and drew criticism from someone who believed that playing from memory put yet one more barrier between the transmission of composer and audience.
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May 13th, 2008 in Premieres | Comment on this Post »
Eastern Pinnacle for Clarinet and CD was premiered during the Johnstone Woodwind Master Series III on May 1, 2008 by clarinettist Colleen Tryon.
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