Song of Peace: March 2008

Next month, the 5th anniversary of the latest US-led war in Iraq, choruses and choirs from around the globe will come together singing songs of peace. Rather than organize one mega-concert, choirs are showcasing songs of peace in their respective home-town concerts, raising awareness of the need for peace in these troubled times. Not only is this message stated in the lyrics of the music sung, but the music itself, should be a balm for peace.

This effort is being launched and documented by the creators of the Song of Peace website. This page lists participating choirs and concerts. There look to be somewhere between 50-60 documented performances in the works. The local Bay Area effort is documented in this Song of Peace blog. Would the contributor be willing to give an inside report on his or her group's preparation for their concert?

The mix of classical music and social/political/charitable issues is never guaranteed to be synergistic. In part, this is due to the perception that classical music lives in this refined bubble that has little to do with the rough and dirty workings of the real world. We go to classical music concerts to be transported away from all the bother and annoyance of our mundane lives- to dress in our opera frocks and experience refinement. ...or on a more serious note, to lift ourselves up and out of the bleakness and tragedy that fills the world, and attacks us from all angles. As I said... this is the perception. I think that this perception will only accelerate the demise of the relevance of classical music today. Pop musicians have been championing geopolitical/social causes for years, and with great success.

I believe that choral music lends itself incredibly well to furthering the cause of peace. I hope to make it to one of the local concerts.

Wanted: Experienced vocalist with good typing skills

One of my choral groups is looking for ways to streamline the budget. We choristers are paid for our services; the organization certainly doesn’t want to give us a pay cut. But, the organization is also spread so thin taking care of the day to day stuff required to keep the engine running (coordinating concert logistics, promotion, personnel management) that they do not have enough time to devote to long term development (i.e. grant-writing and fund raising). It was proposed that the choristers take on more of the day to day business in order to give the business-folk more time and energy to secure the groups’ future.

This proposal wasn’t outlandish for the group. Over half of the artists have been members for more than one season- many for 3, 4, 5… even 11. Their loyalty and commitment goes beyond the paycheck received. The average singer in this group is also an accomplished over-achiever who excels in subjects outside of music, and have many other skills to bring to the table. I am sure that people are going to step up.

But, all professional choral groups are hurting. I think that the group described above is atypical in that it is both professional, yet commands an amateur’s loyalty from its employees. By amateur, I mean “involved through love”, not “involved, though lacking in the skills dictating remuneration”. Also, this group is established enough that each artist can be relatively secure in their future employment.

This model cannot work for groups that

• Hire unionized artists
• Make no guarantees about future employment for artists
• Really pay far too little to demand anything else from their employees
• In general, work in the “pick-up” format- that is, the group really doesn’t exist outside of the concentrated time period surrounding performances

In short, the organization must first succeed in earning the loyalty of their singers before stepping up their demands, and only organizations with security can really earn this. It’s a case of bad Catch-22 for nascent groups.

Having said that, let's consider volunteer choral societies. Not only are budgets "streamlined" by having a largely volunteer labor corps, but singers often contribute more to the group than their voices. Many of these societies charge their singers a quarterly fee, which makes for a big chunk of the operating budget. These volunteers, these "amateurs" in both senses of the word, gladly pay for the privilege of creating beautiful music and performing in high-profile venues for high-visibility events. However, there are limits to bringing this model over to the professional singing world. First off, the reverse-flow of income is completely out of the question (although some professional non-profit choruses can ask their employees to return part of their fee as a tax deductible donation). But, why is it that the volunteer society member is willing to give not only their money and non-musical efforts to the group as well as their time and musical talents? Why is this paradigm completely moot in struggling professional groups?

Another professional-yet-developing group that I am in is trying to put together a volunteer guild, following the model of established groups like American Bach Soloists (link to volunteer page). Such volunteers can run concerts, get word out by pounding the pavement and putting together mailers, give room & board to artists traveling in from out of town, etc. The guild members are rewarded not only with warm and fuzzy appreciation, but can be given complimentary season subscriptions and other material regalia.

Going back to the first proposed model for streamlining choral organizations; is this a necessary survival step in today’s zero-margin cut-throat corporate world? When does this model work? What are other alternatives? What have been your experiences with finding warm bodies to do the grunt work necessary to keep an organization running?

Working with high school singers: a win-win-win situation

One of my choirs is entertaining the following proposal: feature a local high school choir as guest artist in our upcoming concert sets. They would be invited to sing a couple of numbers- hopefully one in collaboration with us. Here is why this is brilliant, from least to most important

1. Fill more seats (at the very least, their chauffeurs, oh excuse me, I mean, parents, will have to attend!)
2. Create a more varied program.
3. Show the kids that its cool to sing when you are an adult- its not just something to do when you are in school.
4. In our case, teach the kids about early music, which they may not get so much of in their choral program (check out kat's comments about pop music in high school choirs)
5. Use choral music to build community.

My group has pretty high performing standards, so we'll have to make sure that we give the kids an assignment that they will excel at (while all the while having fun!). I am confident that this is possible, and look forward to working with some fresh, young talent.

Self-expression and the concert experience

A few posts ago, I observed that a cappella music is much more popular today than classical choral music, and asked why. I strongly believe that individual audience members feel better able to express themselves at the former than the latter, and, again, that the fundamental issue lies beyond the popular roots of a cappella music.

When we are in our teens, twenties, even thirties, we are constantly searching for ourselves. The most obvious way to do so is through the reactions of others (i.e. social interaction). We go to clubs and to concerts not only to hear great music, but to meet other people and to assert our individual personalities in the context of the event. It is nowhere more obvious than at the Club, where participants are expected to engage in physical acts of self-expression, persistently asserting who they are through dance.

We may do other things than dance, clap, and sing along at a popular concert, but we are at all times self-conscious about how we are perceived at these events. We assert and express ourselves through acts of non-participation, as well- we may want to convey a sense of mystery and cool through the aloof act of walking away from the stage.

We are usually free to move around the cabin, to socialize, to eat, drink, and even smoke [outside of California] during the event. While concert etiquette still applies in popular music performance, even when confined to assigned seating, one is free to sing along, tap feet wave hands, verbally respond to the presumably charismatic performer, eat, drink, etc. Even when the performer has the crowd completely mesmerized, the individual never loses sense of who they are. Last November, I went to a big U2 stadium concert, and couldn’t help but join tens of thousands of others, losing myself completely to the power of the crowd and of Bono’s charisma, yet never forgetting that it was my whole person, not just a brain and heart having this experience. Being one-in-the-crowd was just as human an experience as being that individual in a club dancing up a storm or bobbing in the corner with ones eyes soulfully closed.

It goes without saying that pop concerts and clubs are fertile social meeting grounds, and are more sexually charged than the classical concert hall. Face it- there is a much greater chance that you’ll ‘get lucky’ at a club or rock concert hall than at the Symphony.

This freedom of expression is, in part, granted through technology. Pop music performances are electronically amplified, so our behavior [usually] does not pose a distraction.. No matter how raucous the audience becomes, the artists always have the upper hand in setting the tone of our experience.

Can one allow individual audience members a similar freedom of expression in a classical music concert? Can this be achieved in live, acoustic performance? Do we have to check our personality at the door? Must we always have a quiet, ‘contemplative’ experience with this music, without interfering in the experience of the rest of the audience or of the artists?

Outdoor festival concerts allow more freedoms than those in concert halls. We are free to spread our picnic blanket, eat our lunch, read our book or newspaper, let the kids run free around the back of the amphitheater, snuggle with our loved ones, ever (god forbid) talk during the performance. While electronic amplification is helpful in this endeavor, these liberties are foremost granted because everyone understands that the tone is going to be more casual. Opera simulcasts afford similar liberties. But, is the only solution to squeeze classical music into the stadium concert experience? Can more liberties be granted to the audience in smaller, more intimate venues?

One Possible Solution to Some Problems

Reposted, with minor edits, from Iron Tongue of Midnight, where I wrote this in June:

Celeste Winant has written about the tendency of multiple choruses in the Bay area to perform on the same weekend, which happens at least three or four times a year. She is also trying to do something about it.

There are plenty of reasons for choruses to do some schedule coordination. We're all in competition for the same pool of free-lance musicians. We all want to sing in the same venues. Some choristers sing in multiple choruses. Choristers are also audience members, and we want to hear what other groups are doing. Hell, we're in competition for the same audience for choral music.

I think we might need something like the Gotham Early Music Scene to help out. This group plans to "help [early music groups in NYC] with marketing, ticket sales, merchandising and assembling the financial data required for grant applications."

Sheer genius: take this specialized work off the hands of small performing groups that don't have the time or infrastructure to do the best possible job with those tasks. Can we figure something out in the Bay Area to do this for choruses?

Choral versus A Cappella

I've made an un-scientific inquiry into the relative Bay Area popularity of two vocal art-forms; classical choral music and a cappella.

Yahoo! hosts e-mail groups for devotees of both; Bay Area Choral List, (yahoo! group name ba-choral) and Bay Area A Cappella, (yahoo! group name ba-acappella). ba-choral has, at present 147 members, and ba-acappella has 920. I would gather that there are fewer a capella singers than choir members in the Bay Area, which leads me to believe that a large number of the members of ba-acapella are purely fans. Is a capella 6.25 times more popular than choral music?

This begs the question, why would a capella be more popular than choral groups which perform the standard repertoire? I want to look beyond obvious reasons, namely, that a capella is a form of popular music with roots in American folk song, Rock, Soul, Gospel, Hip Hop, and Jazz, or that a capella in this country is almost always performed in English. I want to explore, in particular, two reasons for its greater appeal. When compared with performances of the standard choral repertoire,

• A cappella better vivifies the personality and charisma of the individual performers
• A cappella allows for more varied audience response, participation and expression

Can these freedoms be better granted to choral performers and audiences without ditching the standard repertoire? This will be explored in detail in a future post. If you have any thoughts on this topic, let me know.

Does poor scheduling squander market share?

Last year, I observed in my personal blog that too often, multiple choirs gave conflicting concerts on a given weekend. This seems to be a huge recipe for disaster. Our audience is already so small. Why pit one choir against another and fight over scraps?

My guess at the time was that choirs rarely considered other groups' schedules before setting their own. I ideaslistically thought that if groups bothered to pay attention to what was already set on the schedule, there may be less of these so called choral car pile-ups.

Last spring, I started a yahoo group and calendar, Bay Area Choral Schedule, and invited all fellow choralistas, choir directors, and choir executives to join. I solicited a nice-enough response. Twenty or so Bay Area choral mavens have signed on, and between their input and my own research, I have posted schedules for over 30 different active Bay Area choral groups (including symphony and college choruses).

The sheer number of groups tells me something already. Conflicts in the choral schedule are unavoidable. So, better coordination between groups may not amount to much.

The Christmas choral season is upon us. Many weekends in November and December host as many seven or more different choral concerts around the Bay Area on a given night. December 1st boasts the record of hosting nine concerts which I know of, by groups including Bay Area Classical Harmonies, the California Bach Society, Cantabile, Cantare Chorale, Creative Voices, San Francisco Lyric Chorus, Schola Cantorum Mountain View, Soli Deo Gloria and the Tallis Scholars (presented by Cal Performances). The Christmas season is exceptional, though, in that our audience temporaily balloons to include all people desiring an injection of Yuletide choral cheer.

Other weekends host anywhere from one to six events (which I know of), with a median number of approximately three. Many Bay Area groups present three concerts; one in San Francisco, one in the South Bay on Penninsula, and one in the East Bay. They could take care to never present in the same locality as a competing group on a given night. These are detailed tweaks. In reality, issues like staff and artist availability ultimately dominate scheduling, leaving conflict avoidance in the triage pile.

Using Web Sites Effectively

This is a response to Celeste's previous posting.

Alex Ross has blogged quite a bit over the last few years about the internet and musical groups. Applying some of what he has said, information Drew McManus has posted at Adaptistration, and what I have put together from looking at different musical organizations' web site, I have all sorts of ideas about what's useful:

• Have a web site!
• Made it good-looking and functional.
• Keep it accurate and up to date.
• Post sound samples within what's legal. I personally know nothing about how royalties work when a performance of copyrighted music is posted on the net.
• Sell tickets on the site.
• Have a provision for people to make donations to the group.
• Have a mailing list sign-up page. Um, email list.
  
• Post photos.
• Have audition info posted - dates, audition process, who to contact.

Alex Ross: The Well-Tempered Web

New Yorker classical music critic Alex Ross writes an optimistic article about the synergy between the classical music recording business and the Web. Perhaps not all is lost? The article, titled, The Well-Tempered Web, can be found in the October 22, 2007 edition of the magazine.