Not just two blog posts in one week, but the second is a video blog post at that. Enjoy this mini-documentary of a component of our activities in Baltimore last week.
Michael Kaiser, President of the Kennedy Center, posed an important question recently on his blog hosted by the Huffington Post: “Does the symphonic orchestra model work?” It’s an interesting and provocative line of inquiry, but it might have been more accurate for him to ask whether the symphony orchestra modelS work, seeing as he touched on at least four without identifying them explicitly: business, labour, artistic leadership (closely tied to labour), and community or social engagement.
First though, Kaiser’s title begs another question. What is the symphony orchestra model? From a corporate perspective, the answer is actually quite easy: orchestras operate as a funded-loss. This is exactly what it sounds like, and Kaiser references this concept at the start of his article. Direct trade activity or earned income, in this case ticket sales, doesn’t cover expenses for most orchestras, so the deficit has to be made up through gifted income in the form of public, private and corporate donations or sponsorships. Contrary to what you might think, a funded-loss model is a perfectly legitimate way of conducting business. It’s witnessed primarily in commercial start-ups, but also in many manifestations of social entrepreneurship. In the case of start-ups, the rationale for funding the loss is the expectation that the business will ultimately becomes profitable. In the context of social enterprise, revenue is diverted from a directly profitable area of business to subsidize an activity where the returns are more social than financial, eg: David Green and Aurolab, or the Aravind Eye Hospitals. Often the social activity and its relative worthiness are leveraged to market the more profitable aspects of the business.
There’s no expectation anymore that orchestras turn a profit on concert revenue alone, regardless of whether they’re long established or recently formed. (That they once did and now can’t is actually a function of economics, relating to productivity. If you’re interested in learning more about this, check out the articles here). This thought actually has some pretty profound implications, namely that if ticket revenue is no longer sufficient to cover expenses, even if all performances were sold out, then the operating principle for symphonies has fundamentally changed. Orchestras cannot consider themselves in the concert-giving business, but in the relationship-building business.
They are also as much social enterprises as artistic enterprises.
This acknowledgment doesn’t actually require a major shift in paradigm, just industry attitude. Orchestras only started engaging in education in the last 50-60 years when compelled to justify their continued receipt of public monies. Unsurprisingly, there was initially tremendous resistance to this from within the ensembles, namely concerns it would detract from the more artistically meaningful activities. Musicians also worried that it was too far removed from the core business of orchestras – after all, they were there to perform, not to host instrument petting zoos. Today, education concerts are a fact of life even for such storied and glorious institutions as the Berlin Philharmonic. In light of this, El Sistema or like activities suddenly seem like the most natural and sincere model of community engagement. Music education on such a scale has the potential to build the largest audiences, to resonate with a greater proportion of the populace, and thus to cultivate the greatest number of meaningful relationships. There are manifest positive revenue implications inherent within that, to say nothing of the social, and fortunately there are at least two major orchestras with the vision to recognize that synchronicity. The Baltimore Symphony Orchkids program, initiated by Marin Alsop, is now in its second year, and the LA Philharmonic has had their YOLA initiative in conjunction with Harmony Project and EXPO Center for about the same amount of time. I’ve had the pleasure of working with both these groups in the past few months, and I can confirm from those personal experiences how important, how transformative these initiatives have been for the children involved, even in their embryonic program stages. It will be transformative for the parent organizations too. They will have, as Kaiser said, the “support of their communities, a large fund-raising program and, of course, exciting art.” And they will thrive.
I’m conscious of the practice of defaulting to the Chinese… or Mark Twain… when trying to attribute a quote – but in this case, I’m fairly certain there’s a traditional Chinese curse that states “May you live in interesting times.” According to Ben Cameron, the industry guru from the Doris Duke Foundation we heard speak on Friday, the entire classical music industry has been thus execrated for over a century (although presumably not by the Chinese), with the interesting times rarely if ever relieved by periods of stability and growth.
Ben’s an extraordinarily engaging , energetic speaker, but given the state of the industry, he’s only the latest in a long line of well-informed Cassandras resolutely cold-shouldered by the performing arts. His is an important voice calling for change, but sometimes I get the feeling that the performing arts just aren’t listening. In their partial defense, there have also been many ill-informed prophets of doom over the years peddling apocalyptic clichés concerning live music or dance, none of which have come to pass. Still, that doesn’t excuse the static, almost moribund nature of the sector.
I have some direct personal experience with this systemic intransigence. About two years ago I was a finalist for a conducting position with a professional Canadian orchestra, an organization I forbear to name. The audition process was somewhat unusual in that the conducting component came first, after which two finalists were chosen to be interviewed. During my interview, I spoke, as I always do, about my belief in the need for orchestras to develop a participatory culture in audiences, while referencing el Sistema-like ideals. They couldn’t show me the door fast enough. It’s almost superfluous to add that I didn’t get the job.
But I recall very well the reaction on the faces of the people around me. It was fear: cold, rank fear. They had stumbled along for however many years and were content to continue stumbling, because the only alternative they could envision to the status quo was utter collapse. Again, I don’t fault them entirely for this attitude, because in the past that might have been true. In the face of larger economic and social changes, however, it felt like a policy of “don’t rock the (leaky) boat” while remaining oblivious to the tidal wave about to demolish the dinghy. That simile reminds me of a western US conservatory, in which the student society rejected a proposal to fund lessons to disadvantaged but talented children, in favour of continuing to make capital purchases on behalf of the school. (In this policy they were aided and abetted by the conservatory leadership, who saw the society funds as existing solely to supplement their own purchasing budget.) The tidal wave hit: the society’s funding was reduced by NINETY percent ($5000 dollars down to $500) by the student senate. Clearly, the consequences of doing nothing can be as dire as the consequences of doing something – and personally, I’d prefer to make apologies for having acted rather than having failed to act. Perhaps that’s just me.
Frankly, most music conservatories are as happy in their quicksand as their professional performing counterparts. The schools view themselves as the guardians of a sacred and ancient tradition, in which “innovation” is limited to the painfully esoteric area of computer music or the pointless, ever-changing realm of “music business” as viewed only through the narrow lens of technology. New England Conservatory is a startling exception to the rule: the fact that Abreu Fellows Program even exists speaks volumes about the leadership. In the world of musical academia, where schools cling to “the most recent bad performance” like the emperor to new clothes, it takes incredible vision and commitment to break the normal mold and support an alternative vision of the future of music.
The alternate vision is only one half of what is required to compel system-wide change. The other half is simple: not to decry or denounce the current model, but render it obsolete. As Mark Twain (might have?) said : “A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.” Change is coming, of that you can be certain. We can either lead it, or be left behind by it.
And if you want to use that quote, please credit me and not Mark Twain.
Today the Abreu fellows had the honour of being inducted into the Fundación del Estado para el Sistema Nacional de las Orquestas Juveniles e Infantiles de Venezuela, also known by the rather unlovely acronym FESNOJIV, but more universally shortened to el Sistema. FESNOJIV conductor, teacher and administrator Roberto Zambrano visited us at the New England Conservatory and presented us with the official … I’m reluctant to call it a “medal”, but “regalia” has all the trappings of royalty (for obvious etymological reasons) or worse, academia. Sigillum? Something bright and shiny that was hung around our necks on broad ribbons bearing the national colours of Venezuela. It was a lovely and very kind gesture, and if you will permit me to borrow a phrase, I shall say I consider it a “call to action.” The reverse of the violin bears the motto of the movement in Venezuela, “Tocar y Luchar”, or “To play and to Struggle.”
I did a video interview on Wednesday for the proposed documentary on el Sistema and the Abreu Fellows program, hence another deliberately misspelled posting title. These media encounters are always mortifying, the equivalent of hearing your own voice on someone’s answering machine, times one hundred thousand. Aside from having the original “face for radio”, I also tend to babble incoherently when put on the spot with a camera thrust in front of me. It didn’t help that the interviewer was none other than Jamie Bernstein, daughter of Leonard. Her father was surely one of the most naturally gifted, eloquent speakers my profession has known, so invidious comparisons must inevitably have been drawn.
Jamie asked good, difficult questions, all of which could be summarized into “What’s the point?” Of course she didn’t ask so curtly, being consummately professional – but she would have been right to. We know and understand that el Sistema represents some form of opportunity in North America or the rest of the world, but no one is certain exactly what that opportunity is. Musician and non-musician together understand the program instinctively as a good thing, even if they don’t understand it empirically, rationally, or sociologically, etc. Part of the process of the year will inevitably be some degree of academic dissection, and this in itself reflects one major cultural difference between the north and south Americas: the northern NEED FOR DATA (in stentorian tone). In a way it’s ironic, given that we know this program best through its artistic ambassadors such as the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra. Yes, it’s important to be able to speak to different constituencies in an advocacy role, and there is a place for empiricism and sociological investigation, but el Sistema has won international renown because it speaks emotively, first and foremost, and we would fail abjectly in our efforts if we forgot or neglected the importance of the art. We’ve seen no balance sheets for the program, no standardized curricula or testing, just wonderfully moving performances. And this is why, in the absence of almost all data, we can all agree “This must be good.”
I wish that conclusion could pass as an answer to Jamie’s questions, but it doesn’t. Simply put, none of us expect to transplant what was achieved in Venezuela wholesale to foreign soil and duplicate its results exactly. El Sistema is not some vast panacea for the problems that classical music faces in the developed world, it cannot be packaged up, institutionalized and franchised globally into some horrid McSistema monster. What el Sistema represents, right now, is just a window, a window on potential solutions, new avenues of arts advocacy, or new models of community engagement. When we look through that window, we see that the most beautiful aspect of el Sistema is that it has fundamentally repositioned music and its role within a society. Music is no longer an embellishment of the lives of the hundreds of thousands of program participants, it is a condition. El Sistema rejects the unidirectional disseminative musical model (we play, you listen) of the so-called developed world in favour of creating a culture of participation. It returns music to its place as a social activity, and this is why it has social impact.
So what’s the point?
We’re opening the window.
For the record, I do know how to spell. The title is simply some ill-considered laziness, ill-considered because it necessitated a disclaimer longer than the title “Summer Summary.” That would have been entirely self-explanatory but also somewhat redundant sounding, even if technically correct.
I’m going to dispense with the usual blog disclaimers about frequency of updates and quality/appropriateness of content – or rather, by stating I’m going to dispense with it I have in fact addressed it. The usual caveats apply. The simple truth is that, at this point, I still have little to no idea what I’ve brought upon myself with the Abreu Fellows program and am already concerned for my sanity, given the challenges that have already manifested in balancing the program with my artistic ambitions in just the first month.
You’d think that wouldn’t be a problem after the summer I had. First there was the Kurt Masur workshop with the splendid Manhattan School of Music orchestra in April, then doctoral comprehensive exams, both written and oral, in May. There was a major audition on literally 24 hours notice, followed by the National Arts Centre Orchestra (an incredible ensemble) Conductors Programme in June, and finally the Cabrillo Festival with Marin Alsop in July and August, the visual evidence of which is appended below.While in some ways stimulating and gratifying, the summer was also presented challenges to the point of excess. Still, as far as problems went, those were good problems to have.
Unfortunately, those kinds of problems, however good, are still problems, and they didn’t end with the summer. I’m now in the unhappy position of attempting to balance the Abreu Fellows program with preparation for a Major Audition (yes, capitalized) with a Really Important Orchestra at the end of the month, while finishing a substantial research paper on performance practice in Brahms. I’m delighted I have the stress of the audition, if only to provide impetus and motivation for continued artistic development. Truth be told, no matter what I learn in the Abreu Fellows program, my credibility in the world of music and my ability to effect change therein rests almost entirely on my artistic capacities, yet the Abreu program is at heart about the function of art, rather than the expression of the art itself. This is a fact that largely reflects pedagogical necessity, not philosophical intention.
In short, I’m busy, and going to stay busy.
The Conductors Guild, the national advocacy association, has posted photographs of the Cabrillo Festival workshop online via their facebook page. The photographer is rr jones, who writes his name in the manner of ee cummings.
