Thanks @HereWeGoAgain2018 and congratulations to your daughter on her admission to Colburn! She’s clearly very talented! Does she ever play jazz bass or is she strictly classical?
@compmom, you’re right that music is a global community. My son absolutely loves connecting with people through his music across the country and around the world. This is actually his second time in Japan - he was over there last year with his trio and this time he’s playing with a group of Japanese musicians led by a saxophonist who studied in NYC for a couple of years (which is how my son met him). My son loves Japan - he says the audiences are so appreciative and everyone is so welcoming. And the food is great. 
@SnowflakeVT, that’s wonderful to hear that your daughter is making her music path work. Does she ever perform in NYC? My son’s trio will be back on the West Coast in June, starting in Seattle and working their way south. It doesn’t look like he has an LA gig on his schedule yet, but he has a couple of open days between gigs in Fresno and Temecula at the end of the tour and his schedule page for the tour says more shows to be announced. I think he may be working on an LA date for at least one of the open days. They did the same thing last June - starting with gigs in Seattle and ending with gigs in LA and Newport Beach. It would be cool if your daughter and my son could cross paths at some point.
@jazzpianodad there are several great venues in LA if he gets there. My daughter seems to go to the Blue Whale in LA quite a bit and many of her friends perform there, but there are many other new spots in LA also. Your son sounds like he is well on his way. If my D does pass thru NYC I will PM you because then I will also get there.
@jazzpianodad my d lives in Seattle and will definitely bring her jazz loving friends if you send the dates!!
@jazzpianodad any chance your Son’s trio will be performing in Portland, Oregon? If so, please PM me dates and details! We’d love to go hear him if possible!
Apropos of traveling-- my daughter is 2 years out of school and, while based in NYC, is also on the road all year long with touring groups. (She is a classical musician.) It’s an exhausting life. This year, tours all over the US, often in smaller cities that require multiple flights, car rentals, hours of driving, 4 am wake-ups. Multiple tours also to Europe. We just had a long conversation and how, at this point, she can be choosy about the dates she accepts, although ironically, some low-profile work (that she no longer does), like playing weddings, might pay more in the end that higher profile work that includes hours of rehearsal and (paid-for, but still very time-consuming) travel. As she gets older, I hope she will be able to winnow her traveling down to a level that’s less frenetic. On the plus side, she is racking up those frequent flyer miles. On the minus side, she no longer has a strong desire to travel for fun. Of course I love it when she performs in NY because we can often drive up there for the concert.
@glassharmonica, the travel schedule of a touring musician really can be insane. I get tired sometimes just looking at my son’s schedule. But my son wouldn’t have it any other way. And I love hearing about other young musicians who are making a career pursuing their passion. Not to mention bringing beauty to a world that definitely needs it. Hopefully there will continue to be a critical mass of people to support them and share in that beauty.
As always, I wonder about what happens once our kids have families, though some young people don’t want kids. I also wonder if females worry about this more than males
My son and I celebrated the end of college decision season by going out to see @jazzpianodad’s son play in NYC last night. It was an absolute pleasure to see him play and to meet and speak with him and his wonderful parents. Since it was a jam, my son got to play a song with the trio – he loved every minute of it!
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What a fantastic way to celebrate the end of college decision season. Way to go @jazzpianodad’s son for letting @lkbux64’s S to sit in on the jam. Wonderful way to encourage the young!
My wife and son and I really enjoyed meeting @lkbux64 and her son and getting to hear her son play. My son’s take on lkbux64’s son was “he can definitely play”, which is a high compliment. I know he’s going to do well at college and we’ll look forward to hearing him again in the future.
Good article on what it takes to be a professional musician and why striking CSO musicians don’t deserve the flak they’re getting!
https://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/music/reich/ct-ae-cso-musicians-challenges-reich-0331-story.html
I am sad and embarrassed to see some of the comments on this topic in general media.
Well, I had an issue with the writer:
“Unlike improvised jazz, which poses its own terrifying obstacles, the world of classical music is predicated mostly on historic repertoire known note-for-note around the world. The slightest flaw stands out. And on the less frequent occasions when new scores are on the program, the musicians must read them cold during a couple of brief rehearsals before a premiere.”
How would you like to be a living composer and read this passage about musicians under-rehearsing your work, which took months to write? Pretty insensitive to the challenges of composers I would say.
And yes performances by living composers, especially female ones, are infrequent- which the writer takes pretty casually. How are composers supposed to make a living after all THEIR years of work?
Agreed composers have it real tough to catch and maintain a break.
@compmom and @HereWeGoAgain2018, a composer wrote a solo violin sonata for my daughter when she was 17. She received it ~2 months before the performance. The responsibility of reading, interpreting, and presenting this work was huge. It was an amazing performance, but she felt that most of the recognition should go to the composer. We know many musicians who want to play works by living composers, as my daughter does. It is taken very seriously by performing artists, and it is a unique challenge because they are working from notes on a page that have never been played by an instrumentalist. They feel a most unbelievable and serious responsibility to the composer. I have never ever heard of anyone under-rehearsing anything.
One issue faced by performing artists playing new works is that they may not receive the work within the time frame that they need or were expecting, which creates anxiety and puts a lot of pressure on them. But, as artists, they understand that composers may not be able to give them the music exactly when hoped-for.
It’s wonderful that your daughter and others you know, want to play new music. There are grad programs these days for instrumentalists who want to focus on that kind of work.
Part of being a professional composer is delivering scores on time. Musicians have every right to expect this.
Under-rehearsing is a huge and very frequent problem. I can even think of instances where a piece was “rehearsed” (read) once, an hour before a performance (at a selective festival for instance). Not saying it is the fault of musicians, who are, at times, suffering the time pressures imposed on them as well.
Often a composer will work with musicians to help with interpretation, but hopefully not in an overcontrolling or intrusive way.
When my S was an undergrad at UM he and some of his peers received a grant that they used to develop a program to pair student musicians with student composers with just that intent, to allow them time to rehearse new compositions, develop performing opportunities and give them time to do the compositions justice. He had been frustrated that the performance of new compositions by students was always done on the fly with insufficient rehearsal time. He’s now involved in a similar project that is working to pair a pool of young professional musicians with composers that offers a regular series of performances of new music by young up and coming composers. The problem is funding and developing interested audiences.
@compmom in my daughter’s case it was a professional composer/professor who wrote it specifically for her. It was very difficult and there’s no way she could have done it without a lot of lead time. Not something you could even sit down and read through. He was not intrusive in any way, he met with her once, a week or two before the concert, to work with her mostly for the purpose of seeing if he needed to make any changes to the score, which he didn’t.
She would never want to be in a situation where she had to perform something with minimal preparation; aside from being unfair to the composer, her reputation as a performing artist, and as a collaborator, depends on being prepared. Are the situations you’re referring to orchestral, where the individual nstrumentalists may have less control? That would be something for her to watch out for.
Most composers we know are writing for specific people, either to dedicate it to them, as happened for my daughter, or for them to premiere it. Is this not usually how it is done?. It seems that if one is writing for a specific artist or artist group, there must be an element of trust.
No not orchestral.
At the time, your daughter was 17, and it doesn’t sound like a typical situation.
For many years the balance of power, so to speak, is hardly with the composers. They pay for festivals and programs where pieces can be played, or ensembles visit schools. They apply for commissions and enter competitions, and respond to calls for scores along with hundreds of others.
Meeting peers who will play music when themusicians’ own careers get going can be a good experience, mutually beneficial.
With a substantial resume, a few really important prizes, and maybe an academic position, the balance shifts a bit and rehearsal time increases :
I have two classical music composers in my extended family (both female). One is in a doctoral program at a well known conservatory where she has the luxury of a deep pool of musicians who are interested in performing her compositions. From what I can tell, it’s very collaborative and she works extensively with the performing musicians to make sure the performance is one they can all be proud of, including a good amount of rehearsal time. The other is older and more established - her works are often commissioned and performed by professional groups. In her case as well it seems to be very collaborative. She works with the musicians on rehearsing the music for the premiere and there’s always adequate rehearsal time. Once the piece is premiered, it’s generally published, and other groups may pick it up for performance. Often they’ll reach out to her and offer her a residency to help rehearse the piece. It’s certainly possible that some groups that perform her music do it without the same level of rehearsal time, but the performances she’s been directly involved in seem to have been very satisfying both for her and for the performing musicians. So at least a couple of anecdotal examples to suggest that it can work out well in the right circumstances.
@jazzpianodad where is this music getting published? My daughter potentially has access to new music through her university, at summer festivals, and from connections she can make from the composer who wrote for her. But how often are these works published, and where?