This is an important point. Young players coming out of conservatory now are tomorrow’s old guard. One thinks of cities in which the professional orchestras are in demise but semi-pro training orchestras are now the ones booking soloists, etc. What is the future for the young musicians?
Sorry, I was kidding with the NEC question. The benefit , and believe me it can be a real benefit, from this forum is the logistic and practical advice. The more esoteric and profound questions might be better conveyed over espressos in person as opposed to this often awkward format.
In line with what you are talking about, sort of , is that according to my sources the new scourge in orchestras is hiring photogenic ( as in bouncing around and gesticulating ) first chairs that don’t really know how to lead sections. As far as orchestras in general, as the number of them gets smaller you get the “push down effect” , that is the people that used to be auditioning for major orchestras are now auditioning for regionals and and so the people that can’t get into regionals are auditioning for locals… etc. etc. Same thing happened with the jingle business a decade ago. Suddenly I’m up against the bass player from The Stones? WTF. We call it push down. Pretty soon those Curtis kids will be in the Rockford Symphony. Rockford’s gain and other player’s loss.
When my father, who was a violinist, got out the army after WWII he assumed he could go back to playing in radio station orchestras, but things had changed dramatically. Same with big band players at some point. Now it’s the same with aging rock musicians like myself. It’s just evolution and you have to roll with it. The young musicians will figure it out just like young musicians have been figuring it out for all of time. I don’t worry about my kid going through a conservatory -as long as she makes real music ,I don’t care how or in what format. I tell her to close her eyes and jump. And yes, I’m putting my money, every cent , where my mouth is and haven’t thought twice about it. Damn the torpedoes.
jb1966, I knew you were kidding, hence my deadpan answer, but I also love how the helpful members of the forum all chimed in with their (very good) hotel recommendations. It just shows what a good community this is.
I totally agree with you about the false acrobatics one sees onstage. And “pushdown”–good word for it–happens all over in the arts and academics. Discouraging, but we keep pushing forward because we must.
@jb1966 - jingles?? You’ve still got any jingles? I thought that business died years ago. (Tongue in cheek - just reiterating the point that another one of the staple employment opportunities for free lancers is gone.)
I absolutely agree with the state of the hiring situation. Major international prize winners are now flying in to do concertmaster gigs with regional per service orchestras, major conservatory graduates - (I’m thinking of Juilliard, CIM, etc grads I know) happy to get section positions in regionals that don’t require 2 plus hours of one-way driving from their homes, urban born, bred and trained conservatory grads adjusting to rural and isolated areas of the country after accepting positions that pay $20,000 a year - and feeling lucky to get those offers. I know none of this is news to many of you, I’m just adding my observations.
Pass that espresso - or maybe we could meet later over martinis.
@jpb1966:
Yeah, times do change, though at times I wonder if the music schools and teachers fully recognize that…and like you, knowing how hard music is, I am doing exactly the same thing, in full bore with it, paying full freight…so I hear you on that.
As far as the acrobatics and such, that is where the falseness comes in, along with the music students I have seen in recital who are swaying and trying to imitate being ‘in feel’ with the music. There is a difference between someone into the music and feeling it and moving in expressing it, and someone pantomiming that. I will add I haven’t seen too many CM’s who fall into the false theatricality, I have seen the ones who are expressive but who also do the job well, but I am sure there are some out there doing it to ‘put on a show’.
These kind of arguments have been going on for years. I have this old book on conductors (C1941 or thereabouts, talked about Lorin Maazel as a prodigy conductor of 8), and it talked about Stowkowksi and there was a lot of criticism about his flamboyance and so forth, yet he saved the Philadelphia Orchestra and more importantly created the foundations it still has today…(hey, he even made it to a Bugs Bunny Cartoon lol). I don’t like false theatrics, but I also can’t stand an orchestra full of dead musicians either.
A lot of the jobs that once existed don’t. Things like soundtracks now are often done in Eastern Europe (you don’t see too many movie soundtracks done by the LSO these days, or a group like St. Martin in the Fields), much of the other gig jobs have likewise also disappeared, though I hear there still are opportunities with video game music:).
The perspective I take is something Anthony Thomassini, the music critic from the NY Times, who in response to what a reader wrote in, about it seeming like it was hard times for someone in music, said "It seems like it always has been hard times, it always has been difficult, the nature of the difficulty has changed, but it always was difficult). One of the things to put things into perspective is that the full time orchestra is a thing of relatively recent times, maybe within the last 70-80 years or so, and so a lot of orchestra members in even the big symphonies were doing a lot of other things. Going back even further, I remember reading a history of the predecessor orchestra of today’s NY Phil, where they often had a hard time having a full orchestra for rehearsals and performances, because the musicians would routinely not show up because they had things like wedding gigs and the like that paid better;). And don’t forget that the Berlin Philharmonic started out as a kind of oompah band in a beer hall:)
We don’t call them jingles or sessions anymore, we call them reunions because it’s a great time to catch up with people we used to see on a near daily basis recently reduced to semi-annually. The last thing I wanted to be was the poor schmuck who sat around waiting for the Chrysler assembly line to get going again when it was clearly not. They don’t make cars here anymore.
Every generation of musicians has a hard time. Even the musicians that married well and don’t have to do anything besides play in a regional orchestra or teach do other things because they’ve just got too much going on inside that they don’t want to let sit and ferment. In our house the credo was " If you see Dad, he’s doing something else besides music", because the only way to make a full time living was on the road. Hell, even Bach had music students. The temperamental, diva like, pampered , eccentric , brilliant soloist- light shining down for the big heroic encore is more of a cinematic invention than reality. Life in the arts has always been multi-faceted and always will. When it becomes "Keeping Up With the Kashkashians " instead of the Kardashians, I might change my opinion.
I love that line " When it becomes “Keeping Up With the Kashkashians " instead of the Kardashians, I might change my opinion.” lol. Yeah, the diva soloist, especially these days, is pretty much a thing of the past, the days of being pampered by record companies and arts management and promoters is about as long gone as Yehudi Menuhin and Isaac Stern, these days the performers lucky to be routinely soloing in from of major orchestras and recording do a lot of the hustling that was once done for them, and many of them are on the road 180+ days a year to do it, same with chamber groups. There was a brief period, probably the 40 years after WWII, when the arts became relatively easy (and the term is relatively), because of government funding of the arts during the cold war, and then the big corporate sponsors, there were a lot of orchestras either becoming full time or at the least, paying halfway decently, and there were a lot of things someone could do to supplement that, those days are definitely gone. One of the more interesting things I read was that full time orchestras are a relatively recent thing, it only started happening within the last 100 years, with full seasons and things like benefits and a full salary being attached.
In fact, being a full time musician is a relatively new occupation, historically speaking. The idea of playing folk , or as we would call it “popular” music full time has proved by modern tech to be a transient phenomenon as well. So it goes, so it went. Pampered by a record company was shorter window even still, Things change fast. Being pampered by a royal patron sure lasted a lot longer.
The pampered, paid well and held in great esteem by a narrow segment of the population seems to fading, as it should , precipitously. One of the great lessons my daughter and I learned in our pursuit of her education came on the way home from a weekend of viola in NYC. As we got ready to board our plane, as the thing emptied it’s arriving passengers from whatever flight , off comes a true rock star violin player, replete with sunglasses, over the shoulder scarf and manager carrying his bags. Norma Desmond complete. As we found our seats way back in coach we realized that sitting down two rows ahead, carrying her own bags was the aforementioned Ms Kashkashian. Two artists of equal stature with two different situations and apparently, attitudes. What a great lesson for my daughter. There are many ways to approach an art, from the modest to the bellicose and you make your own choices how to live in “the life”, or not.
Ha! My son was at the airport returning from an audition when he sent me an excited text to say that one of his instrument “idols” was on his flight. He ran into him again at baggage claim and chatted some and got a selfie. We had front row tickets to his show the next night and he reached off the stage at the end and shook DS’s hand.
This may sound counter-intuitive, but I’m actually all for the Norma Desmond rock star musicians. Having celebrity musicians may mean the survival of classical music and jazz as a real viable commercial industry that’s not completely dependent on philanthropy and government support.
We attended a class at Juilliard with Wynton Marsalis and he was stressing the importance of presentation and, well, “showmanship” to the students. How, maybe, instead of just mumbling the song introduction, they might tell a short story, a funny anecdote, etc. He felt that each musician had a responsibility in making the audience feel that they’d gotten their $75 ticket’s worth, even if that audience knew nothing about jazz.
I used to be a chef and the whole celebrity chef syndrome has done a lot to bring money to the position and helped make it a real “career choice”.
Yes, it’s nice to have star instrumentalists or singers, but only up to a point. I’ve had a couple of interesting conversations on the subject with instrumental idols. The first was electric bass phenom Jaco Pastorius who told me he was very disturbed by kids that played just like him, that they were missing the point: he was who he was because he didn’t try and sound like someone else. This is probably a common idol observation, but as a 20 year old bass player it made a great impression on me. The second was a grammy winning classical instrumentalist who I saw get upset after a masterclass when the student asked for an autograph. Instinct took over and the situation was handled very sweetly, but the impression was that it had damaged the teacher/student relationship to have a pedestal. There was also a great article I can’t find anymore about a student who studied under some rock star pianist and then, years later became a colleague teaching at the same conservatory and her reflections on idol worship and how damaging to artistic growth it can be.
But yes, in general I love the fact that there are players out there that want to be like Joshua Bell, but there must be some separation and refocus on the instrument, not the player. Some of the finest examples of being able to do both are the You Tube videos you can find where Isaac Perlman talks about violin and practicing. It’s very non rock star, very sensible and kind and plainly said. I guess having him a generation removed helps. Maybe the last generation’s rock stars will always have that detachment that makes them more viable.
Great quote!
I’ll take it one step further, that it isn’t about the instrument, but the music. There is a big difference between an instrumentalist and a musician IMO, an instrumentalist can be someone who achieves a very high level playing ability on the instrument, but is not a musician (whereas most good musicians are also good to great instrumentalists). A kid on violin can imitate Joshua Bell or Kavakos, play at an incredible technical level, but that is not being a musician. I have seen a lot of this, and I think personally that a great musician cares about the music as much or more than the instrument itself.
Great quote!