There’s an interesting piece on the Guardian website today by renowned American classical music critic Alex Ross – I’ve had his highly recommended book, The Rest is Noise, for ages and tried to get into reading it a few times but always got distracted, should really get back on it… In this article, he’s talking about the etiquette for applause and audience response in the classical concert hall, and it got me thinking about the similarities and differences between classical and jazz audiences.
Ross briefly mentions jazz audiences in his article (”in jazz clubs… people applaud after each solo, as well as at the end of each number”), which obviously simplifies things a lot but I suppose is safe enough to be taken as a general rule. Sometimes, however, clapping by default after a solo is totally inappropriate. I was at a gig recently by a trio that was almost contemporary classical rather than jazz – even though the trio were world class musicians in their own right there was unfortunately not many in the audience (those that were there weren’t even there specifically for the gig as the concert was one small part of a larger event), the music was pretty quiet throughout, and the whole affair was quite intimate. After every single solo though, no matter what the wider musical context, the person next to me (not with me! Just happened to be sat next to me) decided to clap as loud and as forcefully as possible in order to rally the rest of the audience into joining them. As I say the gig was really intimate, the solos were thoughtful, melodic and reflective rather than animated, loud and technical, and having all the musician’s hard work in building up an atmosphere rudely cancelled out by this person’s instant rapturous applause really started to piss me off – I think the musicians were also not impressed as they seemed to be a bit awkward in acknowledging the rather muted, sheep-like applause…
The point of Ross’ article was that people should be allowed to respond to music whenever and however they feel most appropriate rather than having to follow in some sort of etiquette. In the same way that refraining from applause after a massive final cadence in the first movement of a Beethoven symphony feels strange, for example, surely being made to feel duty-bound to applaud after the quietest and most reflective improvised solo in a jazz gig is also inappropriate? Ross quotes the pianist Emanuel Ax, who I think sums it up perfectly – “I think that if there were no ‘rules’ about when to applaud, we in the audience would have the right response almost always.”
Posted by on 09/03/2010 at 16:59 in misc and tagged alex ross, applause, classical, guardian. Leave comments here.
Like I say, in the end a gig’s a gig (especially a solo with an orchestra) – but were the years and years of training really worth it? Really?! (via A Blog Supreme via Matana Roberts)
Posted by on 26/02/2010 at 19:08 in misc and tagged angel, saxophone, youtube. Leave comments here.
Saw via twitter (follow me @beatsnpieces!) that Maria Schneider has announced another opportunity to participate in the creation of her latest commission – if you’ve $125-$2500 burning a hole in your pocket then click here for details.
I know that this type of deal (and ArtistShare in particular) was groundbreaking at first, and the model has since been adopted by countless other artists, but I’ve always been a bit uncomfortable with it. I think that this is because of the other ‘benefits’ you get if you sign up to donate money – for example, if you sign up for the $2500 Maria Schneider package she’ll phone you up 3 times to chat and update you on the commission’s progress. Fair enough as you’ve paid $2500 for the privilege, but it feels a bit to me like she’s just offering up just a bit too much of herself… Similarly for another one of the albums (I think it was Sky Blue) the top package included the chance to go birdwatching with her in Central Park.
I know that this ‘rewarding’ of investors probably goes in internally behind closed doors inside record companies all the time, and Maria probably does enjoy spending time with her fans, but still aren’t you kind of selling yourself rather than your music? I should stress that its by no means just Maria Schneider following this kind of model – there’s been plenty of other examples that I unfortunately can’t think of at the moment (I definitely read about an American metal band offering cookery lessons or a game of golf or something, thought it was Nine Inch Nails but can’t find it on Google so if you have any ideas as to who it was then let me know!).
While we’re talking about Nine Inch Nails, I think that they manage to do a similar thing without over-selling themselves. For example, you could buy their ‘Ghosts I-IV‘ album in a $300 package that included a hardback book, included the multi-track session files on data DVD and was signed by Trent Reznor himself. Limited to 2500 pieces at $300 each = lots of money. I do recognise though that Maria Schneider’s target market is probably somewhat smaller than NIN’s so this may not be possible for her.
At the same time, other jazz artists have also been funding their albums through donations from fans but in a slightly different way. Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society album was funded by donations, and indeed everything we do at Efpi Records is entirely down to donations from you (cheers!). I think that the difference is that people are donating to/investing in you rather than ‘buying’ you though. Whilst I am certainly very grateful for donations through the Efpi site (indeed transporting a band of 14 people to gigs without financial suicide would be impossible without income from donations), I imagine I would feel a bit uncomfortable about offering myself to someone in return for a few grand. And thats not because I’m miserable and don’t want to spend time talking to people about me or our music, indeed its quite the opposite and thats one of the things that I love doing! Its just the feeling of being paid to do it that I think would be a bit weird (to me).
Again I want to reiterate that this is in no way an attack on Maria Schneider, her music or her business model. Her music is amazing, and I had the good fortune to meet her briefly after her gig at the Barbican in 2008 when she was lovely. I’ve also bought at least 4 of her albums through ArtistShare (as well as the new Chris Potter Underground album) and much enjoyed the extra videos and content that I got through the site. I just thought I’d write a little bit about my feelings about giving people the opportunity to buy access to YOU (important to note that I’m talking about something different than paying for teaching) rather than your music in the hope that it would stimulate some discussion… Go!
Posted by on 24/02/2010 at 15:13 in misc and tagged artistshare, chris potter, darcy james argue, efpi, maria schneider, nine inch nails, secret society. Leave comments here.
Been seeing a few articles and mentions of Pat Metheny’s new project around, thought I’d share…
When I first saw this video I thought it was a bit underwhelming, it just seemed a bit pointless to me to have whats essentially a glorified MIDI controlled sound module and not use it to its full advantage… The player piano works of people like Conlon Nancarrow that Metheny talks about on his website were composed and developed because at the time humans weren’t considered physically and/or mentally capable of accurately realising their music due to the complex, often mathematical rhythms, or massive chords far beyond the capabilities of ten human fingers – at least in that preview video, there didn’t appear to be anything in that vein that humans couldn’t do? So I was a bit puzzled as to the musical point of the project, the technical point of the project obviously being the super geek coolness of programming and controlling hundreds of robotic arms.
But then I read this article in the Guardian that talks about Pat controlling everything in real time by sending MIDI messages through Ableton Live, and suddenly everything became a lot cooler… As far as I understand it, the plan is to be able to control the ensemble in such a way that he can improvise with himself each night – sounds like a technical nightmare and frankly a bit of a bitch for one man to control live on stage, but if he can pull it off its going to be amazing; musically, technically and visually. I’d love to go but at present the only tickets left for the Barbican gig are £65… Time to scour eBay I think.
(Incidentally, looking at the tour schedule on Metheny’s website, does anyone else find it disappointing that there’s loads of dates inside certain countries but still only one in the UK? Obviously this is not a fault of Metheny or his people but it seems quite common to me that people only play in London when they’re doing European tours and its a shame there isn’t enough of a demand amongst audiences and/or promoters to make gigs outside London commercially viable…)
Posted by on 13/01/2010 at 13:35 in misc and tagged barbican, london, metheny, orchestrion, patmetheny. Leave comments here.
Let me be the last person to wish you a happy new year! Hope Christmas and everything was good, its perhaps a bit late for that but its always nice to say it anyway… And whilst we’re being late check out the Efpi Christmas message here if you haven’t already, it’ll put you right in the mood all over again.
Thought now would be an excellent time to recap all the stuff from the end of 2009 that I’ve been meaning to post, just to close everything off nicely. First of all, I’ve just uploaded a load of photos from the EP launch night on 2nd December to the gallery; the pictures were all taken by Martin Wilson and they’re really good so check them out now… I think that this one is my favourite.
Also it was my birthday just before Christmas, and wanted to share with you this picture of my amazing birthday cake – remind you of anything?? Thanks Lucy!
Posted by on 08/01/2010 at 00:48 in beats & pieces, misc and tagged cake, christmas, ep, ep launch, gig, odder, party, photos. Leave comments here.
Take a look at this article from today’s Guardian – basically some guy in the audience at a jazz festival in Spain called the police to complain that a gig by a saxophone player called Larry Ochs wasn’t jazzy enough… And the police agreed! Check out the band’s music below.
This got me thinking about how difficult it is to classify contemporary music nowadays, as musicians bring together influences that are so wide ranging – from classical to rock to world and everything in between. I remember reading articles about the Portico Quartet recently, for example, where the authors and even the quartet themselves were bemoaning the fact that their records were classified as either ‘jazz’ or ‘world’ whereas in reality its somewhere in between.
When I’ve been promoting the Beats & Pieces Big Band, I sometimes find it difficult to describe exactly what the music is – I’d say its definitely jazz (but even then, what is jazz?! A whole other can of worms…) but in places its also rock, electronica, minimalist classical etc etc… And I also play many free improv gigs, at the Noise Upstairs or with Token Otter for instance; how would that music be classified?
To be honest I’m not really sure what the point I’m trying to make is, so I’m not too sure what I’m trying to say – just thought it was an amusing article that also raises lots of questions. So go on, discuss!
(Also for the record, I’d disagree with the Spanish Police and say Larry Ochs’ music was close enough to jazz. Kinda reminds me of Tom Arthurs’ Centripede group, based on this clip at least…)
UPDATE: I read this post by Kit Downes where he talks about the word ‘jazz’ as being a creative process rather than an end product… Kinda answers some of the questions I was posing above, and its a great read in itself.
Posted by on 10/12/2009 at 20:22 in misc and tagged centripede, crimes, guardian, jazz, larryochs, noiseupstairs, police, tokenotter, tomarthurs. Leave comments here.
Posted by on 04/11/2009 at 13:08 in misc and tagged army, baritone, youtube. Leave comments here.
Beats & Pieces EP
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