Exposure more important than money for early career

By -

Many classical musicians struggle to be heard, clamour for any chance they can to get out in front of an audience. While there are numerous competitions that award money, it turns out the exposure from performances ends up being the most beneficial to budding musicians. Tim Madigan reporting for the Ft Worth Star-Telegram wrote a nice article about the Van Cliburn Piano Competition and the 1997 winner of the award, Jon Nakamatsu, and how winning the award changed his career from math teacher to classical performer.

The difference for Jon was the number of performances he received as part of the award. The Van Cliburn winner and finalists will enjoy three years of professional management and share more than 300 engagements in venues all across the US. This amount of exposure is infinitely more important than money as it gives audiences and reviewers a chance to get to know the performer. The article also talks about some of the pitfalls of that kind of sudden mass exposure, but off all the examples, the end result is still extremely positive, if not also very demanding.

It would be a boon to the classical music world and to new musicians if other competitions would take the same tack with their awards, particularly for composers. Currently most "Call for Scores" offer a single performance and perhaps a recording. While the recording is nice in allowing the composers something tangible to send to other organization to try and get them to perform the piece, it doesn't actually give the composer very broad exposure.

In both Scotland and England, a grant for commissioning a new work requires the work is performed in more than one location. So, numerous competitions only providing one location (one concert) can't apply for funding assistance, at least not specifically for commissioning new works. However, if they add just one more location to their performances, not only is the additional funding a possibility, but the composer gets a chance to get broader exposure. If symphonies could create cooperative agreements in performing new works, a single orchestral competition could see numerous performances without necessarily creating a great deal more cost. This would also help the composers in terms of their costs, as producing scores and parts can be expensive, but multiple performances of a single work help defray the cost.

Imagine the kind of exposure a composer would get if the New York Philharmonic performed a piece, that was 2 weeks later performed by the LA Philharmonic, followed by a performance by the National Symphony Orchestra. In the space of a single month the composer would not only have 3 performances by three different conductors leading to three potentially different interpretations, but there would be reviews of the piece from numerous different newspapers. This sort of exposure could launch not only a new work, but a new composer into classical world, greatly adding to the chance of success.

The flip side of this sort of success is the exposure the orchestras can get by having been among the first to play these new works. If a composer gains notoriety, those that were the first to recognize his talent can share in the fame. Ft Worth gets a great deal of press from the Van Cliburn Piano Competition, but in the article, the first few orchestras to host the winners in performances were also mentioned in the article. Free publicity just for having hosted the winner performer.

Marin Alsop is a conductor that appreciates and champions new works both with the Cabrillo New Music Festival in California and as conductor for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. However, we (composers) need a lot more of this sort of exposure. There is a lot of really good music being written, but too seldom is it getting heard.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Role of Music in Opera

By -
There are numerous books on the topic, and every composer, librettist, director, singer and audience member has their opinion as to what role the music should play in an opera. In a play without music, the words ought to support the meaning behind a character's actions. However, in the case of action movies, often times the action is what tells the story and there aren't words, just images to forward the plot. We might hear music to accompany action, build tension, but the action tells the story. Musicals tend to speak until the emotion of the moment just "has" to break out in song - unless it's something like "Mama Mia" where the dialog is the rails we travel on between songs; the songs themselves, written before the concept of the musical, are the focus of the production, while the story is secondary. Operas are a different beast. The music provides emotion to the words spoken, but it also plays the role of ambience when there is only action. In &quo
Read more

Episode 210b: Joyeuse le départ

By -
Image
Podcast:  Play in new window  |  Download Subscribe:  Apple Podcasts  |  Android  |  Google Play  |  Stitcher  |  TuneIn  |  RSS Provost Cunningham has Transmigrated, but to where! What is Dr Sage going to do with his body? And how can she bring home her friends, Abigail and Erasmus, without also bring home Cunningham? What are they going to say when they find the “skeleton” she’s hiding in her closet? Cast: Eddie Louise Clark  as Dr Sage Chip Clark  as Professor Savant Justin Bremer  as the Narrator Emily Riley Piatt  as Abigail Entwhistle, Calypso & Dean Stewart Written by  Eddie Louise Theme music by  Unwoman Sound Design by  Chip Michael
Read more

The Art of String Quartets by Brian Ferneyhough

By -
Image
When an artist sets paint to canvas, there are brush strokes used for different effects. Sometimes those strokes are subtle, imperceptible; they produce works of art like the Mona Lisa . Other times the very obvious nature of the stroke is the art, as in works by Van Gogh. With some composers of music, the notes on the page are their craft. How those notes translate into an aural experience is what defines some composers as great artists. Brian Ferneyhough has a masterful command of the techniques of putting notes on the page. These techniques are sometimes so subtle, even though written in black and white, they escape detection. Some of what he attempts with his music is just that, to escape detection, to bury the framework, diverting the ear away from the structure, so only the music is heard . The subtlety is so fine it is almost imperceptible. Even though he studied at several institutions, he is considered self-taught, studying scores from Boule
Read more