pmp2005

THE ANNUAL MAGAZINE OF THE PHILADELPHIA MUSIC PROJECT

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FALL 2005

A Brave New (Old) World Orchestras Rising Saving the Day: The Music Education Explosion Looking for Young Composers

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Contents

Fall 2005

01

Message from the Director

02 14 18

Philadelphia: A Brave New (Old) World by Daniel Felsenfeld Orchestras Rising by Daniel Webster Saving the Day: The Music Education Explosion by Alyssa Timin

06 10 23 23 24 25 26 25

Twenty Projects to Treat Your Ears!: PMP Announces 2005 Grants 2005-2006 Calendar of Funded Events Introducing the Philadelphia Center for Arts and Heritage Between (Or Outside?) the Lines: Pew Advocates for Interdisciplinary Creativity Strength in Numbers: PMP Supports Collaborative Advertising Greeting the Season: First Annual Holiday Party News Corner —In the Community In Focus: International Association of Jazz Educators’ Conference

CONSULTANCIES

28 29

Planning and Development Program/Arts Marketing and Audience Development Program Refreshing Perspectives on Branding and Publicity

BUILDING CAPACITY

30 31

Leading Arts Boards Excerpt from Leading Arts Boards: An Arts Professional’s Guide by Nello McDaniel and George Thorn

DEVELOPING AUDIENCES

32 32 33 34 35 36

Illuminating Arts Market Research My Philosophy by Kate Prescott Engagement Before Information: Eric Booth Interacts Linking Web Design to Audience Development Beyond Just Websites Bring Out the “House Full” Signs by Vicki Allpress

EXPANDING HORIZONS

37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 44

Meet the Press: Journalists on Music New Frontiers in Music 11.17.04 New Frontiers in Music 5.13.05 Field Trips Lost Objects Harry Partch’s Oedipus A Tough Line ChaplinOperas Lincoln Center Festival 2005

SPOTLIGHT

46 47

Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts

48

Looking for Young Composers by Lyn Liston

FEATURES

ANNOUNCING

Front Cover: Music Director Christoph Eschenbach conducts the Philadelphia Orchestra. Photo: Michael T. Regan Back Cover: Saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell performs with the Art Ensemble of Chicago. Photo: Todd Winters

Message from the Director

Welcome to the second edition of the Philadelphia Music Project’s annual magazine.

PMP places substantive articles on music in Greater Philadelphia alongside descriptions of the Project’s grant-making and professional development activities, presenting readers with a unique opportunity to learn more about music in the region as well as our own work.

Feature articles by veteran Philadelphia Inquirer critic Daniel Webster, Daniel Felsenfeld, author of Amadeus Press’ Ives and Copland: A Listener’s Guide, and PMP’s Alyssa Timin span music performance, composition and education, providing enlightening context for the city’s current musical life, and a glimpse of its future.

“Orchestras Rising” is a kind of Stokowski meets Darwin, in which Webster traces the evolution of local orchestras, from the earliest days of the Fabulous Philadelphians to the panoply of chamber, community and genre-specific orchestras that have populated the area’s musical landscape over the last 100 years. Felsenfeld interviews composers whose work is being commissioned and premiered with PMP support during the 2005-06 season in “Philadelphia: A Brave New (Old) World.”

Many of the nation’s most prominent composers, from Pulitzer Prize winner William Bolcom and MacArthur Foundation fellow Bright Sheng to local stars Uri Caine and Jennifer Higdon talk forthrightly about their work, addressing cross-cultural influences and the creative process itself. “Saving the Day: The Music Education Explosion,” by Timin, surveys the dizzying range of educational opportunities provided by regional nonprofits, offering a beacon of hope to those lamenting the seemingly perpetual de-emphasis of music learning in public schools nationwide.

Settlement Music School, Strings for Schools and the Opera Company of Philadelphia are among those institutions whose programs provide what Timin calls “a major catalyst for cultural literacy.”

This issue of PMP spotlights two grantees: the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts and the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, two of the city’s busiest and most well-respected presenters. Sitting on either side of the Schuylkyll River, both exert spheres of profound cultural influence, providing venues for local performers and importing international talent across genre and discipline.

Three sections of this publication highlight the Philadelphia Music Project’s professional development programs: Developing Audiences, Building Capacity and Expanding Horizons. The first two detail the many PMP capacity and audience development events produced over the year, from seminars examining issues of publicity, web marketing and board development to workshops exploring innovative uses of language to engage public audiences in the presentation of new or unfamiliar music. PMP consultants Vicki Allpress and Kate Prescott weigh in with articles outlining their marketing philosophies; George Thorn and Nello McDaniel offer their expertise in an excerpt from the Arts Action Research publication Leading Arts Boards, a myth-busting treatise on successful board relations.

PMP also serves the local music community by providing exposure and encouraging dialogue in response to outside creative work and programming philosophies. Expanding Horizons chronicles those PMP activities intended to support the artistic development of participants, including the recently initiated New Frontiers in Music, a series of roundtable discussions with composers and

interdisciplinary arts proponents. Appropriately, Lyn Liston, Director of New Music Information Services at the American Music Center, suggests pointers to organizations hoping to commission new works in “Looking for Young Composers.”

PMP recounts Meet the Press: Journalists on Music, a Music Project symposium that convened critics from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Jazz Times , Billboard Magazine and the Philadelphia Inquirer for a far-reaching discussion on the influence of popular culture on music criticism.

Finally, the magazine narrates a series of five field trips conducted by PMP that culminated in a journey to Lincoln Center Festival where a group of 27 leaders of Philly music organizations attended concerts, lectures and special roundtables, designed to enrich curatorial capacities and promote interaction and partnerships within the community.

This issue of PMP also features announcements of the Project’s 2005 grantees including a calendar of funded events, the highly anticipated opening of Philadelphia Center for Arts and Heritage, a new Interdisciplinary Professional Development Grant funding program, PMP’s Sector Marketing Initiative, and a news corner, with noteworthy items contributed from music nonprofits around town.

Philadelphia’s music scene has never been more eclectic and fascinating. Whether it’s opera or jazz, symphonic or folk music, artistic boundaries are being probed, challenged and often redefined. It’s no wonder that National Geographic Traveler, which just named Philadelphia the Next Great City, discovered this aspect of what makes the city great.

MATTHEW LEVY DIRECTOR

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Philadelphia: A Brave New (Old) World

DANIEL FELSENFELD, COMPOSER-WRITER

A few months ago, the New York Times ran an article which claimed Philadelphia as its de facto sixth borough, citing disco dancing classes for toddlers and artists living in cheap lofts as evidence of Philadelphia’s newly minted cultural viability. It was almost as if the Paper of Record (for The Center of the Universe) upturned a rock and found itself surprised at teeming life beneath. But as centers of activity go—particularly musical activity—it is no surprise that Philadelphia does in fact have a pulsing, vivid, vital scene, particularly when it comes to the commissioning, promotion, and performance of new works. Since 1912, when a daring, wild-eyed maestro cum musical mountebank named Leopold Stokowski took command of the Philadelphia Orchestra, one of America’s most dynamic musical treasures, Philly has been one of the few cities allowing for the safe passage from thought to deed of The New—and this coming season will be no exception. At the center of this groundswell is, as always, the Philadelphia

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Music Project, an initiative of The Pew Charitable Trusts that enables composers and ensembles to meet, collaborate, produce, and make a little bit of history.

Like previous seasons, this year’s forthcoming commissions outline a wide range of artists, ensembles, and, especially, composers. Some composers work within the “classical,” deeply rooted in the Western tradition; some improvise in a wide cut of styles from jazz to the Gamelan Orchestra; some make use of electronic media, hip hop, quotation, multimedia, music of the Great Masters, show tunes, propaganda—the sky is not even the limit. However, a survey of some of the composers whose works will be presented can show one thing: as long as there are organizations whose hearts and hands work for the greater musical good, then all the pundits flapping about the alleged death of concert music can be put, finally, out to pasture.

This season saw the birth of Margaret Garner, the first operatic collaboration between composer Richard Danielpour and librettist Toni Morrison, a setting of one of the narratives in her book Beloved. It is one of the most highly anticipated premieres of the last few years. This work was a co-commission from three companies: the Michigan

Opera Theater (in Detroit), the Cincinnati Opera, and the Opera Company of Philadelphia. In light of the economic risk inherent to producing new operatic works, this collaboration between one of the most successful composers on the scene and a Nobel Prize-winning author takes a bold step forward in supporting contemporary artists.

Many have wondered how a composer of Persian Jewish descent takes on such a blood-and-guts story about African-American slavery. Danielpour chose to refer to his ancestry in the enslaved race of Esther and to approach slavery from a more universal perspective.

“There have been a lot of surprises,” he admitted, in an interview given to the Cincinnati Enquirer around the time of the world premiere, “but the greatest surprise in writing ‘Margaret Garner’ was, I didn’t know how live an issue slavery really would be. I knew it was important, but I didn’t know how important it was that we write this opera.”

The Philadelphia Orchestra, with its typical zeal for new work, will present six new works in the coming two years, a series called First Performances. In the coming 2005-2006 season, the orchestra will play world premieres of Jennifer Higdon’s Percussion Concerto, Gerald Levinson’s fanfare for organ and orchestra (commissioned for the dedication of Verizon Hall’s new organ), Bright Sheng’s Concerto for Orchestra and a new work by Russian composer Sofia Gubaidulina. Ms. Higdon is also part of Orchestra 2001’s First Hearings program, which includes world premieres

by George Crumb, Gerald Levinson, father and son Larry and Jordan Nelson, and Liviu Marinesco, with Philadelphia premieres of works by Tan Dun and Aaron Kernis.

“This piece,” says Higdon, apropos of her Percussion Concerto, “is one of three concertos I am having premiered this year, and I feel a special fondness for it. I love writing works that highlight instruments that do not have as much literature. There’s plenty out there for, say, the violin or the

Page 2: Bright Sheng. Photo: Alex Cao Page 3, left: Jennifer Higdon. Photo: Jeff Hurwitz Page 3, right: Toni Morrison (front center), Richard Danielpour (back center) and the cast of Margaret Garner. Photo: Timothy Greenfield-Sanders

piano, but not enough for percussion. And creating a work for musicians like Colin Currie,” who is slated to play the solo part, “and the Philadelphia Orchestra is a real inspiration.” The piece, according to the composer, “... emphasizes the interaction between the solo percussionist and the percussion section of the orchestra. It does this throughout the entire concerto, which is unusual—I don’t know if it has been done before.”

Orchestra 2001’s six world premieres this season are highlighted by the premier of The Winds of Destiny by Philadelphia local hero George Crumb, one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. Younger generations have attempted to recreate such ethereal timbres and other-worldly visions, and while many have come close, few have captured the discord of the previous century as succinctly as he. Perhaps the secret of this ingeniously inventive composer is history: “Most of my influences are turn-of-the-century,” he told Mic Holwin in a recent interview, “The LAST turn-of-the-century!”

Composer-pianist-curator Andrea Clearfield is slated for a busy season!

For starters, she has been commissioned by the Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia to write a large work for chorus, orchestra, and baritone—setting poetry of Ellen Frankel—based on the Jewish legend of the Golem. Titled Golem Psalms, the work will be coupled in concert with Ernest Bloch’s nearly-vanished Sacred Service (Avodah Hakodesh). “I plan to research folk music from 16th century Prague,” says Clearfield, “where the most famous Golem story originates, as well as Jewish symbolism and Cabbalistic numerology, which will inform the musical structure. These numbers will reflect the creation of the myth of the Golem, a clay figure who was brought to life by a particular set of mystical ritualistic actions. The work itself will have the form of a cantata, alternating sections for the chorus with arias for the baritone and interludes for the orchestra.”

As well as writing her own ambitious composition, Clearfield will put her PMP 3

PHILADELPHIA: A BRAVE NEW (OLD) WORLD

curatorial skills to use, overseeing a January 2006 concert called “Mozart: Reloaded” at the Kimmel Center’s Perelman Theater. This event includes five world premiere commissions by Philadelphia area composers, inviting them to choose from among their favorite works of Mozart and create new pieces—or improvisations—based upon them. Composer Gloria Justen will perform on her electric violin, and Jan Krzywicki, Robert Maggio, Sebastian Chang, and Evan Solot will each compose a variation on The Magic Flute’s “Bird Catcher’s Aria” for pianist Charles Abramovic. Then Clearfield will bend the rules a little further with a performance by Manfred Fischbeck’s Group Motion Dance Company and jazz improvisations by the Tony Miceli Trio and pianist-composer Uri Caine.

“I met Andrea Clearfield,” says Caine, an accomplish Philadelphia-raised composer of some fifteen albums, “because I wrote a piece for her group Relâche. After this, she asked if I would be interested in writing a solo piano piece to celebrate Mozart’s music—one that would have elements of improvisation within it. On some level, it is a question of finding the right piece—or pieces—to use, and from there you take the structure of Mozart and try to open up certain sections of it for free play, either using his harmony or his themes, trying to develop in a way Mozart might have done. It is daunting to use Mozart because his music is already perfect—but once you get into it, ideas occur.”

Caine is not the only jazz musician being supported this season in Philadelphia to write music responding to extant works of art. The Philadelphia Museum of Art commissioned legendary jazz musicians Stanley Cowell (a pianist) and David Liebman (a saxophonist) to compose pieces directly inspired or influenced by works in their vast and important private collection. The first original compositions commissioned for their Art After 5 program, the project will extend Museum’s commitment to their role as a performing arts venue. “I hope my piece will serve to successfully celebrate the Philadelphia Museum’s ongoing commitment to making connections possible between the area’s musical artists and the region’s people,” says Cowell, “while offering a new perspective on the art and artifacts that are on exhibit.”

“It has been a new challenge,” he elaborates, “to integrate Asian musical articulations, rhythms, scales and textures into a jazz-oriented composition that will feature jazz musicians as soloists while avoiding cliché sounds we often associate with Asian music. The piece will be absolute music that can be heard without references.

However, I am selecting historical persons, gods, places, eras, pictures and titles of artworks from the collection as inspiration and anchors for structuring the music.”

Several preeminent Chinese-American composers will be featured in Philly this year, among them Bright Sheng, Tan Dun, and PMP 4

Chen Yi. “The Philadelphia Orchestra approached me,” says Sheng, “and asked me to write one of several commissions, each of which will couple a world premiere with a Beethoven symphony: mine will be played alongside the sixth. The working title of my piece, for the moment, is Concerto for Orchestra—Zodiac Tales. It has five movements, each of which is inspired by a story from the Zodiac Chinese Legends. But that is enough; titles for music can only stimulate a listener’s imagination. Everyone will—and should—have their own story when they are listening to the work.”

Sheng’s musical purview draws on everything from his native Chinese folk music to Bartòk to Bernstein, and his importance to our culture was honored, in 2001, with his receiving the prestigious MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. The list of orchestras and soloists for whom he has written

includes the Boston Symphony Orchestra, pianist Emmanuel Ax, the NDR Symphony Orchestra, the Brooklyn Philharmonic, the New York Philharmonic, percussionist Evelyn Glennie, and the Santa Fe Opera. He is also an artistic advisor for Yo-Yo Ma’s wildly successful Silk Road Project.

Gateways to Global Music is a project designed by the Philadelphia Classical Symphony, under the direction of Karl Middleman, to bring cultures together, a sort of “East Meets West” imbued with a musical pulse. There will not only be concerts but also symposia, multidisciplinary collaborations and school residency programs, designed not to smash barriers between cultures but to find their points of tension and intersection, all to aid artists’ understanding of their separate and collective musical worlds. In each of the concerts in this series, a leading world music ensemble will join the orchestra to play a world premiere: Chen Yi has been commissioned this year in conjunction with her ensemble Music From China; in the subsequent season, composer Evan Ziporyn’s work will be featured in collaboration with Gamelan Galak Tika.

“This is the latest in a series of pieces I’ve composed over the last fifteen years for Balinese gamelan and western instruments,” says Ziporyn, an American who has devoted a significant portion of his career to Eastern music. “Each of these has involved a unique cross-cultural combination, from mixed chamber groups to electronics to, most recently, a full symphony orchestra. For this piece I designed a new set of Balinese instruments in a unique tuning that will intersect with the strings in some interesting ways.

Normally, a gamelan is tuned in a way that falls completely outside western tuning, but in this case, there are some notes in common. This, combined with string instruments’ ability to retune, will lead to some surprising results - at least I hope so!”

When asked what this work was “about,” Ziporyn had some bittersweet things to say: “I never really know what my pieces are about until they’re finished. But in general, I believe very strongly in finding ways to bring cultures together, because my own life has been so enriched by the personal encounters that my studies in world music have made possible. Today the world is at war, and wars tend to keep people apart. My hope is that in some small way work like this reminds us of the value of reaching outside of our own backyard.”

Ziporyn is a virtuoso clarinetist who has written works for such accomplished and diverse groups as the Bang On A Can All-Stars, the Kronos Quartet, pipa player Wu Man, cellist Maya Beiser and percussionist Steve Schick, Arden Trio, the California EAR Unit, pianist Sarah Cahill, and Orkest de Volharding, always seeking to cross cultures, to compose music that bleeds through the pores of traditional boundaries.

William Bolcom is one of the composers—along with Nicholas Maw, Stephen Jaffe, the Hungarian madman composer György Kürtag, Lewis Spratlan, Jennifer Higdon, Ezequiel Viñao, David Baker and Jake Heggie— to be included in this season’s First Hearings program at the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society. Apropos of his work Serenada Notturna, premiered by the Guarneri Quartet with Richard Woodhams, oboe, Bolcom says: “The piece is not ‘about’ anything but its own self. It is not a ‘profound’ piece—i.e. pompously preachy, as I find a number of recent pieces end up being in their search for depth—or an ‘exploratory’ piece, in that it is mostly tonal, not full of harmonic thorniness (I’ve written plenty of thorny music elsewhere, for anyone who misses it here). The Serenada Notturna is rather serenade-y, definitely ‘night music,’ with night’s delights and terrors. I meant it to be a pleasure for the players—it is intentionally ‘light,” as a serenade should be, with darker patches that are there to remind you of ‘real life.’”

Among the most accomplished and respected composers working today, Bolcom has been commissioned by just about all of the important musical institutions in the world, including the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Metropolitan Opera and the Vienna Philharmonic, to name a few. In 1988, he was awarded

the Pulitzer Prize for his Twelve New Etudes for piano, premiered and recorded by Philadelphia’s own Marc-André Hamelin.

This is only a partial list of some of the composers whose work will be competing for Philadelphia’s audiences this season. It should, however, serve as ample evidence that the city is alive and hopping with significant projects. PMP lovingly fuels the efforts of these variously talented composers, championing a precious commodity that seems all too often in danger of losing its toehold in the larger discussion: concert music. Someday you will be able to say: “I was there when...”

Page 4: Stanley Cowell Page 5, left to right: Evan Ziporyn. Photo: Kendang William Bolcom. Photo used courtesy of Indiana University

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Left to right: Jazz icon McCoy Tyner will be presented by Strings for Schools. Photo: Gene Martin Meredith Monk will be presented by Montgomery County Community College.

Violinist Todd Reynolds will be featured with the American Composers Orchestra in the Annenberg Center’s Orchestra Underground series. Photo: Gerard Barnier

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Projects to Treat Your Ears!

PMP Announces 2005 Grants

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The Philadelphia Music Project made an unprecedented twenty grants to regional music organizations in March of 2005, dedicating $960,395 toward the presentation of more than 150 concerts throughout the 2005-2006 and 2006-2007 seasons. Offering a staggering array of top-notch performance, including over thirty world premieres of new compositions and adventurous series featuring jazz giants, art-house legends, spicy collaborations, and deeply-rooted traditions, these projects constitute a wealth of musical opportunity for Philadelphia audiences.

Many of Philadelphia’s major music organizations are initiating admirable projects to commission and present new works from both local and international composers. The Opera Company of Philadelphia received $80,000 to support the world premiere production of Richard Danielpour’s Margaret Garner, co-commissioned by OCP with the Michigan Opera Theatre and the Cincinnati Opera. With a libretto by Nobel-prize winner Toni Morrison, the opera is based on the tragic story of a Kentucky slave who chose to sacrifice her infant rather than allow her to grow up in slavery. Margaret Garner’s cast will include mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves, soprano Angela Brown, baritone Gregg Baker, and bass-baritone Rodney Gilfry.

The Philadelphia Orchestra was granted $160,000 over two years to support First Performances, Six Commissions.

Six new works will be commissioned by the Orchestra and presented in twenty-two concerts at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts. The 2005-2006 season will feature world premieres of Jennifer Higdon’s Percussion Concerto, Gerald Levinson’s fanfare for organ and orchestra, for the dedication of Verizon Hall’s new organ, and new works by Sofia Gubaidulina and Bright Sheng. In the 2006-2007 season, commissioned works will include John Harbison’s Concerto for Double Bass and Orchestra, featuring the Orchestra’s Harold Robinson, and a new composition by Oliver Knussen. Guest soloists on the project will include Colin Currie (percussion), Oliver Latry (organ), and Simon Rattle (conductor).

The Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts was also awarded $160,000 over two years to engage the American Composers Orchestra (ACO) in a residency that will bring ACO’s acclaimed Orchestra Underground programs to the Annenberg Center for a series of six new music concerts. Guest artists and organizations participating in the project include Todd Reynolds (violin), Ryuichi Sakamoto (laptop), Bill T. Jones, So Percussion, Pilobolus, and the Ridge Theater. The residency will include educational and outreach activities, as well as a program of works by Philadelphiaarea composers.

The Kimmel Center received $40,000 to support the third season of Fresh Ink, a three-concert series devoted to new music. The first concert presents pipa virtuoso Wu Man in a program of works by Chen Yi and Oscar winner Tan Dun. The second concert celebrates the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth with a series of Mozart-influenced commissions and improvisations by Philadelphia artists, including jazz pianist Uri Caine, violinist Gloria Justen, and Group Motion Dance Company. The series concludes with a recital by violinist Midori and pianist Robert McDonald performing works by Judith Weir, Isang Yun, Alexander Goehr, György Kurtäg, and Witold Lutoslawski.

The Philadelphia Chamber Music Society received $50,000 to produce First Hearings, a series of world premieres

by William Bolcom, Nicholas Maw, and Stephen Jaffe; the U.S. premiere of a new piano trio by composer György Kurtäg; and Philadelphia premieres of works by Lewis Spratlin, Jennifer Higdon, Ezequiel Viñao, David Baker, and Augusta Read Thomas. The project features the Juilliard, Tokyo, Emerson, Miami and Guarneri String Quartets, the Beaux Arts Trio, Richard Woodhams (oboe), Jonathan Biss (piano), Diane Monroe (violin) with Michael Schmidt (piano), and Jennifer Koh (violin).

The Philadelphia Museum of Art’s Art After 5 series received support of $25,000 to commission acclaimed jazz musicians Stanley Cowell (piano) and David Liebman (saxophone) for works inspired by the Museum’s permanent collections. These works will be presented as the first original compositions commissioned for the program, expanding the Museum’s role as a performing arts venue and multidisciplinary cultural resource.

However, these large-scale organizations are not the only ones commissioning and premiering innovative music. The Philadelphia Classical Symphony, receiving $60,000 over two years, will present Gateways to Global Music, concerts designed to emphasize cross-cultural influences on musical traditions with commissions by Chen Yi and Evan Ziporyn. Each concert will bring a leading world music ensemble—Music From China in 2005-2006, and Gamelan Galak Tika in 2006-2007—together with the PCS. Activities will include symposia, multidisciplinary collaborations, and school residency programs.

Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia was granted $30,000 to commission Philadelphia composer Andrea Clearfield for a work for chorus, orchestra,

Left, top: The Beaux Arts Trio will be presented by the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society. Photo: Peter Checchia Left, bottom: Maestro Christoph Eschenbach of the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Photo: Jessica Griffin Below, left: Pianist Margaret Leng Tan, soloist with Orchestra 2001. Photo: Michael Dames Below, right: Music from China will join the Philadelphia Classical Symphony in a new work by Chen Yi.

and baritone. Clearfield will set new poetry by Ellen Frankel based on the Jewish legend of the Golem. In concert, the work will be paired with Ernest Bloch’s rarely-presented masterpiece, Sacred Service (Avodah Hakodesh).

The program will feature baritone Sanford Sylvan and the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia and will be presented at the University of Pennsylvania’s Irvine Auditorium.

For its First Hearings series, Orchestra 2001 received $30,000 in support of four programs highlighted by six world premieres and six area premieres.

World premieres include works by Philadelphia-area composers George Crumb, Jennifer Higdon, Gerald Levinson, Larry Nelson and his son Jordan Nelson, as well as a new work by Liviu Marinesco. Area premiers include works by Tan Dun and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Aaron Jay Kernis.

Works by Kaija Saariaho and Jennifer Higdon will receive their second U.S. performances, and Georges Enescu’s 1954 Chamber Symphony will receive its American premiere. The project’s four featured soloists will be Barbara Ann Martin and Sharla Nafziger (sopranos), Margaret Leng Tan (piano), and YuMi Hwang-Williams (violin).

Latin Fiesta, a first-time grantee of PMP, was awarded $30,000 for their Hispanos...Many Roots...Many Faces, a Hispanic music festival involving the Latin Fiesta ensemble with Dave Valentin, Grammy-winning flutist; Raul Jaurena, a master of the bandoneon; Christian Puig, flamenco guitarist and singer, and ALO Brasil, Philadelphia-based Brazilian ensemble. The festival will feature the premiere of a commissioned suite in six movements, Alma Latina, composed by Grammy Award-winners Carlos Franzetti and Oscar Hernandez. In addition, two concerts and workshops exploring Hispanic musical heritage will be presented at the Arts Bank. The event will inaugurate an annual “Hispanic Festival on the Avenue of the Arts.”

A number of PMP’s 2005 grantees are offering compelling series of rarelyperformed music. This season, audiences will be treated to three enormously different vocal music series. Montgomery County Community College received $30,000 to present Voices from Another World, two concerts by artists who bring extraordinary creative vision to vocal performance. Meredith Monk, a pioneer of extended vocal technique and interdisciplinary performance, will be presented with her Vocal Ensemble in a concert and residency program PMP 7

PMP ANNOUNCES 2005 GRANTS

Top: 1. Pianist Carlos Franzetti will compose for Latin Fiesta. Photo: Marcelo Maia 2. Piffaro, the Rennaisance Band. Photo: Copper Stone 3. Guitarist Ernie Hawkins, presented by the Doylestown School of Music and the Arts. Photo: Robert Corwin. 4. Philomel Baroque Orchestra. Photo: Rick Davis Bottom: 1. The Opera Company of Philadelphia’s Margaret Garner stars Denyce Graves in the title role, Gregg Baker as her husband Robert and Angela Brown as Cilla, Robert’s mother. Photo: John Grigaitis 2. The Choral Arts Society of Philadelphia. Photo: Abdul Saleyman 3. Alan Harler, Artistic Director, Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia. Photo: J.L. Shipman

Left to right: 1. Pipa virtuoso Wu Man will be presented by the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts. Photo: Liu Junqi 2. Academy of Vocal Arts baritone Keith Miller 3. Saxophonist David Liebman will present a newly commissioned work at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. 4. Trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith will be presented by the International House. Photo: Hardedge 5. K.J. Yesudas will be presented by Sruti, the India Music and Dance Society. Photo: Thanagini, Inc.

in collaboration with Bryn Mawr College. Azam Ali, born in Iran and raised in India, performs contemporary vocal interpretations that fuse medieval and Arab musical traditions. Her concert, on April 8, 2006, will be followed by a discussion.

Choral Arts Society of Philadelphia received $30,000 to host Maestro Dale Warland, the former music director and founder of the Dale Warland Singers, as guest conductor for a program of works by Howard Hanson, Rudi Tas, Arvo Pärt, Benjamin Britten, James MacMillan, Frank Ferko, Alexandre Gretchaninoff, Vytautus Miškinis, and Henryk Górecki. A regional choral conducting workshop is also planned with Mr. Warland and CASP’s Artistic Director, Matthew Glandorf.

The Academy of Vocal Arts was granted $60,000 to support concert versions of Le Villi and La Navarraise, two important but rarely performed operas

by Giacomo Puccini and Jules Massanet, respectively. Vocalists will include James Valenti (tenor), Ailyn Perez (soprano), Jennifer G. Hsuing (mezzosoprano), and Keith Miller (baritone). Performances will take place at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts.

In addition to vocal performance, this season will see impressive jazz, guitar, and early music series. International House Philadelphia received $26,750 to present Ancient to the Future, five jazz concerts showcasing the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, Inc. (AACM). The series will both acknowledge the accomplishments of the members of the AACM, highlighting the remarkable trajectory of its elder statesmen, and represent its current musical repertoire, featuring new material, concepts and collaborations. Performing artists will include Henry Threadgill’s Zooid, Leroy Jenkins/Myra Melford Duo and Ethnic Heritage Ensemble, Wadada Leo Smith’s Golden Quartet, Roscoe Mitchell Quartet featuring special guest Muhal Richard Abrams, and the Anthony Braxton Sextet.

Strings for Schools was granted $40,000 to present two concerts and PMP 8

a student workshop featuring the McCoy Tyner Trio with guest artist Gary Bartz (saxophone) and Strings for Schools roster artists John Blake (violin) and Marlon Simon (percussion).

Involving both jazz and Latin traditions, the artists will perform new and recent compositions by both Tyner and Blake. The public concerts will be held at Temple University and in a nearby North Philadelphia community venue in conjunction with numerous intensive in-school and community outreach endeavors.

The Sedgwick Cultural Center received $16,505 to support Up the Neck: New Practices in Guitar Discourse, a series that will bring together three ensembles for concerts and workshops. The concerts will approach the guitar as a locus of innovation and cross-cultural influence, and specifically, African music’s influence on recent jazz and blues. The workshops will offer guitarists and other musicians the opportunity to explore new practices in guitar technique and ensemble performance. Guest artists will include the Campbell Brothers, the Vinicus Cantuária and Bill Frisell Duo, and the Mamadou Diabate and Eric Bibb Duo. The Doylestown School of Music and the Arts, another first-time PMP grantee, received $12,140 in support of Stretched Strings, a series of four concerts exploring acoustic guitar practice within a variety of styles, including Travis Picking, Classical, Fingerstyle, and Blues. Each concert will feature resident artist Tim Farrell in duets with guest artists Thom Bresh, Mark Hanson, Robin Bullock, and Ernie Hawkins. An educational workshop will accompany each program.

Philomel, a period-instrument ensemble, received $30,000 to present Benjamin Franklin’s Musical World, a three-program festival celebrating

Benjamin Franklin’s Tercentenary, as well as Philomel’s 30th anniversary.

Repertoire, commentary, and program notes will explore Franklin’s tastes and interests, his role as a dedicated musical amateur, and aspects of his cultural environment. Guest artists will include Peter Sykes (organ), Laura Heimes (soprano), Chatham Baroque, and Julianne Baird (soprano), and WHYY, WRTI, and Philadelphia On Foot will collaborate.

Piffaro, The Renaissance Band, was granted $30,000 in support of Church Feasts and Worldly Song: Two Programs from the Renaissance. The two contrasting programs will feature, first, sacred works of early 17th century composers—Michael Praetorius, Heirich Schütz, Samuel Scheidt and their contemporaries—in a recreation of a Lutheran feast day service, and second, secular works of Jacob Obrecht, a late 15th century Flemish composer, in conjunction with a visual presentation of the paintings of his contemporary, Hieronymous Bosch. Guest artists will include the Choir of St. Ignatius Loyola of New York, Capilla Flamenca, and Laura Heimes (soprano).

Finally, Sruti, The India Music and Dance Society, received $20,000 to present Masters in Carnatic Music, a performance series involving three groups led by outstanding musicians of India. Two concerts—a vocal concert

by K.J. Yesudas and a mandolin concert by U. Shrinivas and U. Rajesh—will present compositions by Purandaradasa, Annamacharya, Thyagaraja, Dikshitar and Syama Sastri, along with improvisations in the raga and tala aspects of Carnatic music. The mandolin concert by U. Shrinivas and U. Rajesh, which will be preceded by a lecture-demonstration, will also include Konnakkol, an ancient vocal percussion tradition of South India that recently has been revived for concert settings.

All told, the projects of PMP’s 2005 grantees will result in 167 events, including the world premiere performances of 32 new works, 16 of which will be commissioned with support from PMP, U. S. premieres of 4 works, and regional premieres of 39 works; 106 public concerts encompassing 26

chamber music, 40 orchestral music, 3 choral music, 63 new music, 13 world/ folk music, 13 jazz, 17 early music, and 10 opera performances; 61 residency and educational activities; 605 local artists and 426 guest artists supported, including 42 guest ensembles; 104,000 estimated live audience members in the five-county region; 402,000 regional radio audience members through broadcasts on Philadelphia’s WRTI and WHY; and national exposure through broadcasts on National Public Radio.

PMP grants are awarded on a competitive basis and are selected by a panel of artists, scholars, and administrators from around the country with expertise in various aspects of music as well as a broad knowledge of the field. A distinguished eight-member panel reviewed this year’s applications and was comprised of Evans Mirageas (panel chair), independent artistic advisor, Brooklyn Philharmonic, Milwaukee Symphony, former Senior Vice President of A & R for Decca Records; Jason Moran, pianist, composer and Blue Note recording artist; Elisabeth Wright, harpsichordist, Professor of Music, Indiana University; Robert Garfias, ethnomusicologist, Professor of Anthropology, University of California, Irvine; Martin Bresnick, Professor of Composition, Yale University; Philip Brunelle, Artistic Director and Founder, VocalEssence; Limor Tomer, Independent Curator, Symphony Space, BAM Café, Whitney Museum; and Carmen Balthrop, soprano, Metropolitan Opera, Associate Professor of Music, University of Maryland.

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2005–2006 Calendar of Funded Events SEPTEMBER 2005

NOVEMBER 2005

9.11.05 Masters in Carnatic Music: Vocal concert by K.J. Yesudas Sruti, The India Music and Dance Society; www.sruti.org Mandell Theater, Drexel University

11.4.05 Ancient to the Future: Anthony Braxton Sextet International House Philadelphia; www.ihousephilly.org International House Philadelphia

9.17.05 First Hearings: U.S. premiere by George Crumb, Philadelphia premiere by Tan Dun Orchestra 2001; www.orchestra2001.org Harold Prince Theatre, Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts

11.4.05 First Hearings: Violinist Diane Monroe performs a Philadelphia premiere by David Baker Philadelphia Chamber Music Society; www.pcmsnet.org Philadelphia Museum of Art

9.18.05 First Hearings: U.S. premiere by George Crumb, Philadelphia premiere by Tan Dun Orchestra 2001; www.orchestra2001.org Lang Concert Hall, Swarthmore College OCTOBER 2005 10.1.05 Jazz Jaunts: Dafnis Prieto’s Small Big Band Painted Bride Art Center; www.paintedbride.org Painted Bride Art Center

11.10.05 Fresh Ink: Pipa virtuoso Wu Man performs a world premiere by Chen Yi Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts; www.kimmelcenter.org Perelman Theater, Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts 11.12.05 First Hearings: World premiere by Jennifer Higdon, Philadelphia premieres by Kaija Saariaho and Aaron Jay Kernis Orchestra 2001; www.orchestra2001.org Trinity Center for Urban Life

10.8.05 Stretched Strings Guitar Series: Thom Bresh with Tim Farrell Doylestown School of Music and the Arts; www.dsma.org Doylestown School of Music and the Arts

11.13.05 American Composers Orchestra: Music in Motion with Pilobolus Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts; www.pennpresents.org Zellerbach Theatre, Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts

10.8.05 Ancient to the Future: Roscoe Mitchell Quartet with Muhal Richard Abrams International House Philadelphia; www.ihousephilly.org International House Philadelphia

11.13.05 First Hearings: World premiere by Jennifer Higdon, Philadelphia premieres by Kaija Saariaho and Aaron Jay Kernis Orchestra 2001; www.orchestra2001.org Lang Concert Hall, Swarthmore College

10.23.05 First Hearings: Guarneri Quartet with Richard Woodhams (oboe) perform a world premiere by William Bolcom Philadelphia Chamber Music Society; www.pcmsnet.org Perelman Theater, Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts

11.18.05 Benjamin Franklin’s Musical World: London with guest artists Laura Heimes, soprano and Peter Sykes, organist Philomel; www.philomel.org Christ Church, Old City

10.28.05 Jazz Jaunts: Bulgarian Bebop with Ivo Papasov & Yuri Yunakov Painted Bride Art Center; www.paintedbride.org Painted Bride Art Center

11.19.05 Voices from Another World: Meredith Monk Montgomery County Community College; www.mc3.edu Science Center Theater, MCCC 11.19.05 Benjamin Franklin’s Musical World: London with guest artists Laura Heimes, soprano and Peter Sykes, organist Philomel; www.philomel.org St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Doylestown 11.19.05 Benjamin Franklin’s Musical World: London with guest artists Laura Heimes, soprano and Peter Sykes, organist Philomel; www.philomel.org The Church of St. Martin in the Fields, Chestnut Hill

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11.19.05 Church Feasts and Worldly Songs: Works by Praetorius, Schütz, and Scheidt with guest artists the Choir of St. Ignatius Loyola Piffaro, The Renaissance Band; www.piffaro.com Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill

JANUARY 2006 1.19,20.2006 Giaccomo Pucinni’s Le Villi and Jules Massanet’s La Navarraise Academy of Vocal Arts; www.avaopera.org Perelman Theater, Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts

11.20.05 Church Feasts and Worldly Songs: Works by Praetorius, Schütz, and Scheidt with guest artists the Choir of St. Ignatius Loyola Piffaro, The Renaissance Band; www.piffaro.com St. Patrick’s Church

1.20.06 Benjamin Franklin’s Musical World: Philadelphia with guest artists the Chatham Baroque Trio Philomel; www.philomel.org Christ Church, Old City

11.25,26,30.2005 First Performances: World premiere of Jennifer Higdon’s Percussion Concerto with Colin Currie, soloist Philadelphia Orchestra; www.philorch.org Verizon Hall, Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts

1.21.06 Giaccomo Pucinni’s Le Villi and Jules Massanet’s La Navarraise Academy of Vocal Arts; www.avaopera.org Centennial Hall, Haverford

DECEMBER 2005 12.2.2005 First Performances: World premiere of Jennifer Higdon’s Percussion Concerto with Colin Currie, soloist Philadelphia Orchestra; www.philorch.org Verizon Hall, Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts 12.2.05 Art After 5: World premiere composed and performed by pianist Stanley Cowell Philadelphia Museum of Art; www.philamuseum.org Great Stair Hall, PMA 12.3.05 Stretched Strings Guitar Series: Robin Bullock with Tim Farrell Doylestown School of Music and the Arts; www.dsma.org Doylestown School of Music and the Arts 12.3.05 Ancient to the Future: Wadada Leo Smith’s Golden Quartet International House Philadelphia; www.ihousephilly.org International House Philadelphia 12.6.05 First Hearings: Beaux Arts Trio performs a U.S. premiere

by György Kurtäg Philadelphia Chamber Music Society; www.pcmsnet.org Perelman Theater, Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts

1.21.06 Fresh Ink: Mozart Reloaded with Uri Caine, Group Motion, Tony Miceli, and four world premiere commissions for pianist Charles Ambrovic Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts; www.kimmelcenter.org Perelman Theater, Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts 1.21.06 Benjamin Franklin’s Musical World: Philadelphia with guest artists the Chatham Baroque Trio Philomel; www.philomel.org St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Doylestown 1.22.06 Benjamin Franklin’s Musical World: Philadelphia with guest artists the Chatham Baroque Trio Philomel; www.philomel.org The Church of St. Martin in the Fields, Chestnut Hill 1.27.06 First Hearings: Violinist Jennifer Koh performs a Philadelphia premiere by Augusta Read Thomas Philadelphia Chamber Music Society; www.pcmsnet.org Philadelphia Museum of Art FEBRUARY 2006 2.3.06 Ancient to the Future: Leroy Jenkins/Myra Melford Duo and the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble International House Philadelphia; www.ihousephilly.org International House Philadelphia 2.4.06 American Composers Orchestra: Underground Mix Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts; www.pennpresents.org Harold Prince Theatre, Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts

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Calendar of Funded Events 2005–2006 2.10,12,15,18,24,26.2006 World premiere production of Richard Danielpour’s Margaret Garner with mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves Opera Company of Philadelphia; www.operaphilly.com Academy of Music 2.10.06 First Hearings: Emerson Quartet performs a world premiere

by Nicholas Maw Philadelphia Chamber Music Society; www.pcmsnet.org Perelman Theater, Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts 2.10.06 Church Feasts and Worldly Songs: Music by Obrecht, images by Bosch with guest artists Capilla Flamenca Piffaro, The Renaissance Band; www.piffaro.com St. Mark’s Church 2.11.06 Church Feasts and Worldly Songs: Music by Obrecht, images by Bosch with guest artists Capilla Flamenca Piffaro, The Renaissance Band; www.piffaro.com Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill 2.15,16,17,18.2006 First Performances: World premiere by Sofia Gubaidulina Philadelphia Orchestra; www.philorch.org Verizon Hall, Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts 2.23,24,25,26.2006 First Performances: World premiere by Bright Sheng Philadelphia Orchestra; www.philorch.org Verizon Hall, Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts 2.28.06 First Hearings: Pianist Jonathan Biss performs a Philadelphia premiere by Lewis Spratlin Philadelphia Chamber Music Society; www.pcmsnet.org Perelman Theater, Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts 3.5.06 First Hearings: Miami Quartet performs a world premiere

by Stephen Jaffe Philadelphia Chamber Music Society; www.pcmsnet.org PA Convention Center Auditorium

MARCH 2006 3.11.06 Stretched Strings Guitar Series: Ernie Hawkins with Tim Farrell Doylestown School of Music and the Arts; www.dsma.org Doylestown School of Music and the Arts 3.17.06 Ancient to the Future: Henry Threadgill’s Zooid International House Philadelphia; www.ihousephilly.org International House Philadelphia 3.18.06 American Composers Orchestra: Tech and Techno with Todd Reynolds, violin Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts; www.pennpresents.org Zellerbach Theatre, Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts 3.18.06 First Hearings: World premiere by Liviu Marinescu, Philadelphia premieres by George Enescu, Brian Kershner, and Jon Deak Orchestra 2001; www.orchestra2001.org Trinity Center for Urban Life 3.19.06 First Hearings: World premiere by Liviu Marinescu, Philadelphia premieres by George Enescu, Brian Kershner, and Jon Deak Orchestra 2001; www.orchestra2001.org Lang Concert Hall, Swarthmore College 3.25.06 Jazz Jaunts: Amir ElSaffar Painted Bride Art Center; www.paintedbride.org Painted Bride Art Center 3.26.06 Dale Warland conducts works by Hanson, Tas, Pärt, Britten, MacMillan, Ferko, Gretchaninoff, Miskinis, and Górecki Choral Arts Society of Philadelphia; www.choralarts.com First Baptist Church of Philadelphia 3.31.06 First Hearings: Juilliard Quartet performs a Philadelphia premiere by Ezequiel Viñao Philadelphia Chamber Music Society; www.pcmsnet.org PA Convention Center Auditorium

4.21.06 Gateways to Global Music: Music from China joins PCS for a world premiere by Chen Yi Philadelphia Classical Symphony; www.classicalsymphony.org Science Center Theater, Montgomery County Community College 4.22.06 Fresh Ink: Midori plays works by Weir, Yun, Goehr, Kurtäg, and Lutoslawski Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts; www.kimmelcenter.org Perelman Theater, Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts 4.22.06 First Hearings: World Premieres by Larry Nelson, Jordon Nelson, and Gerald Levinson Orchestra 2001; www.orchestra2001.org Trinity Center for Urban Life 4.23.06 First Hearings: World Premieres by Larry Nelson, Jordon Nelson, and Gerald Levinson Orchestra 2001; www.orchestra2001.org Lang Concert Hall, Swarthmore College 4.23.06 Gateways to Global Music: Music from China joins PCS for a world premiere by Chen Yi Philadelphia Classical Symphony; www.classicalsymphony.org Church of the Holy Trinity 4.23.06 World premieres by Steven Mackey and Jay Reise Network for New Music; www.networkfornewmusic.org Settlement Music School 4.27.06 First Hearings: Tokyo Quartet performs a Philadelphia premiere by Jennifer Higdon Philadelphia Chamber Music Society www.pcmsnet.org Perelman Theater, Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts 4.29.06 Stretched Strings Guitar Series: Mark Hanson with Tim Farrell Doylestown School of Music and the Arts; www.dsma.org Doylestown School of Music and the Arts MAY 2006

APRIL 2006 4.8.06 Voices from Another World: Azam Ali Montgomery County Community College; www.mc3.edu Science Center Theater, MCCC 4.14.06 Art After 5: World premiere composed and performed by saxophonist David Liebman Philadelphia Museum of Art; www.philamuseum.org Great Stair Hall, PMA

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5.6.06 Masters in Carnatic Music: Mandolin concert by U. Shrinivas and U. Rajesh Sruti, The India Music and Dance Society; www.sruti.org Mandell Theater, Drexel University 5.6.06 Jazz Jaunts: Shoko Nagai Painted Bride Art Center; www.paintedbride.org Painted Bride Art Center 5.7.06 Expression of Jewish Tradition in Contemporary American Music featuring a world premiere by Andrea Clearfield with baritone Sanford Sylvan Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia; www.mcchorus.org Irvine Auditorium 5.7.06 Benjamin Franklin’s Musical World: France with guest artist Julianne Baird, soprano Philomel; www.philomel.org Christ Church, Old City 5.11,12,13.2006 First Performances: World Premiere of Gerald Levinson’s Fanfare for Organ and Orchestra with Olivier Latry, soloist Philadelphia Orchestra; www.philorch.org Verizon Hall, Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts 5.19.06 New Expressions in Jazz: Pianist McCoy Tyner with saxophonist Gary Bartz, violinist John Blake, percussionist Marlon Simon, and others Strings for Schools; www.stringsforschools.org Tomlinson Hall, Temple University 5.20.06 Hispanos...Many Roots...Many Faces. World premieres

by Carlos Franzetti and Oscar Hernandez Latin Fiesta; www.latinfiestainc.com Arts Bank Theater, University of the Arts 5.20.06 New Expressions in Jazz (community concert with student groups): Pianist McCoy Tyner with saxophonist Gary Bartz, violinist John Blake, percussionist Marlon Simon, and others Strings for Schools; www.stringsforschools.org Freedom Theater

5.5.06 Benjamin Franklin’s Musical World: France with guest artist Julianne Baird, soprano Philomel; www.philomel.org The Church of St. Martin in the Fields, Chestnut Hill 5.6.06 Benjamin Franklin’s Musical World: France with guest artist Julianne Baird, soprano Philomel; www.philomel.org St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Doylestown

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premiered attention-grabbing music, made groundbreaking records, pioneered LPs in 1931, led the orchestra to Hollywood for Disney’s Fantasia. Eugene Ormandy pushed farther, leading the first national radio broadcasts, the first televised program. And all with part-time musicians.

Philadelphia? The orchestra spoke for the city.

The Ford Foundation clarified the next steps at mid-century. Orchestras in the late 20th-century would need massive funding, far-seeing management, full-time players with benefits, audience development, marketing, wider reach through electronic means. And they would need a vital new repertoire representing the new America, not the 19th-century European landmarks, no matter how essential they have been to American culture.

The new century finds the Philadelphia Orchestra...evolving. Its music director, Christoph Eschenbach, fits the local German template for the podium, yet his mandate is expansion, inclusion and innovation to balance the importance of the fundamental 19th-century repertoire. The orchestra is going through management change, too, as it sought a replacement for President Joseph H. Kluger, who had led its growth, upheavals and transitions through the eras of conductors Riccardo Muti, Wolfgsang Sawallisch and Eschenbach, as well as the move down Broad Street to the Kimmel Center.

Orchestras Rising

With all the personal closeness, friendly talk, informality and potent marketing, isn’t the music the point? they ask. After all, the first orchestras were born and raised to meet the needs of composers and listeners who wanted new music.

Philadelphia’s Orchestra has answered that question in differing ways. New (and chancy) music is costly to a budget approaching $40 million. Eschenbach seeks a way through developing context, but also by commissioning music from Daniel Kellogg, Gerald Levinson, Bright Sheng and Jennifer Higdon, and playing unfamiliar works by Lindberg and Dutilleux, Sofia Gubaidulina, John Adams, George Walker, Michael Daugherty, Einojuhani Rautavaara and Christopher Rouse.

It’s the classic push-pull. New music shapes the future; old music insures the season. New music asks for new techniques, means, even settings. The old preserves masterpieces and fully uses the gifts of present players. From diverging forces comes...evolution.

The Philadelphia Orchestra long had the burden of being the only show in town. Others could see the folly of trying to be all things to all listeners. The great repertoires of the Renaissance, the early and late baroque eras, the newest music, and music for smaller orchestras began to compete for attention. With that appeared the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia’s earliest

BY DANIEL WEBSTER

There is no political pressure to view the growth of symphony orchestras as part of an intelligent design. In 300 years, orchestras have evolved, almost perfectly adapting to the changes in the environment around them. Numbers of players in orchestras have grown to match composers’ expanding views of music’s message; instruments have been invented and improved to widen and deepen the tonal palette needed for larger halls. Performers’ skills, particularly as the orchestra migrated effortlessly from Europe to North America, have helped to move the orchestra into the new world of electronics, holography and space-age communication. The symphony orchestra is an adaptive creation ideal for the invention and growth of art so profound and plentiful that it matches the visual glories of the Renaissance.

The orchestra does not live in airless glass jars. It is a social figure, an economic engine, a civic emblem, an icon of its culture with all the warts and beauties that implies. Its skin-shedding evolution is never better seen than in Philadelphia where orchestras—for nearly 200 years—have pulled on the robes and held the orbs of healers, educators, entertainers, champions, conservators and iconoclasts.

Given its history, it is no wonder the symphony orchestra is changing shape before our very ears. Economics legislate shrinking size and numbers; popular music beckons with its bumptious rhythms, instant gratification and gaudy sounds. Television and computer use have shaped a generation of quick watchers rather than long listeners.

Disappearing school music programs and a decline in home music-making have contributed to the speedy evolution of next-phase orchestra life.

In what direction? The Philadelphia Orchestra is a national as well as local emblem. Founded at the start of the expansionist 20th century, it evolved from the model brought here by mainly German musicians. The Musical Fund Society ensemble played Beethoven in the 1830s from first edition printings; the Germania Orchestra celebrated in the newly-built Academy of Music. From many came the single Philadelphia Orchestra, its audience already convinced of the music’s importance.

Its evolution was steady. It rehearsed in German even in Leopold Stokowski’s early years, but Stokowski himself represented change. He was a galvanic public figure, unlike the solid German founding conductors, Fritz Scheel and Karl Pohlig. He embraced technological changes as a means of focusing attention on the orchestra and the city. He PMP 14

In its new season, the orchestra again renews itself. The distance between players and listeners is under assault. Who are those formally dressed players in a hall full of men and women in jeans and sweaters? Can they be spoken to?

They can. Eschenbach will offer five “Access Concerts,” 75-minute early evening programs introduced by the conductor and played without intermission to bring young adults close to the players. Five new “Discovery” concerts will offer listeners exposure to new music juxtaposed with Beethoven to help develop context. How do Henri Dutilleux and Magnus Lindberg engage with Beethoven? Beethoven is examined as a revolutionary, not a sure-fire ticket seller. Chamber music, once strictly proscribed by the orchestra leadership, now brings players closer to its audience. Four-year-olds sit on the floor to hear “Music All Around” programs, and the orchestra programs a new Sunday afternoon series and added family concerts.

The Kimmel Center itself is convinced that orchestras help each other. The center imports orchestras from Boston, New York, Berlin, Washington and Pittsburgh this year. “We lose more money, but have the most subscribers for this series,” says Mervon Mehta, programming vice president.

Even the doubters have a role in the season.

manifestations. Marc Mostovoy’s small orchestra trained conservatory graduates and harbored some veteran players while testing local interest in baroque and occasional contemporary pieces.

Evolution demanded a stronger podium and management stance, and with the appointment of pianistconductor Ignat Solzhenitsyn, the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia has become central to the city’s musical profile. Playing classics to fit its size—and the appropriate Perelman Theater—and finding new works as well, Solzhenitsyn is shaping an ensemble whose motto is authenticity and quality. It will begin the Mozart anniversary year with a spring program, and connect with Eschenbach’s Beethoven celebration with an opening night of Beethoven in C. The seven subscription concerts—and some tours—include one commission, Bruce Adolphe’s What Dreams May Come?

Left to right: Haddonfield Symphony wind section.

Photo: Craig Terry Photography Music Director Christoph Eschenbach conducts the Philadelphia Orchestra. Photo: Jessica Griffin Curtis Institute Symphony Orchestra. Photo: Candace di Carlo

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ORCHESTRAS RISING

The city’s music schools have long produced players to staff community orchestras. Curtis Institute students, who shunned orchestral playing in the 60s, now form an ensemble to make many large cities envious. Conductor Otto Werner Mueller and guests mix major works with commissions in concerts at Verizon Hall. It’s often a first look at players who will be in the Philadelphia Orchestra, or soloists in front of it. Temple University’s orchestra has gained respect for the solidity of the training and the knowledgeable guidance of Luis Biava. Players from both schools fan out to fill orchestras in the suburbs.

Economics and the hegemony of the major orchestras tended to force composers into tighter quarters. A work for 104 players may have been possible for Strauss and Mahler, but anyone writing for those forces now needs governmental appropriations or Saudi assurances to support performance.

The twentieth century saw increasingly succinct works created to allude to their massive predecessors. Players have appeared who, while wearing black jerseys, are capable of navigating complexities and native musical sources unknown in earlier years. Microtones, jazz, rock, rap, and Asian tunings are part of the discourse now, and specialized groups bring all that to the new century’s searching listeners.

Philadelphia is relatively rich. Network for New Music, Orchestra 2001 and Relâche have found distinctive repertoires and voices to sketch the direction composers are leading us now. These are small budget groups—$400,000 for Orchestra 2001; under $200,000 for Network—but their focus is so sharp that they meet audience expectations and hopes.

James Freeman founded Orchestra 2001 under the umbrella offered by Swarthmore College. Now retired, he still has Swarthmore’s facilities and some funding as he builds the area’s largest new music ensemble. “This year’s a little lean,” he says. “We have five pairs plus runouts, but by 2010, we project 10 pairs.”

Freeman led his orchestra at the Salzburg Festival in August, capitalizing on his close ties with composer George Crumb. The orchestra premiered some of Crumb’s rapidly expanding American Songbook and will do more this season. The ensemble incorporates freelance players who also appear with the Pennsylvania Ballet and Opera Company of Philadelphia. Recordings help expand the ensemble’s reach, and this season will record with jazz pianist Marian McPartland and perform music by Alec Wilder.

Network for New Music rarely fields 15 players for its concerts at Settlement Music School. Is that an orchestra? It can be, when playing Lukas Foss’ Time Cycle or Bernard Rands’ Oboe Concertino. Linda Reichert’s ensemble plays late century classics, commissions and music that includes other disciplines.

“The audience is our focus now,” she says. “It used to be we programmed music because it was so wonderful. Now we lean to the expressive side. We have a program this season called ‘From hands and hearts,’ and we have a poetry-based program and we did a dance project last year with all those composers writing pieces. Our new approach is successful, I think.”

Relâche found its niche in jazz-based and improvised music, but it also works the rich field of philosophical music by Rzewski, Cage, Harrison, and composers whose scores look like paintings or supply only hints and images.

Their history is as strong as their being is precarious, but the ensemble rises each year to enrich the musical table.

The American Composers Orchestra expands the new music scene this year. The New York ensemble will play three concerts at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Center. Managing Director Michael Rose said the Philadelphia Music Project sponsored a New York Trip two years ago. “I heard PMP 16

Orchestras go on. They are changing shape, size, emphasis, even clothes on their way to reaching the next plateau in this fascinating evolution.

this orchestra at Carnegie Hall, and it was one of the most extraordinary experiences I’ve had,” Rose said. “We’ve used the time to get funding, and now we have the orchestra for two seasons. We have programs including movement with Pilobolus, and one with electronics. At the end of the second year, we’ll have a competition for Philadelphia composers, and play works of three or four finalists in open rehearsals and in concert. We’ll have the orchestra again if we can get funding.”

The new music niche is being served, and so is the era of orchestral beginnings. Three established groups are making their stylish way through music of the baroque and earlier eras. Period instruments first found a sponsor at the University of Pennsylvania, but then came Elissa Berardi and her husband Bruce Bekker, founders of Philomel. Their ensemble quickly declared itself serious and well-trained—well-managed, too. Seasons played in Chestnut Hill, Center City, Doylestown, and the Main Line have encouraged the growth of a real ensemble. The players honor Ben Franklin this year, helping to lead the city’s observances. Bach, Vivaldi, and Handel are the old favorites, but the ensemble has brought to life cohorts of German, Dutch, French and Italian composers and, with its lower decibel count, illuminated the art of nuance.

With Philomel rose Piffaro, Joan Kimball’s ambitious project, and survivor of its first clunky name, Renaissance Wind Band. With Robert Weimkin, coartistic director, Piffaro’s more instrumental focus has encouraged theatrical events, medieval musical plays, and Christmas frolics, all propelled by energized players with krumhorns, dulcimers, psalteries, recorders and more.

Deutsche Grammophon took the group international. Concerts in Chestnut Hill, Center City and Wilmington carry the music of Obrecht, Schuetz, Gabrielli to their audience. Lest it all seem too serious, the Mother’s Day concert is “The Call of the Wild.”

Later to the scene but also internationally known, Tempesta di Mare opens its fourth season with programs in Swarthmore, St. Mark’s, Trinity Church, Old St. Joseph’s Church and in Princeton. Gwyn Roberts has honed her focus on her audience. Her polls found her listeners new to concerts in general, curious about instruments, drawn by lower ticket prices. “We’re doing a Benjamin Franklin concert this season,” she says. “Not his music, but the music he heard in Europe when he was our presence. We’re growing every year,” she says. “We’re solidifying as an orchestra.” Her ensemble now records for Chandos.

Finding that niche keeps ensembles agile. Karl Middleman, founder and conductor of the Philadelphia Classical Symphony, turned his original vision of a Mozart orchestra into a period instrument group. Then, as the cost of finding the right players unbalanced the organization, he reorganized. “We play five centuries of music now, and I try to attach music to larger issues.

“I believe it is no longer possible to play art for art’s sake. You guarantee smaller audiences that way. I try to give them portals of accessibility. When we do the Shostakovich First Piano Concerto this year, I’ll show film clips from early Soviet films. Shostakovich played for silent movies, and I think that may have influenced him later when he wrote music that has such contrasts and moves from comedy to tragedy.”

Middleman has scheduled a young composers’ program and a concert to align Chinese music with American norms. “I’m context-building,” he says.

But if the specialists are working their way forward, what of the traditional orchestral base? Community orchestras thrive, giving amateurs an outlet.

Smaller cities maintain orchestras through pride. In Reading, for instance, Sidney Rothstein has guided the orchestra for 30 years. His orchestra has risen to accommodate Mahler’s Symphony No. 6, a work the Philadelphia

Orchestra didn’t attempt until the 1970s.

“When I came, we were trying to attract a young audience. We still are. Our audience is 55 years old. I think most people now aren’t ready emotionally to relate to what we do until they reach that age.”

Rothstein leaves after this year, but points to programs in place for six subscription pairs, summer concerts, student concerts, family programs including dinner at sponsoring restaurants. “We give a lot of thought to our programs,” he says.

The Haddonfield Symphony redefined itself to benefit from the presence of top flight music schools in the city. Once a community orchestra, the Symphony is approaching the $1 million level and showcases Curtis and Temple musicians. “It’s a training orchestra,” says Trevor Orthman, the executive director. “We play five subscription concerts, two children’s concerts, and one for teens. And we have teamed with Astral Artistic Services to play at the Kimmel Center, showcasing Astral’s young soloists.”

Connecting to its constituency has not been easy. The ensemble plays in Cherry Hill, Marlton and Haddonfield, and Orthman says they lack a sense of home: “We’re hoping to find a single venue.”

The orchestra has also attracted rising conductors. Alan Gilbert rose to the top international level; Daniel Hagy conducts the Syracuse Symphony, and the incumbent, Rossen Milanov, is associate conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Evolution has its cruelties. Musica 2000 died after five years of surveying music by living composers. Conductor Rosalind Erwin said succinctly, “We had a loyal following, but not enough support.”

Yet her other orchestra, the Pottstown Symphony, fulfills its role of civic icon and neighborly provider of a mix of standards and new pieces. “We do ten concerts with something for everyone, and our outreach programs get to 10,000 kids. We have just hired our first full-time manager, and we’re hoping to develop corporate sponsorships and foundation support. Our subscriptions are up.”

In Kennett Square, Conductor Mary Woodmansee Green notes how her orchestra adapts. “We’re doing one concert with 21 players,” she says. “The budget dictates it. We’ll do the Four Seasons with four different concertmasters.” Her fully professional orchestra plays holiday concerts at Longwood Gardens. “I speak from the podium,” she says. “I try to instill trust.”

And so the evolution goes. Composers are not convinced. Players are often frustrated. Managements struggle to balance funding with aspirations. Audiences seek accommodation between their allegiances to television, work and child rearing. But orchestras go on. They are changing shape, size, emphasis, even clothes on their way to reaching the next plateau in this fascinating evolution.

Daniel Webster was music critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer from 1964 to 1999.

Page 16, top: Pottstown Symphony Orchestra violinist. Photo: Orlando’s Photography Page 16, bottom: Music Director Ignat Solzhenitsyn conducts with Concertmaster Gloria Justen, Associate Concertmaster Mei-Chen Liao Barnes and violinist Igor Szwec. Photo: Alan Kolc

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Saving the Day: The Music Education Explosion

BY ALYSSA TIMIN

Music has been deliberately integrated into public school education in the United States for 175 years. The Department of Music Education was created as a branch of National Education Association in 1883. John Dewey, regarded by many contemporary arts educators as the philosophical anchor and hero of the field, published the slim Art as Experience in 1934. Dewey was a close friend of local philanthropist and visionary, Alfred Barnes, acting as the Barnes Foundation’s Director of Education as early as 1923.

However, music education has boomed into a major catalyst for cultural literacy over the past fifty years, largely in response to the continued threat of extinction by restricted government spending. In light of this perceived crisis, a vast array of organizations have taken up the torch, linking great performances with communities and schools and building another generation of passionate listeners and performers. Special concerts, master classes, in-school residencies, lessons, after-school programs and summer camps give students of all ages and all abilities greater access to the wealth of musical tradition.

Nationally speaking, two major institutions in the field of arts education research and practice are Project Zero, founded in 1967 by philosopher Nelson Goodman at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and the Lincoln PMP 18

Center Institute for the Arts in Education, founded by Mark Schubart in 1975. Project Zero, named for Goodman’s sentiment that “arts learning should be studied as a serious cognitive activity, but that ‘zero’ had been firmly established about the field,” has expanded to include several areas of education. Its current director, Steve Seidel, continues to lead the Arts Survive Research Study and frequently acts as a consultant for arts and education organizations, such as the Performing Arts Program for Youth in Atlanta.

The Lincoln Center Institute (LCI) emerged when Schubart published a study concluding that most cultural programming around the country reached only a “very small percentage” of students. At the philosophical crux of the Institute is Maxine Greene, Professor Emerita at Teachers College, Columbia University, a “muse” who has sought to apply Dewey’s insights on artistic and aesthetic experience—or creating and appreciating art—to the activities of LCI, partnering teachers and artists in educational settings. “To this collaboration,” argues Graeme Sullivan, in “Aesthetic Education At Lincoln Center Institute: An

students. In Variations on a Blue Guitar, Greene writes, “We are interested in openings, in unexplored possibilities, not in the predictable or the quantifiable, not in what is thought of as social control.” Despite the desire to prove once and for all that art and music are necessary for society, precisely what is so valuable about them tends to evade our grasp. Without easy answers for policymakers, music has often been the mercy of budget cuts. Hence, increasingly, professional music organizations have stepped in to bridge the vulnerable gap that the mystery of aesthetic experience leaves open.

This is not to dismiss the efforts of public schools, in Philadelphia or elsewhere, to educate their students about musical creation and appreciation. CAPA, formally known as the Philadelphia High School for Creative and Performing Arts, offers an important history of training in both vocal and instrumental performance, and the Office of the Creative and Performing Arts supports a wealth of activities; their Annual All-Philadelphia High School Music Festival was held in May 2005 at the Kimmel Center’s Verizon Hall.

That said, schools need all the help they can get. A number of organizations have formed in Philadelphia whose missions are anchored in music education, but that also have expanded to include public presenting. String for Schools (SfS), a nonprofit founded in 1974, has spent the past thirty years

Historical and Philosophical Overview” (available in the “Philosophy & Practice” section of LCI’s website), “teachers bring their pedagogical expertise and knowledge of the educational context and teaching artists contribute their authentic connection to forms of artistic inquiry.”

These two organizations are only the tip of the arts education iceberg; a March 2005 symposium held by ArtsConnection, a New York organization, brought in 225 attendees. More telling, the Philosophy of Music Education Review has been published twice yearly since 1993 turning over the finer points of “The Nature of Paradigms and Paradigm Shifts in Music Education,” “Competition, Knowledge, and the Loss of Educational Vision,” and “Reconsidering Aesthetic Experience in Praxial Music Education.” All over the country, teachers and teaching artists are looking for answers on how to bring music to young audiences.

Questions about how best to teach music and the arts, indelibly linked to the pesky yet evasive questions on the nature of music and the arts, haunt the steps of educators who care about making artistic ability and aesthetic literacy available to

sending professional musicians into underserved schools for classical, jazz, “crossover popular” and multicultural music and have developed several major initiatives for, as they put it, “giving the gift of great music.” This year, SfS is also a grantee of the Philadelphia Music Project for its public program featuring the McCoy Tyner Trio, saxophonist Gary Bartz, violinist John Blake and percussionist Marlon Simon.

SfS has several new and ongoing student-oriented initiatives. “The Gift of Music” is a collaboration with, among others, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Mann Music Center, PNC Bank, Comcast, Jacob’s Music, Medley Music, and WRTI that organizes instrument donation drives for students who cannot afford to buy or rent them. To date, Strings for Schools has helped to collect over 200 instruments. “Gabriel’s Music,” an initiative inspired by a program in Venezuela that helped to found a system of 155 youth orchestras, will coordinate an after-school youth orchestra for students from nine South Philadelphia schools. The orchestra, which got underway this fall, began with a string summer camp at Settlement Music School.

Strings for Schools has increasingly sought to tap into the local cultures that contribute to the neighborhoods they serve. “Immersion in Latino Music and Culture,” coordinated by Marlon Simon, one of String for Schools’ most

Left to right: Kimmel Center choral camp.

Photo: Evelyn Taylor Trombone section of Kimmel Center Youth Jazz Ensemble. Photo: Evelyn Taylor Settlement Music School dance students.

Photo: Sean Kardon Settlement Music School jazz ensemble.

Photo courtesy of Settlement Music School Doc Gibbs leads student percussion ensemble. Photo courtesy of Strings for Schools

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SAVING THE DAY: THE MUSIC EDUCATION EXPLOSION

active teaching artists, focuses on Afro-Caribbean music as a window into the history of Latin music in America. The program builds and implements arts curricula in Northeast Philadelphia schools, and is developing an after-school Latin Jazz Band. This program also partners with the Asociación de Músicos Latino Americanos (AMLA) to present an annual concert in AMLA’s “Cultural Treasures” series.

In its “Bridge to Music” project, SfS has been asked to integrate a viable music program into four schools in the Temple University area. The selected pilot school for the project is Meade School, a school with the second-lowest income ratio in the city, but whose principal, Frank Murphy, has been described by SfS as “dynamic and visionary.”

Sadly, Murphy has in turn described the school’s community as a “face of carnage.” With Temple University and the Philadelphia School District, SfS will help bring in a full-time music instructor, a string and wind teacher for one day per week, student instruments and after-school coaching, and assistance from Temple University music students.

Denise Kinney, Strings for Schools’ new Executive Director, remarks on the organization’s expansion, “We started out showing children what was possible by letting them meet great professional musicians. Now our activities are much broader and encompass more accountability. Strings for Schools works on many levels, organizing both instrument donations and student orchestras, using music as a force for social change.”

Settlement Music School (SMS), which has an extremely distinguished history of offering music education to a broad spectrum of Greater Philadelphia residents, has also made strides in bringing music to disadvantaged communities. In 1997, SMS began providing program, fundraising, marketing, board development and management support to the Camden School of Music Arts, which had been founded by a group of residents “out of a common concern for the growing absence of music education in the public schools.” Two year ago, the Camden school became the sixth full

centers for young musicians in the world. An exceptionally selective institution, Curtis offers tuition-free instruction to each of its—currently—163 gifted instrumentalists, vocalists, composers and conductors. These students receive coaching and mentoring from some 92 faculty members, many of whom are current or retired members of the Philadelphia Orchestra. Curtis further individualizes training for its students by allowing their stay to be open-ended; students spend as few as two and as many as twelve years at the Institute, and only matriculate when their teachers decide they are ready.

In addition to preparing their exemplary student body for professional careers, Curtis has organized several opportunities for community members, young and old, to benefit from the unique institution. Student recitals, held on most Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evenings throughout the concert season, are all free and open to the public. Curtis’ PECO Family Concert Series, also free, features interactive performances intended for children ages five through twelve.

Since 1991, Curtis has also worked with four Philadelphia schools: Bache-Martin School, Albert M. Greenfield Elementary School, the Gen. George A. McCall School and Meredith Elementary School, to give weekly private lessons to four children by volunteering Curtis students. Curtis students also perform in the participating schools. A new program, the Albert M. Greenfield Concerts, sends students to schools, hospitals, and senior centers, bringing the emerging musicians into further contact with their community.

A similar program, “Inward Bound,” of Astral Artistic Services, brings young, talented musicians to perform more than forty concerts in retirement communities and senior centers each year. Astral both mentors its roster artists—many of whom are Curtis students or graduates—in the business skills needed for a professional music career and presents

Students of all ages, as well as their parents and teachers, and young music professionals honing their skills, benefit from an immense outpouring of education by performers and presenters all over the region.

branch of Settlement, and it will soon move to a new central facility at 531-535 Market Street, across the street from City Hall.

SMS was founded in 1908, when students at the College Settlement House in South Philadelphia began paying a nickel for piano lessons. Six years later, SMS had 250 students and a waiting list 100 hopefuls long. In 1924, the Curtis Institute of Music was founded as an outgrowth of Settlement’s Conservatory Division. Albert Einstein was a member of Settlement’s Advisory Board and played chamber music at the school weekly.

Now the largest school of its kind in the country, SMS currently serves 15,000 students—both children and adults—and is the largest employer of musicians in the tri-state area. Settlement offers individual lessons, group classes, ensemble playing, and music therapy programs at their six branches in the region, not to mention teacher training and faculty concerts, as well as outreach concerts in schools. Merit- and need-based financial aid is provided to forty percent of its students, totaling more than $1.7 million annually. In 1998, SMS’s Kaleidoscope Pre-School Arts Enrichment Program—a partnership with ARAMARK—which provided free arts instruction for children from the Courtyard Apartments at Riverview, a public housing development, received one of the first ten national Coming Up Taller Awards from the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities and the National Endowment of the Arts.

Alumni of SMS serve on every major symphony in the United States. In preparation for the school’s centennial anniversary, it has initiated a Distinguished Alumni Series, this season featuring pianist and composer Leon Bates, soprano Karen Slack, jazz pianist Orrin Evans, and Philadelphia Orchestra oboist Peter Smith. Current SMS students will have the opportunity to take master classes with each of these alumni on the day prior to each concert.

Robert Capanna, Executive Director of Settlement and a composer, sums it up, saying, “Settlement Music School has opened the door to the world of music and the related arts to more than 300,000 people over the past nearly 100 years. Settlement’s unique role is to bring together a committed, credentialed and qualified faculty with eager and engaged students. Settlement’s program of financial assistance to all who demonstrate need and its high professional standards have enabled generations of students to participate in music making at an extraordinary level.”

That once-Conservatory Division of SMS, the Curtis Institute of Music, stands now as one of the finest training PMP 20

a number of public concerts both in Philadelphia and New York. Emerging musicians receive guidance, performance experience and increased opportunities to audition for and collaborate with major institutions and artists, all at no cost. In addition to these activities and “Inward Bound,” Astral facilitates “Classroom Classics,” a program in which Astral artists conduct more than one hundred presentations for elementary and middle school students around the region annually.

A number of PMP’s 2005 grantees are hybrids of professional presenting organizations and institutions for music education. The Academy of Vocal Arts, this season producing concert versions of two rare operas, is a tuition-free training program for young opera singers. The Doylestown School of Music and the Arts is the largest community school of the arts in Bucks County and this season receives PMP support for a series of concerts and workshops led by collaborating folk guitarists. Montgomery County Community College is cooperating with Bryn Mawr College to enable both student populations to take advantage of Meredith Monk’s Vocal Ensemble’s November visit with a workshop familiarizing participants with Monk’s unique extended vocal technique.

Other groups including Latin Fiesta and the Philadelphia Classical Symphony incorporate workshops, lectures, and demonstrations into their programs. Latin Fiesta’s driving force, Maria del Pico Taylor, has performed and taught as a Strings for Schools roster artist and professor of piano at Temple University for years; in 1994 she was honored as Distinguished Teacher of the Year by the State of Pennsylvania. Taylor has planted “building cultural bridges through musical performances,” directly into Latin Fiesta’s mission. During their PMP-funded Hispanic music festival coming up in May, the ensemble will host a family workshop on “The ABC’s of Latin Music,” complemented by collaborator ALO Brasil’s specialized percussion workshop. Karl Middleman, Artistic Director of the Philadelphia Classical Symphony, describes his group’s educational efforts as “crucial” and has recently implemented the “Sound Awakenings” project to teach “the essentials of music composition throughout Philadelphia.”

The Choral Arts Society of Philadelphia will host a special master class for six emerging choral conductors as part of Dale Warland’s residency with the chorus this season. This intensive version of music education offers focused professional development for emerging choral leaders by one of the best-respected figures in the field. At the same PMP 21

SAVING THE DAY: THE MUSIC EDUCATION EXPLOSION

time, singers in Choral Arts Society will receive coaching from Warland, and their new Artistic Director, Matthew Glandorf, will get his own shot in the arm working alongside the Maestro.

With its two-year residency by the American Composers Orchestra (ACO), the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts will also provide enrichment opportunities for local musicians, with master classes for student composers and musicians, ensemble coaching, and a competition for emerging composers that result in selected works being rehearsed, discussed, and recorded by the ACO. Looking beyond the ACO project, the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts facilitates a wealth of educational activities for both students and the general public (See our “Grantee Spotlight” for information on some dance and theater highlights this season). The Philadelphia International Children’s Festival, now in its 22nd year, is unlike anything else in the city and will span a full week—April 30 to May 5—with almost forty indoor performances in four theaters, another sixteen to twenty outside, craft fairs, and international food. Likewise, the International Performing Arts for Young People Showcase, held every other year at the Annenberg, is the only North American gathering specifically for the arts education field. Opening on January 11, 2006 with a day of professional development, the four day event helps make Philadelphia a major center for arts education.

The Opera Company of Philadelphia, supported by PMP this season for the co-commissioned Margaret Garner, has streamlined its educational offerings through the Sounds of Learning TM program, which donates reading-focused lesson plans and activity books for each opera the company performs. Dennis W. Creedon based the program on the Curriculum Frameworks of the School District of Philadelphia and the Commonwealth Academic Standards, anchoring the curricula on each opera’s libretto. Students read and act out the libretto, and then attend the final dress rehearsal of the opera they’ve studied, to which fifth through eighth graders are provided transportation on behalf of the Company.

Along with the Opera Company, the Kimmel Center’s resident companies’ educational activities are charted out comprehensively in a document available in the Education section of its site. The Kimmel Center itself supports a wide range of music education. Open houses for educators provide information on what’s available at the Kimmel, as well as complimentary tickets to selected shows. School matinees and subsidized tickets for concerts also help to bring in young audiences, while churches, social service groups, and community organizations can all take advantage of $10 tickets.

The Kimmel’s adult education program gives classes and tours on specialized topics. Curious about the pipe organ? Modern dance? Music software? Steel drums? Gospel? The Kimmel’s got it. For teens, there’s a free, eleven day summer camp for choral, jazz, and chamber music. In addition, free performing arts classes are starting up this fall for middle- and high-schoolers, with four-unit programs emphasizing American musical culture; they focus on musical theater and jazz, including, appropriately, “The Jazz Heritage in Philadelphia.”

Last but not least, the Philadelphia Orchestra pursues an impressively developed music education vision, headed up by their Director of Education PMP 22

and Community Programs, Sarah Johnson. “Our goal is to provide a wide variety of opportunities for people of all ages to engage with the symphonic repertoire,” she comments. “We offer a wonderful mix of tried and true programs, such as our Family, Sound All Around, and Neighborhood concerts, and new programs, such as our School Partnership Program and College Performance series. We’re also launching our revitalized four concert Access series this season. All of our programs are designed to cultivate a love and understanding of classical music, to offer people different entry points into the music and to feed their curiosity about the music in new and different ways.”

Some of the Orchestra’s school concerts for this season are already sold out, and the PMP-funded commission work by Bright Sheng will be featured in one such concert, “Chinese Zodiac,” in February (“Were you born in the year of the dragon?

The tiger? The rabbit?”). Teachers looking for preparation going into the concerts can attend workshops. These concerts are also made available to families. “Sound All Around,” for our youngest listeners—ages three to five—introduces the youngsters to the orchestra’s instruments with storyteller Charlotte Blake Alston. You may be happy to know that the program is endowed in perpetuity by the Garrison Family Fund for Children’s Concerts.

Older students can benefit as much from the Orchestra’s education endeavors as children. High school and college groups can attend open rehearsals of the Orchestra, and for only $8 the extraordinary “Master Classes for All” offers students, parents, and educators of all abilities the chance to work for two hours with percussionist Colin Currie, saxophonist Branford Marsalis, pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet, violist Roberto Díaz, violinist Christian Tetzlaff, and bassoonist Daniel Matsukawa. And educators themselves have a number of options for assistance and development, with the “Tuesdays Are For Teachers” 20% subscription discount and workshops that draw musical ideas and history together from a concert given by the Orchestra.

So, despite the funding crunch felt by schools around the county, the picture of music education in Philadelphia doesn’t seem so bleak after all. Students of all ages, as well as their parents and teachers, and young music professionals honing their skills, benefit from an immense outpouring of education by performers and presenters all over the region. Organizations and ensembles increasingly challenge themselves to reach students, to give them more access to music in schools and out. Between affordable concerts, thematic curricula, master classes and festivals, passionate music-making and rich appreciation are being modeled and taught to our youngest generations.

Alyssa Timin

ANNOUNCING :

Introducing the PCAH

Beginning mid-November, the Philadelphia Music Project will be housed in the new Philadelphia Center for Arts and Heritage, along with The Pew Charitable Trusts’ six other Artistic Initiatives: Dance Advance, the Heritage Philadelphia Program, Pew Fellowships in the Arts, Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative, Philadelphia Theatre Initiative, and the Philadelphia Cultural Management Initiative.

The new Center is located at 1608 Walnut Street, on the 18th Floor, and is administered by The University of the Arts. “The Pew Charitable Trusts is delighted to work with the University of the Arts once again to promote creative artistry in Philadelphia,” said Marian Godfrey, Director of Civic Life Initiatives for The Pew Charitable Trusts. “Philadelphia’s rich heritage and accomplished arts institutions have helped the city become a national and international cultural destination. Thanks to the Philadelphia Center for Arts and Heritage—and our collaboration with The University of the Arts—we can look forward to even more exciting, innovative and high-quality cultural offerings and the region will see its reputation as a premiere cultural venue grow.”

Rebecca W. Rimel, President and CEO of The Pew Charitable Trusts, commented, “The Philadelphia Center for Arts and Heritage is an idea whose time has come. Philadelphia has shown the world that when you support artistic creativity and preserve your heritage positive things happen for the region’s citizens and the economy. The Philadelphia Center for Arts and Heritage is a testament to the accomplishments of the region’s artists and cultural organizations that enrich the lives of residents and visitors alike.”

The Center houses more than twenty employees and offers an unprecedented opportunity for discussion and creativity for these discipline-specific funding agents dedicated to supporting and invigorating Philadelphia’s cultural landscape

Between (Or Outside?) the Lines: Pew Advocates for Interdisciplinary Creativity Whether the metaphor is talking, reading or coloring, The Pew Charitable Trusts has recently taken some bold steps in supporting interdisciplinary creativity in the Philadelphia arts community. The Trusts’ Culture Program has earmarked funds for two avenues of advocacy: first, modest Interdisciplinary Professional Development Grants enabling past and current Pew Initiative grantees to explore disciplines outside their primary area of practice, and second, occasional field trips for area arts professionals across disciplines to see quality interdisciplinary productions.

According to Greg Rowe, Assistant Director of the Culture Program, “When we look across the various disciplines The Trusts supports through the Philadelphia Center for Arts and Heritage, we note that both artists and institutions are devoting increasing energy on work that defies easy categorization as theatre, music, or the visual arts. We are hopeful that these new resources will be additional encouragement to those who are exploring these multifaceted new directions and maybe eventually result in exciting new programs for local audiences.”

To date, PMP, in partnership with its sister program, the Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative, has organized small groups of arts leaders to attend performances of the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival. Focusing primarily on local performers, the groups attended Leah Stein Dance Company’s site-specific Bardo, New Paradise Laboratories’ ensemble-driven Planetary Enzyme Blues, Pig Iron Theatre Company’s sarcastic Pay Up, the rowdy paean To the Dogs

by Lone Twin, and Miro Dance Theatre’s gothic Hurdy Gurdy.

Left: Marian Godfrey, Director, Civic Life Initiatives, The Pew Charitable Trusts Right: Greg Rowe, Assistant Director of Culture, The Pew Charitable Trusts

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ANNOUNCING :

Right, top to bottom: Tim Ries and Mike Holober performing at PMP’s 2004 holiday party Laura Henrich, Tim Ries, Leslie Burrs, Carla Block, Earle Brown, and Sara Moyn Yung-Chen Lin, Alyssa Timin, Jeffrey Faust, Lynn Faust, Ellie Elkinton

In Focus: International Association of Jazz Educators’ Conference

Strength in Numbers: PMP Supports Collaborative Advertising In the fall of 2004, PMP began a marketing initiative to help selected performing ensembles within specific music sectors gain wider exposure in the Greater Philadelphia area.

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To that end, four new music ensembles—Orchestra 2001, Network for New Music, the PRISM Quartet, and Relâche—cooperated to produce the first New Sounds Philadelphia brochure, which was then mailed to the organizations’ consolidated mailing lists and distributed around the city.

This fall, PMP has extended its efforts, helping to produce a second New Sounds Philadelphia brochure, as well as an early music brochure and choral music brochure. The collaborating early music groups are Philomel, Piffaro, and Tempesta di Mare. Choral Arts Society, Mendelssohn Club, Philadelphia Singers, and Singing City have collaborated for the choral music publication, titled Voices of Philadelphia.

Cooperative sector marketing helps to build core audiences by familiarizing dedicated listeners with a uniquely branded consortium of ensembles in a given genre. The initiative also enables participating groups to develop advertising income and other kinds of supplementary support.

The brochures’ comprehensive performance calendars offer a resource for music enthusiasts rarely provided by entertainment listings or the publications of individual ensembles.

In the winter of 2004, the Philadelphia Music Project made professional development grants for leadership of four organizations to attend the International Association of Jazz Educators’ Conference.

These music professionals included Helen Haynes (Montgomery County Community College), Warren Oree and Graziella D’Amelio (Lifeline Music Coalition), Mark Christman (Ars Nova Workshop), and Earle Brown (Jazz Journeys Educational Institute).

Held in Long Beach, California on January 5-8, 2005, the IAJE Conference drew approximately 7,000 people from 40 countries.

This enormously popular event allowed participants numerous networking opportunities, as well as a chance to attend workshops and performances by many of jazz’s most prominent educators and performers. Seminars and roundtable discussions featured topics such as the future of jazz funding, teaching jazz to non-musicians, and expanding jazz education beyond traditional forms and standards.

The IAJE’s fourth-annual International Jazz Award was made to keyboardist and composer Matthew Bourne, a strongly experimental performer compelled by contemporary composition. The NEA Jazz Masters Awards Concert showcased Dr. Billy Taylor, the Gerald Wilson Jazz Orchestra with Dee Dee Bridgewater, and the Geri Allen Trio with special guests James Moody and Chico Hamilton. The NEA has taken a leading role in developing and promoting curricula for jazz educators; Chairman Dana Gioia announced plans for a new education outreach initiative in partnership with Jazz at Lincoln Center and a $100,000 grant from Verizon.

The 2006 IAJE Conference will be held January 11–14 in New York City. See www.iaje.org for more information.

Greeting the Season: First Annual Holiday Party On the chilly evening of December 14, 2004, PMP hosted its first holiday party at the Ethical Society of Philadelphia. Attended by almost ninety friends and colleagues of PMP, the event featured a concert by Tim Ries, saxophonist, and Michael Holober, pianist.

Ries’ recording and performance credits include collaborations with Phil Woods, Tom Harrell, Dave Liebman, Danilo Perez, Donald Byrd, Joe Henderson, Donald Fagen, Paul Simon, Sheryl Crow, and The Rolling Stones. Holober’s big band project with The Gotham Jazz Orchestra, Thought Trains, features Ron Carter on bass and John Riley on drums, along with an all-star line up that includes Ries, Jon Gordon, Scott Wendholt, Dave Pietro, Joe Magnarelli, and Dave Gilmore. He is also a busy sideman on the New York jazz scene and an Assistant Professor at the City College of New York.

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Left: Robert Diaz will take the reigns as President/Director of the Curtis Institute.

Right: Violinist Ayano Ninomiya of Astral Artistic Services. Photo: Steve J. Sherman

The Philadelphia Folklore Project will present three free music programs this fall at their new offices at 735 S. 50th Street. On October 27th, at 7pm, there will be screening of the video postcard (3 minutes!) for “Elaine and Susan Watts/Women Make Klezmer,” women who carry on Philadelphia’s Hoffman family klezmer tradition, and an opportunity to talk with the artists.

On November 13th at 3pm, attend the release party for South African musician Mogauwane Mahloele’s new CD, “Mountains Never Move, But Their Shadows Do.” On December 4th, also at 3pm, listen to Liberian music from the wonderful singer Zaya Tete as she shares songs and stories accompanied by percussionists and additional singers. For more information, call (215) 726-1106.

The 2004-2005 season brought great recognition for the artists on the roster of Astral Artistic Services. Violinist Christina Castelli took first prize in the Sphinx Competition, violinist Nick Kendall was the recipient of a Musical Fund Society Career Grant, and pianist Spencer Myer was the only American to place in the Cleveland International Piano Competition, where he also captured two of the competition’s additional special prizes. The Chiara String Quartet took third prize at the 7th Paolo Borciani International String Quartet Competition, soprano Karen Slack won the grand prize in the Florida Grand Opera Competition, and violinist Ayano Ninomiya received both an S& R Washington Award and a Frank Huntington Beebe Fellowship. Cellist and composer Clancy Newman performs his own work on the opening concert of Astral’s 2005-2006 season, an Astral commission entitled “The Four Seasons,” and, with Astral’s assistance, pianist Simone Dinnerstein recently recorded Bach’s complete Goldberg Variations.

In the Community

Ethnomusicologist-musician Elizabeth Sayre rejoins AMLA’s staff in September 2005 as part-time administrator, fundraiser, percussion teacher, and curator of AMLA’s Tesoros Culturales/Cultural Treasures program, a series of in-house and school programs that explore the diversity of Latin American and American Latino cultures. Sayre has just returned from a one-year absence from Philadelphia during which she was in residence at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, teaching music theory and working on her Ph.D. dissertation in ethnomusicology. Based on fifteen years of music studies and life history interviews with over thirty-five musicians, her dissertation centers on Philadelphia’s large, vital, and longstanding community of African American hand drummers, many of whom are lifetime devotees of Latin music and its African roots.

Roberto Díaz will officially begin his tenure as President/Director of The Curtis Institute of Music on June 1, 2006, when current President/Director Gary Graffman will retire from the position while continuing on the piano faculty. Mr. Graffman said of his successor, “With Roberto in charge, I am confident that the future of Curtis will be in excellent hands. As an alumnus and faculty member, he is familiar with the functions and needs of this wonderful, if slightly eccentric, Institute; and, as a most distinguished performing artist himself, he knows how essential it is for all of us to do everything we can to keep Curtis Curtis. I look forward to working with Roberto this season to help make a smooth transition for everyone.”

Mr. Díaz said, “I very much look forward to working with everyone at Curtis—faculty, board, and staff—to maintain its unparalleled stature in the world.” Mr. Graffman, who became Curtis’ director in 1986, will be honored at a gala before the Curtis Symphony Orchestra season finale concert on Sunday, April 23. (Please call 215-893-5279 for further details.)

Additionally, Mr. Graffman and The Curtis Institute of Music will be honored by the New York Youth Symphony at its Carnegie Hall concert on Sunday, November 27, with the Theodore L. Kesselman Award for Arts Education.

Singing City opens its 58th Season on Saturday, November 12, 2005, 8 p.m. at the Friends Meeting at 4th and Arch Streets with “An American Choral Celebration.” This concert will salute those unique traditions that have shaped America’s history, including music from colonial times, Civil War music, music from Shaker and Moravian traditions, along with the pioneering works of composers like Charles Ives, Randall Thompson and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, Ned Rorem. The concert will also kick off the 300th anniversary celebration of the birth of Philadelphian Benjamin Franklin, with the world premiere of “Poor Richard’s Almanac, Excerpts” a work by 16-year-old Singing City Prize for Young Composers winner, Daniel Schlosberg.

Left: Tenor Stephen Costello of the Academy of Vocal Arts. Photo: Kelly and Massa Photography Right: Percussionist Mogauwane Mahloele of the Philadelphia Folklore Project

Voces Novae et Antiquae, a professional chamber chorus in its fourteenth season directed by Robert A.M. Ross, will present Christmas carols written as greeting cards on its annual “Twelfth Night Concert,” January 4, 7, and 8, 2006. The first featured composer of these new carols is Abbie Burt Betinis, who continues the tradition established by her great-uncle Alfred Burt and his father before him, Rev. Bates G. Burt. Also to be featured are new card-carols by California-based composer and physics professor Brian Holmes, plus card-carols by the late Lesley Hopwood Meyer, a cellist and composer from suburban Philadelphia, in new choral arrangements by VNA’s Artistic Director Robert Ross. This program echoes one of VNA’s best received Twelfth Night programs (from 2004), which was devoted exclusively to card-carols by all of the above composers.

Rounding out the program will be arrangements of Christmas hymns and carols by Robert Shaw and Alice Parker, drawn from The Robert Shaw Chorale’s landmark 1961 recording for RCA. Visit their website at www.vocesnovaeantiquae.org.

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CONSULTANCIES

Planning and Development Program Arts Marketing and Audience Development Program

Refreshing Perspectives on Branding and Publicity

PMP professional development activities strive to engage music groups across the spectrum of organizational concerns. Alongside a variety of seminars, grants, and field trips, PMP’s two consultation programs effectively bring together arts specialists and local organizations for oneon-one discussion, reflection, and brainstorming.

DEBORAH OBALIL AND ALEBA GARTNER WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2004

Arts Action Research founder Nello McDaniel Deborah Obalil and Aleba Gartner relax following their PMP roundtable

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Deborah Obalil and Aleba Gartner relax following their PMP roundtable.

PMP’s Planning and Development Program provides free consultations for growing music organizations in the five-county region through the New York-based firm, Arts Action Research. Now in its fifth year, the program has offered between one and three years’ worth of bimonthly meetings to twenty-eight organizations, currently serving fourteen groups. The program’s ongoing participants include Peregrine Arts, the Folklife Center, Lifeline Music Coalition, the PRISM Quartet, Orchestra 2001, Choral Arts Society, the Philadelphia Chapter of the American Composers Forum, and the Music Group of Philadelphia. The Bach Festival of Philadelphia, Chamber Music Now, International House Philadelphia, Ars Nova Workshop, and Haddonfield Symphony are all new this season.

Arts Action Research began its PMP consultancy with founders Nello McDaniel and George Thorn (see a description of Thorn’s recent seminar, Leading Arts Boards, on page 30). However, in 2002, Thorn, who had been managing the extreme commute to Philly from Portland, Oregon, chose to refocus his efforts on the West Coast. AAR then brought in Lynn Moffat, Managing Director of the acclaimed New York Theater Workshop.

Nello and Lynn’s wide-ranging expertise in building and maintaining organizational capacity has helped these nearly thirty music organizations with a wide range of goals: identifying and enabling key leadership, achieving clarity in mission and purpose; cultivating effective decision-making and problem-solving processes; developing an appropriate approach to the scale of one’s organization; and achieving overall organizational health and balance.

The Arts Marketing and Audience Development Program, also initiated in 2001, brings marketing and public relations specialists to Philadelphia for one week per year to meet with a larger pool of organizations. These visiting consultants provide individually-tailored advice to program participants, and return for follow-up meetings in the following year. The first two consultants that PMP engaged were marketing maven Deborah Obalil and new music publicist Aleba Gartner. In 2004 and 2005, Kate Prescott and Vicki Allpress worked with local groups on both general marketing strategies and online marketing, specifically.

PMP will be inviting new consultants to visit with local organizations during 2006. For more information on the Arts Marketing and Audience Development Program, please contact Program Associate Alyssa Timin at atimin@pcah.us.

Approximately fifty individuals gathered at Settlement Music School in South Philadelphia for a seminar and roundtable discussion entitled Advanced Branding Strategies for Nonprofit Music Organizations. Featuring Deborah Obalil, Executive Director of the Alliance of Artists’ Communities in Providence, Rhode Island, and Aleba Gartner, President of Aleba Gartner Associates in New York City, the event offered regional organizations an opportunity to refresh their understanding of marketing strategies and hear feedback from the speakers on their experiences consulting with Philadelphia music groups through PMP. Deborah Obalil began the event with a presentation on identity development that explored the nature and purpose of branding, addressed its relation to better knowing and attracting audiences, and analyzed examples of the visual identities of several national music organizations.

Reviewing the basics of branding, Obalil noted that a brand serves as both a trusted promise and encapsulates a “big idea” behind the organization. For example, she illustrated, though Nike sells shoes, its big idea is winning, and behind Starbucks are the ideas of sociability and consistency. Branding defines organizations relative to their competition and articulates what it has that is worth the attention, time, effort and money of potential audiences.

Obalil went on to delineate the steps in identifying customers, and particularly, the importance of audience segmentation.

Quoting Jay Conrad Levinson’s Guerilla Advertising, she commented, “Segmentation is saying something to somebody instead of saying nothing to everybody.” Obalil’s tips for effectively segmenting one’s audience include improving audience surveys, for example, sorting single from season ticket buyers or asking what other activities audience members do with their leisure time.

Following customer identification, Obalil suggested that music groups consider their competition: what are the strengths

the event offered regional organizations an opportunity to refresh their understanding of marketing strategies

and weaknesses of competing activities, and how does your organization compare and contrast with those? What distinct position might you claim?

In order to gain an accurate sense of one’s organization and its competition in the eyes of a customer, Obalil encouraged groups to employ an objective observer and to analyze the total customer experience, up to and including the atmosphere of the venue where events are held. Finally, she offered the “kitchen table test:” throw all marketing materials of yours and your competition’s on a table and compare the materials for their ability to speak to the heart of their intended target, ability to stand out, and internal consistency.

The last component of Obalil’s presentation regarded “core competency,” or the ability to articulate and utilize an organization’s uniqueness. Exercises to identify uniqueness include listing ten things only your group does and imagining, if it died tomorrow, how it would be eulogized. When what is unique about your organization can be clearly stated and wedded to what your audience values, Obalil argued, a strong brand and visual identity can be established.

Afterward, she and Ms. Gartner provided observations from their consulting experience and fielded questions from the audience regarding Philadelphia-specific branding issues. Ms. Gartner emphasized the importance of using efficient, professional language in press materials. Many questions from the audience focused on particularities of communicating with Philadelphia-area press and competing for limited arts coverage.

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BUILDING CAPACITY

BUILDING CAPACITY

Leading Arts Boards THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 2005

George Thorn, Co-Director of Arts Action Research and veteran arts professional, joined PMP and approximately forty representatives of the music community for a seminar on Leading Arts Boards. The seminar took place in Field Auditorium of Settlement Music School, where Thorn jokingly assigned himself to use as many colored markers as possible to represent myths and realities of developing and relating to boards.

His introduction painted a straightforward picture: “The need for fundraising and connections to community continue to increase. The professional and personal lives of our current and prospective board members have become very complex. The traditional models and theories about the role and structure of a board are no longer appropriate.

The convergence of these three factors is causing stress in organizations and ineffective board functioning as well as straining relationships between staff and board. At a time when organizations need greater participation by our community partners, we are often getting less.”

Thorn’s seminar sought to “present new ways of thinking, and new strategies to create the roles, functions, expectations and structures of a board, and also a board’s relationship with professional leadership in today’s reality.” While stressing that he wasn’t putting forth a new model—he doesn’t believe in models—Thorn rendered an organization and its support network as a series of concentric circles. In one hemisphere of these circles, Thorn indicated the center, core, connected, and need-specific layers of participants in the “producing, presenting, curatorial and programmatic function of an organization.” At the center lies the professional leadership of the organization, and beyond that are the core workers, whether a company of artists or additional staff. Specifically, he said, “There is usually a contractual relationship but always an aesthetic, philosophical and spiritual relationship” to the core.

The next layer, the “connected” layer, signifies individuals who have an ongoing connection to an organization, but whose connection is limited or specialized in some way. The outermost layer of this hemisphere, the “need-specific” layer, comprises those who serve “special functions that the organization generally doesn’t require....It is a temporary relationship.”

These four layers form a fairly intuitive stratification of an organization’s programmatic operations. The twist, however, is that Thorn believes that the board of an organization should be able to function in roughly this same way. He offered the more traditional, “institutional model” of organizational structure: a hierarchical body with the board at its head, followed by the executive committee, then branching committees and volunteers. Somewhere below stands the professional leadership with its artistic and administrative branches.

The major problem with this model, which underlies many of the assumptions of board operations, puts the artistic leadership and culture of an organization in a subordinate, conflicted relationship with the board. Thorn ascribed much internal organizational stress to this conflict of cultures. If, he claimed, it’s possible to mirror the collaborative and concentric structure of the programmatic hemisphere in the hemisphere of the board and voluntary support, resources can be derived for one’s organization more effectively.

One of Thorn’s more dramatic points was to revise the strategy of filling board positions with individuals who can provide needed services for an organization. Many people, Thorn suggested, are willing to provide voluntary or discounted service, and will accept a form of thanks other than being placed on a board. In fact, Thorn has found that forming a “Resource Council” of these individuals—a council that never meets, mind you—can be a

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method of recognizing and organizing support without involving as many of these individuals in the fundraising and monitoring activities of the board.

The most active board members, Thorn asserted, will be those who, like the programmatic core, feel a deep affinity for and identity with the organization.

There may be a number of board members who will not agree to the same level of engagement, and, rather than continuously struggling with them for more support, it is possible to recognize them as participating in that “connected” layer of support, and to derive more appropriate assistance by making limited or specific requests.

“Every board member must participate in [fundraising] activities,” Thorn affirmed, and potential board members must be cultivated properly, knowing what they will be asked to do as a member of an organization’s board from the beginning. Without that clarity, there is bound to be struggle between the board and staff members.

Thorn also advocated limiting committees and meeting times to a minimum. One simple tactic is to have board members review reports before they come to a meeting and come prepared for discussion. His underlying philosophy in these matters is “Form follows function,” and the more realistically an organization’s central leadership can approach its board members and larger community of support, capitalizing on specific strengths and casting aside as many myths and preconceptions as possible, the more smoothly the organization’s operations will take place.

Excerpt From Leading Arts Boards: An Arts Professional’s Guide

BY NELLO MCDANIEL AND GEORGE THORN

It is amazing how much the world has changed—socially, politically, economically, technologically—and how the rate of change steadily increases. In contrast, note how little the approach, concept, structures and systems of the not-for-profit arts have changed in 40 years. Most community leaders and funders continue to believe in the institutional model, the conventional wisdom and the power of theories and myths described below...We believe these should never ever again be a singular model, but a great range of examples of appropriate relationships, structures and functions of boards and volunteers....

THEORY #2 The board determines the vision, mission and planning and then hires staff to implement its direction.

REALITY The professional leadership must be at the center of the organization. An arts organization is successful because of the vision, passion, investment and commitment of its professional leadership. Still, the professional staff cannot meet the goals of the organization alone; they need a great deal of help from their community collaborators.

THEORY #4 Whatever expertise or service the organization needs from a community member, he must be recruited to be on the board. We need our lawyer, our accountant, our marketer, our realtor, our printer, our photographer, our caterer, etc.

REALITY The result of this is the slot board. Is it any wonder that so many arts organizations end up with boards a mile wide and an inch deep? None of the expertise or service providers need to be on the board. When an organization needs a particular service, it should find someone to provide it.

THEORY #7 The traditional not-for-profit model must be seen as a three-legged stool: board, artistic, and administrative.

REALITY A three-headed monster is more like it. This structure encourages three separate and distinct cultures, which often isolates the artists and the artistic process from the total life of the organization. This separation is unhealthy for the organization and its staff.

Everyone—artists, managers and boards—must work creatively, positively, strategically and collaboratively to solve problems and meet the goals of the organization. Separate cultures within the organization will tend to be competitive and may eventually become negative energy centers.

MYTH #5 Arts professionals are only skilled at making art, not business, so they need help running their organizations.

REALITY This stereotype, holding that arts leaders are not trained and experienced professionals, is among the most stubborn myths in our society. It extends to the belief that arts professionals do not know how to plan, manage money, run a business or administer an organization. In fact, arts professionals run very good businesses in spite of the fact that their organizations are undercapitalized, lack resources and often basic infrastructure. Still, arts professionals create an extraordinary amount of art and programming. It is amazing how much work they create and connect to audiences with so few resources. Arts organizations aren’t badly managed; they are under-financed.

WWW.ARTSACTION.COM

MYTH #3 The organization should identify a really important person out in the community, find a way to trick him into joining the board, hope he understands the very nature of what the organization does and needs, and then hope he will be transformed and go out and raise money.

REALITY Everyone coming onto a board must deeply understand, and be personally connected to, the organization’s mission and work, or they will not be effective.

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DEVELOPING AUDIENCES

Illuminating Arts Market Research UNDERSTANDING AND USING RESEARCH FOR MORE EFFECTIVE MARKETING STRATEGIES MONDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2004

Kate Prescott, President of Prescott & Associates in Pittsburgh, presented a seminar at Settlement Music School on Understanding and Using Research for More Effective Marketing Strategies. Attended by approximately thirty individuals representing Greater Philadelphia’s nonprofit music organizations, Ms. Prescott explored how the staff of these organizations might improve their marketing strategies by making better use of extant market research. Prescott reviewed several of the major research studies that have been conducted recently regarding arts participation and spent a significant portion of the seminar explaining the charts and numbers generated in the studies.

She began by pointing out that many artistic organizations make the mistake of believing that everyone is their audience, that they are marketing to everybody. In fact, Prescott explained, only a modest percentage of the population represents a viable potential audience; organizations’ marketing efforts are most effective when directed at that population. Also, she noted that audiences reported a wide array of reasons for not attending artistic and cultural events. In other words, rather than there being one obstacle between organizations and potential audiences, there are in fact numerous, minor hurdles, and there will be no one method for filling seats.

Prescott went on to speak from her own experience of conducting marketing services for the Pittsburgh Ballet, including taking phone surveys regarding particular shows. She closely compared the language used for more and less successful productions. Interestingly, survey participants said that they liked both types of productions.

The more successful productions, however, were described in glowing, personal terms that resonated with each listener’s life experience.

She described the success of special offers made to audience members to go backstage at the Pittsburgh Ballet; they were eager to see what goes on behind the scenes, she said. Also, she recommended that organizations aim to offer their audiences “flow,” defined

by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi as the “best moments” that “occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.” Not a simple task!

But it is one that musical performance has lived up to for centuries.

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DEVELOPING AUDIENCES

MY PHILOSOPHY BY KATE PRESCOTT

Engagement Before Information: Eric Booth Interacts

When Matt Levy asked me to write a short piece on my philosophy of arts marketing I wondered if I actually had one. Upon a bit of reflection I would sum it up by saying that “Arts marketing is not about selling tickets; it’s about building strong and lasting relationships.” Ticket sales are just one outcome of an effective ongoing process of marketing and audience development.

I believe the relationship premise is important for several reasons. First, we can all identify with it because we’ve all had relationships, good and bad.

Secondly, it means that marketing is about people—not just nameless butts in seats, but living, breathing, feeling people. And it recognizes the need for several fundamentals: understanding and respect, mutual benefit, and good communication (after all, how many of us enjoy relationships where we’re misunderstood and taken for granted, don’t get anything in return, and can’t talk about the issues). All of this suggests that effective marketing isn’t always neat, clean, or easy.

Understanding and respecting your customers is about knowing who they really are, what their world is like, and how your product fits into their world. It also means realizing that, contrary to popular belief, not everyone is going to love what you do (yes, even after they come to a performance).

So you need to figure out who you are most compatible with and target those folks rather than the entire world. And because relationships thrive when there is mutual benefit and reward, arts organizations need to take a good hard look inside to see if they are really giving their audiences the product and experience they are looking for. This has nothing to do with dumbing down; it is simply very difficult to sell people something they don’t want or need.

Finally, once you understand who the customer is, you need to communicate with them in their language. One of the greatest weaknesses arts organizations have are their communications materials because they are typically written from the organization’s perspective rather than the consumer’s. The problem is that if a potential customer can’t immediately figure out what their personal ‘value equation’ is (e.g. is this worth my time, my money, my effort, etc.), most will simply not respond.

A few other relationships are also key to effective arts marketing. One is internal—marketing cannot be the sole province of the marketing department or communications manager; it must involve all aspects of the organization—including the artistic. Arts organizations should also forge and maintain lasting relationships with marketing experts (design, research, direct response, etc.). Very few arts managers have significant marketing experience, so you will need to get advice from those who do. You should find the best people, not the cheapest, and you should treat them as part of the team. A corollary issue here is saving money where you can and spending it where you should. Finally, developing closer relationships with other arts organizations should be a given. You not only learn from each other’s experiences, but the last several years have shown that collaboration, when done well, is a very good thing—whether it be in joint marketing efforts, sharing space, programming, etc.

While it may not be easy, I’m confident that arts organizations that continuously strive to improve upon all of these relationships and learn from the lessons each one brings will reap many lasting benefits and rewards—including ticket sales!

RAISING THE INVISIBLE CURTAIN: HOW CAN WE (AND WHY DO WE) BRING LISTENERS FURTHER INSIDE THE MUSIC? AND HANDS ON: HOW TO ENHANCE THE INTERACTIVITY OF YOUR PROGRAM SEMINAR AND WORKSHOP WITH ERIC BOOTH THURSDAY, OCTOBER 28, 2004

For the second year in a row, PMP invited Eric Booth to hold a seminar and workshop at the Curtis Institute of Music on audience participation and engagement in musical performances. Mr. Booth, an innovative arts educator on staff at The Juilliard School, has also enjoyed careers as an actor, a market researcher, and a teacher, and combines these fields in his approaches to improving the experience of concertgoers. Last October, Booth’s event focused on language that might be used before, during, or after a public performance to enhance the listening experience.

Mr. Booth included a great deal of interactivity in his morning seminar, Raising the Invisible Curtain: How Can We (and Why Do We) Bring Listeners Further Inside the Music? He asked the audience to brainstorm the qualities of a successful musical experience and demonstrated different ways of framing performances of William Carlos William’s poem “The Red Wheel Barrow”—with no introduction, with a lengthy biographical introduction, and with an illuminating detail regarding the composition of the poem—concluding the demonstration by asking for feedback on which frame was most helpful to listeners.

Booth went on to articulate the task of engaging audiences and delivering a rewarding experience. The aim, he suggested, is to “tap [the audience’s] competence” and to provide them with an “entry point” to the performance. His rule, he said, is “engagement before information”—the expressive and interpretive experience begins only after the line of communication has been established. He encouraged performers to prioritize the piece’s personal relevance for the audience and to “be the thing,” to find a way to portray or embody crucial aspects of what will be performed. Elucidating the structure of a piece before it is played, he argued, can help maintain audience members’ attention and give them more opportunities to connect with the music.

For the afternoon workshop, Hands On: How to Enhance the Interactivity of Your Program, a number of local artists presented introductory remarks that they might make for a piece.

Example introductions were given by Alan Harler, Artistic Director of Mendelssohn Club; Linda Reichert and Jan Krzywicki of Network for New Music; Mogauwane Mahloele, a South African musician and instrument maker, and Diane Monroe, a composer and violinist who performs in both jazz and classical idioms. Each performer, with unique styles, spoke boldly before the group and received feedback both from the audience and from Mr. Booth.

Above: Eric Booth Left (l-r): Jan Krzywicki, Linda Reichert, Eric Booth, Mogauwane Mahloele, and Diane Monroe

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DEVELOPING AUDIENCES

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DEVELOPING AUDIENCES

Linking Web Design to Audience Development

Beyond Just Websites

ARTFULLY ‘E’ MONDAY, DECEMBER 6, 2004

DRIVING WEB TRAFFIC: BUILDING AUDIENCES USING EMAIL, SEARCH ENGINES, AND LINKS TUESDAY, JULY 26, 2005

Vicki Allpress, Marketing Manager of The NBR New Zealand Opera, joined members of the Philadelphia music community to conduct a seminar on her specialty: internet marketing. The seminar, named Artfully ‘E’ after the term she coined during her work streamlining online arts marketing strategies, drew about thirty representatives of music organizations from the Philadelphia area.

Her presentation began with an explanation of what it means to be “Artfully ‘E’.” According to Allpress, a successful internet marketing strategy must achieve a wide array of goals: integrating a website with print materials and organizational identity, ensuring that the right people—current and potential audiences—can find the site, actively driving new audiences to the site, allowing for two-way communication between site visitors and the website’s owner, and, finally, being both respectful and pro-active in engaging visitors.

To achieve each of these ends simultaneously, Allpress suggested, is an art.

Allpress outlined what she calls a “Website Effectiveness Matrix,” a set of four categories with which an organization can interrogate its website’s success: purpose, content and design, usability, and optimization. The first task, Allpress noted, is determining the primary purpose of one’s website. Since arts organizations’ websites might engage in a range of purposes, including selling tickets, providing a calendar of upcoming events, or offering details on the history and activities of an organization, the structure of a website can and should reflect the specific needs of the organization.

The second category of Allpress’ matrix, content and design, includes everything that “populates” the website, and, to keep visitors coming back, it must be current, relevant, accurate, and easy to scan. “People must believe that your website is alive and kicking,” she explained, “They must believe that someone is behind it.” The more dynamic one’s website is—the more frequently its content is updated and the more friendly its use—the more likely visitors are to come to your site, to stick around, and become actual audience members.

As for usability, Allpress defined a usable website as one in which “visitors are able to undertake the task they expect to achieve on the site and leave satisfied that their needs have been met.” Usability is so important, she said, that visitors will leave websites and never come back if the site is particularly

The illustrious Vicki Allpress returned to Philadelphia for her second seminar on internet marketing, this time looking beyond website design to driving web traffic using email marketing, search engines, and links. Back at Settlement Music School, she offered a blow-by-blow PowerPoint presentation for approximately forty representatives of music organizations in the Greater Philadelphia region.

Her presentation began with an analysis of online customers: how they tend to browse and likely points of contact between them and a specific music organization. Allpress mentioned sites related to music publications, tourism, festivals, museums, theaters and concert listings, among others.

Regarding driving web traffic of potential customers, Allpress suggested using email strategically, sharing links with a number of other related sites, ranking highly in search engine results and having a quality website that will merit repeat visits. The benefits of email, she explained, are that it’s “inexpensive, fast, targeted, flexible, scalable, two-way communication, loyalty-building, and measurable.” Also, if used effectively, an email program can be a valuable tool for acquiring and tracking data regarding audiences.

Allpress went into detail regarding the building and maintenance of email lists, particularly regarding the increasingly sensitive issue of privacy and permission-based communication. In order to get and keep subscribers, she noted, it’s important to provide reassurance to customers and not ask for too much information. For storing and managing the information that is provided by customers, Allpress strongly recommended an Email Management System or some other kind of database that can be easily kept current and integrated with other databases an organization might maintain.

Within email marketing programs, Allpress pointed out decisions that must be made regarding whom to target, how the content will be generated for such communication, and how the organization’s website must be kept abreast of the e-news. She spoke about the challenge of getting people to open and read an email, quoting Loren McDonald in Email Labs: “The From line is what recipients use to determine whether to delete an email. The Subject line is what motivates people to actually open the email.” Subject lines, she argued, are best kept short, intriguing, and reassuring.

Allpress also emphasized the use of hyperlinks within an email marketing program to bring customers directly to a site. She discussed HTML versus text-formats, developing a consistent and appropriate look and tone for email programs, and giving customers the opportunity to unsubscribe or change their address. In addition, Allpress explained how taking care of an email list and its members is necessary to avoid being treated as spam: showing respect for privacy, never sharing email addresses, quickly removing unsubscribers or responding to any messages that are sent to you, and ensuring that your email is relevant useful to list members are all ways to build trust and loyalty with your customers.

Moving on to search engines, Allpress explained that Google, Yahoo,

unsatisfactory. Studies have found that web users enjoy sites that are continually updated, easy to navigate, in-depth on its subject, and load quickly on their computers.

The final category in the Website Effectiveness Matrix, optimization, refers to bringing as many visitors to a site as possible.

Optimization is mainly achieved by getting your website noticed by major search engines, particularly Google, through featured keywords in the supporting HTML code.

In addition to streamlining website design, Allpress encouraged music organizations to trade links with other sites in order to bring in additional internet traffic. Increasing link popularity will also raise your site’s status on search engines.

She also addressed strategies for e-mail marketing, including sending messages on appropriate days. For instance, Allpress mentioned that her company sent out an electronic newsletter every Wednesday, when professionals were neither too busy nor too tired to read a message. E-mail, she emphasized, is a cheap and efficient way to gather information about audiences and to initiate various kinds of feedback.

Allpress concluded with further tips to keep visitors coming back to a site: in addition to fresh and current information, she listed regular competitions and surveys, any kind of interactivity, assuming a distinct voice or personality in the text of a site, a good resource links page, as well as others. She outlined ways to record online traffic such as tracking links and feedback forms, and she clarified terms of usage measurement. One of the most misused terms, she pointed out, is a “hit.” Rather than referring to a visitor to the site, a hit is an “action” on the site, like the automatic download of an image. In other words, any time one person arrives at a website, there might be more than a dozen hits.

Allpress offered an online bibliography of helpful texts, including her own recently-published A Practical Guide to Developing and Managing Websites. The publication is available free for download at www.artscouncil.org.uk.

and MSN are the most popular engines, with Google receiving nearly half of all search engine traffic. Search engines, she said, rank sites according to relevance, which corresponds to the frequency and location of keywords on the page and to link popularity, as well as more generalization optimization of the website, such as having quality content and good usability.

In working with keywords, she encouraged organizations to, “Think from the customer’s point of view—what are they searching on? What question are you the answer to?” Keywords function best, she added, as two to three word phrases that speak as specifically as possible to the nature of the organization. These keywords should be placed in the title tags and meta tags of the supporting HTML code and not in graphical text, which cannot be read by search engine crawlers.

Allpress concluded with an overview of link popularity, including how to request an exchange of links with a relevant organization. She presented some ways to monitor the success of linkages, and offered several online and print resources on the web traffic topic, including Successful Email Marketing

by Debbie Mayo-Smith, Email Marketing by Jim Sterne and Anthony Priore, Permission Marketing by Seth Gordon, and Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug.

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DEVELOPING AUDIENCES

EXPANDING HORIZONS

Bring out the ‘House Full’ signs

Meet the Press: Journalists on Music TUESDAY, JUNE 7, 2005

VICKI ALLPRESS

Vicki Allpress visited Philadelphia in December 2004 and July 2005 to consult on web and email marketing. The principles she espoused during her presentations come from a wider background in developing arts audiences in New Zealand , the UK and the US for chamber music, orchestral concerts, ballet, opera and online music services. She is currently based in New Zealand heading the marketing for The NBR New Zealand Opera.

Last night I had one of those proud moments that make all the work worthwhile. From the “latecomers’ room” at the back of the orchestra stalls seats in Auckland’s Aotea Centre auditorium (seating 2,256), I listened to the capacity audience roar as they gave NZ Opera’s production of Dmitry Bertman’s La Traviata a standing ovation. Earlier in the week the venue hauled their ‘House Full’ sign out of a dusty cupboard; it had been a long time since this large theatre in a city of just 1.2 million had filled every last seat for not just one, but two performances of a production.

It’s been a good year down here, and not just for the popular operas. I also have fond memories from last February, when Auckland Town Hall was filled by a highly appreciative audience for the concert performance of John Adams’ The Death of Klinghoffer.

At NZ Opera we know that our potential audience is made up of three broad groups. The first of these, a tight-knit circle, are our regular attendees—committed, educated, voracious. We call them the “Aficionados.” The second are the “Opera Lovers” who will come to the “top 10” operas. The ‘make or break’ group is the third—the “Event Goers.” This is the group we have to reach in order to meet and exceed break-even targets. We’ve come to learn that they’ll buy a ticket when the ‘buzz’ gets loud enough, giving them the confidence and desire to attend.

“Event-goer” is a crass marketing term for a beautiful and sophisticated art form. I can feel you cringe. But unless we in the arts understand and embrace the people who make up this group, we will be unable to grow our audiences beyond the first two. And what a waste that would be for so many people to miss out on such a transformational experience!

When it came to our full houses, I was much helped by a production that was hugely praised, bold, dramatic and enticing for a new younger, broader audience. I can take some of the credit though, for the outcome. I have certain marketing principles, you see, which I tend to rave on about.

Those of you who attended my web marketing presentations in Philadelphia during the past year will recognise some recurring themes.

Get into the head of your potential customer You’ve been attending the arts for as long as you can remember and more than likely you are a musician yourself. That does not make you the best judge of what it feels like to be completely new to your art form.

Plan carefully and in great detail The earlier you plan, the more creatively you can think, and the more opportunities you can identify and utilize. Plan for integration between everything you do, which creates synergy (i.e. the ‘whole’ being greater than the sum of the individual parts).

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Use stylish and appealing imagery Whether we like it or not, we live in an age where image matters. Be appealing with your imagery and express the aesthetics of your art form. That’s what draws new people in.

Be simple and logical This is very important on the web, but applies to communications in general. Don’t make people struggle to find or interpret the information you are trying to get across.

Be consistent Create a brand and a “look” that is instantly recognizable to people, and be consistent with all of your visual imagery and messages. That includes, of course, your website!

Build strong relationships Use relationships with marketing suppliers and partners to your advantage. Win-win situations can work miracles and really enhance a marketing campaign at low cost.

Inevitably, with such a bold production, not everyone enjoyed La Traviata. One customer complained that it wasn’t the Traviata she’d seen on DVD. When we explained that each director interprets an opera uniquely, her response was, “I just didn’t know that.” We seasoned arts consumers find this sort of thing hard to believe. It’s easy to scoff, but we need to understand where people are coming from in order to get them through our doors.

Putting ourselves in our potential audiences’ shoes can transform our bottom line and enliven our art forms, not to mention create new passionate audiences for the future. With the extraordinarily vibrant music scene on offer in Philadelphia (something that impressed me enormously when I was there), and a constant challenge to find audiences, I’d say this is one of the most important things you can focus on.

Here’s to the dusting off of many more ‘House Full’ signs!

I think that we’re seeing a whole new school of composers...of people who are not forging a new language but are writing music that communicates and is vital and important. I think that people in our field have had to readjust our way of thinking about this. Ten years ago, ‘derivative’ was a dirty word, a very dirty word. I don’t think it is anymore. David Patrick Stearns

More than sixty people joined PMP at the venerable and well-appointed Curtis Institute of Music to hear what music journalists had to say regarding contemporary music, its criticism and its audiences. The event featured Anne Midgette, Willard Jenkins, Anastasia Tsioulcas, Philadelphia’s own David Patrick Stearns, and Greg Sandow, who acted as moderator.

Sandow has worked extensively as both a classical and pop music critic and now focuses his work almost exclusively on the future of classical music both as an orchestral consultant and Juilliard faculty member. He’s also a composer. He began the morning boldly, dispensing with the “pop” in “pop culture” and declaring the death of classical music as we know it. More compelled by a wider category of art music, including streams of rock and pop, Sandow argued that it was time for classical music to evolve or perish.

The rest of the panel, as they introduced themselves and discussed their approach to classical-and-beyond music journalism, seemed to identify, if not with Sandow’s apocalyptic thesis, at least with his conviction that change is inevitable and adaptation a necessity. Jenkins, who has worked in a panoply of capacities within the world of jazz (arts administrator, producer, presenter, journalist, broadcaster, educator), now mainly operates via his Open Sky consulting platform. He described Wynton Marsalis and Jazz at Lincoln Center as “the 600-pound gorilla,” giving everyone a laugh, and focused his comments on the evolution of jazz away from the clubs and toward festival and concert settings. Jenkins regarded this change within the “aesthetic umbrella” of jazz not unhappily, citing a recent Village Voice article on the same topic and seeming to enjoy the irony of jazz’s departure from the clubs as classical groups clamor to get in.

Midgette, the first and only woman to regularly cover classical music for The New York Times, spoke eloquently on the oft-noted issue of classical music’s inaccessibility to young audiences, affirming her intuition that younger generations in fact do have a hunger for art music. She hypothesized that, in part, the perception of classical music as an undifferentiated, “monolithic entity” prevents young people from listening. Similarly, she pointed out that people, especially new listeners, who have idealistic expectations and then experience a barrier in listening to classical or new music are likely to think that the problem is them and give up on such music. New listeners may never suspect that the performance just wasn’t very good.

Tsioulcas was hired to Billboard Magazine as a classical music journalist but described herself as interested in the point “where art musics coincide.” She writes as much about world and jazz music, and especially their intersections, as she does about classical. She was optimistic about

young audiences, the growing numbers of listeners with cross-cultural perspectives, and claimed that one of the biggest challenges of her work lies in understanding how best to provide context for an artist or music.

The game is over and classical music as we know it is on its way out....I think that the ultimate problem with classical music is that it’s had its distance from contemporary culture which I think has been growing for quite a long time. But it’s really marked now. If you go inside a concert hall, you still will be in a place where Berlioz’s relationship to Beethoven and Shakespeare looms largest, larger than anybody’s relationship to stuff that is actually going on in the world now. And I’m not saying that we should never talk about that, but you want to be in a world where both things happen. This is really not so in the other arts to as nearly a great extent. Greg Sandow Stearns, the classical music columnist at the Philadelphia Inquirer, was also optimistic about the musical future, asserting simply that, “It’s all going to somehow work out.” He spoke positively regarding the decentralization of music communities, as well as the intriguing friction inherent to the very effort of writing about music. He reflected on the pitfalls of contemporary composition, how people writing new music can take up the wealth of musical vocabularies that have already been developed, and how the very variety of compositional styles and purposes offer challenges to a listener—how, for examples, does a listener differentiate between music meant as an “emotional sounding board” from music based on other, perhaps cerebral or experimental aims?

This page, left to right: David Patrick Stearns, Anastasia Tsioulcas, Greg Sandow, Anne Midgette, Willard Jenkins

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EXPANDING HORIZONS

The real essence of [interdisciplinary] collaboration is actually about humility, about acknowledging that other people know things that you don’t know. You have to lay yourself open to trusting others.

David Lang

Photos, left to right: David Lang. Photo: Peter Serling Min Xiaofen, Jon Jang, Frank J. Oteri, Ken Smith, Zhou Long.

Joe Melillo, Executive Producer, Brooklyn Academy of Music

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[NEW FRONTIERS IN MUSIC]

[NEW FRONTIERS IN MUSIC]

INTERDISCIPLINARY ART: NEW DIRECTIONS CHINESE CURRENTS IN CONTEMPORARY MUSIC WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2004

COMPOSERS’ VOICES: CROSSING DISCIPLINES AND CULTURES FRIDAY, MAY 13, 2005

PMP hosted a full-day symposium at the College of Physicians of Philadelphia to address significant streams of innovation within the current professional music field. The symposium consisted of two panel discussions, Interdisciplinary Art: New Directions, and Chinese Currents in Contemporary Music, with a break for a catered lunch. The symposium was attended by approximately sixty individuals, including a class of composition students from the University of the Arts. Both discussions were moderated by Frank J. Oteri, composer and Editor of the American Music Center’s web magazine NewMusicBox , and were accompanied by audio-visual samples of the panelists’ work.

The morning panel presented nationally prominent panelists with wide-ranging expertise in interdisciplinary art, encompassing composition, direction, production, and management: David Lang, composer and Co-artistic Director of Bang on a Can; Miya Masaoka, composer, koto player, and performance artist; Bob McGrath, Director, Ridge Theater; Joe Melillo, Executive Producer, Brooklyn Academy of Music; and Alisa Regas, Associate Director, Pomegranate Arts. A number of the panelists described their drive to pursue the kind of work that interested

them, despite critical and financial risks often posed by large-scale interdisciplinary projects.

Mr. Lang spoke specifically about problem-solving as a prominent aspect of such collaborative work.

The afternoon panel included Jon Jang, composer, pianist, and Artistic Director of the Pan Asian Arkestra; Zhou Long, composer and Music Director of Music from China; Ken Smith, music journalist for Gramophone and the Financial Times; and Min Xiaofen, pipa player and vocalist, as well as a Sony, Verve, and Avant recording artist. This discussion explored the influence that Chinese and Chinese-American composers have had on Western composition, as well as how the panelists themselves had found unique blends and marriages of Eastern and Western soundscapes. Mr. Jang spoke about how the history of Asians in San Francisco came to shape projects of his, and Ms. Xiaofen gave a striking, impromptu vocal performance of a song she’d woven together from a Chinese folk song and a jazz standard.

PMP’s second panel discussion in the New Fronties in Music series, Composers’ Voices: Crossing Disciplines and Cultures, brought together five significant composers known for their innovative, boundary-blurring projects. Moderated by Frank J. Oteri, composer and Editor of the American Music Center’s web magazine NewMusicBox, the event featured Robert Ashley, Fred Ho, Tania León, Mikel Rouse, and Bright Sheng.

Each panelist was able to take a substantial portion of time to present audio-visual samples of their work, from Ashley’s 1980s opera for television, Perfect Lives (he described a future marriage between the two as “the most natural thing there is”), to Sheng’s mythological Silver River, a music theater work performed by an actress, a Chinese opera singer, a Western baritone, dancers and instrumentalists, including a pipa player.

León shared a section of her cross-cultural percussion piece, Drummin’, and Ho presented his comic-book inspired “martial arts ballet” epic, Journey Beyond the West: The New Adventures of Monkey. Rouse acknowledged that Ashley’s work, including Perfect Lives, had been a direct influence on his own composition and offered video from Dennis Cleveland, perhaps the first and only talk show opera.

These extraordinarily inventive composers spoke freely about their aims and visions, often returning to the matter of place, the myth of America. Things heated up during the question and answer session over matters of fighting and dancing, but the group settled down again for a nice lunch in the Bok Room.

I’m trying to create a living comic book. I deal with fantasy, action, adventure and mythic stories. And I’m not afraid of dealing with conflict, assassins and warfare. Fred Ho

Photo: Frank J. Oteri, Bright Sheng, Mikel Rouse, Tania León, Robert Ashley, Fred Ho

I’ve been propagandizing for opera for TV for the past twenty years.

Musically, I’m mainly interested in trying to find some new way to put American language to music, which has been called everything from ‘it’s not singing, it’s just talking’ to the first rap.

Robert Ashley

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[ FIELD TRIPS ] LOST OBJECTS FRIDAY, DECEMBER 3. 2004

[ Field Trips ]

PMP’s staff was joined by eight representatives of Greater Philadelphia’s contemporary music community for a performance of Lost Objects. Lost Objects is a multimedia music production with music by Michael Gordon, David Lang, and Julia Wolfe, of the new music ensemble Bang on a Can. Members of Bang on a Can performed in the program along with Concerto Köln, The New York Virtuoso Singers (Harold Rosenbaum, Artistic Director), Elizabeth Keusch, Andrew Watts, Daniel Bubeck, and Paul Miller aka DJ Spooky that subliminal kid.

Thematically, the piece addressed the “forgotten and mislaid objects that compose our continually vanishing culture,” as well as “the myriad implications of loss, and what it means to us when those things once lost are found.” The music rubbed up against the edge of rock, guitar- and drum-heavy, an aggressive take on such spectral material.

From the first soloist chirping “I lost my wits,” to the final memorial to Amelia Earhart—a conclusion as sudden and baffling as her own disappearance—the production built steadily in spectacular intensity. Staged by director and filmmaker Francois Girard, the three-tiered picture-plane of singers and instrumentalists was emphasized by a scrim onto which both ambiguous images and the libretto, by Deborah Artman, were projected.

In one scene, a lost child, thirty-feet high, was presented in an almost invasive close-up, a discomfiting paradox of presence and absence.

Photos: Lost Objects courtesy ©Stephanie Berger www.stephaniebergerphoto.com

Since 2000, the Philadelphia Music Project has been leading field trips for groups of twenty or more area music professionals. In December of 2004, PMP also began to lead single-evening “run out” trips for eight to ten leaders of local nonprofit organizations.

Harry Partch’s Oedipus. Photo: Mike Peters

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Our December trip was to Lost Objects, part of the 2004 Next Wave Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM). In the Spring of 2005, PMP undertook a series of three trips for Harry Partch’s Oedipus, produced by the Ridge Theater at Montclair State University; A Tough Line, produced by Vision Into Art at the Whitney Museum at Altria; and Ensemble Intercontemporain’s performance of Benedict Mason’s ChaplinOperas at the Rose Theater of Jazz at Lincoln Center. Artistic leadership of the American Composers Forum Philadelphia Chapter, the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, Chamber Music Now!, the Kimmel Center, Mendelssohn Club, Montgomery County Community College, Network for New Music, New Movement Arts Center, Orchestra 2001, Painted Bride Art Center, Peregrine Arts, the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival, and Relâche joined

PMP staff throughout these excursions.

In addition to these run outs, PMP took a larger-scale, threeday summertime jaunt to the Lincoln Center Festival 2005. These professional development field trips offer local music professionals an opportunity to see performances they might not otherwise be able to attend, as well as to share ideas and perspectives with their colleagues from both Philly and New York.

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EXPANDING HORIZONS

EXPANDING HORIZONS

[ FIELD TRIPS ] A TOUGH LINE WEDNESDAY, MAY 18, 2005

A one-evening trip to Manhattan found eight Philadelphia-area music professionals, as well as PMP’s staff, in the lobby of the Altria building adjacent to Grand Central Station, where Vision Into Art, an interdisciplinary performance ensemble, presented A Tough Line.

Based on a 2002 incident in which a group of Chechen separatists held a theater audience hostage for over three days, the piece takes its name from the ambiguous moment when the terrorists entered the theater and were mistaken by the audience for actors. However, that blur seemed less vehemently expressed by the substance of A Tough Line than by its structure—the script reiterated the suspense of life or death, not reality or illusion. Staged bravely across the unwieldy space of the lobby, the work incorporated movement, narrative theater, video, spoke word, and a score of chamber compositions, all of which staked a claim to occupying some foreground of the audience’s attention.

The multi-genre production was, in effect, its own chamber composition, carefully paced and coordinated. Vision Into Art’s

[ FIELD TRIPS ] HARRY PARTCH’S OEDIPUS SATURDAY, APRIL 2 2005

Actor Credits: Top left: Daniel Harnett (Creon) Top right: Beth Griffiith (Jocasta) Mark Peters (Oedipus Double) Bottom left: the Hysteria Girls, Left to right Emily Hall, Rachel Bell (leaning to her left), Megan Wyler, Joy Harrell (leaning to her left), Kristen Mahon, Brittany Palmer.

Performance Photos: Mike Peters Bottom right: Harry Partch

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Eight Philadelphiaarea music leaders traveled with PMP’s staff to Montclair State University’s Alexander Kasser Theater for a performance of Harry Partch’s Oedipus, produced by the Ridge Theater.

Montclair State has a special relationship with Partch, a “maverick composer” and cultural outlier who rejected the Western twelve-tone scale in favor of a forty-three-tone microtonal scale he developed using Pythagorean theory. Alex Ross contributed an excellent and helpful review to the April New Yorker on Partch, explaining, “Since the early nineteenth century, Western music has been tuned according to the equal-temperament system, which adjusts the neat Greek ratios [of elemental harmony] in order to create a standardized scale. Partch wanted to restore the eerie ‘rightness’ of the old tunings.”

In order to make music based on this new scale, Partch invented a number of instruments, including both adaptations of traditional instruments and more poetic constructions such as the Cloud-Chamber Bowls and the Marimba Eroica. Montclair State now houses this “Instru-

mentarium,” as it is collectively known, under the auspices of composer Dean Drummond and his Newband, who also performed the work (while wearing hospital scrubs).

While the instruments are their own delight, the complexity and strangeness of the music, as well as the oblique staging and video projections of the work of the Ridge Theater team (Bob McGrath, director; Laurie Olinder, visual design; Bill Morrison, film), pile one referential layer upon another, an overwhelming interpretive task for a first hearing. Appropriately enough, Sigmund Freud, played by David Ronis, appears as “Spokesman” to narrate this drama. The other performers, played by Robert Osborne in the title role, Beth Griffith as Jocasta, Daniel Keeling as Tiresias, and a smattering of gratuitously tartish chorus girls, offered a darkly passionate rendering of the age-old woe.

Like Ross, I wondered about the characters’ incessant recitative. He discovers, “In fact, [Partch] invented his forty-three-tone scale not to inflict another system on the world but to allow a new style of vocal setting that followed the contours of the speaking voice.” Specifically, Partch modeled his work on William Butler Yeats’ adaptation of the play, and his vocal lines on the poet’s lyrical reading voice, tuned to the melody of musical speech.

co-founders, Paola Balsamo Prestini and Nora Kroll-Rosenbaum, are after all both composers. With a team of promising artists, Prestini and Kroll-Rosenbaum fashioned a passionate statement on terrorism, a negative image of their cooperative creativity.

CHAPLINOPERAS TUESDAY, MAY 24, 2005

In the Rose Theater of Jazz at Lincoln Center, PMP staff and a group of area music professionals attended a performance of Benedict Mason’s ChaplinOperas, performed by the Ensemble Intercontemporain with Jonathan Nott conducting and Della Jones, mezzo-soprano, and Richard Stuart, bass-baritone, as soloists. Mason’s work accompanies three of Charlie Chaplin’s brilliant silent films, Easy Street, The Immigrant, and The Adventurer, all of which were filmed in 1917.

Much of the audience on this Tuesday evening seemed familiar with the Chaplin films, laughter rising frequently in the hall. Mason’s compositions are equally playful and funny, choosing an “anti-realist” approach that treats the music as an additional character, rather than as background. He seems to be channeling James Joyce in the libretto, part onomatopoetic nonsense, part surrealist stream of consciousness, a kind of aural slapstick that alternately props up and pulls the rug out from under the visual narrative. It invents its own subplots and incorporates references to contemporary Britain.

The libretto is visually compelling, as well, set in two columns down the page, volleying between verse and prose. The

Adventurer’s “Maltreated Samba” goes: comb tongue click wap wap wapwapwap wap wapwap Wa bup pop ba wah wap wap wapwap (thirties dancing mistress): very good my dear now flap hop shuffle two there’s a good girl. (drunken, crooning, out of time) (Chicago again): One notorious madam would tease small men with pistacchio and blueberry ice cream dispensers hidden in her cleavage.

The members of Ensemble Intercontemporain seemed to be having a good time, reveling in the noise of megaphone and kazoos, credit cards and sirens, vocal soloists trying their hand at conducting. However, things never got out of hand, never overwhelmed or superceded the accompanying film. Chaplin, in his way, remained the star of the show, his cat and mouse games still fresh with foolish cunning.

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[ FIELD TRIPS ] LINCOLN CENTER FESTIVAL 2005 WEDNESDAY, JULY 13 THROUGH SATURDAY, JULY 16, 2005

PMP hosted its major annual professional development field trip in New York in July, this year attending several events within the Lincoln Center Festival 2005.

Comprised of about twenty-five leaders of the Greater Philadelphia music community, the group enjoyed three days of performances, discussions, and networking opportunities.

After traveling to the city on the afternoon of Wednesday, July 13, the group attended Robert Wilson’s I La Galigo, a lengthy and large-scale rendering of an Indonesian creation myth. The production incorporated indigenous music and was given a frame by a Bissu, a priest from the Bugis culture from whence the story comes. These native elements, including the immense timescale of the epic—the story, recorded only in fragments, reaches some 6,000 to 7,000 pages in total, and narrates several generations worth of the peopling of the world—were married with Wilson’s trademark spare yet grand architectural approach to theater. Proceeding with care from one beautiful image to another, the performers offered a delicate account of the early days of humanity.

On Thursday morning, the trip participants went to the Asia Society for a portion of an all-day symposium on I La Galigo. The event began with a blessing chant by Puang Matoa Saidi, a Bissu priest, and continued with a more familiar welcome from Rachel Cooper, Director of Cultural Programming at the Asia Society. Drs. Sirtjo Koolhof, chief librarian at the KITLV, Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies, then gave a PowerPoint presentation elaborating on the cultural and historic context of the myth.

After a break, Robert Wilson spoke about the production and more generally about his directorial vision. He closely linked the development of his approach with his guardianship of a deaf child and his insight regarding the independence of the senses. Wilson’s approach to theater—an art he claimed he “didn’t particularly like”—seeks to raise a certain elemental consciousness through controlled, formal gesture. As he put it, he was interested in “[learning] to walk by walking...I, as the director, don’t want to tell you what to think.” Ultimately, with the current production, he sought, “For one evening, to make a continuous line.”

That evening, the group headed in a different direction for the Buster PMP 44

Williams Quartet at the Village Vanguard. A bassist who appears to have played with pretty much everyone, from Art Blakey to Miles Davis, Sarah Vaughan, Sonny Rollins, Count Basie, and Elvin Jones. Williams played two fiery sets, including a number of long, introspective solo pieces. His drummer, Lenny White, played wild and loud, challenging the band to speak up. Williams called White crazy and thanked us all for spending the evening with him.

On Friday morning, PMP hosted two roundtable discussions.

The first was with the Culture staff of The Pew Charitable Trusts: Civic Initiatives Director Marian Godfrey, Assistant Director of Culture Greg Rowe, and Culture Program Officer Bobbie Lippman. Godfrey, Rowe, and Lippman offered an overview of their Philadelphia Artistic Initiatives and answered some specific questions regarding various projects, including the development of the Pennsylvania Cultural Data Project, the opening of the Philadelphia Center for Arts and Heritage, and the purpose and scope of the Philadelphia Cultural Management Initiative and the Philadelphia Cultural Leadership Program.

The second roundtable discussion featured curators from the New York music scene, with Kristin Lancino, Artistic Advisor for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and Producer of the Lyrics and Lyricists series for 92nd Street Y; Brice Rosenbloom, Talent Buyer at the Knitting Factory; Limor Tomer, Music Curator for Symphony Space, BAM Cafe, and the Whitney Museum; and John Schaefer, Host of WNYC’s New Sounds and Soundcheck, who served as moderator. The panel addressed the central tasks and tensions of their work, from nurturing the careers of talented artists, to negotiating programmatic consensus within presenting organizations, to offering competitive and compelling programs within their niche in the city.

The curators also discussed the evolving issue of artistic space.

Tomer pointed out that artists are no longer working in spaces the way that they used to, and Schaefer noted how the interest

in outdoor summer concert series has mushroomed in recent years.

Early Friday evening found PMP’s group in the Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse of Lincoln Center for an interview with Merce Cunningham conducted by WQXR’s Elliott Forrest.

Cunningham, who was wearing a bowtie, spoke graciously about his life and work with and without John Cage. Very early in life he watched Fred Astaire and learned to dance in a kitchen, performing “in a ballroom dress suit that didn’t fit.” The dance teacher in the kitchen believed, he said, in “knowing something about all the arts if you’re going to work in one.” He met Cage at the age of eighteen, and they began their experiments, dance and music, “two things coming at separate times that supported each other.” The work was controversial, he remembered: “[We] used contemporary music, which disturbed the state department.”

When they worked on Ocean (performed later that night in the Time Warner Center’s Rose Theater), Cunningham decided to choreograph the piece in the round, which he claimed was “difficult to do, but absolutely fascinating; it was nice realizing the world was round.” Cunningham explained how he would design postures for dancers and then use software to connect these postures in the simplest way possible. Cage sought to make time flexible for his 112 musicians by, for example, indicating that a note should come somewhere between the first and third minute of a section. The performance that night was, visually, extremely controlled and highly athletic, an exact ninety minutes of arcs and lines. The battery of surrounding musicians—the Anarchic Philharmonic—unfortunately, were difficult to hear clearly when combined with the accompanying electronic deep water sounds and whale whistling.

On Saturday morning, PMP hosted its final roundtable discussions with a number of esteemed music directors within New York: Lisa Bielawa, Artistic Director of the MATA Festival; Sue Mingus, Founder and President of the Charles Mingus Institute and Director of the Mingus Big Band, Mingus Orchestra, and Mingus Dynasty; Arturo O’Farrill, Music Director of the Chico O’Farrill Afro-Cuban Jazz Big Band and Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra; and Alan Pierson, Conductor and Artistic Director of Alarm Will Sound. This discussion was also moderated by John Schaefer.

The panelists began by introducing themselves and their ensembles and organizations.

Bielawa spoke about MATA’s mission to offer a forum of “professional dignity for new, emerging artists;” Pierson described the evolution of Alarm Will Sounds from a presenting group at the Eastman School of Music to a performance ensemble in the style of Ensemble Modern and the London Sinfonietta; O’Farrill commented on his efforts to canonize AfroCuban jazz, including the music of his father, Chico, and Mingus holds on to a similar mission maintaining the legacy of Charles’ composition—the largest oeuvre in 20th century American music, next to Duke Ellington, she noted.

The panelists offered further perspectives on their work. Regarding innovative programming, Pierson explained that Alarm Will Sound often thinks about the range of music that they like to listen to, a method that led them to perform a concert of Aphex Twin songs arranged for the ensemble. Part of Mingus’ efforts to preserve the work of her husband has included founding Revenge Records, a label she started to undersell pirated recordings of Charles’ music she found in stores.

“I love performing for people who have no idea who I am. That’s my favorite thing,” said O’Farrill, who is energized by the thought of untapped audiences. And Bielawa talked about “getting booed and feeling redeemed” because then she’s “making a concert that feels like a real event.”

The final event of PMP’s 2005 professional development field trip was Basil Twist’s La bella dormente nel bosco, a puppet production of Ottorino Respighi’s operatic Sleeping Beauty. Conducted by Neal Goren and performed by the Gotham Chamber Opera, Fuma Sacra Chamber Choir, as well as a talented array of vocal soloists and puppeteers, the show charmed all ages. Life-size puppets danced with singers; roses turned cartwheels in the air, and the troublesome spindle beckoned coyly to the princess.

In previous years, participants in PMP’s field trips have attended performances by the American Composers Orchestra, a jazz organ summit at the Iridium, “Fiesta Mexicana” presented by the World Music Institute, Sweeney Todd at the New York City Opera, the Kitchen House Blend, the Geri Allen Trio, A View From the Bridge at the Metropolitan Opera, a memorial concert for Iannis Xenakis at the Miller Theatre, and a birthday celebration for Jimmy Heath.

Page 44: I La Galigo. Courtesy ©Stephanie Berger. www.stephaniebergerphoto.com Page 45, left: Roundtable panelists (l-r) John Schaefer, Kristin Lancino, Brice Rosenbloom, Limor Tomer Page 45, right: Sue Mingus.

I simply can’t hear music. In order to hear music, I close my eyes and hear much better. If I really want to see something, I close my ears and I see much better. In Western theater we have yet to adequately develop a visual language for theater. We see a decoration, an illustration for what we’re hearing. Theater should be architectural. If we look at world theater (of Asia, Africa, etc.), how rich it is in terms of visual language...In I La Galigo, there is time for contemplation, to reflect, to dream, an artificial time that is constructed. Time to listen the way John Cage taught me to listen to silence. Sometimes when we’re very quite, we hear more, and sometimes when we’re very still, we become more aware of movement than when we move throughout. Robert Wilson When Charles died, his music was considered inaccessible, difficult. This is what you have when you have a real original. It takes our ears quite a while to grow up to new sounds. Sue Mingus In the cultural conversation of contemporary America, music, by and large, has fallen off that table. People can converse knowingly and with reasonable enthusiasm about literature, about visual arts, architecture. But music? If you know anything more than the top pops, you’re like ‘look at Mr. Fancy-Pants over there.’ It’s tied into the twisting of the word ‘elitism’ and the pejorative connotations that have devolved to that word in our country recently. It has kind of stained especially classical music and jazz. John Schaefer PMP 45

Spotlight: Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts

Spotlight: Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts The unfailingly cheeky weblog www.philebrity.com recently described the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts as, “that funny new semicircle thing,” but changed its tune immediately to praise the Kimmel for “a laudable and palpable move to [open its doors] to people who actually live here and can use it.” This recent addition to the Avenue of the Arts and Greater Philadelphia arts scene is a powerhouse presenter and host to many of Philly’s premiere ensembles. The Kimmel books a whole cosmos of music groups from close to home and around the world. Mariza, fado queen of Portugal, Los Lobos, an excellent Latin-rock band out of L.A., and Chick Corea, jazz icon, were all on for the first half of October.

Group Motion Dance Company.

Photo: Cylla von Tiedemann

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The funny semicircle houses two handsome performance spaces—Verizon Hall and Perelman Theater—along with the Innovation Studio and the Merck Arts Education Center.

Verizon is already well-known for its elaborate violin contour, and Perelman, with more limited seating, offers a “turntable” stage that can be rotated to serve music, theater, or dance productions. On the building’s lower level, the Innovation Studio is an equally adaptable black box space. The Merck Arts Education Center, upstairs from Perelman, serves as a space for interactive exhibits, a variety of classes and rehearsals, and a teen summer arts camp.

The Kimmel Center’s own blog, www.blog.kimmelcenter. org, is up and running with the blow-by-blow, and staff are posting from all over the administration. Recently, the site has promoted free concerts held in the lobby—properly, Commonwealth Plaza—featuring a spectrum of local musicians. “New work, commissions, free programs featuring local artists and developing young talent are of the utmost importance,” comments Mervon Mehta, VP of Programming and Education.

In addition to the new facility, Kimmel Center, Inc. also manages its neighbor, the Academy of Music, the oldest grand opera house in America still used for its original purpose, which has been open for art since 1857. Together, they’re home to eight established resident companies: the Philadelphia Orchestra,

Opera Company of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Ballet, Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, American Theater Arts for Youth, PHILADANCO, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society and Peter Nero and the Philly Pops ®. Thus, the Kimmel’s history begins well before its gala opening in December of 2001; the process of construction was its own event, documented in the entertaining time-lapse video available on the Kimmel Center’s website and highlighted by the display of Jenny Holzer’s aphoristic banners during the 2000 Republican National Convention. “Sloppy Thinking Gets Worse Over Time.” Remember that?

Speaking generally about the Center, Mehta adds, “The programming philosophy of the Kimmel Center has been to augment and balance the existing programs of our resident companies by presenting exceptional artists from across many genres. Along with renowned visiting orchestras and major classical recitalists, there is a particular focus on jazz and world music. Achieving diversity among our performers, and thus among our audiences, has been a key factor in booking decisions.” The Kimmel hit the ground running with diverse and high-quality seasons, and, we hope, is just getting going with its improbably imaginative presentations.

Who was expecting The Roots and Deerhoof? What will they think of next?

Across the Schuylkill, the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts has been presenting jam-packed multidisciplinary seasons since 1971. Under its professional performing arts arm, Penn Presents, the Annenberg’s large Zellerbach Hall and intimate Harold Prince Theatre are supplemented by the intensely vertical space of Irvine Auditorium, as well as Harrison Auditorium and, unpredictably, The Church of the Holy Trinity on Rittenhouse Square.

All of this adds up to more than 170 performances per season. Coming up this fall on the music front are Orchestra Europa; “Bahian bombshell” Daniela Mercury; eight-strong Irish sibling outfit Leahy; Poncho Sanchez’ Latin Dance Band; Masters of Caribbean Music with three ensembles: Trinidadian The Mighty Sparrow, Puerto Rican Ecos de Borinquén, and Haitian Ti-Coca et Wanga-Nègés, as well as the PMP-funded Orchestra Underground. The Annenberg has also initiated a University Square Dinner and Lecture Series, so before Miss Mercury on Friday, October 21, concertgoers could eat authentic Bahian cuisine with Dr. Olivia Santana, Secretary of Education and Culture for Salvador, Leonel Leal Neto, Secretary of International Affairs for Salvador, and others.

Another major initiative at the Center, now in its second year, is the Philadelphia Presenting Project, in which local arts groups can receive subsidies to underwrite a production at the UPenn facilities. This season, four of the five supported ensembles are music groups. Orchestra 2001 presented its “BOOM!” concert, a heavily percussive program highlighting preeminent, and mutually influenced, George Crumb and Tan Dun. Strings for Schools’ received support to present Kusangala, an award-winning ensemble featuring Gloria Galante, harp; Tyrone Brown, bass; Rosella Clemmons Washington, vocals; Duke Wilson, percussion; Craig McIver, drums; and Odean Pope, saxophone.

Marlon Simon and the Nagual Spirits will offer “Latin Jazz in its purest form”

on December 10, and Relâche will perform new music live to accompany Alfred Hitchcock’s classic silent film, The Lodger, “a ripper-style murder mystery set in foggy London.” More information on the Philadelphia Presenting Project is available at www.pennpresents.org .

Their dance and theatre programming includes many noteworthy public performances and educational activities. The seven dance ensembles visiting this season will participate in the Annenberg’s noteworthy “Artist to Artist” series, workshops with performing artists that are free and open to the public. A special initiative with the Globe Theatre of London (yes, Shakespeare’s Globe), will offer a five day residency on the Bard’s works and history of the theater. The Globe’s Department of Education will provide customizable workshops and interactive lectures for interested local schools, professional development on teaching Shakespeare for secondary school teachers and interested university students, and a full-length student matinee of Measure for Measure.

The Annenberg’s Managing Director, Michael Rose, comments on the sweeping scale of the Center’s activities: “The Annenberg Center has been serving Philadelphia as one of the region’s most comprehensive performing arts centers for more than 30 years, hosting an extensive range and number of music, theatre, dance and children’s programs. This tradition continues today through our Penn Presents program, which integrates the performing arts across all genres, engaging artists and audiences locally and globally, while connecting these, where possible, to the University of Pennsylvania’s distinguished faculty and curriculum.”

With all this and much more, the Annenberg gives Center City a run for its money. But who’s keeping score? Great arts offerings on both sides of the city is a win-win situation.

American Composers Orchestra Photo courtesy of the Annenberg Center

Looking for Young Composers

BY LYN LISTON

Last year I attended a choral concert of music from the Renaissance to the present and had the great joy of being deeply moved by the music of a young American composer who was unfamiliar to me. It’s a wonderful feeling to discover a composer who speaks to your musical taste, your heart, and your intellect. But how do you find the ones who are hot among the throngs of young composers? It’s not difficult, if you know where to look and how to choose.

For starters, keep an eye on composition awards and orchestra reading sessions. ASCAP and BMI hold competitions for young composers every year, and the Minnesota Orchestra and the American Composers Orchestra have reading sessions for young composers that are very selective. Other composition awards to watch are the Rome Prize, Barlow Commissions, the Downbeat Student Composer Awards (for a variety of musical genres, including jazz), the Gil Evans Fellowship (for jazz), the USAF Sammy Nestico Award for Composition (for jazz), Fromm Music Foundation (no age limit, but young composers are often among the awardees), Colonel Arnald D. Gabriel Award (for symphonic band), and William D. Revelli Award (for symphonic band), and the Haddonfield Symphony Young Composers’ Competition.

Across the U.S. there are hundreds of ensembles who perform new music, and they usually enjoy sharing information about the young composers whose music they have commissioned and performed, and also about those that they haven’t yet been able to program. Some of these even have competitions and post the winners on their websites. A few ensembles who perform a lot of contemporary music are Alarm Will Sound, PRISM Quartet, Present Music, Fulcrum Point, Kronos Quartet, Zeitgeist, Santa Fe New Music, and New York Virtuoso Singers. For further information, the American Music Center publishes an annotated directory of contemporary ensembles, available via www.amc.net.

Publishers are another resource. A few young composers will already be in their catalogs, but publishers also have their fingers on the pulse of the new music field and know who the up-and-coming “unpublished” young composers are. With some finesse, you just may be able to get that information out of them. I suggest you contact G. Schirmer, Boosey & Hawkes, T. Presser, Carl Fischer, European-American Music, and PeerMusic Classical.

New music presenters are another wonderful resource, and include the Other Minds Festival in San Francisco, Miller Theatre in New York, Jack Straw Productions in Seattle, and Bang On a Can, Anti-Social Music, and the MATA Festival in New York.

Fellowships and certain residencies are often offered to very talented young composers, and these include Tanglewood, Copland House, Aspen Music Festival, California Ear Unit’s Acrosanti Composers Seminar, and the Walden School for Young Composers.

Miscellaneous sources include Young Concert Artists, various artist PMP 48

managers (many of whom attend the Chamber Music America conference), Meet The Composer, NewMusicBox.org, NewMusicJukebox.org, choreographers (they listen to a lot more new music than many musicians), and highly visible senior composers and jazz performers, who often want to help their younger comrades. Organizations such as the American Music Center and American Composers Forum, however, are reluctant to show bias by recommending one composer over another, but they often can provide contact information for many of the organizations or individuals mentioned here.

One other approach that requires time and administrative capacity is to initiate a call for scores for composers up to a specific age. The number of responses you receive will depend on the nature of your ensemble and the guidelines in the call, and you will likely find matches for your ensemble’s taste in about 20% of what you receive. Placing an ad with organizations such as the American Composers Orchestra, the American Music Center, and Gaudeamus (an online listing from the Netherlands) is free, and these organizations are glad to help you.

Finding talented young composers is a process that needs careful research but can pay off immensely. Remember that young composers need support from ensembles, presenters, and producers in order to develop, and by commissioning new works from them, we make an invaluable contribution to the music community.

Lyn Liston is the Director of New Music Information Services at the American Music Center and holds a Master of Music Degree in Classical Guitar Performance from CCM in Cincinnati.

pmp Philadelphia Center for Arts and Heritage 1608 Walnut Street, 18th Floor Philadelphia, PA 19103 T 267 350 4960 F 267 350 4998 www.philadelphiamusicproject.org pmp@pcah.us Editor: Mathew Levy, PMP Director Managing Editor, Writer: Alyssa Timin, PMP Program Associate

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The Philadelphia Music Project was initiated by The Pew Charitable Trusts in 1989 to foster artistic excellence and innovation in the region’s nonprofit music community. PMP meets this objective by supporting commissions and productions of new works, presentations of large-scale or long-neglected works, interdisciplinary collaborations, and similar programmatic enhancements. PMP maintains a comprehensive professional development program, producing seminars, conferences, and field trips; providing consulting services in strategic planning, public relations, and audience development; and offering modest grants for professional development to the leadership of local music organizations. PMP is an Artistic Initiative of The Pew Charitable Trusts, administered by The University of the Arts.

The Pew Charitable Trusts serve the public interest by providing information, advancing policy solutions and supporting civic life. The Trusts will invest $204 million in fiscal year 2006 to provide organizations and citizens with fact-based research and practical solutions for challenging issues. www.pewtrusts.org The University of the Arts is the nation’s first and only university dedicated to the visual, performing, and communication arts. Its 2,000 students are enrolled in undergraduate and graduate programs on its campus in the heart of Philadelphia’s Avenue of the Arts. Its history as a leader in educating creative individuals spans more than 125 years. www.uarts.edu

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