Things have been very quiet in AFM-land. Even the blogs have cooled to a dull red glow, with the hot issues of the day being why Tom Lee didn’t do more to prevent the levees in New Orleans failing, why Bobby Herriot showed up at the ICSOM conference, and why the agenda for the upcoming IEB meeting hasn’t been posted on the AFM website yet (a legitimate question). So perhaps it will be considered kosher for an AFM observer to write about other developments in the music business while waiting for the next AFM kerfluffle to erupt.
The MacArthur Foundation has just announced its “genius” grants. It’s an interesting list, as always. It includes a “vehicle emissions specialist,” a number of scientists, an economist, the head of the Sphinx Organization (which provides scholarships and other support to minorities pursuing careers in classical music), a luthier, an “urban revitalization strategist,” a documentary filmmaker – and a conductor. And not just any conductor, either, but one that’s been in the news recently as a result of the botched music director search in Baltimore – Marin Alsop.
I’ve been accused of hating conductors. I don’t. I can’t honestly say that some of my best friends are conductors, but there are conductors I like and respect. But I don’t much like the idea of conductors. Except at their very best, conductors are a necessary evil. They give the audience something to look at and help the orchestra stay together. A few conductors manage to transcend the role of traffic cop and actually say something about the music. But the MacArthur Fellowships are supposed to be given to “individuals who show exceptional merit and promise for continued and enhanced creative work.” Can a conductor – or maybe any performer of classical music – really meet those criteria?
There are a few in our field who have done things comparable to the achievements of the “average” MacArthur Fellowship winner. Leonard Bernstein is one good example; not only was he a first-rate composer, but as a conductor he found innovative ways to teach people about music and to expand the appeal of the art form, not to mention managing to resurrect, all by himself, the symphonies of Mahler from near-total obsurity. Nicholas Harnoncourt and William Christie both created new audiences for large and little-known repertoires, while Jeanne Lamon created the Canadian HIP scene from scratch, as well as one of the world’s great chamber orchestras. Yo-Yo Ma is in the process of helping to create a new repertoire with his Silk Road Project. Lorraine Hunt Lieberson has redefined the art of singing Bach and Handel.
And there are some on the business side with similar achievements. Peter Pastreich took an orchestra viewed as a provincial outpost of the classical music world and made it into the premier American performing arts institution west of the Mississippi River. Liza du Brul Medina took organizing techniques developed by grape pickers in California and adapted and taught them to symphony musicians, to the consternation of every management she dealt with.
But Marin Alsop? What’s she done that’s on that level? The MacArthur Foundation describes her in the following glowing terms:
“Marin Alsop, principal conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and music director of the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, is among the most accomplished conductors working today.”
As accomplished a conductor as her American peers David Robertson, Robert Spano, or Kent Nagano? And what about her colleagues David Zinman, Leonard Slatkin, Michael Tilson Thomas, James Levine, George Cleve, and Lorin Maazel? As a conductor, is she even in the same room?
“ In addition to her masterful conducting technique and visionary artistic programming, Alsop is distinguished by her extraordinary ability to communicate, both with her orchestra and with her audience, successfully translating her musical ideas into symphonic sound with a signature style. In presenting concerts, she often addresses audiences directly and previews short passages demonstrating themes and motifs of pieces to be played. These engaging presentations demystify challenging music for a wide range of audiences."
She talks to audiences! She demonstrates short passages! Have the MacArthur Foundation folks been to any orchestra concerts recently? They will be surprised to find that such behavior isn’t that uncommon. They might be even more surprised to find out that other conductors and orchestras have found other and even more interesting ways to do this than doing what Bernstein was doing for TV audiences 40 years ago.
“While honoring classical music heritage, Alsop is also deeply committed to bringing the work of living composers to orchestras, audiences, and critics around the world. Her discography ranges from gospel recordings to traditional symphonies to the music of contemporary American composers.”
Newsflash: lots of conductors do lots of new music. When I was in St. Paul with Dennis Davies (Alsop’s predecessor at Cabrillo), we did tons of new music, and toured and recorded it too. I can’t think of any of Alsop’s American contemporaries who don’t conduct a lot of new music, for that matter.
“Through her musicality, her skill in making the unusual understandable, and her championing of contemporary music, Alsop defies stereotypes and offers a new model of leadership for orchestras in the U.S. and abroad.”
What “new model”? She’s a conductor, right? She tells musicians what to do, and they have to do it or get fired. What’s so new about that?
If the MacArthur Foundation wants to reward a new model of leadership, they might look toward the musicians, staff, and board of the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, or perhaps to Orpheus. Or they could have given the $500,000 to the Louisiana Phil, who’ve been running the only real co-op symphony on American soil for years now. Saying that Alsop “offers a new model of leadership” is a little like saying that I invented the alto clef.
“She was the only women to be hired as music director by a large American orchestra whose appointment was publicly challenged by the orchestra’s musicians.”
No, they didn’t actually write that. But that’s likely the nub of the matter.
Marin Alsop is a competent conductor, neither the best nor the worst conductor of her generation. The only time she conducted in Milwaukee, she came across as competent but unmemorable, but then that would describe a lot of our guest conductors. She appears to have been a decent music director in Colorado, and her appointment to the Baltimore post may yet work out well for both her and the institution. But if I had $500,000 to award to a person in our field “who show[ed] exceptional merit and promise for continued and enhanced creative work,” Alsop wouldn’t be on my short list, much less at the top of it. And if I had $500,000 to give away, I wouldn’t spend it on sending a big “fuck you” to the musicians of one of America’s major orchestras.
I hope that the management of the BSO figure out how leverage this award to help sell tickets and raise money. And I hope that Alsop gives a large chunk of the award to the BSO in recognition of the fact that she probably wouldn’t have gotten this award absent the press, and the sympathy, she got after the BSO management screwed up her appointment and the musicians went public with their dissatisfaction.
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