Doublereed Archive - Posting 000049.txt from 2003/11

From: "William R. Brohinsky" <onlyocelot@-----.com>
Subj: Re: [DR-L] Opera Co. of Brooklyn Does it Again!
Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 10:56:13 -0500

James Jeter wrote:
A musician friend just sent me the following press
release from the Opera Co. of Brooklyn - touting their
continued and future use of the "virtual orchestra,"
which we so adamantly opposed last summer. Needless
to say, this was pretty depressing news. This company
obviously could care less about live musicians.

I guess I'm more and more disturbed about the kneejerk reactions to
this  whole matter.

I take exception to the statement that OCB 'could care less about live
musicians'. The fact that they have found a way to found a new opera
company in an economy like ours is rather laudable: they are employing
and paying many opera singers who might never get a chance to be heard.
They are doing it in a way that can be managed, with budgets,
apparently, that not only allow them to expand their program (thus more
greatly employing their singers), but allows them to foot free concerts.

How much damage are they doing to music? Apparently not a lot. (I
wonder if anyone has looked seriously at the sales of live-performance
recordings of Bach's music following the release of Switched-On Bach?)

How much damage are they doing to musicians as a whole? They've taken a
bunch of vocalists who might not have had a job using their talents in
the way they've trained for (opera) and given them a venue that didn't
exist before. They haven't given the same major boost to
instrumentalists, yet, but the release quoted does say that they are
including an opera with Murray Sidlin's 13-piece live accompaniement
orchestra: Aaron Copeland's Tender Land. (Copeland also wrote
small-orchestra versions of his large orchestra music. So did other
composers. Are they to be condemned for giving jobs to the forces they
had, rather than letting them all starve because they didn't have
enough to do the big versions?)

What I see here is an innovative approach to opera company startup that
has a real and undeniable benefit: It seems to work! And once
established, the OCB is now starting to ramp up live musician
participation. They are employing instrumentalists that they could not
afford last year. Isn't this good?

Or is the objection merely snobbery? It's easy to sit back and say, "I
like nothing with synthesizers in", but harder (especially these days)
to say, That piece I hear now has synthesizers, and I would like it
better without."

Should the performances held decades ago, by the fellow who programmed
all the printers to play in harmony on stage, have been boycotted by
live musicians? I think it's safe to say that he disemployed no single
musician in his presentations. What's more, he brought to the attention
of a large number of people that electronics, sometimes in ways no one
would (want to) have thought of, could contribute to the world of music.

So, are we tossing out the baby with the bathwater, or what?

After all, musicians whining about being underemployed and underpaid is
nothing new. It's been going on for years. And as the number of
performances have decreased and the price of tickets have gone up, the
number of people who are not musicians who are willing to turn a
favorable ear to the complaints have dwindled to the point where the
biggest orchestras in the country are running deficits worthy of
Congress.

I can't speak for the country. I do know that in our small corner of
new england, we are just recovering from the worst backlash against the
arts I've known of short of the French revolution. When my 23-year-old
son went to the local public school for a year for fourth grade, his
'music class' consisted of a teacher putting a rap CD into a bro-box,
and the kids all 'dancing' around to it. Now, they've finally
contracted a music teacher full-time, who is teaching the younger
grades to read music, and attempting remedial exposures for the older
grades.

What makes the difference? In our area, some amateur groups have been
going out of their way to make themselves available to schools and even
colleges to expose their students to real music played by real people.
(Unlike Hartford Symphony's bleet of a decade ago, it didn't take 'real
money'.)

My own consort spent two years playing renaissance and high french
baroque trio music to history students at Mitchell College. The
responses were incredible. The kids looked like they'd died. One put
his head on his arm, and 'went to sleep'. It was so
disheartening...until I talked to them later. The one who had appeared
asleep was literally transported: he had never in his life heard music
played on instruments in his presence. Not a guitar, not a whistle, not
a fiddle, not a violin...not even a piano. His entire musical
experience had been from recorded media, and that was 100% 'Popular'.
Many others told us how they were now going to take my advice, get a
recorder or a penny whistle and a good tutor (it wasn't hard to hand
out a sheet with recommendations, by the way), and learn to play for
themselves...and their children. (You see, even non-union groups aren't
your enemy.)

OCB recognizes this. "The low-budget opera company in Brooklyn
saves enough money on
musician salaries with its high-tech orchestra that it can offer more
performances per season.". If people don't know that opera is
worth paying to hear, they won't pay to find out. But once they find
out... It could be that the OCB's free performances this year, financed
by the hated synthesizer-reinforced small orchestra, is responsible for
the Met, in five years, having a black bottom line. The fallout from
this could even reach the NYPO's bottom line. It could cause parents to
refocus schoolboards in NYC from facetiously-painted 'Gay schools' to
"Where are the arts in our schools?"

Shall we destroy that now?