US orchestra offers bed and board to 3 minority composers
NewsFrom the Louisville Orchestra:
In a departure from traditional orchestral composer-in-residence programs and commissioning protocol, the orchestra will select three creators to truly embed within both the orchestra and the community in which it’s based. All three will move to Louisville and live in the city’s Shelby Park neighborhood for at least 30 weeks, serving as official staff members while being provided with housing, custom-built studio space, health insurance and an annual salary of $40,000.
The orchestra is encouraging applicants from outside the Western classical tradition, and also those who might form a lasting bond with it as an organization by reapplying for or renewing their residences for up to two additional years (the finalists will be announced in mid-June and begin their residencies on September 1).
Funded by a three-year, $750,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and individual donors, the initiative is “the most ambitious large-scale project” the orchestra has undertaken since (music director Teddy) Abrams arrived in Louisville, he said in a statement, and the first of its kind among American orchestras. He likened the project to the Peace Corps, “deploying artists for a real purpose, getting involved in [the community] in a way that involves a deeper collective vision.”
Some useful comments on The Great Awokening:
“The tendency of many orchestras in the Western world to try to make themselves ‘useful’ to society, by way of atonement, to become instruments of social change, is one of the results from the decreasing status of classical music as a whole, and especially of the expensive medium that the symphony orchestra is. Justification of the costs has now to be found in some form of utility that lies outside music because music as such becomes ‘much too difficult’ to see as something socially relevant.”
https://subterraneanreview.blogspot.com/
One sided thinking. Maybe this is why no one plays your music.
Twice wrong:
1) It is not ‘one-sided thinking’ but the reality when one has a look under the surface of appearances. But that requires some real thinking. Even music lovers are sometimes capable of such mental exercise, when their heart directs them into the right way.
2) There’s no reason to complain, but it is unnecessary to trumpet it around, because people find their way towards the music by themselves. So I won’t mention performances like those by the New Queen’s Hall Orchestra, the Netherlands Symphony, the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra, the Orchestre National de Montpellier, the Dallas Symphony, the Hong Kong Philharmonic, the Shanghai Symphony – that would just be boasting.
Blatant nonsense.
This has long been the mission of every U.S. orchestra.
In the U.S. , all orchestras are 501(c)(3) organizations. The benefits of this is that they do not have to pay taxes and donations to them are tax deductible.
To qualify as a 501(c)(3), an organization’s primary purpose must be:
Religious, charitable, scientific, testing for public safety, literary, or educational purposes, or to foster national or international amateur sports competition.
Thus, U.S. orchestras have always strived to be “‘useful’ to society” and “become instruments of social change.”
If orchestras just want to focus on playing music and nothing else, then they should just go ahead and give up their tax exempt status and become an LLC.
That’s not the point at all: classical music should be understood as useful in itself and THEREFORE useful to society.
What does an orchestra want with a singer from the Chinese Opera, a hip-hop star or a gamelan artist? $120,000 plus all the ancillary costs would buy a lot of music education programming.
And what would they compose that St. Louis wants to hear, let alone that they would tour to unsuspecting other areas? I daresay St. L can hear all the hip-hop it wants, and would prefer to go to their orchestra for classical music from inside the western tradition.
What exactly are they playing at? If all they really want is to up the black content of their orchestra’s offerings, why don’t they just say so? And offer a fellowship for new minority talent? If that’s not it, what are they playing at? What DO they mean by “outside the western tradition”? And why can’t western orchestras focus on music from its own tradition?
I thought the “real purpose” of an orchestra was to provide beautiful music played to the highest point of excellence in performance, interpretation and communication to its audience.
There is nothing wrong with introducing classical musicians to other musics — far from it — but 30-week renewable residencies in something outside their orbit (and remit)? What exactly are these people supposed to impart? And upon whom?
Maybe more details will clarify, but this sounds very, very suspicious-making and wrong-headed. Last place I expected to see it, too; I don’t know anything about this new MD, though a quick google indicates he is interested in jazz. As are many other MDs. I would doubt jazz is hard to come by in St. Louis, and I fail to see why the orchestra should be the go-to place for it, or any other music outside the western classical tradition.
You didn’t even get the city correct.
My mistake. I apologise for my carelessness. But my questions remain.
You just wasted your words. And you got the city wrong. Stay left behind in the 19th century.
They are saying ““outside the western tradition” to skirt the U.S. Civil Rights Act which prohibits racial discrimination. The text was no doubt run by the organization’s lawyers.
Wow. You are an idiot. The text means exactly what it says. We don’t just want composers from conservatories. We want to invite composers from all backgrounds to apply.
The cities are interchangeable. They are both rich river cities. One is on the Ohio and one on the Mississippi.
No, that mistake was mine — I was careless as I was focused more on the message than the source.
But (to answer a critic above) I don’t see why I am accused of 19th century thinking. I welcome minority — and foreign — presence in orchestras, and I am not opposed to new music. But we all know what orchestras are for — they are not there to be the source of jazz music (there are much better sources).
I still cannot figure out what this $3/4 million and THREE long residencies at a time are supposed to achieve, or prove.
Wrong. Louisville isn’t rich and is nothing like St. Louis. Guess you haven’t ventured there, or you would actually know what you are talking about.
You’d be surprised where I am from. I stand by what I wrote.
You truly are a fool. You can’t read, as otherwise you would be able to see what the actual press release said.
Bach was a resident composer. So was Hayden. But, guess therefore you must hate them too.
Teddy Abrams was appointed 8 years ago, and is a modern, rounded composer, who actually writes music people want to hear.
He is beloved in his city and praised for positioning the orchestra as vital to the life of Louisville.
Sincerely,
Graham Parker
Executive Director
Haydn and Bach were “outside the western classical tradition”? That’s what I would like illuminated — it reads like code.
Dear Mr. Parker – Your name calling throughout these comments is an embarrassment to the Louisville Symphony. What kind of leader are you? (Ah, I see, an “Interim” one, thank god.) Also, you do yourself no favors by misspelling Haydn and then trying to claim that Bach is outside the Western music tradition. You must be a real joy to work with if you can’t brook any sort of criticism.
Hi Graham, I take it you haven’t realized that calling people idiots and fools on a blog read by everyone in the industry might not be a great look for you and your orchestra? Just a thought.
I’m not sure if ‘everyone in the industry’ reads this blog. There are days when I don’t read it at all. There are even hours that I don’t think about it.
This is a very beautiful thing to do. I have alerted some composers outside the US to explore this generous and musically creative mission. Teddy Abrams has lived up to the traditions and legacy of the Louisville Orchestra. In their heyday, the orchestra supported the creation of many new works, and this new endeavor will certainly bring this into full force on a global level with composers from far and wide. I wish them good luck!
I always appreciate reading your positive remarks…very refreshing.
Where does it say minority composers on the excerpt above? You, Lebrecht, complain about orchestras dying but here is something trying to breathe new life into it and you flip it. Classic slipped disc.
I read the notice closely because I am from Louisville. I don’t see anything about minority composers either.
This could be an exciting venture provided that there are very clear projects/activities which get the composers out into the community, interacting, teaching, etc. Let’s hope that’s the case.
An interesting project but one of the worst-run orchestras in America. I doubt this will be administered well. Many Abrams-driven projects, while worthy, have fallen by the wayside due to poor administration.
Performers or composers ‘interacting with the community’ have never been able to improve any community’s problems. At best it is a short distraction for the downtrodden, at worst embarrassing wrapping paper to disguise the feeling of uselessness.
Back in the day, the Ford Foundation ran this great program, composers in public school districts for a year, living and working. My district – Herricks Public Schools, New Hyde Park, New York — had Russell Peck in residence. I was in the 9th grade but remember it well. Years later, whenever I would run into him at an ASOL conference, I would introduce myself as a Herricks student which got a big smile out of him.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/americanmusic.33.1.0089
Non musicians making musical decisions- everywhere.
That is, in a general sense, quite true. It is the result of the organisational professionalism of the orchestra in the 20th century. Before that time, it was much more improvised and haphazard, and the musicians greatly suffered from this – low pay, long rehearsels, no job security.
Enough with the support on so-Called minority a as nothing. If we are talking of s talented American if whatever race who deserves help, I’ll be fists y in line. But it’s become a mark of being”hip” to support some Bearded-Lady of the arts or some Tom Thumb of the New Age with the New outlook with New Money from old sources while leaving many deserving non-minorities out in the cold. No more woke benevolence.
I’m surprised they’re not looking for these composers on Craigslist. Seriously though, this is the orchestra that gutted its roster a decade ago in a bankruptcy. At last look, they still aren’t back to full strength (there is no second trombone, third horn, third oboe, or third bassoon position in the complement). Is this really the priority of the board, or is it one man’s passion project?
Being “embedded” with an orchestra is just asking for more trouble. Beds should not be part of the deal!
My God, you people. Here at last is an arts organization that wants to treat the notion of an “artist in residence” as though that meant something. So of course you descend on it like dogs. One reason I love orchestras is that the musicians and audiences are *never* like the people I find here.
Yes, I got that too. They are very different. But they have less fun.
Teddy Abrams absolutely knows what he’s doing. He has both the vision and the skill. Stay out of his way. You’ll get run over.
This is an excellent idea.
The comment as regards this otherwise very interesting project in the media by the Orchestra’s staff member Jacob Gotlib, referring to the symphonic repertoire as currently dominated by “dead white dudes”, would make him worthy of cancellation, had he said that about any other racial group, or gender. This is America: can’t we do better? As for the rather unhinged comments of their current Exec, Graham Parker, they sadly take their place in the now almost-weekly drumbeat of an emigre from the former British Empire — in the immortal words of Brooks Adams, “a river of blood, from the Ganges to the Mississippi” — having the privilege of running a major American cultural institution so he can then deflect from his undeniable whiteness by instead telling white Americans what horrible people they are, all under the financial protection of a Woke-capitalist mega-foundation such as the Andrew W. Mellon. Mr Parker and his staff have so uselessly inflamed the issues surrounding this worthy project as to possibly negate its eventual effectiveness, which would be a loss.