Communication – Page 3 – Robert Bettmann

We notice interpretation easily with innovation

I spent a very enjoyable early evening last night listening to a classical music house concert. It reminded me of being in college. I went to a college with a conservatory of music, and enjoyed the frequent informal concerts. This was of higher caliber, to be sure. Thanks to BC and TG for the welcome.

One of the players last night was violinist Nurit Bar-Josef.

Nurit Bar-Josef was appointed Concertmaster of the National Symphony orchestra in 2001. She was previously Assistant Concertmaster of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Boston Pops, and Assistant Principal Second Violin of the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra. Her solo appearances include performances with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, Boston Pops, Boston Classical Orchestra, Alexandria Symphony, Virginia Chamber Orchestra, International Symphony Orchestra (Israel), and Corpus Christi Symphony Orchestra. Bar-Josef received her bachelor’s degree from The Curtis Institute, where she studied with Aaron Rosand and was the recipient of the Fritz Kreisler Award for Violin upon graduation. She continued her studies at the Julliard School with Robert Mann. Bar-Josef is a founding member of the Dryden Quartet, a group she formed with NSO Principal Violist Dan Foster and his cousins Nicolas and Yumi Kendall, and the Kennedy Center Chamber Players, which features leading members of the National Symphony Orchestra.

I thought Bar-Josefs playing of an Ysaye Sonata was very strong. Not only technically, but in artistic interpretation. Something about her playing reminded me of a video a friend shared on Facebook yesterday. I think we notice interpretation more when it is innovation. The video documents some really amazing inventive new virtuosity. Worth watching/listening to.

The innovations in the video, by Nathan Flutebox Lee and Beardyman, reminded me of Bobby McFerrin. Bobby McFerrins work goes beyond entertainment, though. I think the video above is just amazing. I do remember being similarly charmed by Bobby McFerrin when I first heard his music.

While at Oberlin one of my friends told me that, having been rejected from conservatory, Bobby developed his technique by sitting in closet singing into a tape recorder for two years.

I found the following on an interview:

He described his technique in simple terms. “There really is nothing to teach. I just tell them that it’s yodeling, that’s what it is. There really is no great secret behind it,” he said.

Inspired by pianist Keith Jarrett’s improvised solo concerts, McFerrin, 56, says he begins his solo shows with a spontaneous work, then adds composed songs.

“The secret behind improvisation is just motion. You sing one note after another and just keep going,” he said. “The moment I walk out I am hearing what you are hearing for the first time.”

In another article I found the following:

Academy: What made you decide to go into this world that is so different than singing regular vocals?

BM: In the beginning I was really fascinated with the “solo art” and solo musicians, like Keith Jared playing solo piano and improvising, and I thought as a singer that I would like to try something like that. So I developed this technique that would enable me to put across melody, harmony and the bass lines. The basis of everything I do is solo concerts, being on stage by myself, improvising, singing tunes or what ever comes up. I didnt have any coaches. I knew what I wanted to do and could see myself doing it first, but I couldnt hear what it sounded like. I was really fascinated by the challenge of being on stage by myself, because singers more often than not, especially young singers as they are studying music, have a tendency to fall back on, or rely on an accompanist of some sort. And so theyre not self reliant in the beginning. I wanted to make sure that I was very strong in my voice and my technique so that any situation that I went into, regardless of what that was, whatever the ensemble was or whatever, I knew where I was at all times, because I could rely on myself to be wherever I was on stage musically with whoever I was with, instead of pacing my dressing room floor because my accompanist is caught in a snow storm, or the bands plane is delayed and Im the only one out there.

In the beginning, for the first two years, I practiced a lot every single day. Always tape recording and listening to myself. For the first two years I didnt listen to a single singer, no matter what the discipline was, jazz, classical, whatever; I didnt want to listen to anyone because I am very impressionable. I was afraid if I kept looking towards a singer I would find someone I liked and would try and copy them and I would lose myself. So I thought the only to find myself is to shut myself off from all vocal influences and just sing and see what comes up. I knew what I wanted to do; I just didnt know what it sounded like yet. So I would sing for hours and hours everyday for years. Then I discovered this technique and developed some exercises. The challenge of it was staying in tune. Once I had a good idea of who I was, then I started branching out and listening to other singers. By then I was confident enough in myself that I was not afraid at that point that I was going to start mimicking someone elses sound.

And in another:

“I came up with this crazy idea just to walk out on the stage with no band at all and just start singing whatever came to mind,” says McFerrin. “I actually fought the idea for a while because it seemed almost too radical.”

“I like to think that our task as musicians is transcendence,” he says. “When you’re performing in front of people, you don’t want them to leave the same way they came in. You know, sometimes when you go to a concert, your heart is closed for one reason or another, you had a fight with your spouse, you just got fired from your job, one of your kids is sick, they cancelled your favorite TV show, who knows. So you’re dragged to this concert kicking and screaming, and then all of a sudden something happens, and you’re completely changed.”

Ave maria

Blackbird

I Don’t Want to Paint the Fence: why big media should pipe down and get back to work

Writing April 27th, 2009 in the online magazine Slate, Gary Kamiya argued, “If reporting vanishes, the world will get darker and uglier. Subsidizing newspapers may be the only answer.” Kamiya’s article – titled “The Death of the News” – is just one in a recent onslaught of articles considering print medias’ current troubles. In a commentary published last week by the New York Times, Maureen Dowd asserted, “my profession is in a meltdown.”

The facts of the issue are dramatic. The website Newspaper death watch.com reports that since the creation of the site in March, 2007, 10 daily papers have ceased print publication. (The Rocky Mountain News; Baltimore Examiner; Kentucky Post; Cincinnati Post; King Couty Journal; Union-City Register-Tribune; Halifax Daily News; Albuquerque Tribune; South Idaho Press; and San Juan Star.) Declining revenue is to blame for these failures. Writing on Slate in 2006, Jack Shafer reported, “Everywhere, newspapers are chucking stock tables, eliminating such once-venerable features as horse-racing coverage and their own editorial cartoonists, and consolidating or killing sections” to reduce expenses.

There are many opinions regarding how this crisis happened, and what the effects will eventually be. Dowd’s commentary blames the search engine google for transforming formerly monetized products into free products. Shafer’s piece notes that, “To be fair, the seeds of the great newspaper decline were planted more than 80 years ago… The emergence of every new media technology-the car radio, television, the portable radio, FM, cable, the VCR, the Internet, the cell phone, satellite radio and TV, the podcast, et al.-has delivered another kick to newspapers.”

The internet has increased the efficiency and decreased the cost of basic news reporting. Writing on the Technology blog for the LA Times, David Sarno cited the downing of a plane in the Hudson river as an example of the new reporting cycle. In that instance, a bystander broke the news long before major outlets were anywhere near the scene. Sarno wrote, “This may be among the most striking instances yet of instant citizen reporting, a trend that was visible in the Mumbai terrorist attacks.”

The impact of the print media crisis on investigative reporting is uncertain. The editors of Techdirt.com, writing on March 18th, 2009, argue that the major media outlets are propagating two myths regarding their service: “Myth 1: Newspapers put tons of money and resources into investigative journalism. They don’t. And never have. Myth 2: Only newspapers can do investigative journalism.” The Huffington Post, one of the leading new news resources, recently created the Huff Post investigative journalism fund. As reported on their site, the Fund has, “an initial budget of $1.75 million. That should be enough for 10 staff journalists who will primarily coordinate stories with freelancers.” The Huff Post initiative resonates with the statement by Google CEO Eric Schmidt (as quoted by Maureen Dowd) that, “Incumbents very seldom invent the future.”

The wealth of reporting regarding the decline of print publications is influenced by the fact that those impacted are also the ones holding the megaphones. Jack Shafer’s article remarked, “That high-pitched squealing you hear in the background is the sound of the American newspaper shrinking.”

Looking from my perch as editor of an online arts magazine, I see the pain caused by the loss of staff journalist positions. The situation reminds me of an article written by Terry Teachout for the Wall Street Journal in November of 2006, sub-titled, “The decline and near-disappearance of dance in America.” The article highlighted the National Endowment for the Arts 2002 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts, which showed that “…the percentage of Americans between the ages of 18 and 35 who attended one or more ballet performances a year fell from 5.0% in 1992 to 3.1% in 2002.”

Teachout argued that “Anyone who seeks to launch a new company, or revitalize an old one, must start by figuring out how to make large numbers of Americans want to see something about which they no longer know anything–save that Emmitt Smith does it.” Like Dance, print newspapers are falling off of our radar screen. While the talent of the print economy adapts to a new marketplace, we can rest assured that the market still values reporting, and journalism.

There is no evidence that the interest of consumers has dramatically changed; the marketplace is evolving. New models are developing within a newer economy to support the interests of news consumers and providers. The situation is quite reminiscent of Mark Twain’s experience with the New York Journal (a daily that ceased publication in 1966.) Following publication of his obituary in the Journal, Twain quipped, “The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”

Video reviews

I was able to sit in on the Dance Critics Association annual conference last summer (thanks George.) Hosted by the Kennedy Center, the meeting was an opportunity to sit in a room with the best and newest critics around, and to listen as they shared opinions, joys, and pains. Delphina Parenti‘s performance of an early modern Maslow piece punctuates my memory of the conference.

Amongst all the talking was some serious hand-wringing regarding changes wrought by technology. Does criticism have to change to reach electronic readers? Perhaps words are no longer enough? Now we will have to make videos also? There isn’t time to do that. How can we be writers and multi-media producers at the the same time?

I have no idea when this started, or if others are doing it; here is a video review of a new production of Guys and Dolls by Terry Teachout, dance and theater critic for the Wall Street Journal. I’ve enjoyed his blog on arts journal for a while.

The Joyce Theater now has a blog. Not a hat on the street one, but an actual content-carrying one. Dance Theater Workshops‘s performance listing pages now have images and video from performances.

As the new things arrive (railroads, cars, telephones, computers….) the worst that the old people can do for themselves is pretend that they can’t work with the new things. The second worst of course is thinking that the new thing can replace them/what they do. I’m pretty sure we’ll start seeing more video reviews published alongside traditional ones. Kudos to Terry and his team for not waiting for the express.