thank you imagine music that could feel
a culture when I was very small we had
hi-5 system and a small collection of
classical albums I listened to de mole
de by smetana
and the Firebird suite by Stravinsky and
Beethoven’s Pastoral I play put that on
the on the stereo and played it when I
was sick because it was my healing music
when I was 13 my best friend gave me the
latest hit meet the Beatles my mom took
a look at it said that’s trash throw it
out I hit it but the lesson had been
learned
listening to music was not a matter of
preference it was about listening to the
right music which was composed by good
composers and the wrong music which was
trash this caused some pretty serious
cognitive disconnect in me and the
rebellion began by the time I got here
to college I had stopped listening to
classical music altogether at that time
my healing music was the Paul
as I came of age I came to understand
that my parents were very well-meaning
but they were mistaken they were doing
some kind of a moral conflation in their
heads which really had more to do with
propriety now propriety is one of those
words that refers back to group identity
right so if you follow the rules of
etiquette for the group to which you
wish to belong you’re invited in if you
can’t won’t don’t forget it and these
were notions that didn’t sit well and
required scrutiny on my part so I’m here
this afternoon to ask you to look at
your attitudes about classical music in
the United States and in this I’m
talking about the Symphony Orchestra the
from the Boston Symphony Orchestra all
the way down to but really mostly about
community volunteer orchestras such as
the Lowell Philharmonic Orchestra in
[Music]
imagine a culture that values
authenticity over propriety every
institution has walls I’m here you’re
there there’s a wall propriety is a
social construct that sets up all kinds
of walls all artificial
my husband’s partner in their sound and
light business in Boston is Dave who was
from Southie he speaks with a South
Boston accent so thick you need
subtitles right and he dresses in a
black t-shirt black jeans with a long
chain everywhere but he’s a genius in
the sound booth Dave told me about the
time that he and some friends got
tickets to the the Symphony Orchestra so
they went and they sat down and Dave
found himself sitting next to a blue
head patron of the Arts she looked him
over and said what are you doing here
Dave being Dave said yeah I like to come
to the concert she said well I’m quite
surprised you’d want to be here
well Dave knows waltz he knows walls of
economics of Education of class but he’s
so brilliant and and so motivated that
he just bulldozers right on across those
tracks
my daughter-in-law Sarah
college-educated a schoolteacher in
Salem Massachusetts she’s a real music
lover so I asked her about her her
thoughts about the Symphony Orchestra
and she said well you know I like
classical music but I just don’t know
very much about it you know it’s really
you really would I grew up with I grew
up with indie and folk rock and and and
pop and I liked that she thought a bit
and she said you know it’s because it’s
kind of dance and
jamón yeah Dave Struthers really kind of
run to death-metal on his truck radio
but the fact is that both of them listen
to what they know they listen to what is
familiar so therefore it seems as though
we have two cultures here we have
European classical cook culture of these
great symphonic pieces and we have this
wonderful body of American homegrown
popular music so how can we get the two
together oh well that’s easy the Pops
[Music]
imagine a music industry that respects
our roots the Pops not limited to but
mostly involving pop tunes set to the
strings arranged for the strings
nowadays though we tend to think more of
the the about a hundred and thirty years
later right we think of the Boston Pops
on the at the fourth of July on the
Esplanade right playing for a sea of
people
however classical music musicians have a
few bits of ambivalence about playing
this music don’t get me wrong we love
playing fun music that is well written
but we have some feelings that maybe
were being asked to compromise our
artistic ethics you see it’s made very
very clear to us that the Pops is about
the bottom line butts in seats and this
obsession with money starts at the top
with a corporate music industry who
wants to use a world-class Symphony
Orchestra to legitimize a pop artist
that they are promoting now the idea
that legit musicians and that is a real
term are being kind of shanghaied into
being a backup band for
pop artists no matter how good they are
and they are just so some corporate suit
can make a ton of money
now that causes some ethical concerns ah
but this is entertainment right come on
just chill right we have an appreciative
audience and we’re making music what’s
the source of the music
african-americans immigrants those
people and now by definition
illegitimate illegitimate will somebody
please tell me in what way does popular
music need to be legitimized by anybody
ah
but high culture we’re elevating the
music right well I have yet to meet a
pop artist who feels their music needs
to be legit Allura to be elevated
although nobody turns down a paying gig
I can tell you that the the issue really
started when the music industry becoming
aware of the tremendous amount of demand
for popular music so cash cow and so
they assimilated the music they
appropriated it then they got their
legal departments to write up all kinds
of proprietary agreements and what they
ended up with was a music that was
sanitized made playable by strings and
palatable for mostly white audiences and
if you don’t believe me Google audience
photos fourth of July Esplanade I did
did people demand pops concerts because
they want to hear something that’s
familiar they want to hear music they
know and they’re not thinking about
corporate and they’re not thinking about
the faces in the crowd and they’re
they’re certainly not thinking about our
artistic ethics right they’re there to
have fun with their families and that is
the way it should be and the pops
started as a way to take this european
culture that was come you know
in droves on boats and combine it with a
premise like vital homegrown popular
culture here but it didn’t work
greed and bias created division and the
people the people whose music that
originally belonged to they’re not
really that interested in coming to the
concerts case in point we did market
research in downtown Lowell with person
and the street interviews asking
people’s attitudes about symphonic music
Vanessa an african-american woman early
forties dressed in a business suit
agreed to answer some questions I asked
her how frequently do you go to the
symphony pops her otherwise whoa don’t
win the headlights she said occasionally
yeah I said okay what can we do to make
you want to come to hear a concert oh
that took her back she looked at me like
this and she thought and she answered
honestly you could make the music more
imagine a repertoire that is a just and
truthful representation of who we are as
Americans this next little part is kind
of like the intermission right when you
would be looking at your program and
reading the notes about the pieces
you’ve been hearing except you can’t
because they’re all on the screen behind
me and the thing is is what you’ve been
hearing has nothing to do with the
slides because I’m making my own
Symphony here but this now this will
give you a chance to read the
attribution and I can tell you about the
reasons I chose these pieces
I chose Beethoven because of the
antecedent because because we need to
respect all of our sources about a
minute into the third movement of the
pastoral symphony he quotes a little
Austrian folk dance of the day and he
pokes a little a little gentle fun at a
group of local musicians for whom he
actually wrote in which the oboe player
tended to come a bit early and the
bassoon player a little bit late listen
to it Ralf garlic is at Boston College
he was born in Germany unadopted he was
adopted his mother was from Turkey and
she found herself pregnant out of
wedlock and so fled for her life and
gave a ruff for adoption he was raised
and then she disappeared back into
Turkey so he was raised in Germany
emigrated to the United States and his
music and I know you’ve never heard of
him but but I hope you’ll look him up
his music is powerfully emotional deeply
classical and using a lot of poetry and
text sources de Lima Subrosa
is line from Cervantes poem Don Quixote
Florence price came to critical acclaim
in the late 1930s she moved to Chicago
and lived there pretty
for her life and as such was kind of a
westward expansion of the Harlem
Renaissance the joopa movement of her
third symphony is characteristic of the
music that she grew up with but her
music became largely lost and is only
Roberto Sierra what a lovely man I had a
great conversation with him he came from
Puerto Rico originally he teaches at
Cornell University
now fandango’s is a very popular piece
of his and one one of my favorite pieces
of all time it’s kind of a construction
deconstruction reconstruction of this
old Spanish harpsichord baroque piece
right and and I like it because it’s got
that bolero groove that goes all the way
through it but Sierra is very clever
about the deconstruction where he just
it falls apart and then brilliantly
comes back together again Jennifer
Higdon is at Curtis Institute of music
she too has kind of a interesting
background because she didn’t grow up
with classical music she grew up with
folk and rock and roll and as her genius
began to emerge she felt that she had to
really play a lot of cash she had to
work extra hard to catch up with her
with her classmates and now Pulitzer
Prize and a few Grammys later I think
she’s done the job blue cathedral is a
tone poem that that is kind of one of
her signature pieces and you can listen
to that now now all of the music clips
are going to line up with the slides for
you
[Music]
imagine a sharing music community there
is fierce competition for grants for
cheap rehearsal space for audience for
even musicians and so you can’t blame
community performing arts groups for
holding their cards pretty darn close
when I was doing my orchestra research
in Lowell Mass Sean who was then the
president of the LA Philharmonic
Orchestra the amateur group emailed me
and he said are you gonna be booking
your concerts on the same nights as us
well okay so to me being a good art
citizen is not threatening my sister
organizations and I told Sean that and I
also told him that we wouldn’t be double
booking our concerts because Sean if you
remember I play with aloe Phil right I
sit behind you lack of access is such a
critical problem especially in the
community arts because there’s no money
and access to new music in particular is
it’s almost unattainable you can’t
really buy it it’s very expensive to
rent and what is not in print which is
most of it is all proprietary so what’s
left to school music or what’s in the
public domain and you can guess that’s
standard European rep what if I could
tell Sean that a piece my professional
group commissioned and premiered this
season I could make available to Lowell
Philharmonic next season for nothing
more than the cost of the royalty back
to the composer ownership of critical
resources back in the hands of its
creators offers the promise of healthier
arts communities by working from the
bottom up with support from the top but
the plight of the composer oh my gosh
can you imagine writing a piece for
months or even years and having to beg
an orchestra even pay an orchestra to
perform it
now this isn’t my personal experience
because actually I’m not a composer I’m
a conductor but but I work for them
I do copy work for them so then they
would get like one rehearsal from this
Orchestra and a single performance kind
of shaky right it hasn’t had a chance to
to a lock-in and then the piece goes
never heard from again
this happens with thousands of pieces of
music that are out there you know that
just doesn’t seem right because as a
conductor I need time to develop my
interpretation and my musicians need to
get it under their fingers right but
mostly most importantly you you need a
chance to hear it a few times right it’s
got to grow on you
maybe it’ll stick I guarantee you
history will take care of longevity if
we’ve learned anything from the
corporate music industry it is how
critical it is to create demand because
demand steers growth growth Foster’s
familiarity and familiarity creates good
old cannon and cannon is just a fancy
imagine our greatest talent taking their
place on the world stage right I chose
this piece the three black kings by
Deucalion Ellington not because
Ellington drew from the source but
because he was the source I can sum this
up in the kind of a syllogism if you’ll
allow me based on Aristotle’s rulebook
for the arts the poetics in an air
stallion sense the symphony orchestra is
on that Royal Road to universal truth
with music as a medium our folk music is
the universal outcry of the human
condition that’s why it’s popular you
know
so therefore doesn’t it make sense that
our source music our fork folk music
deserves a ticket to ride on that Royal
Road in an Aristotelian sense but for
high culture to punch that ticket
there’s a bit of reckoning that has to
be done the timeless music of the
European tradition is revered and it
should be it absolutely should be but
this culture needs to stop hiding behind
another cultures group identity and then
we in the orchestra business need to do
some serious soul-searching about bias
and this infernal obsession with a
bottom line and then then we need to
have a serious conversation about race
and class as it relates to music in this
country then perhaps we can program some
concerts where Dave can come dressed the
way he is and not feel like he’s on the
other side of the tracks and Sarah can
come with her kids my grandkids right
they can dance the night away and
Vanessa
can hear her beautiful self reflected in
the music if Beethoven could use his
country music country man’s music to
create a classical repertoire that heals
then can’t we as Americans do exactly
the same yeah I think so
oh you know what let me hearing
something you I’m hearing something in
my head you can’t hear it because it
hasn’t been written yet imagine of
bassoon concerto based on the bass line
to Michael Jackson’s beat it yeah yeah
yeah cuz in those eighth notes there’s
enough American DNA motivic DNA that
Gustav Mahler and Ricard Strauss would
be fighting each other to develop it
yeah you know somebody should write it
maybe one of you hey I’ll tell you what
if you ride it and it’s good I’ll
program it thank you [Applause]
a culture when I was very small we had
hi-5 system and a small collection of
classical albums I listened to de mole
de by smetana
and the Firebird suite by Stravinsky and
Beethoven’s Pastoral I play put that on
the on the stereo and played it when I
was sick because it was my healing music
when I was 13 my best friend gave me the
latest hit meet the Beatles my mom took
a look at it said that’s trash throw it
out I hit it but the lesson had been
learned
listening to music was not a matter of
preference it was about listening to the
right music which was composed by good
composers and the wrong music which was
trash this caused some pretty serious
cognitive disconnect in me and the
rebellion began by the time I got here
to college I had stopped listening to
classical music altogether at that time
my healing music was the Paul
as I came of age I came to understand
that my parents were very well-meaning
but they were mistaken they were doing
some kind of a moral conflation in their
heads which really had more to do with
propriety now propriety is one of those
words that refers back to group identity
right so if you follow the rules of
etiquette for the group to which you
wish to belong you’re invited in if you
can’t won’t don’t forget it and these
were notions that didn’t sit well and
required scrutiny on my part so I’m here
this afternoon to ask you to look at
your attitudes about classical music in
the United States and in this I’m
talking about the Symphony Orchestra the
from the Boston Symphony Orchestra all
the way down to but really mostly about
community volunteer orchestras such as
the Lowell Philharmonic Orchestra in
[Music]
imagine a culture that values
authenticity over propriety every
institution has walls I’m here you’re
there there’s a wall propriety is a
social construct that sets up all kinds
of walls all artificial
my husband’s partner in their sound and
light business in Boston is Dave who was
from Southie he speaks with a South
Boston accent so thick you need
subtitles right and he dresses in a
black t-shirt black jeans with a long
chain everywhere but he’s a genius in
the sound booth Dave told me about the
time that he and some friends got
tickets to the the Symphony Orchestra so
they went and they sat down and Dave
found himself sitting next to a blue
head patron of the Arts she looked him
over and said what are you doing here
Dave being Dave said yeah I like to come
to the concert she said well I’m quite
surprised you’d want to be here
well Dave knows waltz he knows walls of
economics of Education of class but he’s
so brilliant and and so motivated that
he just bulldozers right on across those
tracks
my daughter-in-law Sarah
college-educated a schoolteacher in
Salem Massachusetts she’s a real music
lover so I asked her about her her
thoughts about the Symphony Orchestra
and she said well you know I like
classical music but I just don’t know
very much about it you know it’s really
you really would I grew up with I grew
up with indie and folk rock and and and
pop and I liked that she thought a bit
and she said you know it’s because it’s
kind of dance and
jamón yeah Dave Struthers really kind of
run to death-metal on his truck radio
but the fact is that both of them listen
to what they know they listen to what is
familiar so therefore it seems as though
we have two cultures here we have
European classical cook culture of these
great symphonic pieces and we have this
wonderful body of American homegrown
popular music so how can we get the two
together oh well that’s easy the Pops
[Music]
imagine a music industry that respects
our roots the Pops not limited to but
mostly involving pop tunes set to the
strings arranged for the strings
nowadays though we tend to think more of
the the about a hundred and thirty years
later right we think of the Boston Pops
on the at the fourth of July on the
Esplanade right playing for a sea of
people
however classical music musicians have a
few bits of ambivalence about playing
this music don’t get me wrong we love
playing fun music that is well written
but we have some feelings that maybe
were being asked to compromise our
artistic ethics you see it’s made very
very clear to us that the Pops is about
the bottom line butts in seats and this
obsession with money starts at the top
with a corporate music industry who
wants to use a world-class Symphony
Orchestra to legitimize a pop artist
that they are promoting now the idea
that legit musicians and that is a real
term are being kind of shanghaied into
being a backup band for
pop artists no matter how good they are
and they are just so some corporate suit
can make a ton of money
now that causes some ethical concerns ah
but this is entertainment right come on
just chill right we have an appreciative
audience and we’re making music what’s
the source of the music
african-americans immigrants those
people and now by definition
illegitimate illegitimate will somebody
please tell me in what way does popular
music need to be legitimized by anybody
ah
but high culture we’re elevating the
music right well I have yet to meet a
pop artist who feels their music needs
to be legit Allura to be elevated
although nobody turns down a paying gig
I can tell you that the the issue really
started when the music industry becoming
aware of the tremendous amount of demand
for popular music so cash cow and so
they assimilated the music they
appropriated it then they got their
legal departments to write up all kinds
of proprietary agreements and what they
ended up with was a music that was
sanitized made playable by strings and
palatable for mostly white audiences and
if you don’t believe me Google audience
photos fourth of July Esplanade I did
did people demand pops concerts because
they want to hear something that’s
familiar they want to hear music they
know and they’re not thinking about
corporate and they’re not thinking about
the faces in the crowd and they’re
they’re certainly not thinking about our
artistic ethics right they’re there to
have fun with their families and that is
the way it should be and the pops
started as a way to take this european
culture that was come you know
in droves on boats and combine it with a
premise like vital homegrown popular
culture here but it didn’t work
greed and bias created division and the
people the people whose music that
originally belonged to they’re not
really that interested in coming to the
concerts case in point we did market
research in downtown Lowell with person
and the street interviews asking
people’s attitudes about symphonic music
Vanessa an african-american woman early
forties dressed in a business suit
agreed to answer some questions I asked
her how frequently do you go to the
symphony pops her otherwise whoa don’t
win the headlights she said occasionally
yeah I said okay what can we do to make
you want to come to hear a concert oh
that took her back she looked at me like
this and she thought and she answered
honestly you could make the music more
imagine a repertoire that is a just and
truthful representation of who we are as
Americans this next little part is kind
of like the intermission right when you
would be looking at your program and
reading the notes about the pieces
you’ve been hearing except you can’t
because they’re all on the screen behind
me and the thing is is what you’ve been
hearing has nothing to do with the
slides because I’m making my own
Symphony here but this now this will
give you a chance to read the
attribution and I can tell you about the
reasons I chose these pieces
I chose Beethoven because of the
antecedent because because we need to
respect all of our sources about a
minute into the third movement of the
pastoral symphony he quotes a little
Austrian folk dance of the day and he
pokes a little a little gentle fun at a
group of local musicians for whom he
actually wrote in which the oboe player
tended to come a bit early and the
bassoon player a little bit late listen
to it Ralf garlic is at Boston College
he was born in Germany unadopted he was
adopted his mother was from Turkey and
she found herself pregnant out of
wedlock and so fled for her life and
gave a ruff for adoption he was raised
and then she disappeared back into
Turkey so he was raised in Germany
emigrated to the United States and his
music and I know you’ve never heard of
him but but I hope you’ll look him up
his music is powerfully emotional deeply
classical and using a lot of poetry and
text sources de Lima Subrosa
is line from Cervantes poem Don Quixote
Florence price came to critical acclaim
in the late 1930s she moved to Chicago
and lived there pretty
for her life and as such was kind of a
westward expansion of the Harlem
Renaissance the joopa movement of her
third symphony is characteristic of the
music that she grew up with but her
music became largely lost and is only
Roberto Sierra what a lovely man I had a
great conversation with him he came from
Puerto Rico originally he teaches at
Cornell University
now fandango’s is a very popular piece
of his and one one of my favorite pieces
of all time it’s kind of a construction
deconstruction reconstruction of this
old Spanish harpsichord baroque piece
right and and I like it because it’s got
that bolero groove that goes all the way
through it but Sierra is very clever
about the deconstruction where he just
it falls apart and then brilliantly
comes back together again Jennifer
Higdon is at Curtis Institute of music
she too has kind of a interesting
background because she didn’t grow up
with classical music she grew up with
folk and rock and roll and as her genius
began to emerge she felt that she had to
really play a lot of cash she had to
work extra hard to catch up with her
with her classmates and now Pulitzer
Prize and a few Grammys later I think
she’s done the job blue cathedral is a
tone poem that that is kind of one of
her signature pieces and you can listen
to that now now all of the music clips
are going to line up with the slides for
you
[Music]
imagine a sharing music community there
is fierce competition for grants for
cheap rehearsal space for audience for
even musicians and so you can’t blame
community performing arts groups for
holding their cards pretty darn close
when I was doing my orchestra research
in Lowell Mass Sean who was then the
president of the LA Philharmonic
Orchestra the amateur group emailed me
and he said are you gonna be booking
your concerts on the same nights as us
well okay so to me being a good art
citizen is not threatening my sister
organizations and I told Sean that and I
also told him that we wouldn’t be double
booking our concerts because Sean if you
remember I play with aloe Phil right I
sit behind you lack of access is such a
critical problem especially in the
community arts because there’s no money
and access to new music in particular is
it’s almost unattainable you can’t
really buy it it’s very expensive to
rent and what is not in print which is
most of it is all proprietary so what’s
left to school music or what’s in the
public domain and you can guess that’s
standard European rep what if I could
tell Sean that a piece my professional
group commissioned and premiered this
season I could make available to Lowell
Philharmonic next season for nothing
more than the cost of the royalty back
to the composer ownership of critical
resources back in the hands of its
creators offers the promise of healthier
arts communities by working from the
bottom up with support from the top but
the plight of the composer oh my gosh
can you imagine writing a piece for
months or even years and having to beg
an orchestra even pay an orchestra to
perform it
now this isn’t my personal experience
because actually I’m not a composer I’m
a conductor but but I work for them
I do copy work for them so then they
would get like one rehearsal from this
Orchestra and a single performance kind
of shaky right it hasn’t had a chance to
to a lock-in and then the piece goes
never heard from again
this happens with thousands of pieces of
music that are out there you know that
just doesn’t seem right because as a
conductor I need time to develop my
interpretation and my musicians need to
get it under their fingers right but
mostly most importantly you you need a
chance to hear it a few times right it’s
got to grow on you
maybe it’ll stick I guarantee you
history will take care of longevity if
we’ve learned anything from the
corporate music industry it is how
critical it is to create demand because
demand steers growth growth Foster’s
familiarity and familiarity creates good
old cannon and cannon is just a fancy
imagine our greatest talent taking their
place on the world stage right I chose
this piece the three black kings by
Deucalion Ellington not because
Ellington drew from the source but
because he was the source I can sum this
up in the kind of a syllogism if you’ll
allow me based on Aristotle’s rulebook
for the arts the poetics in an air
stallion sense the symphony orchestra is
on that Royal Road to universal truth
with music as a medium our folk music is
the universal outcry of the human
condition that’s why it’s popular you
know
so therefore doesn’t it make sense that
our source music our fork folk music
deserves a ticket to ride on that Royal
Road in an Aristotelian sense but for
high culture to punch that ticket
there’s a bit of reckoning that has to
be done the timeless music of the
European tradition is revered and it
should be it absolutely should be but
this culture needs to stop hiding behind
another cultures group identity and then
we in the orchestra business need to do
some serious soul-searching about bias
and this infernal obsession with a
bottom line and then then we need to
have a serious conversation about race
and class as it relates to music in this
country then perhaps we can program some
concerts where Dave can come dressed the
way he is and not feel like he’s on the
other side of the tracks and Sarah can
come with her kids my grandkids right
they can dance the night away and
Vanessa
can hear her beautiful self reflected in
the music if Beethoven could use his
country music country man’s music to
create a classical repertoire that heals
then can’t we as Americans do exactly
the same yeah I think so
oh you know what let me hearing
something you I’m hearing something in
my head you can’t hear it because it
hasn’t been written yet imagine of
bassoon concerto based on the bass line
to Michael Jackson’s beat it yeah yeah
yeah cuz in those eighth notes there’s
enough American DNA motivic DNA that
Gustav Mahler and Ricard Strauss would
be fighting each other to develop it
yeah you know somebody should write it
maybe one of you hey I’ll tell you what
if you ride it and it’s good I’ll
program it thank you [Applause]
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