Columbus, Oh. - July, 1999
Third Stream - Pro Musica - Dr Timothy Russell & David Murray
As with a number of my generation, I grew up listening to the radio. I listened to Chicago’s Sid McCoy and to Detroit’s DJs that included George White, ”Frantic” Ernie Durham, Ed McKinzie, Kim Herron, Ed Love, Dr Laslow
Böhm, ”Night Flight”, and others.
Dr Böhm played a recording of a Bach cantata every week on Wayne State University’s WDET-FM (hereinafter WSU). In high school I listened to ”Frantic” Ernie Durham who played R & B and whose theme songs where the very hip ”Hand Clapping” by Red Prysock and the even hipper ”Bluesology” by the Modern Jazz Quartet. I once had a job painting a neighbor’s backyard fence. Since George White’s one hour jazz program aired from noon to one o’clock, I painted from noon to one each day. There’s no accounting for a proto-bebopper’s work habits! I’ve mentioned the New World Stage elsewhere.
In the 1960’s John Sinclair produced jazz-music recitals in WSU’s Helen DeRoy auditorium and was one of the founders of the Artists’ Workshop. I recall meeting alto-saxophonist Marion Brown after his group’s performance in DeRoy. Later, 1972, Sinclair was one of the producers of the Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz Festival that featured Sun Ra, Art Ensemble of Chicago, Elmore James et al. For a history of the Ann Arbor Blues and Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz Festivals see the Wikipedia link below. In later years, the Ann Arbor Festivals evolved into Eclipse Jazz which presented Sonny Rollins, Dexter Gordon, Johnny Griffin, Max Roach’s duet with Archie Shepp, Art Ensemble of Chicago, Leroy Jenkins, Freddie Hubbard, Stanley Turrentine, David Murray’s Octet and B3 organ quartet with Don Pullen, among others.
A lot of Fire Music then.
It was also in the DeRoy venue that Elliot Wilhelm started the Detroit Film Theater, now part of the Detroit Institute of Arts.
In Ann Arbor, in the 1960s, the ONCE Festival was an annual event.
The ONCE Group was a collection of musicians, visual artists, architects, and film-makers who wished to create an environment in which artists could explore and share techniques and ideas in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The group was responsible for hosting the ONCE Festival of New Music in Ann Arbor between 1961 and 1966. It was founded by Ann Arborites Robert Ashley, George Caioppo, Gordon Mumma, Roger Reynolds and Donald Scavarda. [From Wikipedia]
I remember listening to a radio broadcast from the ONCE Festival featuring Eric Dolphy. What I’m getting at is this: the ONCE Festival was so named because the thought was that it would be a one-time thing, a non-repeatable event. The ONCE Festival did persist for seven years.
I’ve been personally involved in producing music concerts in Detroit, Michigan and Columbus, Ohio. The Detroit concert featured the British Arditti String Quartet performing works by Schoenberg, Kagel and Kurtag under the auspices of the Chamber Music Society of Detroit. The Columbus concerts featured David Murray and D. D. Jackson and the World Saxophone Quartet. These concerts were under the auspices of the Pro Musica Chamber Orchestra, Timothy Russell, Music Director. In 2003 a recording was released (see link below) by Pro Musica of concertos by George Gershwin, Aaron Copland, and Oliver Lake. The Lake composition, Rahsaan & Stuff was commissioned by Pro Musica and features the World Saxophone Quartet—Oliver Lake, David Murray, Hamiet Bluiett, and Bruce Williams. The Gershwin Rhapsody in Blue featured D. D. Jackson and the Copland Clarinet Concerto featured the orchestra’s principle clarinet Robert Spring. The live concert was, and the studio recording is, breathtaking. Exciting concert music, excellent orchestra and music direction, wonderful soloists. See the link below.
WHY ONLY ONCE OR AT MOST TWICE?
Why did the Chamber Music Society of Detroit retreat from newer and new music presentations? Why did Pro Musica retreat from adventurous programs such as Gershwin-Copland-Lake? Pro-What-Music or Which-Music? one might ask. I have thought about THIS QUESTION, about these questions often. The spirit of, and motivation behind, my remarks is one of regret, of course; but also one of hoping that a music-ecology need might be recognized and acted upon.
Americans tend to be Anti-American when it comes to serious-art-music. Americans love the actor and film maker Clint Eastwood. Mr Eastwood remarked somewhere that America’s major contributions to culture have been jazz and western films. And, until recently, even film-music scores were primarily the products European composers.
Excuses I’ve Been Given
• New and Newer music is too difficult to learn and requires too much rehearsal time.
• Corporate Funders don’t invest in programs they don’t like, in music they can’t understand.
• Individual donors and subscribers dislike new and newer music.
• Newspaper critics don’t like new and newer music. They’ll knock our organization for scheduling new music.
• The general public doesn’t like new and newer music.
• ‘Classical Music’ radio stations dislike playing new and newer music.
• Our audience consists of a defined socio-economic class. And it doesn’t support new, newer, or American music performed by certain individuals—black musicians don’t draw as well as other musicians.
• N.B. This last comment was made not by anyone connected with the Chamber Music Society or Pro Musica; but by an artistic director of an arts organization affiliated with a public university.
The Pro Musica Chamber Orchestra of Columbus, Ohio deserves a lot of credit for presenting David Murray, D. D. Jackson, the World Saxophone Quartet, and for commissioning Oliver Lake’s Rahsaan & Stuff. It deserves criticism, however, for not continuing to present new and newer music: for not presenting (at least) Schoenberg’s chamber orchestra arrangements of Mahler, his Erwartung, Webern’s chamber orchestra arrangements, smaller ensemble pieces featuring orchestra members, Stravinsky’s Septet (say), and many other offerings from the 20th Century.
With orchestras going out of business in the USA, the prevailing attitude is: let’s just play the audiences’ top twenty. Let's give our audience what it wants—viz. no surprises and nothing for the audiences’ imagination. One problem with this attitude is this: the audience is dying and a new younger audience is not being cultivated properly. Reliance on top-forty ‘classical’ radio stations won’t do. This attitude reinforces the cycle of feel-good-smooth-music; music heard so often that its performances become banal.
The Ohio State University is to be commended for its School of Music’s New Music Festivals presenting the music of composers Gunther Schuller, Lukas Foss, Krzysztof Penderecki, and others. And for having the composers appear in person.
The point of the above is this: We ought to be able to do better. And it’s something of a paradox that with less money, with meager funding NEW and NEWER MUSIC IS A BARGAIN. (For example, new music specialists cost less.) Top forty is more expensive and a waste of an orchestra’s and chamber music society’s financial resources. (Stars of top-forty cost more and are overpaid.) Cultivating new audience, an audience with eclectic and electric tastes and sensibilities, requires techniques employed by winning football and basketball programs: orchestras must draft well (new and newer music), have competent artistic direction (winning coaches), and an organization that the players (orchestra members) and coach (music director) can rely on for management support. Schumann and Stockhausen.
DUE TO FINANCIAL CONSTRAINTS WE ARE FORCED TO PRESENT NEW MUSIC. SORRY!
