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Thursday, October 26, 2006
TheirSpace
I received my Boosey & Hawkes Newsletter the other day — always a good read, but one article caught my eye immediately. It's a piece headlined "B&H Composers On Myspace", and it details how several of their biggest names now have myspace pages:
www.myspace.com/johnadamsmusic
www.myspace.com/elenakatschernin
www.myspace.com/stevenmackeymusic
www.myspace.com/meredithmonkmusic
www.myspace.com/stevereichmusic
www.myspace.com/christopherrouse
Now even B&H composers can get invitations to join "webcam groups" (Nope. Don't want to know what that is) from "Oksana" (Nope. Not a real person).
BCM has a page, yup. It seemed interesting and easy (and harmless enough) to put one together, for sure. And I can see where if the engine is worked consistently and with diligence, it can be an amazing marketing tool. I'm also betting your average 16-year old Radiohead fanboy would really dig someone like Meredith Monk, or Steve Reich — they've just never had an opportunity to hear their stuff. So why not see if you can't reach them?
But I'm less sure that this would make a dent for, say, Christopher Rouse. I just don't see his audience anywhere in there. Can't even conceive of Rouse copied onto an iPod, and myspace seems to work best for music you'd want to steal. Likewise for Steven Mackey (the other Mackey!). He's giving it a go, definitely—he's put up his coolest pieces (although not my particular favorite, his Micro-Concerto for Percussion and Chamber Ensemble)—but from the comments on the page, I'm getting the vibe that no one has a clue who he is, or cares. "Very cool sounds!!!!", or "Nice to hear real instruments" does not bode well for an established composer.
The myspace concept is brilliant of course. But I personally find it hard to get past the kinks, like the fact that the audio streaming is simply horrendous. Or that the pages are ugly as sin, or that your page layout can get knocked to Kingdom Come when some yahoo posts a ginormous picture of a barbie doll in your comments. 'Cause there are prettier, more targeted knockoffs which might be a better fit...
But this might not be the worst idea for John Adams. Or Steve Reich. Or especially Elena Kats-Chernin, who might be the best sign B&H has done in 20 years. Her music is cool as anything, and masterfully crafted—but also sincerely unique. Myspace might work for her. Her stuff's got legs, and the wider the net you throw for her, I say the better. A snippet of her excellent Clocks is streamed from the page, and everyone should hear that piece.
For the other Big Guys my gut reaction is to grumpily grunt "...if I want to hear Music for 18 Musicians, I can pop in the CD." It might sound slightly better than in the 16-bit cruddy internet stream. But in this forum, those who don't know that marvelous masterpiece could conceivably get a taste, and I'm betting their minds will be blown.
What would be even cooler yet is if B&H somehow gets all of them to post bits of works-in-progress and such on their myspace pages instead of their finished pieces. Their personal webpages could be left for the serious-minded—those interested in playing their music, and the myspace page for the quirky throwaways, the non-final drafts ... y'know, the interesting stuff. I'd be on board with that, and would check in on their profiles all the time. Me and "Oksana".
2 Comments:
The MySpace trend is pretty interesting, I agree. When I went to LA for the National Arts Marketing Conference in April, the first thing they told us was "Get your arts group onto MySpace!" So that's what I did. And now we have almost 600 friends. I'm not exactly sure how well it's working, but it gives the younger generation a chance to give us feedback on their favorite dancers and productions. We've also started incorporating some marketing tactics on the page, like using our blog for press releases and special offers. You can't deny that putting yourself in front of 70 million people could ever be a bad thing. It may work better for some (Eric) than others (Rouse).
I find the whole intersection of contemporary classical/art music and digital networking hubs like MySpace utterly fascinating. We may be a long way from determining what works best for, in this case, the new music industry, but I think that composers and publishers like B&H are giving themselves the benefit of the doubt by attempting to be at the forefront of the experiment. And, yes, sooner or later the music of a composer like Christopher Rouse is bound to elicit a less than comprehensive response from a random MySpace browser, but if we choose to, I believe we can see in that a significant intersection of interests that might otherwise have never taken place. I know this is a bit abstract, but I guess I am just appreciating the fact that, due to MySpace and other smaller online communities, truly great music is given another opportunity to be part of the fabric of culture. In the big picture, contemporary art music may ultimately remain relatively obscure and esoteric, but its sheer presence online on such portals is important.
Speaking of Christopher Rouse, Musical America recently posted on their website a B&H press release about the forthcoming premiere of one of the composer’s largest works, his Requiem, which was commissioned by an arts organization that I direct, Soli Deo Gloria. Anyone in the L.A. area toward the end of March may be interested to take it in. I think it’s really going to be significant.
Chandler Branch, Exe. Dir.
Soli Deo Gloria
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Soli Deo Gloria, at
11:18 AM