Music

Jeremy Dutcher and Why Indigenous Music Matters /  by Chris Foley

Congratulations go out to Jeremy Dutcher, whose Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa (iTunes link) won the Juno award for Best Indigenous Album last weekend. Jeremy’s process for creating the album involved transcribing and arranging songs in the Wolastoqiyik language from wax cylinders in the Canadian Museum of History.

Here’s Jeremy singing and playing Pomok Naka Poktoinskwes on CBC’s First Play Live:

A few words about Jeremy’s process from his National Music Centre residency a few years ago:

In his acceptance speech, Jeremy asked all the other nominees in the Best Indigenous Album category to stand up and be acknowledged. His words on the importance of the Indigenous genre:

All of your work changes this place, and it deserves to be considered outside of this category. Because our music is not niche. Our music is saying something.

I don’t know how many more times they’re going to let me do this, so Justin - Mr. Trudeau - a nation-to-nation relationships does not look like pipelines. A nation-to-nation relationship does not look like sending militarized police forces to unceded territory. And a nation-to-nation relationship doesn’t look like - in 2019 - our communities still on boiled water advisory. 

So, this means so much to me. I hope to continue to share and use this platform to tell truth. We can all do better…

The Space Between the Notes /  by Chris Foley

Rhonda Rizzo explores the ground of being called silence from which music emerges:

Actors know the power of the pregnant pause.  Artists understand the need for white space.  Some musicians play the notes; others play the space between the notes.  Masterful artists of any discipline think perhaps the notes or words or space are a way to express the silence and that sound and silence are simply mirror images of the same thing.  But then again, have any notes really ever expressed the nature of silence?  Can words or paint or sound ever do more than hint at the eternal silence that is the foundation of everything—the silence of earth and rock and empty space.  After all, the Earth is simply a spinning marble of clay in a sea of silence older than time.

Many people are surprised to learn that I rarely listen to music in my free time, and that it is most certainly not classical. In order to function as a pianist and teacher of music for up to 9 hours a day, I need periods of silence for at least part of the day so that I can emerge from a place of quiet and actually listen to the music that I’m playing and teaching.

Radio-Canada's Ultimate Record Giveaway /  by Chris Foley

You’ll never find a bigger record giveaway than this one:

Radio-Canada is seeking Canadian institutions that fall into one or more of the following categories: a) secondary or post-secondary educational institutions that offer specialized music instruction recognized by a provincial Department of Education or the equivalent in Canada; b) museums; c) public libraries; d) community radio services; e) non-profit organizations with a social mission (hereinafter referred to individually as the “Institution”) to acquire, as is and without charge, one or more portions of its inventory of vinyl records comprising an estimated 108,000 surplus copies of 33 RPM, 45 RPM and 78 RPM records, and/or its inventory of CDs comprising an estimated 57,000surplus copies (hereinafter referred to as the “Inventory”).

The breakdown of vinyl is astonishing:

  • 49,000 33 RPM records

  • 19,000 45 RPM records

  • 40,000 78 RPM records

I’ll bet the 78’s are where the genuine treasures lie. Of the types of non-profit institutions listed, I can guess that community radio services might have the biggest mandate to take on such a huge record collection, assuming space permits. Might be worth the road trip to Montreal…

(Via Ludwig van Toronto)

(Image from Umberto Cofini on Unsplash)

19 Blogs I Follow in 2019 /  by Chris Foley

Last year I published a list of my favorite blogs that reflected some of my picks for the best independent writing on the web. This year the selection grows by one, with several new additions. Although the material from these writers is highly varied, a common theme tends to dominate: honest, straightforward writing from authentic minds, presented in a clean, clutter-free layout, emphasizing ideas rather than hard-selling a product, and broad enough in scope so that people outside their field would be interested in what they have to say.

  1. Brain Pickings - Maria Popova reads a lot of books. More than that, she crafts the ideas of authors and artists into fascinating blog posts that make you want to dig deeper into the literary, cultural, and scientific worlds.

  2. CJ Chilvers - A writer and photographer from Chicago who writes about creativity, technology best practices, and everything in between. His ideas on newsletters helped me greatly when I launched my own last year.

  3. The Cramped - Patrick Rhone’s blog about the pleasures of writing with analog tools, and how rediscovery of pen and paper can help to jumpstart your creative process.

  4. Cross-Eyed Pianist - Frances Wilson looks at the pianistic life with a special emphasis on the development of the amateur pianist. I particularly like the perspectives of her frequent guest bloggers.

  5. Cultural Offering - Kurt Harden writes about family life, public affairs, art, literature and the pleasures of the table.

  6. Daring Fireball - John Gruber is mostly known for his web projects (Markdown!) and The Talk Show podcast, but his blog casts a wider net with his curation of tech news and current events.

  7. Derek Sivers - Derek founded CD Baby in 1997, selling it just over 10 years later. His unique perspectives on personal development are offered with “a minimalist desire for only what’s needed.”

  8. Execupundit - Michael Wade is a consultant who writes about leadership, management, ethics, and life. He also understands the importance of process and why we need to find beautiful things.

  9. Kottke - Jason is one of the OG bloggers from over 20 years ago, and still one of the finest purveyors of hypertext products.

  10. Marginal Revolution - Economists Tyler Cowan and Alex Tabarrok offer not just a first-rate economics blog, but one of the most balanced news sites on the web.

  11. Melanie Spanswick - Melanie writes about the art of practicing the piano, education, and musical culture. A must-read for pianists.

  12. The Newsprint - Josh Ginter’s blog is memorable not just for its stunning photos, tech and gear reviews, but for his varied curation of Fresh Links from around the web.

  13. Nicholas Bate - Nicholas’ words of wisdom are offered in short, digestible posts, but their impact can be profound.

  14. Patrick Rhone - A lovely quiet street of the internet to restore sanity in an overstimulated world. In Patrick’s words: “It’s not about stuff, really. It’s about the stuff behind the stuff.”

  15. Sandow - Greg Sandow looks at issues at play in the world of classical music and how it needs to grow (or grow up) in order to survive.

  16. The Sovereign Professional - The freelance world has its attractions but is not without downside. This is what you need to read in order to stay grounded in a world of chaos and entitlement.

  17. Study Hacks - Cal Newport’s long-running blog started out as a site to help college students with study skills. Since then it has grown to become the centre of the digital minimalism community in a world where technology has made it increasingly challenging to maintain focus.

  18. Susan Eichhorn Young - Susan’s authentic voice is a beacon for those of us in the performing arts. Her kind but firm advice points of towards an artistic life filled with discovery, intention, and a growth mindset.

  19. Three Star Leadership - Ideas, strategies, and leadership reading curated from around the web by Wally Bock.

Thanks for reading and I look forward to putting together the list of 20 in another year. What blogs have I missed? Leave a comment and share your favourites!

(Image courtesy of Aaron Thomas)

Classical Music Blogs are Surprisingly Robust in 2019 /  by Chris Foley

A tweetstorm by T. Greer highlighted some of the differences from what he calls the Old Blogosphere (the ecosystem of blogs that had their heyday from 2003-2011) and the current situation with social media. Some highlights:

…back in the old days, the natural instinct of someone itching to make their point was to create their own website to do so.

This is the fundamental difference between the old blogosphere and the current media environment. In the OB, the main mode of engagement was not between bloggers and their commentators--it was between bloggers and other *bloggers.*

That took more investment. The barriers to entry to starting your own blog are not as high as starting your own twitter--but the cost of writing up a blog post were certainly larger than the cost of sending off a tweet.

Half of the people writing in those days wrote under pseudonyms. There wasn't a lot of prestige in the beginning--nobody did it to boost their resume. They did it because they were passionate or nerdy about the subject they wrote about.

And because of this, there was not a lot of credential flashing involved. You commented on other people's sites, you blogged yourself, and if what you wrote, people paid attention to you--no matter who you were.

That kind of thing just didn't happen in the world before the blogosphere--and it doesn't happen now that the old blogosphere is dead either.

But is the old blogosphere really dead?

Being one of the OG bloggers of the classical music blogosphere (I started the Collaborative Piano Blog in 2005), I must admit that it was a different place back then. Most of us followed other bloggers and we commented like crazy on other people’s blogs. This led to many animated discussions and helped to build a lot of friendships. Being linked to in another blog and having RSS subscriptions were important gauges of our readership and the measures of our success.

Then social media came along, and starting in 2007, many of us started spending more time on Twitter and Facebook. Very gradually at first, and much quicker after a few years, Facebook became the default place to hang out and keep in contact with people, share memes, or find cool links. My blogging activity started to trail off around 2014 and became a trickle by 2017-18.

Shortly after my return to blogging in the last week, I took a look at the most popular articles on the Collaborative Piano Blog in the last few months. Surprisingly, it was an article from 2007 about the top 10 classical music blogs on Bloglines, a now-defunct RSS reader. My listing was solely based on RSS subscribers.

Why are so many people still reading that article? The heyday of classical music blogs was supposed to be long past.

Turns out that’s not the case. The classical music blogosphere, far from being a thing of the past, is alive and well. Even though many of the bloggers on that list didn’t make the leap to social media, they still publish day after day with the same care and dedication that they showed 12 years ago.

A quick look at the blogs on that 2007 list shows that 19 of them have published in the last month, including 9 of the original top 10. Here they are:

And this list doesn’t even touch the significant number of classical music blogs that have sprung up since 2007.

The independent web is alive and well in the classical music world and following the scene involves a lot more than just being active on Facebook.

What are your favorite classical music blogs in 2019? Leave a comment below and let’s get the discussion going once again.

(Photo courtesy of Manuel Nägeli)

Does Classical Music Have a Problem with the Present? /  by Chris Foley

This is 2019, and many classical music organizations (especially orchestras) still have a strong preoccupation about the European past and are highly reluctant to program new works.

Greg Sandow writes about classical music’s disconnect with the modern world:

Sometimes people say, not very pleasantly, that a classical concert can be too much like a museum. But it’s been true for quite a while that this isn’t true, because museums are far more oriented toward the current world than we are.

I don’t think this makes us look good, to the people we’d like to find for our new audience. We’ll look backward to them.

Greg makes the comparison to the contemporary art world, where contemporary art draws the largest crowds, is the largest market for buyers, and the primary area of study for graduate students in art history.

A similar situation exists in the theatre scene, where plays from the past exist alongside 20th-century repertory and new work for the stage. No one throws a fit because a new play is too reminiscent of contemporary life.

However, Greg sees the upside:

But there is some good news here. Once classical music emerges into contemporary life, our new audience will be there already, waiting for us.

One of the most penetrating things I recall anyone saying about classical music and its relationship with the past was by Peter Hinton in a rehearsal several years ago*. He said that we might think we know all there is to know about the past, but we really don’t. He went on to say that if we could ever construct an actual time machine to go back in time, we wouldn’t be able to function beyond more than about 50 years in the past, as the cultural context of even the most basic social interactions would be nearly impossible to understand. It would feel like being on an alien planet.

But perhaps classical music’s staying power might be because of its tension between past and present. Different groups of people will gravitate towards different classical styles and genres, and the interplay between the great works of the past past, those of the present, and our ever-changing tendency to see the past in terms of our present-day cultural context may well be what gives classical music its variety and vitality.

How do you feel about classical music’s reluctance to embrace the present? Feel free to leave a comment below.

(Photo courtesy of Pierre Chatel-Innocenti)

*I recall this from the rehearsal process of 120 Songs for the Marquis de Sade (libretto by Peter Hinton and music by Peter Hannan) produced in the spring of 2002 by the now-defunct Modern Baroque Opera in a co-production with Vancouver New Music. 120 Songs was an opera that utilized both both electronics and a baroque orchestra in Peter Hannan’s scoring.