P.O.S. is the real deal

P.O.S.
Articulate and thoughtful about his musical influences, the music business, and performance - P.O.S. is still (just barely) an underground superstar. My prediction for 2010: watch this talented artist take off. He's on the cusp of gaining a new musical depth. Could he be the new Prince -- no. He isn't that kind of artist (polyglot, multi-instrumentalist). P.O.S. is a Poet of Society.

Dec 27 broadcast of "The Fourth Wiseman"

"The Fourth Wiseman" is the story of the forgotten visitor at the Nativity, the Slaughter of the Innocents, and finally The Last Supper. Based on the novel of the same title by Michel Tournier, this church opera follows in the steps of Benjamin Britten's "The Prodigal Son" or "Noye's Fludde."

The performing forces are a trio of young voices who are the angels watching over the fourth wiseman, Rajar, who comes to Bethlehem with his gift of sweets. Adult soloists are Rajar (tenor), Demas (baritone), Melchior (tenor), Gaspard (baritone), Balthazzar (bass), and Mother/Woman (alto). The mixed chorus is broken into two groups and the orchestra is made up of 13 instruments which corresponds to the number of those attending the Last Supper.

A reduced orchestration for organ and percussion was directed by Neva Pilgrim and performed by the Syracuse Society of New Music. This version will be broadcast.

Music by Randall Davidson. Libretto based on Michel Tournier's "The Fourth Wiseman" by George Sand.

Broadcast on Sunday, December 27, 2009 at 2pm Eastern on WCNY/Syracuse. Streaming audio at http://www.wcny.org/component/option,com_wrapper/Itemid,128/

Merry Christmas!

The Cricket

When the days are SO short and the temperatures are SO cold, I begin to think of the coming summer nights sitting in a hammock among a grove of white pines at the end of a peninsula jutting out into Eagle's Nest Lake Number Two. These thoughts have inspired...


The Cricket: a new song by Randall Davidson. Karl Lappe is the poet who first had the poem set by a German composer by the name of Franz Schubert. 


The poem's narrator is sitting in front of a campfire watching the embers burn down as he listens to the sounds of the woods. He is alone. A cricket chirps in the woods and the narrator then understands that he is not alone at all. He is connected to the cricket, the woods, and everything and everyone in the world. I have recently been laid off and, at first, felt alone and disconnected. Upon reflection (not in front of a campfire but with colleagues, friends and family), I now understand that I am not alone at all. I am connected. We are all suffering whether we are employed or not. Things will get better...

Dinghies, not Battleships

When the NEA report on arts audiences was released mid-June 2008, the corporate media was pretty quiet about it. Corporate media has no vested interest in the arts. There is little profit to be made by reporting on the arts, in general, because arts organizations do not advertise and this is critically important to newspapers and broadcast television these days.

But the news from the NEA was important. And the news was bad. According to the National Endowment for the Arts, "American audiences for the arts are getting older and their numbers are declining." Dramatic stuff. And those were only the headlines.

This same report has been released five times since 1982 - roughly once every five years. The data collection has been culled from cultural institutions, for the most part the people who receive funding from the NEA. This report, however, collected some data about audiences' use of the internet and "other forms of arts participation."

The report must be carefully read to understand the context of the headlines. There is no substitute for reading the whole report, but here are a few teaser summaries that bear quotation here, if only to encourage you to download the pdf document.

Between 1982 and 2008, attendance at performing arts such as classical music, jazz, opera, ballet, musical theater, and dramatic plays has seen double-digit rates of decline.

Audiences for jazz and classical music are substantially older than before. In 1982, jazz concerts drew the youngest adult audience (median age 29). In the 2008 survey, the median age of jazz concert-goers was 46 – a 17-year increase. Since 1982, young adult (18-24) attendance rates for jazz and classical music have declined the most, compared with other art forms.

When cultural institutions show serious declines in attendance, everyone should be concerned since a portion of our tax dollars are supporting these expensive enterprises. When they are failing, our system of subsidy is somehow failing.

One of the major rationales for government support of the arts is that it will stimulate private donations and audience access. Although this report does not address charitable donations, it does paint a grim picture about audience engagement.

I focus my attention on the classical music portions of the report because I think these audiences are the people who listen to my music. The conclusions shared in this report are much more dire than the typical audience-is-getting-older hand-wringing exercise. This report unearths data, and it should not be discounted or ignored, that 45-54 year olds are not continuing to classical music. The heart of the demographic that has traditionally supported classical music institutions are not showing up.

And you'll remember what Sol Hurok, the famous impresario and artist manager, would say: "if they don't want to come, nothing will stop them."

***

I have a question for the NEA: is this report about audiences or about cultural institutions? I suspect, based on how data is collected, that cultural institutions are the primary focus. I suggest that this approach is upside-down.

Cultural institutions are not culture. If the institutions are not reflecting the content and the excitement of our culture their audience will decline. We should not conclude that our culture is in decline because the symphony orchestra's audiences are shrinking. We should assume that the symphony orchestra is not keeping up with what is going on in the culture.

I know this is dangerous territory but I believe the NEA's radar is picking up only battleships and the little dinghies bobbing on the water have no presence at all. Those dinghies are all those "other forms of art participation" that are harder to document.

New, small enterprises are only possible when large, established enterprises are slow to adapt to changes in the culture. This is not a particularly important insight. This is what economists might call the marketplace at work. Coffee houses, church music series, house and parlor concerts, nightclubs, salons, and the powerful presence of the internet are where new enterprises are taking place. They do not receive NEA subsidies because they are able to support themselves with sweat equity and ticket admission.

Audiences are voting with their feet. If the NEA report wants to measure audiences, they should stop watching the institutions and start paying attention to what people are doing with their time and money. That will take a better radar, I think.

Snow Day?

I grew up in central Missouri until I graduated from high school. We had a number of "snow days" which usually came in the form of ice covered with a slick but puny layer of snow.
Tonight in Minneapolis, it is snowing about an inch every hour from midnight through to 6am. We're expected to have falling temperatures (12 degrees F) with winds gusting to 25 mph. The wind will drive snow up into the air making visibility difficult during rush hours (6-9am). It will continue to snow all day Wednesday. Black ice is a phenomena at intersections where car exhausts melt snow and it quickly re-freezes into a polished surface that is treacherously slippery. Black ice was already forming last night at 10pm.
On Minnesota days when there is a great deal of snow (like now), Snow Emergency streets have no parking until the snow is removed. Then cities, each on their own separate and conflicting schedules, restrict parking on certain sides of the street starting at different times of the day and night and this will continue until all of the snow is cleared. With snow coming down steadily for 36 hours, it will be difficult to keep Snow Emergency streets clean and so we can expect surface streets to remain snow-clogged for another day.
With all of this wrasslin' and hastlin', it is almost a sure thing that there will be now "snow day" called in Minneapolis. Everyone will get to work 10-15 minutes late and will complain bitterly about the cold and the traffic. The snow will be third on the list of complaints.
A gallery of photos submitted as evidence
In Missouri, were it is also raining/snowing tonight, I will expect that schools and businesses are closed.
And in Missouri: heavy ice

Anyone want to bet?

Where did the name "Boys Art Music" come from?

This is the week that I've set aside to re-launch my very own little music business. The company name is Boys Art Music which has almost nothing to do with anything. Except...

It started with my skepticism about gender aesthetics. One of my professors, Susan McClary, is an avowed feminist musicologist and she was writing a book at the time that was published with the title Feminine Endings. In fact, I had encouraged her to write one of the chapters which first appeared as an article in the Minnesota Composers Forum newsletter.

Anyway, she still holds to the idea that one is able to hear a difference in female and male music. (Or at least it makes for a better story that she holds to it.) At the time, I was co-producing a monthly show with Randy Bourne on Minnesota Public Radio on Minnesota composers' music. We decided that putting the female/male aesthetics to the test would make good radio. As it turned out, we were right.

At that time, Kim D. Sherman was a local composer and was very much attracted to the idea that her music had a feminine sound and that she could hear the difference. And Paul Fetler was a professor and (is) a prominent composer who was not only skeptical of the idea but scoffed at the idea that one could hear feminine or masculine characteristics in music.

We tested the idea by randomly and anonymously playing five selections for Kim and Paul on air. If you want to know what happened...come to my blog athttp://randalldavidson.blogspot.com/ on Friday, December 11, 2009 and I will tell all and answer questions.

tee hee

Ten days and counting

As I look back on the posts to this website, it seems like it takes me ten days to work up enough steam to say something. And although I often have instant opinions on nearly everything, I appreciate my reluctance to throw everything I have onto this space.

You might think it's laziness - it take a little bit of effort to organize one's thoughts and to put it down into clear language. But I think it's something else, instead.

There is just too much noise on the internet. Opinions are flying all the time and most of them are hurtling towards you with graphic (or at least dramatic) imagery, sound, and headlines. What I have noticed about most of the stuff that comes my way is that there is very little consideration in establishing a dialogue.

I have just changed my settings on this blog to allow comments. I hope that you are inspired to contribute something to this blog - after all, I am a strong believer in the idea that trees don't make noise when they fall in the woods if no one is there.

In fact, I think this blog could have a different sub-heading: "noises in the musical woods."

After a premiere

Earlier today, I heard a new piece I composed. This first performance is called a premiere and composers typically live/die for the experience. There is the drama of rehearsals running up to the performance often with hair-on-fire revisions and tantrums because the music is too hard or not to the liking of the performer.
After a long, quiet, almost-boring writing process, the machinery of concert producers can have a circus quality. No two premieres are alike -- everyone has its treachery, its surprises, its anxieties.
But this premiere was one that I've been looking forward to for a number of years. This is the first time I was able to compose something that my wife, my son and I could perform together. I've been waiting for my son to become proficient enough that he would have a positive experience. Arriving at this moment has been like watching paint dry or corn grow -- it's taken a long time and I've not been paying attention.
And then, this Advent season, it was obvious that it was now or never. My son is visiting colleges and submitting applications and we're filling out FAFSA forms. The reality of his moving out of the house - though it won't happen for months - is starting to approach like a distant freight train. It will be here and then it will roar by in a cloud of dust and then it will be gone and all will be quiet, again.
This Advent is our last one, I think. It won't be the last time I compose for all of us, however. The real sense of satisfaction that follows a successful premiere was amplified because all of the performers belonged to each other. I found that there is a deeper, non-musical bond that remains and is strengthened by the making of music.
I mis-counted in the final bars, my son had a few burples at the beginning, and my wife was perfect (as usual). The hair-pulling and frustration that attends every premiere was there, but this time we all blinked at each other and then decided to go get some rolls and coffee and get back to work. No biggie.
Except, there was a whiff of a transition in the air. We will never be here again. And it is good. Happy Christmas.