Archive for June, 2012

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Claus Guth’s Forest-bound ‘Don Giovanni’ at the Staatsoper; Musikfestspiele Potsdam’s new Pleasure Garden

Friday, June 29th, 2012

By Rebecca Schmid

Few operas in history have gripped the human psyche to the same extent as Don Giovanni. Pushkin, Kierkegaard, and Bernard Shaw count among the literary figures to have written their own account of the daemonic seductor since Mozart and Da Ponte staged their ‘drama giocoso,’ a tragi-comedy, in Prague. Since the 19th century, some champions of the work have further added to the opera’s moral ambiguity by excluding the final sextet, “Questo é il fin di chi fa mal/e de’ perfidi la morte/alla vita è sempre ugual” (this is the end for evildoers/death and life are the same for the villainous) after Don Giovanni is sent to hell. Meanwhile, his female conquests have been increasingly interpreted as consenting perpetrators of his sexual games rather than just victims and continue to provide stage directors with ample fodder. Robert Carsen, in his new production for La Scala last December, sets the Commendatore’s murder by Don Giovanni in the chambers of Donna Anna (Anna Netrebko), leaving her white slip covered in blood as she holds her father’s dead body on the same bed where she frolicked with the murderer. In the final scene, the accursed aristocrat reemerges from hell puffing on a cigarette while his avengers descend into infernal smoke.

Carsen’s vision was supposed to travel to Berlin this month as a guest production of the Staatsoper until it emerged that it would be impossible to adapt sets to the company’s current home in the Schiller Theater (the company’s 18th-century headquarters on the Boulevard Unter den Linden are currently undergoing renovation, recently delayed—again—until 2015). In another strange twist, La Netrebko, the highlight of a live screening that will be broadcast to an outdoor plaza, announced in May that she would withdraw in order to make time for her son. The Swedish soprano Maria Bengtsson was whisked in and Claus Guth’s 2008 production, mounted during Staatsoper Intendant Jürgen Flimm’s tenure at the Salzburg Festival, quietly slated as a replacement. The star appeal was not entirely lost as Netrebko’s husband Erwin Schrott remained on the roster as Don Giovanni’s sidekick, Leporello, while the original Zerlina (Anna Prohaska), her Masetto (Stefan Kocan) and Don Ottavio (Giuseppe Filianoti) provided continuity for an event that has been touted as a highlight of the season.

The Guth staging, seen at its German premiere on June 24, takes a dark, pseudo-cinematic approach to the opera, confining the action to the middle of a dark forest with a rusty bus stop serving as the only manmade shelter. The curtain opens to a beer-chugging, ex-convict like Leporello while Donna Anna rips off the Don’s shirt in the background. In the showdown with the Commendatore, Don Giovanni is shot in the stomach with a plastic gun and walks around through the remainder of the opera with an open wound. During Donna Anna’s aria “Non mi dir,” he has already become a specter. Meanwhile, a business-like Donna Elvira chases after her one-time husband in heels, gets stoned out of her mind with Leporello, and lies on the forest floor with the dying anti-hero during her aria “Mi tradi.” In the first act, Zerlina and her bridesmaids emerge like wood nymphs in the thick of what appear to be real pines (sets and costumes by Christian Schmidt) before the stage turns to reveal a tree swing that will serve as Don Giovanni’s seduction grounds. The rotating stage spins at its fastest when Donna Anna and Don Ottavio pull up in a sedan, although they are ultimately as damned to roaming the forest as much as any other character.

(c) Monika Rittershaus

While it is hard to deny the poetic weight of setting Don Giovanni in the woods—the opening to Dante’s Inferno, “Mi ritrovai per una selva oscura” ‘I found myself in a dark forest’ is the first thing that comes to mind—the production is mired in Regie gimmicks that undermine its psychological depth. Staring at tree trunks for two full acts also proved monotonous. Guth omits the final sextet, leaving Don Giovanni to fall into the earth after the Commendatore returns to a wintry forest (further emphasizing the notion of a terrestrial hell in which the characters cannot find the way toward redemption), yet scenes such as Don Giovanni and Leporello roasting marshmallows and the senseless presence of immaculate, bourgeois dressed characters in the brambles linger irritatingly within the director’s otherwise morbid vision. To be sure, his concept is fully in keeping with the opera’s legendary blend of comic and tragic elements, and his surrealist take on Don Giovanni’s existence, trapped somewhere between life and death, could not be more dead-on in literary terms, yet the production demands a level of intellectual engagement that supersedes its theatrical appeal. 

Nevertheless, Guth was blessed with a cast that largely rose above the quixotic circumstances vocally and theatrically. The audience hardly seemed to miss Netrebko as Bengtsson, a statuesque blonde with natural allure, portrayed the distraught Donna Anna with creamy tones and fine attention to dramatic nuance. Her voice was tearful in opening stanzas of “Non mi dir,” kept painfully slow by Music Director Daniel Barenboim, while she revealed unblemished strength in her swift declaration that heaven may someday forgive her. As Don Giovanni, Christopher Maltman evoked more of a modern playboy than an irresistibly virile predator, yet his high-lying baritone warmed up to give a fine rendition of his aria “Deh vieni alla finestra,” and his fear was vividly credible in the final scene. Schrott nearly stole the show as the riotous buffoon and manipulator Leporello, his booming bass and excellent Italian diction carrying magnetically in the dry acoustics of the Schiller Theater.

It is almost unfair to cast Elvira, often considered a mezzo role, with a soprano as eloquent as Dorothea Röschmann, and yet her acting skills do not always rise to the same level. While her rich tone and technical polish were the vocal stand-out of the evening, her presence more easily called to mind the countess in Le Nozze di Figaro, which she sang earlier this season, than Don Giovanni’s brash consort. As Zerlina, Prohaska (Musical America’s current “New Artist of the Month”) lived up to her usual standards of musical and thespian excellence, effortlessly singing through “La ci darem la mano” as she pumped herself on a swing. Kocan was a convincingly exasperated Masetto, although his voice retains a thick Slavic quality that interferes with the demands of singing in Italian. By contrast, Filianoti, in the role of Ottavio, cultivates a flexible technique that was ideal for the coloratura runs of the aria “Il mio tesoro,” yet his nasal timbre lacks body. He also failed to remain in time with Barenboim on more than one occasion. Ukranian Bass Alexander Tsymbalyuk was an imposing, expressively full-voiced Commendatore.

Barenboim led the Staatskapelle in a performance that never lacked dynamic shape and dramatic purpose, sensitively accompanying the singers at all times with great emotional depth, yet his tempo relations in Mozart were occasionally perplexing. The second half of “La ci darem la mano,” “Andiam mio bene” was twice as fast as the opening. The orchestra, despite its rich, Germanic sound, is also not terribly flattered by the acoustics of its current home, and its attacks could be rounder. Despite the odds stacked against this production, Barenboim proved that his ensemble is the best in town for Mozart operas, even if the composer is rolling is in his grave as Don Giovanni continues to wander the forest.

The production runs through July 6.

(c) Monika Rittershaus

Out at Friedrich the Great’s old stomping grounds…

The city of Potsdam is currently inundated with tributes to the tercentenary of Friedrich the Great, from Das Musical Friedrich to an exhibit of personal items entitled Friederisiko that stretches from the rococo palace Sanssouci to the Neue Palais, built at the end of the Seven Years’ War. While the 18th-century Prussian king may be best remembered for an aggressive military campaign that annexed parts of modern-day Poland and the Czech Republic in an escalating power struggle with the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the ‘enlightened despot’ was also a great patron of the arts. A flutist and amateur composer who penned 100 sonatas and four symphonies, Friedrich included C.P.E. Bach and Quantz among his court musicians; enjoyed a legendary if tumultuous friendship with Voltaire; and, fittingly for his time, favored the French language above German. Homages to “Old Fritz,” as he has been nicknamed, have extended to a new album released by Berlin Philharmonic Principal Flutist and soloist Emmanuel Pahud, Flöten König. The Swiss musician even dressed up earlier this season on the grounds of Sanssouci.

Potsdam’s annual Musikfestspiele (June 9-24) similarly seized upon the opportunity to transform city grounds into a courtly celebration, including a “Sanssouci Prom Concert” in the garden of the Neue Palais and ensembles as such as the Freiburger Baroque Orchester and the Orchestra of the Age of the Enlightenment in baroque and classical repertoire. The festival also included a “picnic concert” for the first time this year. The setting on Potsdam’s Freundschaftsinsel, a picturesque botanical garden nestled quietly away from the post-war architecture surrounding the main station just minutes away, proved a fitting escape for the occasion, replete with a couple in 18th-century garb pushing a tram that carried a baby anachronistically sucking a pacifier. Locals festively spread out their blankets and picnic fare, some including white tablecloths and prosecco on ice with an eye to winning the competition that was underway for “most inventive arrangement” (Potsdam, while only an hour away from Berlin and Friedrich’s summer getaway of choice, maintains its own brand of provincial flair).

The opening concert, however, represented a decidedly non-continental take on celebrations for the Flute King, featuring the band Fine Arts Brass in an all-British program. As both a visiting journalist from a U.K. publication and one of the group’s members individually commented, it felt “surreal.” The concert fell just on the heels of the Jubilee Weekend in England, and the brass band naturally included an arrangement of Handel’s Water Music. The group’s leading trumpeter Simon Lenton, moderating between numbers with a refreshing blend of humor and informative material, joked that the German native was “England’s finest composer.” Yet the program ranged from arrangements of Dowland and Purcell to a suite by Anthony Holborne that is usually performed for Christmas and Farewell to Stromness by Peter Maxwell Davies, living proof in his position as “Master of the Queen’s Music” that the art of patronage has not died.

In conversation with the festival’s Artistic Director Andrea Palent, it emerged that the event was partly modeled after “Last Night of the Proms,” which moves from the concert hall out into Hyde Park and other outdoor venues. She also mentioned the 18th-century tradition of “pleasure gardens,” which according to Palent spread its influence throughout Europe in Friedrich’s time (although the fact remains that he was Francophile). Palent also grounded the concept in a more general principle of the Enlightenment as championed by figures such as Rousseau—“back to nature”—saying that she hoped the outdoor setting would affect listeners on a sensual as well as intellectual level.

As the Meccore Quartet, a young group of Polish musicians, performed from string quartets by Haydn, Mozart, and Mendelssohn during the second part of the program, the music indeed served to heighten the sensory experience of sitting on the lawn and breathing the summer air rather than become an isolated spectacle. While one of the violinists mentioned afterwards that they had been concerned about acoustics, the music felt as if it were meant to be played in this setting, which in fact camouflaged technical and dynamic details that would have been more apparent to a critic’s ear in the concert hall. In an age of technological oversaturation, the event proved a fleeting reminder of the values that bred 18th-century art, even if a retiree couldn’t refrain from chasing after the musicians to take pictures with her digital camera.

 A gabled sculpture from the garden of the Neue Palais © Holger Kirsch for the Musikfestspiele Potsdam Sanssouci

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A Month at the Phil

Wednesday, June 27th, 2012

by Sedgwick Clark

Gilbert’s Austere Nielsen

Alan Gilbert’s first major recording project since becoming music director of the New York Philharmonic is the symphonies and concertos of Denmark’s foremost composer, Carl Nielsen (1865-1931), for Dacapo. The series commenced last year with the Second Symphony (The Four Temperaments), recorded live in concert. Last week was the Third, nicknamed Sinfonia espansiva. The two are set for release on the first CD in the fall.

Nielsen completed his Third in 1911, the same year as Stravinsky’s Petrushka, Sibelius’s Fourth Symphony, Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire, Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle, and Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier. Debussy was working on Book II of his Préludes and Ravel on Daphnis et Chloé. Three weeks after Nielsen finished his Third, Mahler died, leaving his Tenth Symphony unfinished.

Like those composers, Nielsen’s mature voice is unmistakable—unique even, like Janáček’s—with warmly German Romantic roots. He has often been compared with his fellow Scandinavian Sibelius, but the Dane’s sunny optimism, prankster humor, and humanistic love of life are nowhere to be found in the moody Finn’s music. Nor were those qualities much evident in Gilbert’s first of four performances of the Third (6/14), although a friend who heard three performances felt he had relaxed into the work a bit more by the final one.

Gilbert began promisingly with sharp attacks on those stuttering (Anthony Tommasini’s apt description in his Times review) fortissimo chords, digging in with ample schwung to the central oom-pah waltz section. But taut symphonic structure is not what Nielsen is about. By the work’s end, with only fleeting hints of rubato or expressive rhetoric (such as healthy unmarked ritards in the final bars of the outer movements) to heighten the music’s joy, one felt Gilbert’s vision anything but espansiva. His sole departure from the score was a slight increase of tempo for the last two pages of the finale, which raised the temperature nicely.

The conductor’s urgency should better suit Nielsen’s propulsive Fourth (The Inextinguishable) when the time comes.

The program opened with Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture, with Gilbert preferring warm, rounded textures over the work’s inherent nervous intensity. His sensitive accompaniment in Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Violin Concerto fit Leonidas Kavakos’s affectionate interpretation like a glove. I felt the first two movements dragged somewhat, having learned the piece via the famous Heifetz recording, but the finale veritably crackled, bringing the audience roaring to its feet.

Comfortable Mozart   

Coming after Gilbert’s spectacularly successful subscription finales to his first two seasons, Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre and Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen, a pair of Mozart works to end the season seemed a cruel joke. True, Emanuel Ax’s genial take on the 22nd piano concerto and a buoyant, unpressured performance of the Mass in C minor (Great) on June 20 were nothing to sneeze at. Moreover, a Joseph Flummerfelt chorus (New York Choral Artists in this case) is always a treat. And those productions must have been costly in a time of red ink. But this is the New York Philharmonic, damn it all, and those two 20th-century operas were huge hits with the public and critics. An imaginative music director is a terrible thing to waste.

Dutilleux—the French Bartók?

Scheduling three non-subscription concerts of mostly 20th- and 21st-century music the following week partly made up for this lapse of judgment.

First, on June 26, a superbly performed concert of three scintillating works by French composer Henri Dutilleux: Métaboles (1961-64), Ainsi la nuit (Thus the Night) (1973-76), and Tout un monde lointain . . . (A Whole Distant World . . .) for Cello and Orchestra (1968-70, rev. 1988). Yo-Yo Ma was soloist, so the concert was sold out and scalpers proliferated. (I wonder how many audience members had the vaguest notion of what they were about to hear?) They heard top notch—Ma at his best, the young Miró Quartet irrepressible in the second work, and the Philharmonic strings in Métaboles as sumptuous as I’ve ever heard them, reminding us that Gilbert is a violinist. A definite highlight of his tenure thus far. Dutillieux revealed a delightful penchant for pizzicato in the first two works especially, reminiscent of Bartók’s MUSPAC and, more generally, the Hungarian master’s Concerto for Orchestra.

The concert also marked the first year of the Marie-Josée Kravis Prize for New Music at the New York Philharmonic, with Dutilleux as its inaugural winner. Upon accepting the award, the French composer announced that he would share the prize money of $200,000 with composers Anthony Chueng, Franck Krawczyk, and Peter Eötvös, who will write new works for the Philharmonic in Dutilleux’s honor. Kravis and her husband, Henry, have been major donors for new works at the Philharmonic since 2003, and the new prize will be awarded every other year. The Composer-in-Residence position is also endowed by the Kravises. Bravi to all concerned!

Second is a pair of concerts at the gargantuan Park Avenue Armory consisting of four works for multiple orchestras: Stockhausen’s Gruppen; Boulez’s Rituel (composed for the Philharmonic when he was music director); Mozart’s finale from Act I of Don Giovanni; and Ives’s The Unanswered Question, which is not really for three orchestras, but strings representing silence, a solo trumpet intoning the question, and flutes replying in increasingly hysterical “answers.” Presumably these three choirs will be widely separated in the Armory. The concerts are this coming weekend, the 29th and 30th. 

Let’s Not Forget CONTACT

This new-music series was conceived by Gilbert and the orchestra’s initial composer in residence, the Finn Magnus Lindberg, whose three-year term will be assumed next season by the American Christopher Rouse. On June 9 (Carl Nielsen’s birthday, incidentally) Lindberg hosted his final CONTACT program, with David Robertson conducting, at Symphony Space.

The astonishing 103-year-old Elliott Carter’s latest world premiere, Two Controversies and a Conversation, was played. He was in attendance for an interview with Lindberg and to cheer on percussionist Colin Currie and pianist Eric Huebner. The Swiss composer Michael Jarrell’s impossibly titled NACHLESE Vb: Liederzyklus (2011), on poems by Luis de Góngora y Argote, received its U.S. premiere. I have no idea if it’s a total-serial work, but it certainly harks back to the prim timbre and erotic beauty of fifties’ Boulez. I was riveted from first note to last and hope to hear more of Jarrell’s music soon. Charlotte Dobbs appeared to have mastered the composer’s intricate writing utterly.

Robertson introduced Boulez’s …explosante-fix… after intermission. He had conducted the Ensemble InterContemporain in the 1993 premiere of this final version and not only spoke lucidly but apparently extemporaneously, without notes, about the work’s history and composition. Absolutely mind-blowing! Equally impressive was his conducting, which harked back to Boulez’s Philharmonic days and the elder conductor’s extraordinary ability to make the performances so confident and easily grasped. And the Philharmonic players proved they still have it, seemingly negotiating these complex works as if they were basic repertoire—a crackpot notion that violinist Fiona Simon disabused me of afterwards, enumerating the hours of rehearsal both officially and at home. Well worth it, Fiona!

Looking forward

My week’s scheduled concerts:

6/29, Park Avenue Armory. New York Philharmonic/Alan Gilbert; Magnus Lindberg, Matthias Pintscher, assistant conductors. Gabrieli: Canzon for antiphonal brass. Boulez: Rituel in memoriam Bruno Maderna. Mozart: Don Giovanni, Act I Finale. Stockhausen: Gruppen. Ives: The Unanswered Question.

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Is That A Music License I Hear?

Wednesday, June 27th, 2012

By Brian Taylor Goldstein

Do we legally have to have a music license if we have bands performing in our Country Club at weddings, social events, etc.?

Yes. Anytime music is publically performed, either live or by playing a recording through a sound system, a “performance license” is required. A “performance license” is a fee paid to the composer for the right to perform his or her composition publically (as opposed to performing music in your living room for friends and family.) Whenever you hear music being played in a department store, or in a restaurant, or in an elevator—even though its being played in the background and even though there are no fees or tickets to listen to the music—someone, somewhere has paid a performance license so you can enjoy an enhanced shopping, dining, or elevator-riding experience. Similarly, whenever music is performed live at a concert hall, nightclub, restaurant, or even, yes, at a private wedding held at a country club, someone, somewhere must obtain a performance license.

As the owner/operator of a performance space/venue, it is your legal responsibility to ensure that the necessary rights and authorizations have been obtained with respect to all copyrighted music that is publicly performed in your venue—even if the “performance” is for a private party. Just because the party is “private” or “by invitation only”, a country club itself is a public venue and the wedding guests are “public.” So, if your space is used for a wedding, and the happy couple hires a wedding band, it is your responsibility to ensure that there are appropriate licenses for the music being performed by the band.

While you could require the band or the event organizer to obtain the necessary licenses, that will not relieve you from responsibility (ie: liability) should they fail to do so. Most venues where live music is performed are better advised to obtain blanket performance licenses from the three performance rights licensing organizations: ASCAP, BMI and SESAC. Each of these organizations controls the rights to 1000s of compositions and a “blanket license” permits all the music from their catalogs to be performed at your venue. Its like one stop license shopping. While this will require you incur the license costs yourself, you can pass the costs along through your rental fees. Its also the best and only way to ensure that your legal responsibility as the owner/manager of the venue is being met. In other words, you need to obtain music licenses for the same reason you carry insurance: to protect the venue from liability.

If nothing else, think of it this way: for many artists/composers with lousy record deals, their performance licenses may be the only fees they receive for their work. If dancing and listening to their music makes the wedding guests happy, and happy wedding guests means happy Country Club members/renters, then all that happiness is at least worth a fee to the composer.

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“Law & Disorder:Performing Arts Unit” will take a short break on Wednesday, July 4. Our next post will be on Wednesday, July 11.

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For additional information and resources on this and other legal and business issues for the performing arts, visit ftmartslaw-pc.com.

To ask your own question, write to lawanddisorder@musicalamerica.org.

All questions on any topic related to legal and business issues will be welcome. However, please post only general questions or hypotheticals. FTM Arts Law reserves the right to alter, edit or, amend questions to focus on specific issues or to avoid names, circumstances, or any information that could be used to identify or embarrass a specific individual or organization. All questions will be posted anonymously.

__________________________________________________________________

THE OFFICIAL DISCLAIMER:

THIS IS NOT LEGAL ADVICE!

The purpose of this blog is to provide general advice and guidance, not legal advice. Please consult with an attorney familiar with your specific circumstances, facts, challenges, medications, psychiatric disorders, past-lives, karmic debt, and anything else that may impact your situation before drawing any conclusions, deciding upon a course of action, sending a nasty email, filing a lawsuit, or doing anything rash!

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Nézet-Séguin performs Epic Romance with the Berlin Philharmonic

Friday, June 22nd, 2012

By Rebecca Schmid

Conducting the Berlin Philharmonic is no small feat for a 37-year-old, and Yannick Nézet-Séguin—returning to the orchestra’s podium for the first time since his 2010 debut—had no intention to the make the event a small affair. The newly minted music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra, seen at the Philharmonie on June 16, juxtaposed Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet overture with the full three movements of Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé as sung by the Rundfunkchor Berlin. It took Ravel three years to complete this ‘choreographic symphony’ to a commission by Diaghilev in 1909, and the score is usually reduced to two-part suite arrangement (penned by composer in 1911) for concert performance. The 1912 premiere of the full ballet in Paris did not go down as a success following Diaghilev’s open disinterest in Ravel’s score during rehearsal and the opening of Débussy’s L’Après-midi d’un faune the previous month, featuring provocative choreography by Nizhinsky that usurped public attention.

While Daphnis et Chloé reveals Ravel’s intricate powers of orchestration at their height, with rich impressionist tapestries and pictorial evocations of celestial groves, its subtleties struggle to reign in the listener for its full duration (just under an hour) without the presence of a ballet corps. Much like Stravinsky’s Apollon Musagète, which Sir Simon Rattle conducted last season alongside Mahler’s Fourth Symphony, it is—at least based on the performance I saw—a difficult piece to pull off in the concert hall. Nézet-Séguin had a clear sense of what we wanted from the orchestra and did not let the reins slack on a body of players who often dictate what is happening onstage at least as much as the conductor, and his French-speaking roots certainly worked to the performance’s advantage through the ethereal ebbs and flows of Ravel’s music, yet the Philharmonic’s handsome elegance remained a bit staid for moments of sheer nymph-like grace. The orchestra nevertheless thrived through the score’s transparent textures, such as the rapid flute and harp over muted strings that imitate the sound of rushing brooklets before building into a majestic view over the nymphs’ prairie in the third tableau.

The story, adapted by Michael Fokine from an ancient Greek romance, tells of the courtship between the goatherd Daphnis and the shepherdess Chloé, who is kidnapped by pirates but saved by her father, Pan. Once Daphnis and Chloé are reunited, a tumultuous final dance of the nymphs celebrates their union. Ravel weaves a simple two-note motive throughout the score to designate the pair’s mystical realm, easily evoking the earth’s breaking in the closing scene. The chorus is deployed atmospherically to enhance a sense of rapture, at one point emerging accompanied. The Rundfunkchor, which recorded this work with Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo in 2010, produced glorious tones here, particularly in the soprano section. Concert Master Guy Braunstein delivered his solo numbers with deeply sensitive musicianship, evoking Daphnis’ approach of Chloé and the young Nymph wandering in the meadow with gleaming tone. The flute and clarinet solos of the Lycanion dances emerged with characteristic elegance and fluidity of communication.

Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet, officially designated as a ‘fantasy overture,’ similarly illustrates the stormy Shakespearean love story in a programmatic development of contrasting tableaus, moving from the prescient concerns of Friar Lawrence before yielding to the feuding Capulets and Montagues. The rich cellos and woodwinds of the opening Andante revealed the Philharmonic in top form, and the violins lamented with a well-rounded vibrato under Braunstein. Nézet-Séguin led a tight, fiery Allegro, and the longing wind solos during the couple’s first meeting on Juliet’s balcony left little to be desired. Still, having recently heard the Marinsky, the seas of string pianissimi had a slightly brittle quality. The orchestra redeemed itself with the clean attacks and immaculate synchrony of the whirlwind inner movement. The elegiac homage to the lovers in the final Moderato, punctuated by the theme of the warring factions, burned with tension.

The program opened with Berio’s Sequenza IXa for clarinet solo, a virtuosic yet poetic exploration that Walter Seyfarth, a player with the Philharmonic since 1985, dispatched with impressive technical control and dynamic nuance. The piece takes the form of a structured yet unstable train of thought, evolving through runs across the instrument’s full range into a kind of internal dialogue that culminates in a blaring high note which is juxtaposed with increasingly vehement melodic opposition until it is echoed in resigned resolution. Allusions to the vocalisations of Berio’s spouse and muse Cathy Berberian and saxophone-like motifs expand the clarinet’s dimensions into nearly operatic planes. While the connection of this piece with the rest of the program remained unclear—an unusual occurrence at the Philharmonic—it is heartening to watch Berio become standard fare in the German capital.

The Philharmonie at dusk

The Philharmonie on Potsdamer Platz (c) Schirmer/Berliner Philharmoniker

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Is A Choral Group Required To Have Workman’s Compensation?

Wednesday, June 20th, 2012

By Brian Taylor Goldstein

Dear Law & Disorder:

We have a non-profit choral group. Our of local public television stations has sent us a contract to record and broadcast one of our concerts this December and they have an item that requires us to have workman’s comp on our entire group. We currently only have 3 staff employees (all part-time) and the performers themselves are not employees. As a non-profit, are we required by law to carry workman’s comp on members of our group?  We are wondering if we can sign this agreement if we don’t carry workman’s comp insurance.

First, and foremost, your non-profit status is unrelated to the issue of workers compensation. Non-profits are subject to the all the same laws, statutes, and regulations as all other businesses. Whether or not you are required to carry workers compensation depends on whether your staff and chorus members are considered independent contractors or employees. This requires an analysis of both federal law as well as the laws of your state. However, in this particular case, such an analysis may be irrelevant.

If you were to enter into a contract with the television station in which you are required to have workers compensation, then you would be agreeing to provide workers compensation whether you are legally required to do so or not. That’s really the whole point of a contract: two parties are agreeing to do things for each other they would not normally be required to do. So, regardless of what the law does or does not require, you cannot just sign the television agreement unless you plan to comply with their requirement. Otherwise, if you signed such a contract and then failed to obtain the workers compensation insurance, you would be in breach.

I suspect that, like many institutions, the television station is using form contracts and boilerplate terms that they themselves probably do not understand. Do not always assume that the other party knows more than you do! Before you do anything, I’d call the station and discuss your situation/concerns with them. Perhaps they will waive the requirement. Perhaps they can agree to allow you to purchase a general liability policy to cover your group in lieu of a workers compensation policy.

However, regardless of whether or not you are “required” to have workers compensation either as a matter of law or by a contract, consider the possibility that if a staff member, a chorus member, or a volunteer were to be injured during a performance or in providing some other service for your organization, your organization could be liable. So, I’d strongly recommend that you obtain a general liability policy to cover injuries to any of your performers, staff, or volunteers who provide services to your organization.

_________________________________________________________________

For additional information and resources on this and other legal and business issues for the performing arts, visit ftmartslaw-pc.com.

To ask your own question, write to lawanddisorder@musicalamerica.org.

All questions on any topic related to legal and business issues will be welcome. However, please post only general questions or hypotheticals. FTM Arts Law reserves the right to alter, edit or, amend questions to focus on specific issues or to avoid names, circumstances, or any information that could be used to identify or embarrass a specific individual or organization. All questions will be posted anonymously.

__________________________________________________________________

THE OFFICIAL DISCLAIMER:

THIS IS NOT LEGAL ADVICE!

The purpose of this blog is to provide general advice and guidance, not legal advice. Please consult with an attorney familiar with your specific circumstances, facts, challenges, medications, psychiatric disorders, past-lives, karmic debt, and anything else that may impact your situation before drawing any conclusions, deciding upon a course of action, sending a nasty email, filing a lawsuit, or doing anything rash!

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Posted in Arts Management, Contracts, Employees, Independent Contractors, Law and Disorder: Performing Arts Division, Liability, Non-Profits | Comments Closed

A Roman Candle

Monday, June 18th, 2012

by James Conlon

About a week ago I witnessed a heart-warming spectacle in Rome.

Imagine 750 kids between the ages of five and twelve, screaming, giggling, squealing with delight, singing, dancing while running on and off the stage of a theater. It lasted about an hour and ten minutes in all.  They were grouped together by age and filled almost the entire orchestra level of a theater. The adults are allowed to sit in the back and in the balcony, where the teachers could watch their students from a distance and their parents could videotape freely and take as many photos with their iPhones as their hearts desired.

Sound like a nightmare or a scene from Dante’s Inferno? Not at all.  It was the end of the year performance of a Mozart opera designed for school children. Not just to attend, but, more importantly, to learn and to participate.

Why do I say a Mozart opera? Because I actually attended, on consecutive days, two completely independent projects to introduce and cultivate a love for opera through direct participation that are thriving in Rome. One of them is produced with private and corporate sponsorship, and the other a consortium of government and private sponsors.

On a Friday evening, I attended an abridged version of Don Giovanni, and the following morning, a similar arrangement of The Magic Flute.  The Don Giovanni was produced by the Associazione Musicale Tito Gobbi. Spearheaded by the dynamic personality of the renowned baritone’s daughter Cecilia, it collaborates with schools not just in Rome, but from Umbria and all the way south to Sicily. I serve on its honorary board (mostly from a distance) so I was particularly eager to see the product.  Entitled “Magia dell’Opera” (The Magic of Opera) it defines its mission as that of planting the seeds in the new generation for the creation of future audiences. It is in its eighth season and estimates that more thirty thousand children have experienced this over the years (six to seven thousand this year).

The following morning the Rome Opera, offered its similarly conceived Magic Flute, translated into Italian. Supported by the government, this program has greater means at its disposal. It is now in its seventh year.  In its first year, four hundred students attended.  It gave thirty-four performances over the past several weeks this year and estimates that about seventeen thousand children participated.  That is forty-two times the number of students than at its starting point only a few years ago.

Children’s symphonic concerts are very important, and certainly nothing new in the U.S.  I am also aware that there are outstanding programs offered for young people by many American orchestras and opera companies. But I have never seen anything like this before, and certainly not on the scale of what is going on in Rome.

It operates on the pedagogical principle of “active” education in which the students participate. The performance is the culmination of preparation over the course of several months. A team of instructors first meets with teachers in the schools, providing an instruction book and a recording with excerpts from the opera that the children will actually sing at the performances. They commit these all to memory, just as millions of young people do with popular music. The instruction books, marvelous examples of imagination, provide background, not just about Mozart and the particular opera in question, but the history of the art form from Monteverdi to Shostakovich. There are illustrations of the classical Italian opera theater, pictures with explanation of all the instruments of the orchestra. All of this is interspersed with games, quizzes and puzzles. The characters of the opera, the texts to be sung are all included.  The students and teachers receive these months in advance. This is how they learn the subject.

The culmination is the performance. It is abridged and adapted, accompanied at the piano. A secondary benefit of the system is the opportunity afforded to young professional singers. Some are still in (or just finishing) conservatory. There is a narrator (in one case it is Mozart; in both cases dressed in period costumes) who interacts with the children, asking them questions, prompting them to call out to the characters on stage at specific moments. The children are encouraged to make their own costumes, choosing the characters they prefer.

The best moment is when they all stand up and sing together from memory–everything from Leporello’s opening lines, the enumeration of Don Giovanni’s conquests in the catalog aria to (pointing their fingers) the final chorus condemning the protagonist to his eternal punishment.  All of the choruses and music of the three children were memorized at the Magic Flute performance, with highlights being Monostatos’ little ditty, and … the Queen of the Night’s famous second act aria (!!!!). Can you imagine seven hundred children doing all of that at once!?

Between the two organizations, approximately twenty-four thousand children have seen, “sung” and “acted” in an abridged Mozart opera in the past six weeks. Both organizations said that many of the older students have been coming back for years. That means that some now have a “repertory” of seven or eighth operas.  Operas done in past years include The Barber of Seville, The Elixir of Love, Carman and La Traviata. I am sure many of these children will carry this experience through their lives. Many will return over the course of their adulthood and bring their own children. Not only is a future opera audience being built in Rome, but these children are also learning about, and ingraining, a knowledge and recognition of their cultural patrimony.

And before one says those are their roots, but not ours, let’s check our history: All of the roots of what we call Classical Music come from Italy: opera was created in Renaissance Florence, and the art of singing, church music, the first (and sometimes still best) instruments, musical notation and terminology.  Need I go on? These are our roots also.

All of this is possible in America. Perhaps programs like this already exist. If so, whoever is responsible for them deserve our gratitude and praise. We are certainly reading all about the financial troubles in Europe (parallel to our own) and Italy in particular. Yet with all of that, this is one country where they still know how to take care of their children, educating them in an imaginative and fun way.

It is very fine to scratch our heads and ask how we can build audiences, as if there is a quick fix solution to the challenge. There is not, but there is a beautiful, long-term solution–and it starts with five-year-olds. Europe’s oldest city can serve as a great model and light the way for all who want to take up this mission.

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Bachfest Leipzig’s Musical Offerings; Radiale Nacht with Colin Jacobsen and Alisa Weilerstein

Friday, June 15th, 2012

By Rebecca Schmid

The motto of this year’s Bachfest Leipzig, “…ein neues Lied” (a new song), could not be a more fitting choice to honor J.S. Bach’s legacy in the city where he spent his final 27 years as cantor. Upon arriving in 1723, he set out to write a cantata every week, enlisting as scribes his second wife, Anna Magdalena, and students who were trained at the Schola Thomana. Now buried beneath a bronze plaque at the foot of the altar in the St. Thomas Church, Bach—or at least his presumed remains which were exhumed from a former cemetery and transported in 1949—continues to infuse local practices with his spirit. The St. Thomas Boys Choir, celebrating its 800th anniversary this year, has commissioned new music for six major religious occasions and included some of Europe’s most seminal contemporary composers: Hans Werner Henze, Heinz Holliger and Krzysztof Penderecki will have all premiered works in the church by January of next year.

At a concert yesterday, the Bachfest (June 7-17) reprised Easter music by St. Thomas Cantor Georg Christoph Biller and Henze’s Pentecost music alongside two Bach works from the Leipzig period. Pentecost, a holiday of tremendous weight for practicing Christians in Europe, officially took place late last month and celebrates the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles. Henze, a self-avowed atheist, and his librettist Christian Lehnert take a spiritually inquisitive approach in An den Wind for chorus and orchestra. The chaos of unharnessed natural forces and human doubt yield to the promise of peace: “the dove will wake, its wings,/caught by the gusts, no longer will repose,” begins the final chorus after a solo violin emerges from the dust of a desert storm. Henze references Bach with a direct but unfinished quote “Jesu, meine Freu…” to ominous woodwinds and harp plucks in the first section, while wild counterpoint and a percussion interlude after Simon the Zealot’s proclamation of a burning wasteland recall the dramatic tension of his opera Phaedra (2007), another collaboration with Lehnert.

Henze often separates the high and low voices of the St. Thomas Choir and aligns them with according instrumentation: ethereal celeste, piano clusters and sustained chords accompany the pure timbre of boy sopranos while changed voices are underscored by low strings and woodwinds. Unaccompanied moments such as the Disciple’s urging to “call out…so softly that no one shall hear us but the wind” take on deceptively liturgical importance, yet the orchestra thwarts any sense of resolution, such as the gong crash after the mysterious harmonies of the chorus asking God for immortal strength or the rambling piano and bassoon blast following the sopranos’ quote from the Lutheran Bible, “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you….” The Holy Ghost’s powers of salvation transcend earthly strife to restore the natural world—“a wing’s beat, a wind, a simple breath”—bringing the choir together against a billowing atmospheric chord. Biller led the choir and members of the Gewandhaus Orchestra in an intense, precise performance that clocked in at 20 minutes on the mark.

Biller conducting at the St. Thomas Church © Bach-Archiv Leipzig / Gert Mothes: Bachfest Leipzig 2012

The cantor, in his St.-Thomas-Ostermusik, takes a more pious approach, using light-dark imagery to represent the ascent of Christ with direct allusions to Bach’s Passions. Biller himself devised the text for his cantata (also 20 minutes) based on Bible passages and originally composed verse. The opening features a sustained Wagnerian-like minor chord that is punctuated by trombones, only to yield to serenading recorders before the chorus rejoices in this “Easter day! Away with care and sorrow!” Cluster harmonies reminiscent of modern American choral music bring a progressive, optimistic air, while a recurrent rising, whole-tone wind motive and quasi-liturgical structure ground the work in a decisively western European tradition. Some members of the audience sang the descant of the Bavarian/Austrian hymn “Christ is arisen” while the boy sopranos crooned into the stratosphere, a transcendent passage that culminated in the clang of trumpet and chimes. Although the work may have its hokey moments for non-church goers, Biller manages to straddle contemporary developments in religious music with a clear reverence for the St. Thomas tradition. Alongside the immaculately trained choir, tenor Martin Lattke gave a fervent performance as the Evangelist.

Between the two newly commissioned works, Bach’s Ascension Oratorio (BWV 11) transported the audience back to the heyday of cantatas as the Gewandhaus musicians and boys’ choir performed with irreproachable authenticity under Biller. As the program notes explain, the work was written only six months after the Christmas Oratorio and features liberal borrowing from Bach’s earlier works, yet any such knowledge hardly impedes upon the music’s fresh exuberance as the trumpets open the work with a life-affirming proclamation. The ensemble’s sense of pace was particularly striking in the cadence of the opening chorus “Lobet Gott in Seinen Reichen,” and the Gewandhaus players’ flowing but restrained body movement made it clear that they have this music in their bones. The fragile, glassy timbre of a boy soprano in the aria “Jesus, deine Gnadenblicke” further evoked the original spirit of the work while the woodwinds accompanied in sensitive counterpoint. Closing the program was the motet “Der Geist hilft under Schwachheit auf” (BWV 226), performed at the burial of a St. Thomas headmaster in 1729. The music does not mourn but expresses gratitude to “the Spirit” for helping mortals through their weakness. A quiet penitence prevailed beneath the painted vaults of the St. Thomas Church.

Note to interested listeners: the St. Thomas Choir, for its 800th anniversary, has released a compilation of live performances featuring works by Bach, Mozart, Mendelssohn and others on the label Rondeau Productions.

Back on the (non-denominational) scene in Berlin…

The Mahler Chamber Orchestra (MCO) and the alternative arts space Radialsystem teamed up last weekend for their second Radiale Nacht, a rotating program of orchestral and chamber works featuring choreography by Sasha Waltz, live remixes and an after show. The format, scattered between the main hall, the lounge area, and the upstairs deck, exploits the ample space of the converted water pumping plant and creates a relaxed atmosphere in which musicians mingle casually with the audience. Guest artists Pablo Heras-Casado and Colin Jacobsen roamed between the bar and patio overlooking the Spree River before the concert, while one orchestral player dressed in black was mistaken for an onsite employee. The event was first launched in November with sponsorship by the pharmaceutical company Aventis in an effort to provide a Berlin base for the MCO, founded in 1997 as a touring ensemble with offices in the German capital. Radialsystem Intendant Jochen Sandig and MCO Intendant Andreas Richter hope to further cement the relationship despite the fact that they were denied city funding; Sandig reported in conversation that the local government is currently losing half a billion Euro over the delayed launch of the new airport.

Tense cultural politics aside, the energy was high as the youthful members of the MCO took the stage with Jacobsen as concert master under the direction of Heras-Casado. The mostly Russian program, seen June 9, opened in the main hall with Alisa Weilerstein in Shostakovich’s First Cello Concerto, a tour de force whose ferocity and emotional complexity the 30-year-old conveys with intuitive grace. She moved seamlessly between growling harmonics and whining melodies, shaping every passage with spontaneity and forward-moving inertia as she plunged into the depths of Shostakovich’s despair and rage. The cellist maintained irreproachable beauty of tone throughout the entire rage of her instrument in the Cadenza, which moves cautiously from a slow lament and into wild disillusion. She was matched well by the strings’ sinuous phrasing under Jacobsen and lean, buoyant textures that emerged through Heras-Casado’s economical but commanding gestures, although the tone could have been angrier in the final Allegro movement. As an encore, Weilerstein offered a fast movement from Bach’s Cello Suites, whose spritely baroque character was somewhat of a sudden palate cleanser to the edgy textures of the previous work.

Upstairs on the deck, she and Jacobsen joined with two members of the MCO for a very Berlinified rendition of Shostakovich’s Eight String Quartet featuring live remixes by the DJ Georg Conrad. Jacobsen’s bright, smooth tone led the group through the searing canonic development of the opening Largo—whose main theme is drawn from the First Cello Concerto, while Weilerstein’s fierce playing found a spotlight in the following Allegro molto. Then, in an unexpected twist, the musicians rested their bows as an interlude of house music whirred through the speakers. One can’t deny that the dance beats were well suited to the views of graffitied industrial buildings across the Spree, yet it was quite awkward to watch the quartet sit onstage without playing. While Jacobsen and other audience members started nodding their heads in rhythm, it might have been more organic to have the musicians improvise over the DJ: the connection to Shostakovich’s musical content was otherwise more than spurious. The effect was no less jarring when Conrad’s atmospheric grooves returned a second time after a violin solo during the penultimate Largo movement. The quartet otherwise formed a well-balanced whole, especially considering that they had only rehearsed the set-up that day.

The program retained its progressive flair with an excerpt from Sasha Waltz’s choreographed concert “gefaltet,” a Mozarteum commission originally unveiled earlier this season. The Divertimento in E-flat, as re-experienced at the Radiale Nacht, features a quartet of dancers in mock-ballet movements that range from sweeping, eloquently neo-baroque to angular, tick-like gestures while a trio plays at the corner of the stage. Waltz is strongest when she captures the sensuousness and symmetry of Mozart’s music, while less congruent attempts to stamp the music with a post-modern sensibility are less effective for this viewer. Sandig’s subsequent scenic arrangement of the Schnittke pastiche Moz-Art à la Haydn also incorporated dancers of Sasha Waltz & Guests in “structured improvisation” to mirror the aleatoric demands of the score, which riffs on a theme by Mozart into polytonal madness. In keeping with Schnittke’s original suggestions for blocking, the dancers begin in darkness along the aisles of the main hall before clustering with the dancers in a swarm onstage and running back to their original places. Heras-Casado was spotlighted toward the middle of a piece as a buffoon-like caricature of a conductor, waving his arms only for the sake of imposing control, only to be upstaged by a child dancer-turned-maestro with as commanding a head of curls.

Heras-Casado conducts the MCO (c) Holger Talinski

The official program closed with Shostakovich’s Ninth Symphony, considered the most neo-classical of his fifteen symphonies in its neat structure and cheerful character, although this is thoroughly tongue in cheek. The symphony was written at the end of World War Two in 1945, upon which Stalin accorded himself personal credit for the defeat of Germany. The dictator was not deaf to the satirical military allusions in this symphony, and announced soon thereafter that his regime could now find time to take appropriate measures toward art that so blatantly challenged his authority. The MCO’s spirited playing did full service to the music’s irony, knit together with fiery attacks under Heras-Casado, while wind solos emerged with confidence. Shostakovich’s writing for the bassoon is particularly prominent in this work, with its humorous melodies in final Allegretto that steer the orchestra away from triumph. The music continued in the lounge outside with Jacobsen’s chamber arrangements of works by Astrud Gilberto and others. The quintet, which included Weilerstein at the cello, was clearly having a great time jamming to samba and tango beats, and the audience rewarded them with wine-imbibed cheers.

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Spring for Music II Highlights; Frühbeck’s Carmina

Wednesday, June 13th, 2012

by Sedgwick Clark

The blockbuster of Carnegie Hall’s second Spring for Music festival last month was the second (!) performance this season of the rarely played, 70-minute piano concerto by the turn-of-the-20th-century piano virtuoso Ferruccio Busoni. It’s not a “great” piece, as one considers Beethoven’s Emperor great, but it’s a hoot and was stupendously negotiated on May 9 by the Canadian pianist Marc-André Hamelin and sympathetically accompanied by the New Jersey Symphony under Jacques Lacombe.

Alex Ross’s New Yorker review (January 9, 2012) of the earlier performance this season, by Piers Lane and the American Symphony under Leon Botstein, is necessary reading for anyone interested in the piece. He calls it “a wildly entertaining creation” and approvingly cites Bernard Holland’s loveable summation of the concerto–“a hymn to immoderation”–in his Times review of the work’s previous local performance, in 1989 at Carnegie. As fun as this garrulous example of late-Romantic mysticism is, however, its requirement of a men’s chorus in the finale will likely ensure its infrequency.

On the festival’s opening night, May 7, Hans Graf led the Houston Symphony in a well-drilled all-Shostakovich program. Houston was first to perform and record the Eleventh Symphony in the U.S., with Leopold Stokowski in 1958, so the work seemed a natural choice. But the Eleventh, composed in honor of the 40th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, reworks popular and revolutionary prison songs to tedious length, especially in the first and third movement adagios. Only Rostropovich’s searing, expansive performance with the LSO ten years ago at Avery Fisher raised it above the level of film music in my experience. Also played was Shostakovich’s Anti-Formalist Rayok, a 20-minute, late-1950s satire of Soviet bureaucrats, written for private performance among friends. Perhaps one has to be Russian.

Advance word was strong on the English conductor Justin Brown and the Alabama Symphony. A promo DVD with his orchestra of the Badisches Staatstheater, Karlsruhe, was as fine a Bruckner Fifth as I’ve heard from any conductor alive today. His recently released Karlsruhe Mahler Ninth on Pan Classics, however, is astonishingly uninvolved. Brown has championed contemporary American music in Alabama, and on May 10 he led the New York premieres of two recent ASO commissions, the first of which made a bang-up concert opener. While composing Astrolatry, lifetime city dweller Avner Dorman actually ventured into the countryside at night for inspiration. To an impressive degree he has captured his newfound “awe of nature” in this glittering 14-minute piece. Less persuasive was Paul Lansky’s tinkly Shapeshifters for two pianos and orchestra. After intermission, Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony was well played but less-than-compelling interpretively. The Fourth or Eighth might have shown this team’s work to better advantage.

I had never heard Charles Ives’s unfinished Universe Symphony (“realized and completed by Larry Austin”), with which the Nashville Symphony closed the festival on May 12. The Universe is in the style of Central Park in the Dark, beginning quietly, building to a raucous climax, and then tapering off . . . but lasting four times as long (36 minutes), at least in the hands of Nashville’s Giancarlo Guerrero, a name new to me and, I assure you, quite an enthusiastic fellow. Personally, I’m content with Central Park. But the Nashville’s performance—beginning with the quietest pppppp imaginable—was sensational. Ives fans may look forward to next Spring, when Leonard Slatkin will bring the Detroit Symphony to Carnegie for all four (legitimate) Ives symphonies in one gulp!    

As before, the concerts were streamed live internationally by Classical 105.9 FM WQXR and attended by busloads of hometown concertgoers.

Frühbeck’s Carmina burana at the Phil

Carl Orff’s ability to set Carmina’s bawdy texts with vitality and memorable melodies has excited audiences for 75 years despite critical sniping at the work’s rhythmic simplicity. Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Musical America’s Conductor of the Year for 2011, served it resoundingly well on June 1 with the New York Philharmonic, soprano Erin Morley, tenor Nicholas Phan, baritone Jacques Imbrailo, the Orfeón Pamplonén chorus, and Brooklyn Youth Chorus. Among many fine instrumental touches, Sandra Church’s slinky flute duet with Markus Rhoten’s perfectly balanced timpani in the Tanz was outstanding. Frühbeck’s 1965 New Philharmonia recording on EMI is still my favorite.

Selections from Manuel de Falla’s unfinished cantata, Atlántida, opened the concert.

Looking forward

My week’s scheduled concerts:

6/14, Avery Fisher Hall, 7:30. New York Philharmonic/Alan Gilbert; Leonidas Kavakos, violin; Erin Morley, soprano; Joshua Hopkins, baritone. Beethoven: Coriolan Overture. Korngold: Violin Concerto. Nielsen: Symphony No. 3 (Sinfonia espansiva).

6/20 Avery Fisher Hall, 7:30. New York Philharmonic/Alan Gilbert; Emanuel Ax, piano; soloists and chorus. Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 22; Mass in C minor (Great).

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How Do I Protect My Personal Assets From Claims of Copyright Infringement?

Wednesday, June 13th, 2012

By Brian Taylor Goldstein

Dear FTM Arts Law:

Could owning copyrights individually (as opposed to being owned by a corporate entity) ever be a personal liability?  I understand that if copyrights are held in the name of a S-corp, C-corp, or possibly LLC, the corporate veil would shield my personal assets.

There is no liability in “owning” a copyright—unless you’ve written something really horrible and would rather not be credited. However, there can be considerable personal liability in stealing (or what attorneys call “infringing”) someone else’s copyright.

Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that you are a composer and another composer claims that portions of your famous zither concerto contains unlicensed portions of the other composer’s music. If you own the copyright in your zither concerto personally, then you can be personally liable. But what if you had transferred or assigned the copyright to your publishing company and your publishing company is a Limited Liability Company (LLC)? Then both you and your company can be sued! In other words, a corporate veil does not protect you or your personal assets from liability for copyright infringement!

In most cases, you are correct that when your form a valid corporate entity (C-corp, S-corp, or LLC), then a “corporate veil” descends between the entity and the owners (even if there is only one owner) and the owners are not personally responsible or liable for the debts of the corporate entity. If, for example, your corporate entity enters into a contract to pay for services, and your corporate entity breaches the contract and refuses to pay, then only the corporate entity is liable, not you personally. However, this “corporate veil” only protects you from liability for debts, bad business deals, or contract breaches. It does not protect you from liability from what are called “torts.”

A “tort” is any thing other than a breach of contract which causes damages to another person and includes such things as fraud, negligence, assault, battery, defamation, and….copyright infringement. So, if the president of a corporate entity commits fraud, then both the corporate entity can be liable as well as the person who “personally” committed the fraud. Or, if a truck driver runs a red light and causes an accident, then both the truck driver can be sued, as well as the company he or she works for. It is the same with copyright infringement.

If you are accused of using unlicensed material in your zither concerto, it doesn’t matter who holds or owns the copyright. If it is ultimately determined that you used someone else’s copyrighted materials when creating the work in the first place, then you are personally liable. And it gets worse. Through a legal theory called “vicarious liability”, the musicians who perform you work could be liable, the agent or manager who promoted it could be liable, even the venue where it is performed could be liable.

In the end, the smartest way to protect your personal assets from potential claims of copyright infringement is either by using only original works or by ensuring that you have all of the proper licenses and permissions in the first place. Also, in order to protect yourself from frivolous lawsuits and false claims of infringement, register your copyrights with the US Copyright and Trademark Office.

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For additional information and resources on this and other legal and business issues for the performing arts, visit ftmartslaw-pc.com.

To ask your own question, write to lawanddisorder@musicalamerica.org.

All questions on any topic related to legal and business issues will be welcome. However, please post only general questions or hypotheticals. FTM Arts Law reserves the right to alter, edit or, amend questions to focus on specific issues or to avoid names, circumstances, or any information that could be used to identify or embarrass a specific individual or organization. All questions will be posted anonymously.

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THE OFFICIAL DISCLAIMER:

THIS IS NOT LEGAL ADVICE!

The purpose of this blog is to provide general advice and guidance, not legal advice. Please consult with an attorney familiar with your specific circumstances, facts, challenges, medications, psychiatric disorders, past-lives, karmic debt, and anything else that may impact your situation before drawing any conclusions, deciding upon a course of action, sending a nasty email, filing a lawsuit, or doing anything rash!

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Classical:NEXT debuts in Munich

Friday, June 8th, 2012

By Rebecca Schmid

Classical:NEXT, an exclusively classical professional forum which held its first edition from May 30-June 2 in Munich, set out with high ambitions. Founded at the behest of the Association of Classical Independents in Germany (CLASS) as an alternative to MIDEM, which has left many attendants disappointed in recent years both for its high costs and lack of innovation, the new event included not only a trade fair and networking opportunities but live showcases, video screenings, panel discussions and after-hours concerts exploring classical club culture. Naxos, a partner of Classical:NEXT, brought its entire brigade alongside countless small labels, distributors, independent entrepreneurs, managers, and more to mingle at Munich’s Gasteig, an elegant event space that also serves as home to the Munich Philharmonic. 700 delegates attended in total, 60% of which came from outside Germany.

The most successful aspect appears to have been the networking opportunities. The managing partner of a small label told me that several people planned on foregoing MIDEM—which is heavy on pop music and serves thousands of delegates—in favor of the new alternative next year. The founder of a new label whom I spoke with at a private party was headed up to his hotel room to sign a contract with Naxos. While none of the (former) ‘Big Four’ labels were represented, there was no lack of promotional activities. Meanwhile, the live showcases and video screenings (for which yours truly sat on the jury) coincided with each other as well as conference sessions, receiving a less than stellar attendance rate and leaving several performers disappointed. One can only hope the coming iteration will attend to the issue. I did manage to catch a performance of composer-performer Thierry Pécou’s “Ensemble Variances” in two original chamber works. His subjective idiom and unusual presentation format certainly fits into the “NEXT” part of the event’s mission, as did a contemporary concert at the Harry Klein club later that evening.

Delegates mingling at the Gasteig (c) Eric van Nieuwland/Classical:NEXT

The topics of the conference sessions included the use of atonality in film music, crowd funding, digital marketing, and perspectives on journalism today. Carnegie Hall E-Strategy Director Christopher Gruits gave an unusually focused presentation about multimedia strategies alongside Bavarian State Opera Head of Marketing Anna Kleeblatt. Video is the operative word for both institutions, while the Bavarian State Opera is also making its first forays in Twitter and has amassed 3,356 followers: the company recently launched a contest for a free weekend in Verona that asked participants to name, among other creative bits, their favorite “manner of death onstage” (hopefully stage directors won’t take the submissions too seriously). The discrepancy in developments across the Atlantic of course could not hide its face—Carnegie Hall has four people on staff for digital marketing as compared to one at the Bavarian State Opera—but the latter is fully on the bandwagon with its newly-launched free streaming service, already attracting 40,000 viewers in the U.S. Up next is an App entitled “I love Opera” to serve the 13 largest opera houses in the German-speaking world.

The ramifications of digital developments for journalism of course also dominated a discussion with BBC Music Magazine Editor Oliver Condy and freelance journalist Jessica Duchen as moderated by PIANONews Editor Carsten Dürer. Condy emphasized that music journalism must be seen as a profession and accorded proper compensation: I wouldn’t invite a plumber to work in my house and say this will be a great promotional gig, he explained. Duchen, who holds a widely read blog, admitted that it has become a bit of a “millstone” for her as she struggled to meet the expectations of readers and PR agents who request that she cover certain topics. The panel members also decried the proliferation of opinion pieces as opposed to solid music journalism. Perhaps it is my American perspective, but the general tone was a bit outdated for the current state of affairs and made too strong a distinction between internet users and print. Surely we journalists have reached the point where we can actively exploit the internet to our advantage, rather than allow it to exploit us, and use multimedia in healthy doses.

Gramophone Editor-in-Chief James Jolly, in his closing speech, emphasized the power of social media (his magazine boasts some 14,000 Facebook followers) and compared the iPad’s impact on journalism to the iPod when it first descended upon the music industry. He also confirmed that the U.S. is leading the way in digital developments, somewhat of a tricky issue at a continental conference including people from countries (40 altogether) at various stages in exploiting new technology. As it happens, some local residents of the conservative Bavarian capital were not so smitten by the forum’s international mission and complained that city funds had been invested in an event that failed to involve enough local arts institutions. Jolly smoothed over any controversy by praising Classical:NEXT as a “relaxed forum…vital to sharing our experiences, developing new relationships and guaranteeing that we will all be in a position to return again next year– in good health and ready for the challenges that will undoubtedly present themselves.” That they will indeed.

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