Putting Down New Roots

September 13th, 2012

By: Edna Landau

To ask a question, please write Ask Edna.

To Our Readers:

I hope you have all had a very enjoyable summer and I welcome you back to Ask Edna. Since a number of our readers have moved over the summer, I have decided to dedicate this first column of the new season to a question that was posed to me at a session I did at the Imani Winds Chamber Music Festival in July. I was asked how someone who is well-established as a musician in a particular city can make connections when they move to a new city where they don’t know anyone. In thinking about this, I chose to contact pianist Makiko Hirata, a graduate of the Colburn School and now a doctoral candidate at The Shepherd School of Music/Rice University. I have always found her to be very entrepreneurial so I was curious as to how she had personally approached this.

Makiko told me that before moving to Houston, her teacher in Los Angeles called several faculty members at the Shepherd School to introduce her. A prominent composer whose work she had recorded called a number of composers and musicians in the Houston area to introduce her as well. Upon arrival in Houston, Makiko got in touch with some members of the Japanese consulate there, as she had been advised to do by some contacts in the Japanese-American community in Los Angeles. She also auditioned for and was accepted into the Young Artist Program of the Da Camera Society, which provided her with performance opportunities ranging from in-school concerts to a fundraising event where former president George H. W. Bush and Barbara Bush were in the audience. On her own, Makiko organized a fundraiser following the devastating tsunami/earthquake that happened in her native Japan. She got tremendous support from the administration at Rice University, the faculty at the Shepherd School of Music, the media, the local community, and the Japanese community in the greater Houston area. In the end, she raised over $10,000 and (in her words) “found a supportive community of music lovers that was eager to learn about and support her activities and dreams.”

Here are some more things you might want to try, depending on your career objectives:

  1. Check online to see if there is an arts council in your new location. They will often list performance opportunities as well as events taking place in the area.
  2. Learn about any established concert series in your new home city. (Check Musical America’s listings!) Take a look at their website and read their newsletter. Try to attend at least one concert and meet the presenter afterwards.
  3. Much of the musical activity in any town revolves around the school and its music department. Many such concerts are free. Make a point of going to one or two of them and saying hello to the performers afterwards.
  4. Find out who the contractor is for any local orchestra, festival or special occasion gigs, such as weddings.
  5. Acquaint yourself with the venues that are currently being used for concerts and explore new possibilities such as churches, synagogues, banks, galleries, book stores, meeting halls, museums, and even the local zoo. Consider doing a benefit concert for a local charity.
  6. Learn about schools, hospitals, retirement homes and social service organizations who might welcome the opportunity to offer musical programs.
  7. If there is a local classical music station, see if they would be interested in live performances.
  8. If you are seeking chamber music partners and are not a student, place an ad in an appropriate local publication. The same would apply if you are interested in teaching or playing wedding jobs.
  9. Network with people who are already established in the community, such as teachers, to see who they think it might be worth your while to meet. Try to include people who aren’t necessarily musicians.
  10. Investigate whether there are any conductors for whom you might audition.
  11. Check out opportunities in nearby cities within commuting distance, especially if you hope to play in an orchestra.

Any number of these roads should lead you to individuals who can give you valuable advice about how to be most productive and successful in your new home town.

To ask a question, please write Ask Edna.

© Edna Landau 2012

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Kudos for a Critic?

September 12th, 2012

by Sedgwick Clark

Frankly it was astonishing: A disingenuous “culture” editor of “all the news that’s fit to print” shunts a classical-music critic from his 35-year beat into a position called “general culture reporter,” and within a day 500 angry readers sign a petition to reinstate him. Two days later the number had grown to 1,100! By noon today (9/12), the number had risen to 1,357. And remember, we’re talking about a critic of the high art that is supposedly dying faster than the printed newspaper.

My phone calls and e-mails haven’t let up since I blogged on the subject last week.

Gil Shaham’s 20th-century Concertos

Just to show that I’m not squeaky clean either, I’m about to quote from a press release! It’s about the upcoming season of Musical America’s 2012 Instrumentalist of the Year, Gil Shaham, who has been engaged in “one of the most imaginative programming concepts in years,” to quote our own words.

Now entering its fourth season, Shaham’s long-term exploration of iconic “Violin Concertos of the 1930s” was conceived when he realized how many outstanding 20th-century violin concertos derived from that fateful decade. The coming year brings the project’s first recording, on which he joins forces once again with David Robertson, his brother-in-law and frequent musical partner. Due for release on the violinist’s own Canary Classics label, the new album features three of the decade’s most evocative concertos, performed with the world-class orchestras of three nations, all with Robertson on the podium: Stravinsky’s (1931) with the BBC Symphony Orchestra; Berg’s (1935) with the Dresden Staatskapelle; and Barber’s (1939) with the New York Philharmonic, with whom Shaham previously collaborated to impress the New York Times with their “rich-toned, gracefully shaped performance.”

In the concert hall, Shaham performs no fewer than seven violin concertos of the 1930s over the coming season. Barber’s is the vehicle for his return to the New York Philharmonic, now with music director Alan Gilbert (Nov 29 – Dec 1), and for appearances with Marin Alsop and the Baltimore Symphony (Sep 20–22). He reprises the Stravinsky with both the San Francisco Symphony led by Michael Tilson Thomas (June 18–20) and the Orchestre de Paris under Nicola Luisotti (Jan 9–10), and plays the Berg with Michael Stern directing the Kansas City Symphony (May 31 – June 2). Other 1930s masterpieces showcased over the coming season are William Walton’s concerto (1938-39), which headlines the violinist’s appearances with the Chicago Symphony and Charles Dutoit (Nov 8–11); Benjamin Britten’s (1938-39), which he undertakes with both the Boston Symphony conducted by Juanjo Mena (Nov 1–6) and the Montreal Symphony under James Conlon (Sep 26); Bartók’s Second (1937–38) with the Orchestre de Paris led by Paavo Järvi (March 20–21); and Prokofiev’s Second (1935) on Japanese tour with the NHK Symphony (March 7–11).

I combed with fingers crossed through those two paragraphs for the name “Hindemith,” who wrote what I consider the most underrated Violin Concerto of the 20th century. When Gil received his Musical America award I goaded him into promising that he would add the concerto to his repertoire, and I hope that I’ll see it on a New York Philharmonic schedule soon.

While awaiting the Shaham rendering of this supremely melodic masterpiece, those who wish to test my opinion may listen to Isaac Stern’s Columbia recording with Bernstein and the NYPhil now on Sony Classical. I had the pleasure of sitting next to Stern at a Carnegie Hall season announcement lunch a decade or so ago and told him of my regard for this piece because of his recording and that it was my favorite violin concerto of that century. He replied that, much as he loved the Hindemith, he would personally choose the Bartók Second and Berg concertos as his favorites.

Ah, the memories of Stagedoor Sedgie.

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Smile, You’re On Candid Camera!

September 11th, 2012

By Brian Taylor Goldstein

THIS WEEK’S BLOG IS BEING WRITTEN FROM THE MIDWEST ARTS CONFERENCE IN GRAND RAPIDS, MICHIGAN WHERE ROBYN AND I ARE TEACHING SEMINARS AND WORKSHOPS. HERE’S A SHOUT OUT TO THE INCREDIBLE STAFF AT ARTS MIDWEST!! And now back to our regularly scheduled blog…

We re-booked a popular classical artist to perform at our venue. In promoting the concert, we used a photograph of the artist that one of our staff took the last time the artist performed here. Then we got a nasty phone call from the artist’s manager saying that we could only use “approved” photographs. Is this true? Since we took the photograph in the first place, don’t we own it?

Personally, without some significant costuming and airbrushing available, I hate having my photograph taken. Fortunately, I’m not a public figure who needs to attract audiences or sell albums. However, for those who are, there’s a reason agents and managers want to control what images are used to promote their artists: not everyone looks good in a candid photo. And it’s not merely a question of vanity. Singers and musicians often contort themselves into considerably unnatural—and unappealing—positions to achieve just the right note or sound. How an artist looks during a performance, or even in candid shots taken backstage after a performance or during a donor reception, doesn’t necessarily reflect how the artist wants to be seen professionally. And that’s really the point. At the end of the day, it’s the artist’s decision, not yours.

Just because you took the photograph, doesn’t mean you have the right to use it. Legally, there are two sets of rights inherent in every photograph: the rights of the photographer and the rights of the person being photographed. In order to use a photograph for commercial purposes (which includes marketing and publicity), you need to have permission from both. Most booking contracts require the manager or agent to approve all photographs precisely so that the artist can control their publicity and image, but even if the contract doesn’t require this, you still have no right to use anyone’s image for publicity or marketing without their permission.

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For additional information and resources on this and other legal and business issues for the performing arts, visit ggartslaw.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. GG 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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Posted in Artist Management, Arts Management, Contracts, Copyrights, Law and Disorder: Performing Arts Division, Licensing, Presenters, Venues | Comments Closed

September 10th, 2012

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Eclipse, A New Work for BAM’S Newest Space

September 10th, 2012

By Rachel Straus

Jonah Bokaer in "Eclipse." Photo: Stephanie Berger

Choreographer Jonah Bokaer and visual artist Anthony McCall’s world premiere of Eclipse inaugurated the BAM Richard B. Fisher Building with six sold out performances from September 5th through 9th. The hour-long work (seen on the 9th) in the new black box theater was configured so that the audience flanked four sides of the dark, carpeted, stage space. The performance began when Bokaer approached one of the lowest hanging bulbs and knelt to Thomas Edison’s invention. Like the sun god Apollo, Bokaer’s penetrating gaze into the bulb’s opaque surface caused its illumination.

Bokaer’s ability to make this opening moment feel mysterious and important is part of the reason why he has captured the attention of museum curators, visual artists and the international dance set. He has an indelible stage presence and is a beautiful mover, though less and less is he demonstrating the range of his physical virtuosity. Like the 1960s Judson Church Theatre founders, Bokaer is saying no to most of his training, which includes ballet, Martha Graham and the Merce Cunningham techniques. His chosen vocabulary for Eclipse is spare, includes lots of sharp starts and stops, and numerous sculptural poses. All are executed with an intense seriousness.

Because Bokaer’s first encounter with McCall’s slowly illuminating lighting installation was gripping (but became less so the second and third time) and because McCall’s “sonic score” for the four dance scenes was solely comprised of the ceaseless tick-tick of an ancient film projector, Bokaer had a real theatrical problem on his hands: How to proceed. On top of that, McCall’s installation of 120 watt light bulbs and old-time theater sound evoked a nostalgia for a previous technological era. In contrast Bokaer has increasingly embraced new technology as a launchpad for developing choreography. Consequently, the most notable eclipse in Eclipse was this difference between Bokaer and McCall’s apparent interests.

Dancers Tal Adler-Arieli, CC Chang, Sara Procopio and Adam Weinert first appeared in the slightly claustrophobic space like ghostly sleepwalkers. Later they became sculptual set pieces graced by Aaron Copp’s chiaroscuro lighting. By the performance’s end, each excellent dancer had performed a short solo.  But unlike Bokaer’s solo—which possessed the tenseness of a perilous traffic blockage with Bokaer as a topnotch traffic cop (pumping his fists outwards from his chest, slashing his arms and changing directions with knife-like precision)—the solos Bokaer choreographed for each of his four dancers didn’t marry gesture with any clear sense of intent.

What was most impressive during the course of the performance was that none of the dancers collided with McCall’s lightbulbs as they traversed through his confidence course-like installation. Also fascinating was when the dancers performed fast-moving phrases inches from both the audience and the illuminated hanging bulbs. During these moments, the performers eclipsed the light.

Eclipse was structured into four scenes by three blackouts during which time deafening sounds (the rumblings of a train, an overhead helicopter) poured out of the speakers directly above the audience’s heads. This experience eclipsed my desire to have ear drums.

In the final section, the dancers moved for the first and last time in unison. They flattened their bodies to the floor to become two-dimensional figures signaling to a subterranean world. Bokaer soon reappeared and took his orginal kneeling pose beside a low hanging suspended bulb. When the dancers took their bows, I had almost as many questions and images hovering through my head as the number of light bulbs hanging in the space.

But the confounding part of Eclipse was not it sense of impenetrable mystery, but the contents of the playbill. Bokaer’s page-long biography made no mention of the fact that he had danced for Merce Cunningham Dance Company. At 18 years old, Bokaer joined the troupe. Cunningham’s aesthetic is firmly rooted in Bokaer’s works, which are chock full of off-center balances, electronic scores and computer technology. Most of all by performing Cunningham’s dances across the world, in the most highly esteemed theaters from 2000 to 2007, Bokaer came to the attention of avant garde composers, visual artists and critics. When Bokaer began to choreograph, he wasn’t some young choreographer with a BA in Visual & Media Studies. He was Cunningham’s favorite male dancer.

Bokaer’s ommission of Cunningham is nonetheless the sign of a true modernist. This originator must eclipse—must totally obscure—the father figure.

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Keeping the Faith in Lucerne

September 7th, 2012

By Rebecca Schmid

Reconnecting the spiritual with classical music might seem a controversial issue in an era of cultural pluralism, yet the hunger to unearth the spiritual has seeped into some of Europe´s leading festivals. As Jim Oestreich reported earlier this season in The New York Times, a wave of religiosity has spread from Lincoln Center´s White Lights Festival, now in its third season, to both Salzburg and Luzern. In what may be interpreted as an increased awareness of social responsibility, both picture-perfect cities have devoted attention to Judeo-Christian tradition and the ramifications of Holocaust—although Luzern was in fact founded as a non-fascist alternative to Bayreuth and Salzburg in Nazi times, bringing in composers such as Toscanini and Bruno Walter. While Luzern´s Easter Festival has already established itself as a sanctuary of religious music, the summer edition (August 8-September 15) hopes to explore the theme more deeply and thereby further integrate itself into the social fabric, as Intendant Michael Haeflinger explains in an interview with the festival magazine Più. A production of Schönberg´s biblical opera Moses and Aron was mounted in direct collaboration with a local church, while Lutheranism, Buddism and Islamic mysticism briefly received their due.

Programming around the theme of faith of course provides a wealth of dramaturgical possibilities. Maris Jansons and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam appeared in a program of Schönberg, Stravinsky, Barber and Varèse, as much a spiritual as geographic journey that had already travelled to the Salzburg Festival. The detached recitation of the speaker (Sergei Leiferkus) against the shrieking brass and raw strings of A Survivor from Warsaw, which Schönberg wrote in American exile upon hearing about the horrors of the Holocaust, ceded to Stravinsky´s austerely meditative yet playfully neo-classical Symphonie de Psaumes. The final chorus, which the composer described as a “calm of praise,” remained firmly trapped in the heavens against the ethereal dissonances of the orchestra, a choir of survivors singing down in the aftermath of destruction. The CBSO chorus, trained by Simon Halsey, dispatched its role in fine form.

The spirit of reconciliation found more worldly expression in the Adagio for Strings, which managed to escape its hackneyed identity in the context of this concert. Jansons coaxed the full-bodied strings of his orchestra into sensuous, sighing phrases. Closing the program was Amériques, a vast landscape of musical possibilities for which Varèse found inspiration from the window of his Upper West Side apartment shortly after leaving Europe. Siren-like brass, anxious, insistent winds, pounding percussion and metallic bursts into post-modernity capture both the harshness and chaos the composer must have sensed as well as his affection for this open-ended, untameable future. The Concertgebouw musicians played with combustible energy.

Mahler´s Resurrection Symphony, performed by Andris Nelsons—Luzern´s Artiste étoile this summer—and his City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra was also amenable to the program´s goals, the music´s spiritual ambiguity retaining a powerful hold on the modern psyche. As program notes by Susanne Stähr point out, Mahler hadn´t yet converted to Catholicism when he wrote his Second Symphony. His bombastic affirmation of faith in an afterlife, replete with Wagnerian undertones, does not entirely mask the composer´s extreme ambivalence toward abandoning his Jewish roots in order to ensure more professional mobility: “Cease from trembling! Prepare thyself to live,” sings the chorus in the final movement. Nelson led the orchestra and the CBSO chorus with a clear sense of the music´s architecture, mastering sweeping phrases in visceral connection with the musicians, yet a sense of irony could have been more present in the Klezmer-like melodies of the third movement and quotes from the Knaben Wunderhorn song cycle. The performances of soloists Lucy Crowe and Mihoko Fujimura also verged on the melodramatic despite their polished execution.

Much as Mahler could not avoid undertaking a highly spiritually quest in his music, not least by subverting classical form with his free integration of popular melodies, Composer-in-Residence Sofia Gubaidulina, whose 80th birthday was celebrated internationally last year, considers writing music not a secular act but “a form of worship,” as she says in a statement. She has also testified in interview that music provided an escape from the politics of the former Soviet Union. Nelsons conducted fellow Latvian violinist Baiba Skride and the City of Birmingham Symphony the following evening in the Russian-Tartar composer´s First Violin Concerto Offertorium, an approximately 35-minute work which opens with the main theme of Bach´s Musical Offering, only to be stripped down and built back note by note. The violin remains trapped in its own quest to win back spiritual direction, as it were, against an orchestra ridden by uncertainty.

Skride played with humility and elegance throughout high-pitched harmonics and ethereal sketches, while the Birmingham players remained strong and on point under Nelsons. The notion of faith took on a directly political connotation with Shostakovich´s Leningrad Symphony, who famously thematicizes the German occupation of the Russian city in 1941, completed after the composer fled to Moscow. An ironically jovial theme marches on with a nearly farcical stride in the opening movement, while unusually simple harmonies quietly convey resignation and nostalgia before yielding to a tortured, C-major victory. Nelson led the orchestra in a clean, sincere performance that could have nevertheless brooded more under the surface.

Meanwhile, the young musicians of the Lucerne Festival Academy were busy rehearsing a wide range of contemporary repertoire, some with Academy Co-Founder Pierre Boulez, who in his earlier days with the Darmstadt School advocated a complete break with the musical values of the past due to the political horrors of the twentieth century. Yet even he admits in his own way that spirituality can transcend certain human and artistic polarities. “Faith in the broadest sense reveals itself in all music,” he tells the Swiss magazine Musik&Theater. “Whether a composer is conservative or progressive, he maintains his motivation to create art.”

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A prim ‘Carmen’ returns to the Salzburg Festival

September 7th, 2012

By Rebecca Schmid

The title role of Bizet´s Carmen is a milestone for mezzo-sopranos, setting them up for comparison with a pantheon of singers from Maria Callas to Jessye Norman. Magdalena Kozena, well-aware of the challenge, waited until this year to sing in her first fully-staged production, directed by the choreographer Aletta Collins and conducted by her husband, Simon Rattle, at the Salzburg Easter Festival. The premiere was widely criticized, mostly for the reportedly undercooked playing of the Berlin Philharmonic in its last residency before the orchestra packs it bags for a shiny new Easter Festival in Baden-Baden, while Collins and Kozena also had to contend with their share of negative feedback. Die Presse went as far as to call Salzburg native Genia Kühmeier the highlight of the production as the virtuous Michaela, hopelessly in love with the naïve solider Don José as he chases after Carmen.

The opera returned to the roster of the Salzburg Summer Festival (July 20-September 2), this time with the Vienna Philharmonic in the pit at the Grosses Festspielhaus. The ground was not terribly fertile for Kozena´s first entrance, seen August 25, following the onslaught of pseudo-gypsy contemporary dance during the overture, nor did the Czech native convey the sense of danger one associates with the ferocious gypsy. She brought excellent French diction and pliant phrasing to her opening aria “L´amour est enfant de bohème,” but her presence was almost too elegant to believe, nor do Kozena´s low notes have the bite to pull the listener into her seductive destruction. She warmed up a bit more to the role in the second and third acts, expertly playing the castanets in her aria “Là-bas tu me suivrais” in which she beckons José to ride off with her into the sunset, and brought touching vulnerability to the final scene in which José stabs her in a fit of desperate rage.

Jonas Kaufmann is, like Kozena, one of today´s most versatile singers in his Fach and has the star quality to lure audiences in practically any role. His throbbing tenor and steadfast presence made for an amiable José despite a constricted timbre that is not ideal for French repertoire. His single aria “La fleur que tu m´avais jetée” was moving in its earnest execution, although his diction was more understandable in spoken passages. I can´t help but agree with the Austrian press that Kühmeier outshines her more seasoned colleagues in this production. Her words floated effortlessly to the back of the theatre even in soft passages, with a purity of tone and technical control that reveal the greatest respect for Bizet´s lyrical nuances. The American baritone Christian Van Horn also impressed with round, authoritative singing as the lieutenant Zuniga.

Kostas Smorginas was commanding as the toreador Escamillo, José´s rival, despite a gravelly quality to his voice. The German soprano Christina Landshamer revealed fine musicianship in the role of Carmen´s friend, Frasquita, complimented well by Rachel Frenkel at her side as Mercedes. The remainder of the supporting cast similarly made a strong impression. The chorus of the Vienna State Opera lived up to its high musical standards, and the children´s chorus of the Salzburg Festival added some charm to the production. Rattle led the Vienna Philharmonic in an elegant but controlled account of the score, perhaps holding the reins too tight in order to realize his even-textured vision of the music. While the conductor underscored tender moments with great sensitivity, Bizet´s luxurious Romantic phrases did not always breathe idiomatically.

It is of course no easy task to make one´s stamp an opera that counts among today´s most hackneyed stage works. Collins´ production provides a fresh take through her background in dance, setting musical interludes to elegant if flashy contemporary moves and placing an emphasis on the physical interactions between characters, but the effect is more often contrived than revealing. Her direction shies away from the socially subversive qualities that made the opera so scandalous in the late nineteenth century, having Kozena aggressively push away both José and other soldiers ad nauseum while her giving her irresistible eroticism a polite veneer of civility. José murders Carmen tenderly but without the bestiality that blurs the lines between love and hatred, life and death. Sets by Miriam Buether and costumes by Gabrielle Dalton range indecisively between the realist and the post-modern. While the plush, red tavern of Lillas Pastia revealed fine craftsmanship, the oversized masks of the final act seemed desperate to create an original artistic brand. Kozena made a striking last appearance in a burnt orange silk dress and matching flower, perhaps more cover girl than street walker, but a fitting presence for a festival that loves its stars. The audience clapped enthusiastically between numbers and well after I had made my way out of the Festspielhaus.

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DanceNOW Festival at Joe’s Pub

September 6th, 2012

By Rachel Straus

Adam Barruch’s I Had Myself a True Love had my vote as the winner of the DanceNOW Challenge at Joe’s Pub. On September 5, Barruch’s competition was nine other choreographers. Just like a prime-time dance competition, the sold-out audience was invited to judge and pick a favorite. The challenge for the artists was  to create a work in under five minutes for the tiny cabaret stage which provides, in the words of producer Sydney Skybetter, “a clear concise artistic statement.” The odds were tipped toward Barruch. He was the only choreographer with two works on the program. Last year he was a DanceNOW winner. This year his new hyper-expressive solos to recorded music sung by Barbara Steisand opened and closed the hour-long evening.

At the smartly renovated Joe’s Pub, the boyish-looking Barruch danced from the gut. But his work wasn’t sentimental. It was intentionally overwrought. Like Pina Bausch, Barruch contasts sharp, vexed gestures with voluminous ones that wash over his body like a tidal wave. His small gestures—wrists curling up like a fern, fingers streching the lids of his eyes wide—become the places where Barruch dances a specific experience. To me it read as if he was seeing a horror and longing to transcend it. Barruch’s transcendence occurred through his loose-limbed body’s swirling and lunging and his speed that left behind distinct lines in space, like that of a painter’s brush. Barruch’s choice of Streisand songs I Had Myself a True Love and Lover, Come Back To Me grounded the two solos in a narrative. But unlike many Streisand dance tributes, Barruch’s didn’t stoop to camping this favorite diva. Instead, he channelled Streisand’s intensity and oddness through Charlie Chaplin-like facial expressions that expressed forlornness, hope and near madness.

Barruch studied for a year and a half at The Juilliard School and then launched himself as a choreographer-dancer in today’s hard knocks dance world. Multiple dance educational institutions have commissioned him to teach and make works. He has been a stand out in several group shows. Recently, the Alvin Ailey Foundation’s New Directions Choreography Lab invited him to be one of their initiative’s first recipients. Barruch is getting noticed.

As for the other artists, they made for an eclectic evening. Some were funny, others were earnest. If you feel like seeing new dance-theatre makers and voting for your favorite one, DanceNOW’s tenth anniversary Joe’s Pub festival continues (September 6, 7, 8 and 15). Producer-directors Robin Staff, Tamara Greenfield and Sydney Skybetter will help choose an overall winner of the DanceNOW Challenge. That artist will receive $1,000, a week-long creative residency, and twenty hours of New York City studio space. This prize is not Lotto, but these days dance artists need all the bits of help they can get.

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Allan Kozinn: The Times Eats Its Own

September 5th, 2012

by Sedgwick Clark

The word spread like wildfire: Allan Kozinn, a classical-music reviewer at the New York Times for 35 years and a staffer since 1991 had been transferred from the reviewing staff to general cultural reporting. His last review ran on Monday, September 3, Labor Day – the same day that Norman Lebrecht broke the story (see link below), alleging that the change in Kozinn’s status was the result of Culture Editor Jon Landman’s poisonous office politics and a knife in the back delivered by longtime Classical Music Editor James R. Oestreich, his friend of three decades, who feared for his own job. (For the record, I know all of the dramatis personae except for Lebrecht and Landman, and have edited articles by all of the writers mentioned below except for Tommasini, Wakin, and Eichler.)

Classical-music fans are enormously loyal, but even so, the response to Kozinn’s sacking as a reviewer was astonishing, with musicians, writers, and readers in often vituperative discussion. Readers responding to Lebrecht’s blog wrote of Kozinn’s “lack of personal bias and agenda” and “trustworthy standard of intelligence, erudition, sensitivity, and judiciousness.” They called him “a truly eloquent lover of music” and “a tremendous loss for the Times [and for] the music world.” There was even a “Save Kozinn” petition that had over 500 signatures by midday Tuesday!

To me personally, the overriding merit of Kozinn’s reviews has always been his exceptional ability to describe what the music and performance sounded like, which is no easy task. I can’t get to every concert I wish, and I’ve counted on Kozinn to elucidate the baroque and contemporary repertory he had staked out at the Times. Kozinn covered more concerts than any of his colleagues, some 250 per year. He has always been there for his editors. (When John Cage died suddenly, Kozinn wrote a 3,000-word obit in four hours!) If I believed that the executive editors still give a damn about classical music in this time of newspaper death throes and the worldwide embrace of popular culture, I would suggest that they will regret this move.

Here’s the inter-office skinny: When staffer Bernard Holland (whose elegant pen is greatly missed) retired in 2005, his position was not filled, leaving only three full-time staffers (Anthony Tommasini, Oestreich, and Kozinn) and three stringers (currently Steve Smith, Vivien Schweitzer, and Zachary Woolfe) who are limited to three reviews a week and occasional features. Landman (who I had never even heard of before Labor Day) and Oestreich (whose grumpy reviews share Kozinn’s clarity) are dying to get Woolfe on staff – understandably so, as he is highly readable and controversial, especially in opera (whose aficionados detest him). But apparently the only way to finagle that was to banish Kozinn from a classical beat altogether because Dan Wakin does a superb job covering classical news. The Times has an abysmal record of late in keeping its best classical stringers: When the paper refused to put them on staff, Alex Ross left for The New Yorker, Anne Midgette for the Washington Post, and Jeremy Eichler for the Boston Globe.

Evidently, Landman and Oestreich have no wish to repeat such blunders. But Landman has already proven himself to be an ignorant judge of the Times’s classical readership. It may be small, but it’s loyal and buys newspapers – or whatever technological form the news comes in for the time being. The good grey lady as cannibal is a sad image for this Times reader of five decades to countenance.

Lebrecht blog:

http://www.artsjournal.com/slippeddisc/2012/09/exclusive-new-york-times-demotes-a-critic.html

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Listen To Your Mother and Get It In Writing!

September 5th, 2012

By Brian Taylor Goldstein

Can you answer this question for us?  My soon to be son-in-law is a musician. He has written and recorded many songs, and is producing his first CD.  One of the songs on the CD, he had a female friend sing with him.  If he plans to put this song on his CD, doesn’t he need some sort of written permission or release from her?

Congratulations! It sounds like you’re not only gaining a son-in-law, but your son-in-law is gaining a manager. You are absolutely correct. Even though your son-in-law may have may have written the song and paid for the recording, his friend owns the rights to her performance. There needs to be something in writing confirming that your son-in-law has her permission to record her performance for the CD and distribute copies. As most everyone in the arts world would rather suffer a paper cut than deal with paperwork, its very common for musicians and others to take the position that, if a person is aware that they are being recorded, then permission is “assumed” or “implied” and no formal contract or agreement is needed. While this is technically true, an implied license can also be revoked at any time. This means that she could wait until the CD was a big commercial success, revoke her license, and use the threat of a copyright infringement lawsuit to negotiate for a large royalty or payment.

While written permission or a release is better than nothing, if he really wants to make sure there are no future problems, the written permission (also called a “license”) needs to specify that it is “irrevocable, perpetual, and worldwide.” Even better, skip the license and have her confirm that she is assigning (ie: granting) all rights and ownership in the recording of her performance to him. Either way, in order for the “writing” to be enforceable as contract, it also needs to confirm what she is getting in exchange for the license or assignment. A flat fee? Royalties from sales of the CD? Even if she agreed to do the recording out of friendship in exchange for nothing, the writing should confirm that she will be given credit and acknowledgement “in exchange” for the assignment or license. While this may seem like an unnecessary formality for a first CD, it’s far wiser to plan for success rather than have it derailed by someone else’s plan.

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For additional information and resources on this and other legal and business issues for the performing arts, visit ggartslaw.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. GG 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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Posted in Artist Management, Arts Management, Contracts, Copyrights, Law and Disorder: Performing Arts Division, Licensing, Music Rights, Publishing, Recordings | Comments Closed

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