sound collective
While I am on the subject of musicians putting their foot down (see The Sun Brothers, below), please take a look at the new ensemble I am involved with, sound collective.
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While I am on the subject of musicians putting their foot down (see The Sun Brothers, below), please take a look at the new ensemble I am involved with, sound collective.
The Sun Brothers' new album is out. Its sound owes something to the progressive rock movement of the seventies, but is poppier than that, and more wide-ranging, with quirky and creative arrangements, and unsentimental, sometimes even hard lyrics.
Aside from the fine music, what is REALLY interesting about this album is that the high-quality production was all done by the Brothers themselves in the front room of a west London flat. The process is detailed on their FAQ. They decided to do everything themselves, partly as a reaction against the terrible conditions they often had to perform under and still more against the money-motivated prescriptions they found themselves up against when record companies got interested:
"By the end of 2001, the record industry descended. First bands, gigs and producers, then record companies, publishers, A&R men, lawyers and contracts. People stopped talking about music, which we had rather naively thought was the whole point."
As they say, it took them a year to do the album, because they have full-time jobs (and, I suppose, it's the necessary evil of having jobs that has also been their liberator, because they haven't had to mix up their music with money). But they've done it, and they've given such a lot a good two fingers in the process.
People like The Sun Brothers are very important, as much in classical music as in pop. It is vital that there are some of us who have the courage to put their foot down and say This Is Not Good Enough. That could be working conditions; situations like the synthesizers coming into the West End (nice one, MU), or the gigs the Sun Brothers did where they were sworn at. It can also, of course, be to do with the music itself. Restrictive record deals, or in the classical world a lack of rehearsal time, timid programming, uncharismatic presentation.
Of which, more in my next post. But go and look at The Sun Brothers' website and muse on what they have achieved.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/3725993.stm
comments?
I have been reading Julian Fellowes's Snobs (I had some time to kill at gigs in castles and thought it would be appropriate). Fellowes wrote the screenplay for Gosford Park, and Snobs is a similar comic exposee of the English upper classes. Narrated by an actor who moves comfortably between countesses and cameramen, the story begins with the marriage of arriviste Edith Lavery to Charles, The Earl Broughton. Quickly bored by her nice-but-dim husband, Edith falls for the charismatic but shallow Simon, a mediocre actor. Quickly again, however, she finds a poky flat, twittering Hampstead parties and falling like a stone from her former high society palls. She returns to her husband, has a son and a daughter, and lives "happy enough" ever after.
The plot borders on operatic familiarity and simplicity, and like many operas, Fellowes shapes it into a parable both subtle and humane. The chasm between the aristocracy and middle-classes-on-the-make goes deeper than whether you have a Greuze pastel on your wall, or a Peter Jones flower print. When Edith has to choose between boredom and social advancement with Charles, or fabulous sex and exclusion with Simon, it boils down to a choice between public and private satisfaction, and which of the two will make you happier.
Fellowes admits that whether you choose self or society has much to do with your values, which are necessarily linked to your upbringing - Edith is the daughter of a social climber, and nobody has a definitive answer to the nature/nurture debate. He also further twists the dilemna when it emerges that Simon, while sexy, is incapable of genuine feeling, whereas Charles, if a bit dense, is. He loves Edith dearly, although he knows she does not love him in the same way: nonetheless, because he loves her, he takes her back. In a very English way, everyone makes the best of it. The narrator concludes: "I am glad she was and is happy enough. That is a good deal happier than a large proportion of my address book."
It is fitting that the middle-class element of the novel is depicted through actors, for acting and performing is much beloved by the middle classes: a malleable flitting between roles, assuming identities as it best suits (I don't mean this necessarily in a derogatory sense. I'm middle class myself, and I don't suppose I'm the only one who finds themselves calling somebody "mate" before driving down to Hampshire to visit posher friends. One of the nice things about being in the middle is you can find common ground with lots of people. Less attractive is when you push in one direction or another).
Snobs's chapters are divided into three musical parts (you see, eventually my argument slides seamlessly into music) - impetuoso-fiero; forte-piano; dolente-energico. It is an elegant highlighter that while Snobs amuses with the surfaces of social class, it links those surfaces rather touchingly to the complexity of common human emotions. Expression markings on a score tell us what to do; but the musician still has to draw on their own feelings to put those expressions across. And when we perform, we are putting on a show; but if it has no conviction behind it, it will fail. You can always tell - in a competition, for example - those who perform to impress and to win, instead of to play music. The same of course applies to acting, and that is why, in the book, the superficial Simon never makes it. Sometimes there is no clear-cut emotional answer - Fellowes' characters must be content to stay "happy enough".
We are privileged, in music, that often music distills what we cannot articulate in life: there are fewer occasions, listing to great music, where we are "happy enough", and more where we hear a perfect happiness, or a great love. But if music can be more perfect than reality, musicians cannot. We get nervous; play wrong notes; have affairs with unsuitable people; get embroiled in difficult political situations; argue fee disputes; receive nightmare tax bills; play Andrew Lloyd-Webber for cash. Sometimes we get disillusioned and become accountants, or, far worse, continue to work in a grubby sort of way, but stop practicing and cease to care.
None of this List Of Woe actively enhances happiness. The cliche from friends with office jobs is, of course, "but you do a job you love." In caustic moments, one remarks that love and proper pay scales, respect in the workplace and reasonable hours are not mutually exclusive. Here's the thing, though - I do do a job I love. And I love it in spite of the politics, the time on the M25, the occasional corrupt fixer. I don't love them, but I am happy enough. I have my Sibelius and Beethoven and Ravel to keep me there.
Furthermore, music that does not transcend reality isn't necessarily the poorer for it. Shostokovich's political anger, for example, or the powerful mixture of love and jealousy I heard in Walton 1 the other night. The anguish in the Moonlight Sonata as Beethoven grew deafer; the blackness in Don Giovanni as Mozart became more paranoid. The time Rostropovich performed the Dvorak concerto on the day of the Prague Invasion, tears pouring down his face the whole time. Classical music does not portray everything as wonderful, happy, uplifting. Its emotional range is not so flat; nor its social awareness, nor its humanity. And you have to have the desolation, if you are to understand the elation; engage with the muddled reality, if you are to be happy enough.
Looking up the Apache wedding prayer for Le Poulet Noir , I came across Max Ehrmann's Desiderata.
Wonderful. I mean, of course I've heard it before, but only had the first line in my memory. I know it's terribly famous and one's only supposed to admire rare B-folios, but, well, it's made my day.
While I'm on the subject of the well-known I really like Rach 3 as well...
I am loving Ann Widdecombe's agony aunt column in the Guardian. It's hilarious, because she's using the quick wits you need for a Commons' debate instead of the pious seriousness problem pages usually require.
I wonder what abilities professional musicians have that would work very well elsewhere?
HARPIST AS WEDDING CO-ORDINATOR. Experienced professional on 50 weddings pa. Recommends: short drinks receptions with lots of canapes to prevent unseemly early drunkenness; sacks of entertaining plastic toys for anyone under the age of 12; fast left hook to carry wailing babies out of the ceremony; prompt arrival of the bride to save the poor groom's shredded nerves [it's awful when they're late. One I did took forty minutes to appear and the groom had to stand around looking macho and unconcerned in front of all his and her relatives. Couldn't have happened to a nicer chap, but honestly]. Ban on that reading from an ancient Indian peace warrior. Flip-flops for all the ladies who overestimate their ability to stand around for two hours in new six inch heels.
(WO)MAN WITH VAN. Strongwoman available for all your moving needs, no job too small. Expert knowledge of parking meters in and around the Covent Garden area. Masters in getting let off by traffic wardens using time honoured method, thus: 1) smile and bat eyelids; 2) dramatically describe size and weight of what you are unloading, down to the gilding on the column (must be accompanied with elaborate mime if you have already dropped your instrument off and it is out of sight); 3) express sympathy for the warden's position; 4) cry (this best left until interested crowd of large men has gathered). Also works well for squeezing parking permit out of the stage door. Has been tried at airports, but with patchy sucess.
DIPLOMAT. Entente Cordiale? Genetic modification? Bush? A picnic compared to the internal politics of your average orchestra/pit/conservatoire. The most highly qualified have also sat on competition panels.
ADMINISTRATOR. Internet research, graphic design, mail-outs, CD and video production, financial administration, tax returns.
STRESS MANAGEMENT COUNSELLOR
BARTENDER. See above. Although the article I was reading last night about women's drinking habits made me so depressed I poured the rest of my chianti down the sink :(
At the end of the day, though, I find this list oddly reassuring that I'm in the right job. We all moan about the amount of admin/politics/stress we have to negotiate - but hey! If we were doing a different job, we'd be doing all of that anyway - but without the music.
I have been doing pit-work for the last fortnight, and so have missed all of Young Musician of the Year, and can't join in the - I'm guessing - furore that's going to ensue about whether or not the 11 year old pianist should have won. I have not been doing seven hours practice a day, like Nicola Benedetti (who won); no, I have been fagging it down/up to Bromley/St Albans, and padding out AmDram productions.
I'm not going to pretend I'm quite glad to have a break from them and get back into working on my own stuff, but I don't half take my hat off to all these opera and musical theatre enthusiasts who give up two or three evenings a week for six-odd months to learn a full-length opera. They were super! Some of the soloists on Carousel last week were as good as professionals and it was a pleasure to watch them in my tacets. Humbling, when the MD tells you he works full-time in computer sales. How do they fit it all in?
Of course you make time for what you really want to do. Check out Jessica Duchen's latest post about being inspired to practice by Benjamin Grosvenor on Young Musician. I do too, but in some ways also by the enthusiastic chorus members I've been working for recently.
What I have not been feeling inspired by is my discovery that for one of these productions has been fixing the band at two rates. If you're fixed by the leader, you get about £500 a week; if you're fixed by the other fixer, you get £275. The (professional) conductor and (professional) leader have known about and allowed this situation to happen for years, and each remark that sorting it out is not their problem. Well, I don't know if it's their technical mandate, but you'd have thought it would be their moral concern. The only person trying to do anything about it has been fixer B. She knew about the split fees for years as well, but she's an amateur member of the chorus who only fixes for this opera once a year...and someone kept telling her it was fine to fix at this pathetic rate because her musicians were students/local. Of course she should have realised what was going on was Funny Business, but you can at least understand why she was slow to wake up to it.
Again, sometimes I take more heart from the amateurs than from the professionals. I think this is why: they haven't lost sight a) doing the absolute best they can by the music/production; b) they tend to be coloured with a rosy hue of old-fashioned decency which makes everybody's jobs a lot easier. This was particularly the case in Carousel, where not only the chorus but also soloists and band were all amateur, and you couldn't have wanted to work with a nicer bunch of people (and they even managed to pay everyone fairly, too).
When I was at the RCM the buzz-word was "professional". Above all else, you had to be professional. At student level it meant things like turning up on time with your shoes polished and all your music in a folder; of course it also means having the discipline to work so that you always turn in the most polished performance you can, not just when you feel like it (someone, I forget who, said "An amateur practices until he can play it right. A professional practices until he can't play it wrong."). I also believe it means having the interests of the profession at heart, and taking a stand on things like corrupt fee scales and nepotistic fixing which insults the efforts of the people on stage. Ours is a profession that relies on mutual support and when people do things like accept half the fee of the player sitting next to them "because it's still work, isn't it", how can they be suprised when the work falls off and is increasingly ill-paid?
Of course I am not saying that amateurs are better than professionals. There are thousands of consummate professionals out there and I aspire to be like them. It's just that when the amateurs compare favourably to the jobbers, well, for shame.
