A Brief Overview of the Bassoon

Two videos have recently been put up by bassoonist Eryn Oft, highlighting the recent masterclass Keith Collins gave for the bassoonists at Jacksonville State University. If you read this blog, you will likely be familiar with the material Keith covers, but I find his explanations to be, both in style and content, a very good introduction for those bassoonists who know relatively little about the instrument's history. In fact, Keith was the first baroque bassoonist I ever met. For two weeks I took masterclasses with him at TBSI in 2009.

A List Like This

Last month the CBC published the "30 hot Canadian classical musicians under 30, 2015 edition", a post which makes me shiver.

30 hot Canadian #classical musicians under 30: http://t.co/PZr6Xt3nSw The future of classical is in good hands! pic.twitter.com/JmTqe0wUND

— CBC Music (@CBCMusic) August 5, 2015

Though I have no doubt that the performers mentioned in the click-through gallery are dedicated servants of their art, CBC Music's investment in celebritization ultimately does the art more harm than good.

The 'industry' in North America, as it were, is in a truly pitiful state (take a look at Norman Lebrecht's When The Music Stops, an outing of the business of classical music, finds its conclusion at the turn of the 21st century where the trend of corporate mergers and the swallowing up leftover independent firms was just beginning): a small handful of multi-national corporations manage the bulk of touring artists, conductors, and ensembles, as well as own and operate seemingly independent media. Private interests control the incredible salaries paid to stars by publicly-funded institutions and the argument which, surprisingly, has held this system in place has been the necessity of celebrity to secure institutional longevity. 

In fact, if a performing artist is not directly or indirectly (through an ensemble) in contact with this celebrity system, they can very easily find themselves in a second tier: falling victim to labeling (referred to as 'local', or similar terminology), or making their income from other, non-performance based sources. It's the reality of the system in place, but should a national broadcaster be paying homage to it? (This isn't the first time I've tackled CBC Music's online coverage, and, as you can tell, my overall position hasn't changed.)

The media coverage at present surrounding a typical performance is almost entirely PR-driven. Newspapers 'sponsor' arts organizations, meaning that they guarantee coverage of that organization's activities (usually with an interview or promo piece) and, due to the thinning out of newspaper arts sections across Canada, it is getting harder and harder to get any coverage of non-institutionalized music-making at all.

So what's the alternative? Nurturing a culture of participation, encouraging the idea that live performance is categorically different from, and cannot be substituted by recorded media; cultivating the notion that the reward a live performance can grant you is worth taking the risk of attending. The most difficult pill to swallow for institutions in this scenario is the requirement to attack dwindling attendance culturally, not simply on a case by case basis (as is the norm). Performance art organizations would have to join together in encouraging a wholesale reinvestment in the culture of attendance - even if that means encouraging patrons to go elsewhere in the case of a conflict.

In order for any meaningful change to be made leadership from among the establishment is needed. It's about time, CBC, will you step up?

Great Minds Against Themselves Conspire

Henry Purcell and Nahum Tate’s Dido and Aeneas is a piece with a rich performance history in modern times. Since a revival in 1895 and an edition printed in 1889, the work has drawn the attention of a number of musical celebrities including Ralph Vaughan Williams, Gustav Holst, Benjamin Britten, Christopher Hogwood, William Christie, and Alexander Weimann – who, along with Les Voix Baroques, will be performing it at Chamberfest 2015. A triumph of human tragedy, today countless recordings of Dido are available and it sits as one of, if not the most well-known opera in the English language. But can we claim, as Chamberfest has done in its promotional material, that it is “Henry Purcell’s greatest of all English operas”?

Crossing off my list

Originally published on Wolfgang's Tonic.

Making lists has been crucial to my development as an artist. For eight years I’ve set achievable goals for myself, giving me the drive I’ve needed to reach where I am today. On my most important list, titled as bassoonist, I make three categories: short-, medium-, and long-term. The long term goals are, of course, the most ambitious and it has only been over the last three years or so that I’ve been able to cross off and replace a number of the ‘to-dos’ in that category. On the 27th of July, I’ll be able to mark another task as complete.

An Unfortunate Detail

On my way across the Atlantic on Wednesday I received a communication about an upcoming performance. It was a line that any bassoonist dreads, especially one who is already in transit to the performance: “Sorry for any confusion, but it’s at 392.”