I try to be positive where I can when it comes to the American classical music scene, pointing out last week for example that we are living in the golden age of the string quartet in this country. But then some news item always comes along to bring me back down to earth a bit. Today it's this item from Vancouver about the role of sex appeal in marketing classical music soloists.

Most depressing quote, from David Pay, a consultant on marketing and strategic planning in the arts: "We’re in a world where you cannot escape marketing, and if you want classical music to be an integral part of that world, why in God’s name should it have to play by different rules?” 

Well, Mr. Pay (great name, too, for a marketing consultant!), some of us believe that the need for a place of refuge from marketing is greater than ever. I've always believed that art, by its very definition, is that place of refuge. So let me flip his question backwards and ask, why in God's name would anybody want classical music to be an integral part of a world where marketing has become, elsewhere, inescapable?

To be fair to Mr. Pay, he does go on to say "the marketing should only ever support the art. And when it turns into being about the marketing, that’s the slippery slope..." But the problem is not that these slickly marketed musicians are not worthy artists; in most cases, they have the goods to back it up. The question that lies behind this article yet remains unasked is, who is being overlooked because they are not attractive, maybe a little overweight, or maybe don't have the money behind them to finance high-class photo shoots and marketing materials? The message seems to be that if you suffer from these disadvantages, especially if you are a woman, you can pretty much forget a soloist's career in music.

The classical music critical establishment flatters itself that it does a good job of bringing to light the best talent that is out there...that goes both for players and composers. The best composers must always be the ones that are most famous. The best performers must always be the ones that are best known. But of course, logic tells us that indeed in this world where "you cannot escape marketing," that cannot be entirely true. Music critic and composer Kyle Gann gave this thought more eloquent expression some months back.

In any case, perhaps music conservatories need to go farther in teaching their students about the "real world" out there. Perhaps curriculum overhauls such as that instituted by Eastman School of Music in recent years do not go far enough, and we need to start including classes in makeup, modeling, and fashion in our conservatories.

Idea for a pitch to Hollywood studio execs..."Zoolander" meets "The Competition."

Atlanta, our enormous sprawling neighbor three and a half hours' drive southwest on I-20, has been much in the news lately when it comes to the arts. Some of the news is exciting, some is troubling, and the jury will be out for some time on one of the biggest pieces of news: the recent announcement that beginning in the fall 2007 season, the Atlanta Opera will move from its former Midtown location out to the suburbs, taking up residence at a new performing arts center in Cobb County. According to Opera America, this will be the first time that a major opera company will leave its established location within a city and move all its performances to the suburbs. Atlanta Opera says a majority of their subscribers and donors live closer to the new suburban arts center than the old Midtown home. (By the way, could there be any reason other than sheer pretentiousness that the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre spells centre the British/Canadian way, rather than Center? Oh puhleeze...give me a break.)

The implications for the Midlands could be interesting, especially considering the plans underway for the new performing arts center in Lexington County. Things seem to be progressing in fits and starts there, with one potential site already rejected. As of now there doesn't seem to be much more than a logo and the website, but with the growth of that area, it is probably just a matter of time and fundraising until the center is a reality. The South Carolina Philharmonic has already expressed interest in doing some performances there. Will a new arts center drain audience away from the heart of Columbia, specifically the Koger Center and USC?

Geographically, one big difference between Atlanta and Columbia is the layout of the suburbs relative to the city. In Atlanta, most of the affluent suburban areas are to the north of the city. There is probably not a large audience south of Atlanta that will be lost by the opera in their move northwest to Cobb County. But in Columbia, the northeast and northwest areas are booming very strongly as well as the town of Lexington. A music-lover in the Northeast now has a substantial drive in to the Koger Center, but would be twice as far from a Lexington County arts center. In that sense, center-city Columbia is still probably in a stronger position to be the arts anchor for the entire Midlands region.

In the sad news category, Atlanta Ballet has decided to dispense with live music, citing financial woes (they are burdened with a nearly $3 million debt). Evidently the company would now be the largest in the nation not performing with a live orchestra. The Atlanta musicians are not taking this lying down, and have filed an unfair labor practices charge with the National Labor Relations Board. Is Atlanta Ballet pursuing a penny-wise and pound-foolish strategy? Time and ticket sales will tell.

Happier news comes from the High Museum of Art, where an unprecedented three-year collaboration with the Louvre has just commenced. This first year of the partnership brings a treasure trove of paintings, drawings, and decorative arts from the Louvre's Royal Collections (those of Louis XIV, XV, and XVI) to Atlanta. Visit the High Museum's "Louvre Atlanta" website for more details.

Allan Kozinn's New York Times review of last weekend's pair of Steve Reich concerts at Carnegie Hall appeared today.

Carnegie Hall itself set up a fantastic "Reich at 70" site with all kinds of information, audio clips, great photos of past performances, interviews, and much more.

Steve Smith's blog "Night after Night" discusses last Sunday evening's concert with a focus on what he calls the "decidedly human dimension" of "Drumming." (Columbia audiences will have a chance to hear this landmark Reich work on April 5, 2007, when the So Percussion group joins forces with USC percussion students to perform it on the Southern Exposure concert series. Don't say I didn't give you enough advance notice...)

The composer and music critic David Schiff has an excellent and very comprehensive overview of Reich's career and significance to American music, in the Nov. 6 issue of The Nation. Schiff writes: "Not since Aaron Copland turned 75 has the birthday of an American composer been greeted with the jubilation now surrounding Steve Reich as he enters his eighth decade....[Reich's] radicalism...has turned out to be profoundly conservative. It returned American art music from the wastelands of academic atonality and neo-Romantic nostalgia to its most fruitful mission, the fusion of utopian ideals and the sounds of everyday life that we hear in Charles Ives's Three Places in New England, George Gershwin's Concerto in F, Aaron Copland's Appalachian Spring and Duke Ellington's Black, Brown and Beige."

Harking back to the London performances earlier in the month, the Guardian has reviews of The Cave and of the October 8 concert with both the Daniel Variations world premiere and Music for 18 Musicians.

Back in my hotel room after a second exhilarating evening of playing Steve Reich's music with the band at Carnegie Hall...in a day or two a blog post will be coming with links to lots of other stuff on the Reich 70th birthday celebration in New York. Meanwhile, on a totally selfish personal note, it's been a gas as a Carnegie guest artist to be put up just down the block at the Buckingham Hotel on 57th Street near 6th Avenue...not because it's so terribly fancy, although it is very classy and lovely (and I certainly could not afford it on my own dime)...but because the building has such a remarkable history of legendary musical residents. The most notable of these was the great Polish pianist (and Prime Minister of his nation) Ignacy Jan Paderewski, who made the Buckingham his headquarters in the U.S. while serving as President of the Polish National Council, a government-in-exile. He died in this hotel in June, 1941. Many opera greats have lived here as well, most notably Victoria de los Angeles and Renata Tebaldi. If only these walls could yield back the sounds that they must have absorbed over the years...

If you are reading this blog, there's a good chance you've also come across music critic Greg Sandow's fine blog on which he and his readers grapple with the weighty topic of classical music's future in this country. Most of the comments you read there about the supposed death of classical music (whether bemoaning it, celebrating it, or challenging the very premise) have to do with the institution of the symphony orchestra. But whatever your view is on the proper role of the American orchestra in the 21st century, it is undeniable that at the moment I write these words, in the United States today we are truly living in a golden age of the string quartet as a professional music entity. Never before have so many quartets made a decent-to-good living in this country, and never before have so many quartets existed who play at such a high technical and artistic level.

These thoughts were triggered by last Thursday's extraordinary concert by the Miro Quartet at the Columbia Museum of Art. Their playing was at the highest level, and the Columbia audience was privy to an experience every bit as magical (save possibly the acoustic aspect) as that which can be enjoyed on a good night at the Wigmore Hall or the Concertgebouw or the 92nd Street Y.  Beethoven's Op. 18, No. 4 was absolutely electric from first note to last, and the sense of blend, intonation, balance, color, and shape in the Debussy quartet was impeccable. The slow movement was heartrending. (The last Debussy I played, a few weeks ago, was "En Blanc et Noir", the very late and enigmatic two-piano work written near his death; hearing the young Debussy's Quartet it's hard to think that the same person once wrote such a forthright, still Romantic work, and yet you still hear the premonitions of the later Debussy...an aural glimpse into a future, his future.)

Whether you were lucky enough to be there Thursday night, or kicking yourself for not being there, if you live within a 120-mile radius of Columbia you need to mark February 8, 2007 on your calendar now. That evening, the Charles Wadsworth-hosted series at the CMA brings to town more evidence of this golden age of the string quartet: the Brentano Quartet. They are of a generation between the early-thirties-ish Miros and the "dean" of American quartets, the Emerson. Known perhaps more for a penetrating intellectual approach that includes much modernist repertoire (Elliott Carter, for example), the Brentano Quartet's Columbia program could not be more down-the-middle: Haydn and Brahms. It should be spectacular.

This is funny: so Thursday night I'm sitting in Columbia, South Carolina listening to the Miro Quartet. Yesterday (Friday) I board the early morning Delta nonstop to New York. I get my suitcase, walk out of the Delta terminal at LaGuardia to catch the express bus to Manhattan, when who should I bump into, arriving at the airport on their way to Florida for concerts? The Brentano Quartet. The golden age...the evidence is everywhere and we should enjoy it while it's happening.