PhD Tree Profile

||: Music is Hard :||

Tired of reading the apologists, I took to google+:

The daily rags feel compelled to print none but the most well-worn tropes about contemporary classical music. Boldly going where all have gone before. By the time something interesting is being said, the audience has moved on. Why not skip the "contemporary music is hard" bit and go straight to talking about how great the festival is? It's only hard if you say it's hard.

 I mean no disrespect to Ms. Kelly when I say that it really is a severe waste of column inches to drone on and on about the ways in which audiences are so easily turned off to classical music, contemporary or otherwise.

In fairness:

With all due respect, the only failure of 20th c. music is failure of imagination on the part of we, the performers.
— Jordan Randall Smith (@jordanconductor) December 5, 2013

...I think we probably agree about most points, but when are we going to start talking about just how great the 20th century is? It's the world's greatest cornucopia of art. Every possible kind and variety of sound has been explored since the year 1900. One of the many problems is that we still try to lump them all together and sell them together. Corporate types love to talk about "unbundling". When will we start to see unbundling in the music world?

The truth is, this has been taking place for sometime, with things like the American Mavericks festival a few years back. But we need more. We need festivals, artists, presenters, and ensembles committing themselves to concerts and series and festivals devoted to only a handful of great works from specific 20th century genre. It's important to remember that the contemporary art music sphere has exhibited far more biodiversity in the 20th century than has the popular music world. Yet one would ordinarily bristle at the thought of mixing Benny Goodman and Tupac in one music event. True, classical music has a fan culture with more eclectic tastes. But the point is that we want to grow audiences. And some audiences want specific things and don't want other things. So let's be more considerate of their tastes when we design concert programs.

Alex Ross, author of The Rest is Noise, which was the spur to the Southbank Centre festival (Picture: BBC Archives)

Hogwood at Cornell

The Past Is a Foreign Country: Why Making Music Matters

Hogwood speaks at Cornell University

From the site:

"Understanding the musicality of the past can enrich the musical life of the present," said conductor, musicologist and keyboard player Christopher Hogwood Oct. 25, 2013 during his first visit to campus as an A.D. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University.

Now, with more than a century's worth of recorded evidence of how music was heard in the past, said Hogwood, people are able to pursue a historical interest in music, and the music of the 19th and 20th centuries can be observed and judged by everyone -- not just expert musicians or historians.

Learn more at the Cornell University website.

Carmelites

listen to ‘Carmelites’ on Audioboo

Bartok

Putting them to bed, one by one.

Analysis: Bartok, Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celeste. Mvt. I.

Mahler on iTunes and YouTube

Added some +Gustav Mahler footage to YouTube and to my podcast:



You can view and subscribe right here:

Or watch the latest on YouTube: 

Jordan Smith Conducts Mahler 2

Now, with 100% more Mahler.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Rehearsal for Mahler 2 have begun. I shared a few thoughts the night before last:

Post by Jordan Smith.

I wrote that:

I have only two items on my musical Bucket List. This is out of practicality: there is far more great music than I can get to in 5 lifetimes. Also out of balance: my 2 works will take a lot of effort to get crossed off my list, so I have to prioritize to get there. 

One of them is the Bach Mass in B Minor. The other is Mahler 8. Tomorrow marks the next important step towards that second item. While it will be my second time to conduct some music by Mahler, and my second time performing Mahler 2 in some capacity, and although I've played several of his symphonies, it will be my first time to conduct Mahler with full orchestration. While it does not put me close to managing such a large structure as Symphony No. 8, it is a very important step along that path.

Rehearsal went extremely well the following day:

Post by Jordan Randall Smith, Conductor.

Here is a brief sample from rehearsal:

Post by Jordan Smith.

Lastly, Mahler 2 in 6 seconds or less:

 A mustachioed young Mahler without his glasses

Fresh Sounds

I've added some new content and some old content is now blog-able.

Some of the best recorded music I've been a part of is now embed-able at MySpace:

                   Madonna from Jordan Randall smith on Myspace.

They have also added a new portfolio feature, which I have elected to capitalize upon. Here's a peak:

In other news, I posted a quick clip to sound cloud, the first recorded evidence of the work I've been doing to get back in shape as a Marimba player:

Hard to believe it's been 9 years since the last time I gave a public performance of this!

And these two are just for fun:

A little Stravinsky:

And a little Brahms:

Updates

Updates to my CV.

This particular version collates and highlights opera/choral/vocal conducting/performance/pedagogy. Enjoy:

Jordan Smith - CV

More bio and CV materials are also available from my website, http://www.jordanrsmith.com/bio.

Opera Roundup

This week has been filled with opera related matters, including a fun little project comparing multiple performances of the same recitative passage. I covered "Tutto è disposto" from Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro. 

My results:

Recitative Comparison

You can compare the three examples yourself with this playlist that I created. Help me out: what differences did I leave out? Check the score using this link.

I took some good notes in class, some of which will be unintelligible, and some which will be perfectly clear.

And of course, my scores came in:

And I've since been hard at work compiling this into a usable chart....

Mahleriana

 A mini-roundup of some recent Gustav Mahler posts:

The young Gustav Mahler

Post by Jordan Smith.

Post by Jordan Smith.

Post by Jordan Smith.

Post by Jordan Smith.

Post by Jordan Smith.

Post by Jordan Smith.

Ressurection, with Jordan Smith and Nikita Borisevich

Accompagnato

I spent the weekend on the general topic of recitativo accompagnato.

First, a little crowdsourcing for repertoire information:

Post by Jordan Smith.

An outline, some collated information out of Oxford/Groves (a work in progress in collaboration with several colleagues, our summary found at bottom):

Some information from a favorite on my reference shelf: The Art of Accompanying and Coaching by Kurt Adler.

And my teacher's take from the Conductor's point of view:

The Score, the Orchestra, and the Conductor  by Gustav Meier

Angel.co

Added a profile on AngelList. This site is designed around startup investing. The blog and the festival each have a page. Thus, this was probably not the intent of the site, but I expect a bit of traffic generation and of course some hopefully healthy, high quality back links. Below are some of their embeds.

Conductor's Notebook Profile on Angel List

Weekend 1: Carmélites

"Every time I start in earnest on a work that is new to me, I feel rather like Columbus, wind and sea in my face, embarking on a grand voyage. This ship has left the harbor."

This weekend marks the first of many in which I'll be working on Poulenc's Dialogues des Carmélites.

I received the full score on Friday.

And my vocal score arrived on Saturday.

Post by Jordan Smith.

Post by Jordan Smith.

As I wrote, "every time I start in earnest on a work that is new to me, I feel rather like Columbus, wind and sea in my face, embarking on a grand voyage. This ship has left the harbor."  It's a lovely work filled with the sensuous and the serious.

Kent Nagano leads Opéra de Lyon

Post-Audition thoughts

Glad to be home from a fantastic experience with the Richmond Symphony and their Youth Orchestra Program. 

I feel 100% about having put out my authentic artistic self without reservation. I'll know more tomorrow morning, but I'm looking forward to whatever the future might hold... regardless of the specific outcome of the audition.

Music is a tricky business and high-performing individuals can sometimes get dusted by those with more flare or more charisma. And poor-quality individuals can win jobs just because the talent pool was lower than hoped for. In fact, these particular aspects aren't unique to music at all. In this audition, I don't believe this was even a concern as my competitors seemed highly qualified. Which is one of the reasons I can genuinely live in peace about this.

It is also why it is grand that I can walk away feeling like they received everything they needed to make a good decision. And if they decide to choose someone else, then I can be confident that it was for all the right reasons. 

Cynically, musicians need jobs to get other jobs. One line on a resume helps you put in another line, in a vicious cycle. Far more genuinely in my case, I'm supremely eager just to have an orchestra to call my own! To be a part of a family! A great team! To make great music and choose great repertoire! So yes, I want it. But I can live with myself because I know that they got the best of who I am as a musician. I can say truthfully that I will be happy with any outcome. 

Perhaps not equally happy... But happy.

The Gist

A collection of pins from my github page. This is the best way I know how to embed gists since blogger and tumblr both seem to be less than impressed with them. 

Last First Day

Peabody Conservatory

My last first day of school.

Sigh. I must admit, nothing fully prepared me for yesterday. My last first day of school. Ever. Yes, it is true to say that I likely will have coursework to complete after this year. I likely will have other first days of all kinds throughout my life. But this was the last first day of school for me as a full-time student enrolled in school where I will sit down at a desk, take notes, etc.

The first thing that comes to mind were perhaps the two most consequential first days prior to this one.

My first first day: Kindergarten

I remember well, the feeling of silent terror that filled me as I entered the classroom for the first time. I set directly across from Cody Lee, a child whom I would grow up, if not as best friends, certainly as well-known acquaintances, even to the present day. The child, however, was fiercely scary with his large, intense eyes and spiky hair. I quickly learned what to expect from an array of other children, each with unique traits and mannerisms.

My other first first day: College 

Thinking about both high school and college is fraught with challenges because the "first day" is a relative idea due to the early start caused by marching band. This was certainly the case with me. This first day was fantastically more adventuresome than just about any other. I had received my driver's license on the day prior, just in time to drive my belongings in the ancient Ford LTD wagon that my parents had purchased for me. Unfortunately, this was never to be. That vehicle made it 3/4 of the way there in the caravan comprised of my mother and I before the vehicle gave up the ghost while I was behind the wheel. She pulled over as we assessed the situation. We ended up moving all belongings to her vehicle, preparing to abandon my vehicle but this was only the beginning of our problems. For her car had also succumb to disrepair! We managed to strand both vehicles simultaneously.

I had a brand new, prepaid cell phone, the first in my family to own one. It had ten minutes of paid cal time and I had exactly one friend where we were headed who could pick me up and get me there. My mother and I managed to find a farm house where we received hospitable treatment from kind strangers who took my mother in while I was fortunately driven away by my friend who came to fetch me and take me to college in time to make a first rehearsal scheduled for that evening. My mother was later saved by my father, and they collectively and graciously moved my boxes into my freshman dorm room.

Yesterday was far less catastrophic but perhaps equally as challenging. But after 1,000 other harrowing tales collected since that time, I feel equipped to handle them all.  Here are just a few notes from last night's class. Perhaps there are a few gems buried within this morass.

Visit this note here:
https://www.evernote.com/shard/s56/sh/ff402c28-0934-4a27-ae5a-e6f9abfe21c0/89953a7b96fdf856ca398439da13915f

Marching to Nowhere - Part 2: The Power of Band

Since last week, the documentary on my High School band director, Gary Faust, hit the airwaves in Austin, Tx.

It was incredibly gratifying to see this video, prompting me to broadcast to social media:

Twitter:

Jordan Smith - The Power of Band. Wind instrumentalists,... https://t.co/uuE30D9N50

— Jordan Randall Smith (@jordanconductor) September 2, 2013

Facebook:

Post by Jordan Smith.

I wrote a sort of open letter to many of my former directors and teachers coming from the band world, which I've reprinted in modified form below:

Wind instrumentalists, percussionists, doctors and lawyers, former students alike: call your director, call them now and thank them for all they've done. They deserve it. This documentary from KLRU illustrates the man who was the inspiration for just about everything I've done in life since the first time I did a drag turn 8 on the 35, side 1, 18 off the back hash. Thank you Gary Faust, for what you've done for all of us who've had the pleasure to know you. To all: please refer to my post last week for lengthier remarks on Gary's remarkable impact on me as my high school band director.

Tonight, however, I want to say thank you to Gary along with all of the other astounding and amazing band directors-former, current, and future who have made an extraordinary impact on my life and the lives of tens of thousands of others. You have all helped shape the musician and the human that I am, each in your own way. There's an Easter egg in here for just about everyone tagged, but the idea is more universal.

You conducted my all-region band, you mentored me as a student teacher, you taught side by side with me, you clinic'd my band, and you gave sound advice. 
You taught me percussion lessons and life lessons. 
You let me ride in the backseat with you and your boyfriend to the music convention for free. 
You took me to the grocery store so I could get something to eat and then go back to practicing. 
You were the best roommate ever. 

You accepted my form a day late, you listened patiently to my sob story, and you bought me dinner. You nurtured my curiosity about music and encouraged me to let my only limit be my imagination. You drove a marimba to my house, you drove all my equipment to Austin just for me. 
You put up with me as a head director. You invited me to Midwest as an undergrad. 
You flew with me to Midwest as an undergrad. 
You drove with me to Midwest as a grad student! 

You hired me when I had no experience.
You made my half hour coaching session into an hour and a half. 
\You showed me your Shostakovich records during your lunch break. 

You let me risk failure, just to make sure I was prepared to be able to pick myself up and dust myself off. 

You taught me phrasing and you taught me compassion. 

You hired me to teach your band camp.
You took notice of me for no good reason and nurtured me all the same.
You taught me jazz.
You taught me about life, faith, and meaning.

You accepted me as your student.
You made sure I stayed on a musically nutritious diet, only selecting the best repertoire.
You showed me how to have a family and make that work side-by-side with a love for music.
You drove me to the game in your car when my bus left me.
You let me mow your lawn for lessons.
You taught me how to do what it takes to win, but that it isn't about winning, it's about excellence.

You gave an awe-inspiring symposium. 
You were an luminary to watch, both on and off the podium. 
You treated me like a peer even though I'm not. 
You let me conduct your group when it was way above my pay grade to do so. 
You hired me as a judge when I had no idea what I was doing. 

Mitchell Curry, you payed in cash for my freshman band trip! 

I could keep this up for hours, but I think you get the message. 

You are some of the most wonderful musicians and humans I have had the pleasure to know and I am just a representative for all of us whom you have touched as teacher, student, mentor, colleague, and friend. You are remarkable musicians and people, all of you, and I owe every bit of whatever small bit of success I've had to you. And if this message doesn't communicate the power of band, this video says it all.

In a word: thanks.

Love,

Jordan 

Gary Faust, my high school band director

Marching to Nowhere - Part 1

Last week, I came across one of the most important recent links to come into my life. I was gobsmacked to find a trailer to a documentary featuring my high school band director, Gary Faust.

Which prompted me to share to my contacts, along with an ode to the man who inspired me to do so much.

Post by Jordan Smith.

The post read:

I have tears in my eyes. Very emotional to watch this video.

This is the man that told me I could achieve great things. The man who inspired me to work hard, to have a goal, and to focus on it. The man who was never eager but never afraid to tell me or another student a truth that might be difficult to hear. A compassionate person with a big heart, a musical brain, and unstoppable energy. A person who would push me harder than I ever thought possible. This is the man who would have amazing musical insights into phrasing, into shaping delicate passages of music, and then would personally vacuum the giant rehearsal hall that he helped design at the end of the day! Who does that?

To this day, I believe that the heart of my musical personality-making great music but also wanting to delight as many people as possible, all while inspiring people to come together to do great things-came to me directly from this great man. Grateful thanks to my high school band director, Mr.Gary Faust.

Gary, I wouldn't be the man I am today without your work. Work that started long before I ever came on the scene, up trough the many, many hours you invested in me. This even includes personally driving that stupid U-Haul full of percussion equipment to and from Austin on what should have been a relatively easy weekend at TSSEC for you,
just so Nathan, Matt, Kristine and I could live out our percussionist's fantasy..... I am so glad that you are being recognized, in this way, for the compassionate artist and genius educator that you are. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Gary Faust

Embedding. Literally.

I am working on going through and doing more embedding into blog posts. Here are two examples:

IFTT Recipe

IFTT is a great app/service that allows you to hack together various features across the web. I use it frequently. Here is one recipe of mine. Unfortunately the code itself has an embeddable form on github, but ironically, I can't yet seem to be able to get the content to show up!

https://gist.github.com/jordanconductor/6416484

The embed below sometimes takes a while to load. Here are my two profiles:

• https://ifttt.com/people/jordanrss
• https://ifttt.com/people/jordanconductor

Recipe from my IFTT account

Twitter List

Twitter lists are another such example. I use this list in the margin of my website blog.

https://gist.github.com/jordanconductor/6416577

Tweets from @arsnovadallas/jordan

Where to school?

A reader asks:

...I would love to hear, say, maybe your top five graduate schools you would recommend for programs overall? I'll be sending out applications this fall...

My response, edited for this post:

Whew! Top 5 grad schools? That's going to be difficult to answer. It's also hard to talk about because my training as an undergraduate and masters student does not make this list. So I will make the following conversation easier by offering the caveat that there are amazing institutions of higher learning across the country beyond this narrow list. Fantastic musicians often come from unlikely places, and half of what is interesting to people is the life story of the person, and often that means the more unique the story the better. And in the case of smaller schools, who doesn't love a good Cinderella story? That being said, I will now don my elitist hat and give you what you've asked for: 

If we're limited only to US Conservatories: 
Eastman 
Juilliard 
Mannes 
Manhattan 
Peabody 
San Francisco

If we're talking about only Universities with excellent graduate music programs: 
Indiana 
UNT 
UT 
USC 
UCLA 
UMich

I would posit that there is value to looking for "Brand-name" cachet, but you also absolutely need to be at a place where you can have a great relationship with the teacher with whom you want to study. Ideally, you want a place that has both. Juilliard is the best name brand simply because it is the most internationally well known institution of music, perhaps now better-known than any one particular conservatory in Europe. This much is a reality independent of the quality of the instruction or the outcomes for students attending. So even if individual programs are stronger at other places, more people not in the music business will know and respect your credentials. This is useful for some musicians more than it is for others, depending on your concentration. Peabody is a very strong name brand that is made even better because it is now the Peabody Conservatory of the Johns Hopkins University, and so you widen the net of folks who will instantly respect you. If they don't know much about one of America's oldest conservatories, they absolutely will be familiar with Johns Hopkins.

In the case of composition: I can say, as a panelist for composition competitions, that we adjudicators do unavoidably look at resumes and consider a composer's training as a factor. It doesn't decide who wins, and we do choose people from "dark horse" schools, but it does help you to get promoted out of the pile, into a much smaller group where your artistic voice will get much more consideration. This is not fair, but it is the least unfair way to equitably judge 120 applicants for a competition and still retain ones soul at the end.

Also, your compositions will only ever sound as good as the orchestras and ensembles who play them. So consider that, after getting through the 1st round with the calling card of your institution, then you also have the advantage that your recordings will have on them performances by Eastman students, not Central Wisconsin Univeristy-Janesville on it. (With all respect for what I'm sure are some fine musicians at my hopefully made-up university!)

It's a cascade effect. 

On geography: I can now say for certain that the coasts are the place to be. There just are more jobs, more artists, more people interested in more new and different kinds of music, more universities, and even if that wasn't true, there definitely are more jobs, schools, and people per square mile! This will be a mega time- and cost-saver to me as I apply for jobs. Anywhere else you go, you can fully expect to take many multiple days off for very simple things like single day interviews and auditions (which I have done). However, just this past week, I benefited from a job interview at one of 5 huge urban areas within a 2 hour travel radius.

As a recovering Texan: while I miss aspects of Texas and certain virtues of my home state, they are far outweighed by all of the virtues enumerated above.

So my top five decision factors would then be: 
1. Brand Name Institution 
2. Teacher Fame / Teacher Reputation / Teacher Quality / Teqcher Relationship 
3. Location 
4. Cost 
5. Quality of the program

#5 is definitely not the least important, but 1 and 2 almost completely take care of this. At the graduate level, you've already filtered out all of the other hundreds of institutions that wouldn't have "Best" associated with them. Good, Great, but not Best.

Facing facts: the music business is tough. Even with the Peabody Conservatory as my calling card, with the networking and all the rest, finding a job will still be difficult. But every little bit helps. You don't want the job hunt to be a dice throw. You want them to know that they need you. And this is where careful planning and preparation can possibly be worth it in the long run.

Mid-Atlantic Labor Day

Enjoy a playlist containing some repertoire from this weekend's concert with the Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra.

Music includes:

Beethoven, Symphony No. 9: Finale

Bernstein, Selections from On the Town

Puccini, Selections from La Bohème

Smetana, The Moldau

Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra Conductor Julien Benichou conducts soloists from Morgan Stat University.

Hearts and Minds

I was deeply moved by these beautiful words. Please read this beautiful articulation of a music fan's relationship to classical music. These are the people whose hearts and minds we're after in the classical music world. People who appreciate classical music, maybe don't yet know enough of it, but who know exactly what they want from music and can describe it so eloquently. Becky writes:

"I do not have any formal musical training, so I kind of feel over my head just posting on this page at all. I tried to read through some of the discussion but I got lost. I like a wide variety of music & like some things that might appear on a classical station like Beethoven's 9th Symphony or Moonlight Sonata, or some Gregorian Chant, or Nutcracker. But I would not usually just sit down & listen to the classical station."

Read more at: https://www.facebook.com/jordanconductor/posts/10151604923013613

(Post also embedded below)

Post by Jordan Randall Smith, Conductor.

Ask Me Anything: Let's Get Popular

Today, I conducted an informal Ask me Anything:

Post by Jordan Smith.

A reader asks:

What do you think is the best way to make "classical" music relevant to young/all audiences today? Is it important to popularize it in its most pure forms? Is it the musical principles and emotions that need to be employed and popularized in new forms or is it the literature or both? How? 

I responded:

Regarding the term "classical", you're right to note that the term is problematic, but that is mainly the case for musicians in classes and not for the people we supposedly serve, audiences. It's a genre. Like whisky. No one is worried about saying whisky because people may not grasp the historical nuances of the difference between Bourbon and Scotch, or what a difference 15+ years makes in the case of the latter. If you burrow down, then you can talk details, but at the surface, "Classical" is a large container with many possible subdivisions within. Same as "Rock", really. All of those other definitions for classical are more specialized ones that relate in interesting ways but are not so pertinent when it comes to how audiences relate. So I try not to flinch any more when I say it.

As far as the other term you use, "popularize": Matthew Duvall wisely and beautifully said in an interview once that, "Not everything we do is serious, or art music, and then that gets into a larger philosophical discussion, but... I kind of enjoy it when it is as loosely defined as it can be." (watch the feature below)

That's where I stand. Loose definitions are best. Big tents are best. Most critically: in just about every conceivable case, I think that at least part of the answer must be contemporary (or at least relatively recent!) music. People who get to make programming decisions must get their communities intoxicated with the music of the Jennifer Higdon's and the Christopher Rouse's of the world, to say nothing of the Roger Zare's and the Mark Fromm's and the Joshua Bornfield's coming up. And how do you get them hooked?

To me, the answer is following the lead of Gerard Schwarz, and James Levine, and of course my own mentor Marin Alsop, who all say and do some version of: 

1. find some composers that you are personally excited about, 

2. learn all you can about them and develop relationship,

3. perform their music, ALOT, and

4. repeat.

Levine did that in Boston for a time with Eliot Carter among others, Schwarz with Seatle by performing and recording so very many of the symphonies of Alan Hovhaness. Marin, with Cabrillo in her arsenal, would be unfair to peg down to the exclusion of all of the other composers she's so prolifically served, but certainly she and Rouse have had a particularly durable relationship extending back quite a long way, just to give one example.