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: 

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

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.