“A composer is a guy who goes around forcing his will on unsuspecting air molecules, often with the assistance of unsuspecting musicians,” Frank Vincent Zappa, modern master, composer, iconoclast, social critic, filmmaker and equal opportunity offender, once said.

This weekend, Zappa’s music gets the help of musicians who are very much on to the molecules. Leave it to the innovative ensemble concert:nova to present Shut Up and Play the Zappa! featuring chamber pieces by Zappa and his musical mentors, as well as covers of his Rock music, at the 20th Century Theater in Oakley.

It won’t be about yellow snow or valley girls, says concert:nova’s artistic director Ixi Chen. A protean composer who defies categories, Zappa created his own unique distillation of influences — everything from Rhythm and Blues to Jazz to serial, eastern and western Classical forms. By the time Zappa died from prostate cancer in 1993, his work had been recorded by Pierre Boulez, the London Symphony Orchestra (led by Kent Nagano) and Germany’s Ensemble Modern and performed by major American orchestras.

Though the music is beyond category, it’s highly accessible and wildly inventive, with Zappa’s trademark irony and blistering humor never far below the surface.  

For artistic guidance, concert:nova turned to Dave McDonnell, a CCM doctoral student, saxophonist and Zappa authority. Both McDonnell and concert:nova cellist Ted Nelson have been Zappa fans since high school. 

“He made his own image that didn’t fit any pre-existing mold,” McDonnell says. “He couldn’t be confined.”

“Most of what we’re performing is taken from projects he did before he died, the Yellow Shark concert with Ensemble Modern and his work with Pierre Boulez,” Nelson explains.

“There are also pieces originally done by his many Rock groups that were later arranged for chamber ensembles.”

The program includes “Bebop Tango,” the wildly kinetic “G-Spot Tornado,” “Outrage at Valdez,” “The Perfect Stranger” and “Peaches en Regalia.” There’s no definitive number for how many works are in his catalog; the best estimate is around 1,500. But Zappa took each one seriously, whether it was the orchestral mayhem of Hot Rats or Reuben and the Jets’ surreal Doo Wop. 

Zappa viewed composition in architectural terms, along the lines of a balancing act. Like his compositional mentor Edgard Varèse, he used “a system of weights, balances, measured tensions and releases,” he once wrote, comparing his music to “a Calder mobile, a multicolored whatchamacallit dangling in space that has a lot of big blobs of metal connected to pieces of wire, balanced ingeniously against little metal dingleberries on the other end.”

A self-taught musician, Zappa started out as a drummer in R&B bands then switched to guitar. After reading a description of composer Edgard Varèse’s “Ionisations” (“a weird jumble of drums and other unpleasant sounds”), Zappa began a lifelong obsession with Varèse’s music, along with that of Anton Webern and Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. concert:nova’s program includes Varèse’s “Octandre” and Stravinsky’s “Octet.”

Zappa began composing almost as soon as he started playing music. He wrote for his high school’s orchestra, for films and, of course, for his many bands, including The Mothers of Invention. 

From the 1966 Mothers album Freak Out! until his death (and even after), Zappa’s output has been prolific and completely unique. To date, his discography features 91 official albums, including numerous posthumous collections. He maintained tight control over his catalog and recorded material.

“He was a classic Type A control freak when it came to his output,” McDonnell says.

Although arrangements are available for rental (through the venerable music publisher Schott, no less), the Zappa Family Trust has taken over the control freak role, limiting selections, performance practice and, yes, even how Zappa’s iconic mustache is used for promotional purposes.

Chen says the Trust expects the performances to sound as close to the original recordings as possible.

The audience for Sunday’s show should be as eclectic as Zappa’s catalog. His musical odysseys appeal to an ageless sense of irony and imagination. 

“He insisted you had to be your own person,” Ted Nelson says. “The geeks love him for that.” 

Who wouldn’t?

I’m from Lake Arrowhead, California. Which is a little tourist trap of a town in the San Bernadino Mountains. I trained at Lake Arrowhead School of Dance, and Anaheim Ballet until I was sixteen and I received a scholarship to San Francisco Ballet School. My whole family moved from our gorgeous mountain house that was a mile from the lake, to a cramped two bedroom apartment in San Francisco that was a mile from some interesting characters on Height Street, who I admittedly grew to love, all so that I could go to what I would argue to be one of the best ballet schools in the country. I was always more interested in jazz and tap as a kid, so going to San Francisco Ballet, I was a bit of a fish out of water. But I made some of the best friends I’ve ever had, and thanks to the teachers there like Parrish Maynard and Jean Yves Esquerre, I had an amazing experience. As far as how I ended up in Cincinnati, simply enough, Victoria Morgan came and watched me in class one day and offered me a job. Two months later, I was here!

2. Tell us a little about your career.

My career has been pretty short up to this point. I was a trainee with San Francisco Ballet my last year I was there, where I was fortunate enough to get to be in some of their productions. My favorite of which being Balanchine’s Diamonds. I was a random dancer in the back of a line of over twenty other dancers, and still felt like some big shot doing that amazing choreography! I started at Cincinnati Ballet as a New Dancer when I was nineteen, I’m twenty-one in the corps now, and have been here for two seasons. As ridiculous as it might sound, my favorite parts I’ve danced here have been the Ugly Stepsister in Cinderella, and the Mouse King in the Nutcracker. I’m getting paid to be as obnoxious and/or goofy as I can be! You can’t beat that! And I tend to get way into it, giving these characters voices, mannerisms, and detailed back stories.

3. What goes into choreographing a show like this? What types of things to you have to take into consideration, who do you have to collaborate with, do the dancers have input, etc?

For me, choreographing a show like this has been awesome. I heard that some of the music was going to be a Copland piece, and I was sold! I was nervous about the collaborating, because I’m very set in the process I use, even though it is constantly evolving, and I wasn’t sure how it was going to mesh with the other choreographers. I went in focusing hard on Appalachian Spring, knowing I didn’t want it to be just dance. I wanted first of all, a purpose for us to be doing this ballet. What did we want to say, and why is it important we say it. I thought it would be great to have a structure, a narrative, and a story arch. As well as motives and character development as the story progressed. On the day of our first meeting, it turned out we were all on the same page with that, and it’s been smooth sailing this entire time. For the other half of the program we decided we were going to break up the sections of Barber’s Cave of the Heart, and give the choreographers free reign to do as they pleased. So there’s no continual story line, or style. Which is going to be a great contrast to Appalachian Spring. For Cave of the Heart, I got the last three tracks of music, and decided I was going to indulge myself and go as crazy as I wanted. I developed a structure and story arch with a meaning behind it, and roped my best friend Erin Crall into staring in it. Who has been awesomely on board with it all. I wanted do something about the bad things we’ve done in life that we felt as though we couldn’t control, and/or couldn’t get out of. So I ended up with a ballet involving a zombie, murder, and the cure for the disease that leaves the protagonist distraught with all the harm she’s caused. As dark as it may be, it was fun to make, it’s going to be fun to be in, and it’s rare when you see things in ballet that are knowingly campy and gleefully absurd, which are two of my favorite things. So it’s fantastic that choreographers are being given a place to explore these sorts of ideas and impulses. As far as the dancers input, to be completely honest, with me it tends to be a bit limited. It’s popular now of days for choreographers to come in blank, take their time, and throw a bunch of ideas out there and see what sticks. There’s nothing wrong with that, in fact some of my favorite works have come about in exactly that way, but it’s just not me. Choreographers say they’re poets. They’re trying to reinvent the language, which is important. But I think of myself as a screenwriter. I want to set a scene, find some characters, give it all some pacing, and take the audience on a ride. Not just give them something to look at, but something to think about, something to feel, and something to challenge them. It doesn’t always succeed, and it’s a risky way of doing it, but it seems to be the only way I enjoy it. It makes you vulnerable to work the way I do, to not be vague. Because it means there is one right answer, one way it’s supposes to be interpreted, and that it’s either going to work or it won’t. And after all that, how serious I take my process and the passion I put into it, I’m a goofy guy. So I have an immensely serious way of working, even when the product is anything but serious!

4. What has been the most challenging part of choreographing this performance?

The most challenging part for me has been the music. I respond to the phrasing and structure of music, which at times was difficult to find. But it’s beautiful to listen to, so it wasn’t unpleasant to have it going nonstop on my iPod for weeks as I figured out what I wanted to do, and how I was going to do it.

5. What have you enjoyed the most about choreographing this performance?

I’ve enjoyed this whole experience. Being able to do some more character driven jaunty group dances one day, and a dark seedy solo the next, isn’t very common. So I’m embracing it while I can!

6. Are there any particular challenges with choreographing music that wasn’t originally intended to be used for dance?

I feel like that depends on your method for choreographing. Sometimes to have music that isn’t necessarily dance music can be better. But both seem to pose their own challenges.

7. Anything else you think we should know?

The only other thing I can think of that would be valuable to know is how grateful all of us are to get to be involved with Concert Nova again this year. As you may have noticed from my answers to the previous questions, I have a bit of an odd imagination and a driven way of working. One that I’ve had few opportunities to prove are going to beneficial to the world of ballet and art. So having a chance like this to put some new ideas that I’m so passionate about out there, has been a big highlight of my year.

8. What do you enjoy doing outside of dance?

Outside of dance my favorite thing to do, hands down, is go to the movies. I’m there once or twice a week. And when I can, going and seeing a musical that’s in town. Both are always best when I can drag a friend along!

I grew up in south-eastern Ohio near Marietta.  Just across the Ohio River in Parkersburg WV, I learned how to dance with Suzy and Norma Gunter at a small dance school.  My time in Cincinnati started at the College Conservatory of Music at UC.   I received my BFA in Ballet in 2010.

2. Tell us a little about your career.

For my last two years at CCM I began dancing with The Cincinnati Ballet as a trainee and then apprentice for my senior year.  I am going on Fourth season with the company.  Through the university and with Cincinnati ballet I have had the chance to work with so many instructors and choreographers.  Highlights from those experiences that have had a great impact for me as an artist so far come from Vivi Flint from the Royal Danish ballet, working with Darrell Moultrie,  Adam Hougland’s Mozart Requiem, and the chance to explore the role of Puck in Victoria Morgan’s A Midsummer Nights Dream.

3. What goes into choreographing a show like this?  What types of things to you have to take into consideration, who do you have to collaborate with, do the dancers have input, etc?

A lot of planning and homework has to go on for a show like this.  All of the choreographers need to have a clear vision before we start working with dancers because of the constriction of time.  We have to consider the amount of space on the stage to make sure all of the dancing will fit.  Also since Appalachian Spring has a story each choreographer has to be careful to tell that story in a way that the audience will understand and keep it interesting.   For the sections that I created the dancers have contributed a lot.  I ask them if certain movement s work well or feel awkward. They have a lot of say in my creative process.  Watching them execute my movement or ideas is helpful too.  Sometimes something looks great in my head then I see it performed right in front of me in the studio and it needs a bit of tweaking.  A lot of the collaborating came with writing our own plot for this project.  Appalachian Spring had a story line about a pioneer couple, but as a team we decided to make the piece more modern day.  Those brainstorming meetings were the biggest part of the collaborating process.  Once the sections of the piece were divided up the choreographers were more on their own to create something that related to that central story line.

4.  What has been the most challenging part of choreographing this performance?

Playing the role of both dancer and choreographer has been the biggest challenge for me.  When I choreograph a dance piece I like to be able to stand in the front of the room and watch the product begin to form and concentrate totally on the artistic outcome.  I will ask myself, are all the elements working, are the dancers in a formation that I like, what does this movement phrase say to the audience, etc.  As dancers we speak with our bodies.  So it is hard to watch the conversation happening on the stage when you are one of the ones talking through dance.

5.  What have you enjoyed the most about choreographing this performance?

As a professional dancer you are always taking instruction from a teacher or choreographer, but for this project I have the chance to be one of the ones to call the shots.  It is nice to let my imagination fly and get the opportunity to try some of my own ideas.  It is a time to be a little weird and try something that is maybe not so dancy but more a piece of theatre or a visual exploration on an everyday subject.

6.  Are there any particular challenges with choreographing music that wasn’t originally intended to be used for dance?

If you ask me any music or even silence can be a soundtrack for dance.  My choreographic process relies a lot on inspiration from the music, but sometimes I also just pay attention to the mood the music supplies.  Then, I think of a phrase or series of movements to go with that mood and put on the music and watch the two interact.  Further refining can lead to a jump happening on a certain note or other details that create musicality; do I need to add more steps or take some away to marry the body to the music?  With the same process I sometimes think of a section of choreography that goes against the music or doesn’t match up.  This adds another layer or texture for the eyes and ears to take in.  The two pieces on the bill for this performance were written for dance.  This makes it easy in a way because built into the music is a sense of movement.  Both Samuel Barber’s Cave of the Heart and Aaron Copeland’s Appalachian Spring were commissioned for Martha Graham right around the end of WWII.  Although I respect the work  and technique of Graham our rendition to her original pieces will be very different on the 6th.

7.  Anything else you think we should know?

Know that the Barber pieces, Cave of the Heart, don’t really have a plot that runs through.  Even though Martha Graham’s original was based on a piece of mythology, our version is more of a series of dance shorts exploring a wide range of topics.   Some of the movements will stand alone without any dancing.  Appalachian Spring, on the other had does tell a story from start to finish.  I don’t want to give away any spoilers, but the plot has an unexpected relationship and an impassioned reaction that leaves the stage divided.

8.  What do you enjoy doing outside of dance?

I enjoy cooking, especially desserts.  Having fun and spending time with friends.

Edwin Outwater is one of North America’s most creative, dynamic, and engaging conductors. He is currently music director of the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony in Ontario, Canada. Now in his fourth season, he has revitalized the orchestra and gained international attention for his innovative projects and brilliant performances. Outwater also leads the orchestra’s Intersections series linking orchestral music to diverse musical genres and other creative disciplines. So working with a group like concert:nova is right up his alley! An internationally sought-after conductor, the Washington Post describes Edwin Outwater as having “a lyric sensibility and a gift for blending high drama with subtle, convincing emotion.”

A native of Santa Monica, California, Outwater hasn’t always planned on being a musician. He attended Harvard University, graduating cum laude in 1993 with a degree in English literature. He was very involved in various music productions at Harvard and chose to receive a master’s degree in conducting from UC Santa Barbara, where he studied with Heiichiro Ohyama, and Paul Polivinick. He also studied music theory and composition with John Stewart, Joel Feigin, and Leonard Stein.

He has previously served as resident conductor of the San Francisco Symphony. He has also held posts as Associate Conductor of the Festival-Institute at Round Top (a renowned music-training program based in Texas), Principal Conductor of the Adriatic Chamber Music Festival in Molise, Italy, and Assistant Conductor of the Tulsa Philharmonic.Visit his website www.edwinoutwater.com.

What a piece of work is concert:nova.

Apologies to William Shakespeare (“Hamlet,” act 2, scene 2), this cutting edge chamber ensemble keeps expanding the boundaries of classical music in Cincinnati.

Thursday night at The Mercantile Library downtown, members of c:n presented “Words + Music,” a multi-media event with a capital “E.” No venue could have been more fitting, the walls lined with books and busts of authors looking on from all sides.

Featured work on the program was Elvis Costello’s “Juliet Letters” (1992), a song sequence comprising letters to an imaginary recipient named Juliet Capulet. No direct link to “Romeo and Juliet,” though the inspiration was there. Vocalists Greg Tate and Julie Spangler collaborated with a string quartet consisting of Anna Reider and Heidi Yenney (violins), Joanne Wojtowicz (viola) and Theodore Nelson (cello). The impact of the work, mostly bittersweet, was moving in the extreme.

But that was not all. Also on the program were Michael Fiday’s Nine Haiku for flute and piano (2005), Ned Rorem’s “After Reading Shakespeare” for unaccompanied cello (1980) and “A Visit from the White Rabbit” for French horn and narrator by Eric L. McIntyre (1998). Narrator for all three was actor Michael Burnham, professor of drama at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.

Fiday is associate professor of composition at CCM. His Nine Haiku after Zen philosopher/poet Basho immediately compelled attention with its evocative use of flute and piano and Burnham’s sensitive reading of the nine poems, which trace the journey from life to death with power and immediacy.

Performers were flutist Randolph Bowman and pianist Julie Spangler. Bowman, principal flutist of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, explained the extended techniques used by the musicians, including “tongue rams” and “key clicks” (percussive sounds on the flute), tapping the wood of the piano and placing coloristic or muting devices on the strings (here rubber pencil erasers). From the merry rice planting song, which opened the set with Spangler’s tapping and Bowman’s percussive flute, to the final, wan-sounding “Sick on a journey, dreams wander the withered fields,” the effect was spellbinding. (Hear Nine Haiku on Fiday’s album “Spanning the Globe,” available at http://www.futureclassicsmusic.com/)

Shakespeare’s bust, sitting on a pedestal nearby, added a visual element to Rorem’s “After Reading Shakespeare,” which he composed, he says, after dipping into Shakespeare’s verses. Soloist was CSO cellist Theodore Nelson, who performed four pieces from the set, “Lear,” “Katherine,” “Iago and Othello” and “Why Hearst Thou Music Sadly” (the latter from his Sonnet No. 8). As Nelson explained, these are non-programmatic, character pieces, composed before they were given names. And the characters fit, especially given Burnham’s authoritative declamation of select verses preceding each movement.

“Lear” (“King Lear”) was gritty and indicative of a struggle, but also pleading and somehow gentle to Nelson’s final, downward glissando. “Katherine” (“Henry V”) was warm, romantic and a bit folkish. “Iago and Othello” (“Othello”) was a quarrel in music, one voice conciliatory and soft spoken, the other impatient and seemingly advancing the same argument repeatedly (angry trills). Outcome? Who knows? The softer voice faded upward at the end. By contrast, the excerpt from Sonnet No. 8 read like a gentle soliloquy (one might even conjure Johann Sebastian Bach and his Suites for Unaccompanied Cello toward the end).

A treat on the program was McIntyre’s “Visit from the White Rabbit,” drawn from Lewis Carroll’s “Through the Looking Glass.” Soloist and commentator was Elizabeth Freimuth, principal hornist of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. Freimuth explained how she had met the composer (on the faculty of Grinnell College in Iowa) and learned about the piece from him. She also explained the extended techniques she used on her horn, adding jocularly that she didn’t learn them at the Conservatory and hoped her listeners would “know the difference.” Techniques included blowing through the horn without a mouthpiece and making “raspberries.”

Burnham used props as part of his delivery. The opening “Mock Turtle Song – an exchange between a whiting and a snail – was a hoot, with Burnham’s “Will you, won’t you join the dance?” and the snail’s answering “would not, could not . . .” after successive verses. Burnham tossed a rubber lobster aside after the second verse, and tucked British and French flags behind his ears for the final verse, in which the whiting proposes a journey to France.

“The Mouse’s Tale” opened with loud salutes by full and stopped horn. Freimuth exhibited her acting skills, too, shrinking meekly before Burnham’s menacing advance at the end. The “Jabberwocky,” a toe-tapping dance to gibberish text, grew dramatic on “Beware the Jabberwocky,” with Burnham wielding an ax.

Costello, who like Sting and other rock artists, has crossed over from time to time into classical music, wrote a classic with his popular “Juliet Letters.” The work was written for the Brodsky String Quartet and became a best-selling CD during the 90s. The letters partake of Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers with their angry, questing texts and ill-fated outcome. The opening “Deliver Us” and penultimate “Last Post” are for string quartet alone

Vocalists Tate and Spangler stood on either side of the quartet and sang together and separately. Spangler is best known as keyboardist of the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra, but is also a talented composer, arranger and singer. Tate is a senior musical theater major at CCM. Both have deeply affecting, expressive voices and tapped a world of emotion: sadness, anger and despair in Tate’s “For Other Eyes,” “Swine” and “Taking My Life in Your Hands,” tenderness in Spangler’s “Romeo’s Séance,” and for both singers, “I Almost Had a Weakness,” “Jacksons, Monk & Rowe” and “I Thought I’d Write,” expressing sarcasm , bitterness and perplexity. In short, the world of feelings aroused by love.

The quartet played with full, lush emotion, as well. Reider (CSO first violinist and concertmistress of the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra) soared in the tango-flavored “I Almost Had a Weakness” and sang with sweetness in “Romeo’s Séance.” CSO violist Wojkowicz added plangency to “Last Post”

Tate and Spangler brought tears to their listeners’ eyes in the final “The Birds Will Still Be Singing,” an acknowledgement, to rhapsodic music by the quartet, that life and the writer’s heart will go on without the beloved.

For more information on the Taft Music Series, click here.

Contact: Adam C. Butalewicz
Email: concert:nova@gmail.com
Phone: 513-739-6682

Images available upon request

concert:nova to Perform Words + Music

Program features Shakespeare, Haikus, “Juliet Letters”
and special guest Naomi Lewin

CINCINNATI – February 14, 2011 –The ground-breaking chamber music ensemble
concert:nova will present an eclectic program for romantics and realists
alike on February 28 at the Red Tree Art Gallery in Oakley and on March 3 at
the Mercantile Library downtown.

The performance features “The Juliet Letters” by Elvis Costello, a song
sequence for string quartet and voice based on imaginary letters sent to
Juliet Capulet care of Verona post office. The work defies classification.
Not quite a rock opera or a crossover, it is a unique soundscape for strings
and voices. We will hear the voice of singer/pianist Julie Spangler joined
by one of the CCM Theater program’s most talented students, Greg Tate.

Naomi Lewin, hostess of the award-winning weekly feature Classics for Kids
and Michael Burnham, head of CCM Drama department, will also be featured in
the program.

First-half appetizers include moving, humorous and delightful pieces
inspired by the Zen haiku poet Basho, sonnets and plays of William
Shakespeare, a lecture of Elie Wiesel, and three “Alice in Wonderland” poems
by Lewis Carroll. Michael Fiday, CCM faculty member, composes “Nine Haiku”
based on Basho’s Zen philosophy. Ned Rorem took inspiration from Shakespeare
in “After Reading Shakespeare,” a dramatic work for solo cello. Oswaldo
Golijov sets words from a lecture by Elie Wiesel in “There is Wind and There
Are Ashes in the Wind.” And finally, three poems of Lewis Carroll are the
centerpiece of “A Visit from the White Rabbit,” a hilarious piece for French
horn and narrator by Eric McIntyre.

Called “Cincinnati’s most innovative ensemble” by the Cincinnati Enquirer,
the ensemble seeks to provide a program of absorbing entertainment and
inspired pieces highlighting the work of modern living composers by world
class musicians and acclaimed guest speakers and dramaturge in our city.

The musicians of concert:nova are world-class performers: Cincinnati
Symphony Orchestra Principal Horn Liz Freimuth, Principal Flute Randy
Bowman, Violinist Anna Reider and Heidi Yenney, Violist Joanne Wojtowicz,
Cellist Ted Nelson and Clarinetist Ixi Chen.

7:30pm Monday February 28, 2011, THE RED TREE GALLERY & COFFEE SHOP
(Oakley), 3210 Madison Road Cincinnati, OH 45209
7:30pm Thursday March 3, 2011, THE MERCANTILE LIBRARY, 414 Walnut St. 11th
Floor, Cincinnati, OH 45202
Tickets are available at Brown Paper Tickets 24/7 Ticket Hotline:
1-800-838-3006. or at the concert:nova website www.concertnova.com

For more information about the events and concert:nova, visit the ensemble’s
Web site at http://www.concertnova.com/ or call 513-739-NOVA (6682).

###

Founded by Ixi Chen, chamber music ensemble concert:nova, has made great
strides in performing world class chamber music in diverse and unusual
venues using interdisciplinary collaboration to illuminate the music.
Comprising members of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and Cincinnati
Chamber Orchestra, the group’s mission to perform in this way helps draw
audiences out of the traditional performance space setting, shedding light
on new and interesting ways to interpret classical music. concert:nova has
combined classical and modern chamber music with dance, theater,
photography, film and the spoken word to create an experience that is vital
and relevant to contemporary audiences.

–
concert:nova
513-739-NOVA (6682)
Follow us on Facebookand
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Join narrator Naomi Lewin, singer Julie Spangler and musicians of concert:nova for an unforgettable evening of Words and Music.

Monday February 28, 2011 7:30pm Red Tree Gallery
Thursday March 3, 2011 7:30pm Mercantile Library
Click here for more information!

January is half over. Have you made your New Year’s resolutions?

If you’re like me, you ponder a few possible improvements to your life and then fail miserably at following through. So let’s forget for a moment about getting more exercise and organizing our finances. Instead, let’s talk about how we can improve the world of classical music. And goodness knows, it could use a few crafty ideas.

In the following days we’ll be making our own “Classical Resolutions” and I hope you will join in by telling us your thoughts in our comments section.

With the help of some prominent musicians such as Marin Alsop, Jennifer Higdon, Jonathan Biss and others, we’ll open up a forum to bounce ideas off of each other.

If there is one thing we can count on in classical music it’s that people will continue to argue over its future. Is it dying a slow death? Or is it relatively healthy, merely hitting a few bumps in an awfully rocky economic road?

There has been a steady stream of provocative musings on both sides of the issue over the past year, perhaps none more heated than the online debate between Greg Sandow, who is writing a book, Rebirth: The Future of Classical Music, and Heather Mac Donald, whose article “Classical Music’s New Golden Age” was featured last summer in City Journal.

Sandow is quite concerned about classical music’s future (“I think classical music has lost touch with the world around it.”). Mac Donald appears fiercely optimistic (“Never before has so much great music been available to so many people.”). If you want to relive their fascinating back and forth (watch out for the verbal jabs) here you go:

Mac Donald … original article

Sandow responses … first, second, third, fourth

Mac Donald … response

Whichever side you’re on (if any) it’s hard to deny that many American orchestras had a rough 2010. The Detroit Symphony has been on strike since Oct. 4, the Louisville Orchestra has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and the Honolulu Symphony, after 110 years, called it quits last month after more than a century. Many other orchestras, from Philadelphia and Cleveland to Charleston and Pittsburgh are facing financial predicaments.

Brian Wise from WQXR succinctly summed up a number of trends over the past year in an article on his station’s blog. And the Baltimore Sun’s Tim Smith reminded us that not all symphonic battles are based entirely on economics. There is also, he notes, a fervent anti-culture war being waged by those who feel the arts are unnecessary.

Still, not everything is gloom and doom. The philharmonic orchestras in New York and Los Angeles, and their audiences, continue to be invigorated by their new young conductors — Alan Gilbert and Gustavo Dudamel. The L.A. Phil is confident enough to beam its live concerts into movie theaters around the country. Michael Tilson Thomas’ New World Symphony in Miami is poised to open a new Frank Gehry-designed concert hall this month. And in Chicago, where the symphony recently snagged star conductor Riccardo Muti, the orchestra reports rock-solid finances.

Younger listeners are attracted to an emerging and vibrant “indie-classical” scene, especially in New York, which is fueled by forward-thinking venues and small but smart record labels. And even a behemoth like the Metropolitan Opera is cashing in on its popular HD broadcasts to local cinemas.

So with all this in mind, help us craft some “classical resolutions.” Tell us what needs to be fixed. What’s working fine, and what your hopes are for the future of this long-lived music? Please leave your thoughts in the comments section.