 CLASSICAL REVOLUTION: Vive les pants! |
Mattie Kaiser was on track for a career as a classical violist when she saw the world’s greatest string quartet, the Emerson, play a piece by one of her favorite composers, Dmitri Shostakovich—and hated it. “It seemed lifeless to me,” she says, missing the passion and spontaneity that make music come alive. The performance was technically immaculate, but “they’d played it so many times around the country for years, again and again. They were on autopilot.”
Not long afterward, Kaiser worked for months with fellow Carnegie Mellon University grad students to master Claude Debussy’s luminous trio for flute, viola and harp. But aside from the academic jury that evaluated their performance, they had no outlet to play it. “We’re playing some of the most gorgeous music in the world,” she thought. “Why is there no one here to listen to it?”
Frustrated, Kaiser dropped out of grad school and returned to the West Coast. “I saw the conventional classical career and ran the other way,” she recalls. As much as she loved playing chamber music, she realized that it’s almost impossible to make a living at it unless you’re one of the lucky and immensely talented few who can get the rare grants and university residencies. “It has to be more about the music,” Kaiser thought, “and less about these huge nonprofit organizations.”
Kaiser also detested the antiquated context that suffocates most classical music performances: high ticket prices that deter all but the most affluent listeners and the stiff concert hall format that distances audiences—especially newbies—from the performers and the music.
“There’s this atmosphere that you can’t clap between movements, you can’t have a drink in a bar while listening to it, my God!” she says with a sarcastic giggle. “All these barriers make the music so inaccessible.”
But Kaiser knew there was an alternative model. In San Francisco, where she’d obtained her bachelor’s degree in viola performance from the city’s Conservatory of Music in 2006, Kaiser had played a few gigs with the original Classical Revolution ensemble in a South of Market cafe and enjoyed the easygoing atmosphere. So two years ago, when she moved to Portland and saw other “underground” classical groups (Opera Theater Oregon and Portland Cello Project, among others) rescuing the music from concert hall entombment, Kaiser put out some feelers, using craigslist and other outlets, for other disaffected, classically trained musicians. She soon compiled a list of more than 100, including some who’d played with some of the city’s conventional classical ensembles. In April 2007, Kaiser founded Classical Revolution PDX, an ad hoc aggregation “dedicated to breaking down stereotypes about classical music and making chamber music accessible to everyone.”
What the group’s relaxed “chamber jams” (at Someday Lounge and Costello’s) might occasionally lack in polish, they make up in the performers’ edgy passion for the music and close connection to the listeners. “I’m trying to make it no different than any jazz or rock or electronica show, where there aren’t those weird expectations,” Kaiser explains. And when the group played a Shostakovich quartet at Holocene last winter, “I was so blown away that the audiences were quieter and more attentive than even a classical audience,” she recalls. “The music should make you sit up and pay attention.”
CRPDX’s programming is growing more ambitious, and Kaiser has plans for “guerrilla chamber music” that go well beyond the chamber jams, but she struggles with the demands of teaching and coordinating rehearsal and performance schedules for many busy musicians who play many different instruments. (She encourages anyone interested in playing to sign up at the CRPDX website.) But playing the music without the off-putting pretensions and snooty atmosphere is worth it.
“We all love this music so passionately,” she says. “For us to play it and make that connection with each other and with the audience is so rewarding.”
SEE IT: Classical Revolution PDX plays a chamber jam at Someday Lounge Wednesday, Aug. 27 (see listing, left), and a Baroque Bash with Kaiser’s other band, chamber poppers Sophe Lux (where she goes by the nom de band Foxy Lux), at Holocene Sept. 17.
If the complaint is that classical music audiences can't get down with head bangers, well they're not the only ones who can't. As for ticket prices, front row to hear Nigel Kennedy is more affordable than to hear Sting, that is if you can hear him at all amidst all the screaming. Comparing value, well there is no comparison; not only because Kennedy's 10 times the musician, fronts a band 10 times the size of Sting's and his material is world class and timeless, but you'll also hear every millisecond of his performance in a pristine acoustical space, unlike the rockers' 50K-seat arena that sounds like a train station.
Now if we take this to the local level, many fine regional classical musicians have enjoyed themselves after-hours at local pubs. This goes back over 30 years. e.g. Riddles Bar string quartet Thrusdays, if you're old enough to remember, or more recently, Portland Brewery, classical nights, etc. But, all these musicians know, and for good reason, that their best foot is always most forward in the uncluttered acoustical atmosphere of the concert hall.
Even Nigel Kenndy jams at local pubs in his adopted home of Krakow. I know this first hand. But when I put his Sibelius Concerto on the stereo, I'm so very pleased it wasn't recorded in one of them. Yeah, live jazz recordings pick up a certain flavor from that, and I'd rather hear jazz in a club than on a concert stage any night, provided the pub can manage to bring in a descent piano. As well, I'd be the last to protest anyone playing anything they like in a pub. But I'll be the first to contest the quality of classical music in a pub vs. a concert hall. And, you can forget the dress-code, and/or elitism BS. It simply is not there. Show up at to the symphony in running sweats and they'll sell you a ticket to any section in the hall and hardly anyone will notice. Want a drink? Lobby bar is open, before and during the show. Yes, the musicians honor a dress code, just like your mail carrier, bus driver and the judge behind the bench, but the same musicians play their chamber gigs in casual dress, after which you may, at most concerts, hang around to chat, where upon you'll very likely be served complementary wine and hors d'oeuvres, at which point that $15 ticket begins to feel like the bargain of the week.
Upset because you can't make a living in classical music? Join the club. But, blaming the culture surrounding those that can, is off the mark.
Factoid: the annual budget for art and culture in the City of Berlin is 10 times that of the USA's entire National Endowment for the Arts. Now there's a target, along with the burgeoning strata of career arts management bureaucrats, who, rather than fighting for more support for the lot of us, are generally content to cover their own asses, as bureaucrats everywhere tend to do.
One more factoid: RACC officers enjoy 6-figure salaries. Keep that in mind the next time you're asked to play for free at one of their soir
If you go to the symphony you'll see an overwhelmingly older, more wealthy demographic. I can't imagine the symphony organizations are happy about this -- they want to be inclusive too. And I can't speak for them, but I'd bet they're excited that grass-roots organizations are taking the lead to help them re-build a base. It's hard for most symphonies to back-pedal at this point and bring down their overhead to make make their performances more accessible economically (which is always the biggest barrier) because they have so much overhead. Being public organizations and non-profits they can't exactly hire a visionary CEO to cut out the jobs that aren't necessary and do something revolutionary to the programming to make it more relevant. They're stuck changing slowly with a lot of out-of-touch voices like yours complaining but offering no solution other than "deal with it!"
As for rock venues sounding bad -- you live in Portland. This is the city where the best sounding concert hall is in... Vancouver at SkyView High School. The Schnitz and the Hult Center down in Eugene where their symphony plays sound utterly horrible.
And the price of classical music performances is undeniably ridiculous: the cheapest ticket to see Yo-Yo Ma next month in Eugene is $175. In a bad sounding concert hall? I've seen Yo-Yo 4 or 5 times and it has always been like a religious experience, but I think I'm going to sit that one out.
I saw Radiohead last week for $50 in a place that seats 24,000, and the sound was absolutely, undeniably perfect. This is the town of The Doug Fir, The Aladdin and Mississippi Studios. Rock music sounds great here.
Classical musicians and classical music culture isn't inherently elitist and exclusive, but the image is there and it does deter audiences.
Just my two-cents:
Douglas Jenkins
The Portland Cello Project