Inner Cities just got longer

'A painting is never finished - it simply stops in interesting places' said the Scottish artist Paul Gardner, and it is the same with contemporary music. Back in November I thought I was broadcasting Alvin Curran's Inner Cities complete, but I was wrong. The epic 4 hour 24 minute cycle for solo piano had just stopped at an interesting place called Inner Cities 11.

Pianist Daan Vandewalle tells me that two new Inner Cities have been added to the cycle, and another is in the pipeline. This week he recorded IC12 in Paris, he has performed IC13 in Italy, and is finalising a commission for Alvin Curran for IC14. I wonder what would have happened if Daan had been around when Wagner was composing the Ring?

My next project is a marathon broadcast of Kaikhosru Sorabji’s Opus Clavicembalisticum for solo piano which also lasts for hour hours. Read about it here.
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Found - thousands of happy new ears

In only six weeks more than a thousand people have visited the Overgrown Path podcast page on iTunes, and this week James Weeks talking about the music of Elisabeth Lutyens has been added to my David Munrow and Alvin Curran podcasts. Doesn't that level of interest in music from the long tail tell us something?

Elsewhere there has been some good humoured discussion of Angela Hewitt world Bach tour T-shirts, with one defender of the Bach world tour marketing machine writing - 'I think you are missing the point here, which is trying to get new people interested in her, giving her profile in the press and recognition ... every interview, every talk show appearance is promotion.'

Every talk show appearance may be promotion. But all promotion is not good promotion. And promoting serious music to mass markets is a risky business. There are very few examples of large, and loyal, new audiences being created by mass marketing. But there are numerous examples that ended in tears, where mass marketing failed to attract a new audiences, but instead drove away the core audience. The most obvious example is BBC Radio 3, where going mass market has failed to attract Classic FM listeners, but has instead, literally, switched-off the network's core audience and resulted in a net loss of listeners.

New audiences are essential for the health of serious music, but so is being realistic. We live in an age of instant gratification, and today's arts administrators and broadcasters want immediate access to new mass audiences. This is not only unrealistic, it also often achieves the opposite result to that intended. New audiences can be reached, but we need to be less greedy and more adventurous to reach them.

As always on this blog these are my personal views. But they are based on real world experience. Yes, the sample size may be small, but, as I have pointed out before, the samples are larger than the focus groups used by the BBC and others. And before the cynics sniff at a few thousand listeners for David Munrow and Alvin Curran they should remember that it was revealed recently that Rupert Murdoch's new satellite Fox Business Network is attracting an average of only 6,000 daytime viewers.

The new audience for serious music is in the receptive long tail, not in the mass market short head. The long tail of classical music has received much attention recently. But there are many other long tails - for literature, for the visual arts, for the cinema, for techno and electronic music, and others. There is overlap, but there is also a sizeable new audience for serious music waiting in those other long tails. These are people who have been driven away from classical music by BBC TV's Classical Star and Classic FM's music for dinner parties. They see serious music today as being unexciting. They don't want to be talked down to by chummy radio presenters. They want the adventurousness of Boulez in the 1970s at the Round House and Proms in London, and at the Rug Concerts in New York. But, with a few notable exceptions, we are not giving them what they want.

I have talked to some of the new audience that my internet radio programmes and blog have reached. They told me they bought CDs and downloads of music by Guillaume Connesson, Karlheinz Stockhausen, John Cage, Conlon Nancarrow and others after discovering them On An Overgrown Path. These new listeners are well educated, have disposable incomes, are interested in the media, travel extensively, have expensive stereo systems, watch art films, and read contemporary fiction. But they listen to non-classical music because they find it more exciting and challenging. They are the long-tail dwellers, they are a receptive new audience for serious classical music, but we need to be a lot more adventurous to reach them.

Sir Brian McMaster arrives at the same conclusion in his controversial and brave report on funding in the UK arts which was published last week. In the report he recommends 'that cultural organisations stop exploiting the tendency of many audiences to accept a superficial experience and foster a relationship founded on innovative, exciting and challenging work'. Or, as that great arts administrator and BBC Radio 3 controller John Drummond wrote "the arts are as much about controversy as about achievement".

We need to be more adventurous and controversial. We already have the exciting music. We should stop apologising for it.

Image with many thanks to AllPosters.com. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Early and late music reaches new audiences

Adventurous programming of early and late music has reached new audiences via my Future Radio programme. My Inner Cities webcast, which was late both in terms of the work's year of composition and my bedtime, was just one example. From earlier times my David Munrow (photo above) feature was repeated by popular demand over Christmas, and it has just been made available as an iTunes podcast, as has my interview with pianist Daan Vandewalle, who played Alvin Curran's Inner Cities. And every week I am getting more emails at the station responding favourably to the programmes' eclectic mix of music.

My sample size may be small, but it is no smaller than the focus groups used extensively by the BBC and by US presidential contenders. If I were predicting the future I would say that early music will be the 'big thing' in 2008, and that there is also a real opportunity for live concerts combining early and contemporary works. Pierre Boulez did it in his Domaine Musical concerts in France in the 1950s (e.g. Bach or Gabrieli combined with new works), while in 2000 a concert in Berlin combined Mahler and Ockeghem and sold out. Whatever the sample size the Overgrown Path webcasts are punching well above their weight, and the last thirty hours of broadcast music have not included a single note of Mozart, Beethoven, Mahler or Shostakovich.

I've already written here how David Munrow virtually single-handedly made early music the 'big thing' in the 1970s. All that is needed to make it happen again is the right animateur. If early music is the surprise of 2008 perhaps EMI's new owners will make their acquired assets work for them by releasing a box of the complete David Munrow recordings with decent documentation instead of sub-licensing them for peanuts to other companies while also giving them away piecemeal on their own budget label? That way the new owners wouldn't need to 'revalue' my pension.

Over the next few weeks I have some very interesting programmes on Future Radio which combine early and contemporary music. I will publish full details before each broadcast, but here is an outline of the schedule. Judging by recent events you may also see some of these composers making last minute appearances in the BBC Radio 3 schedules. My programmes are broadcast on Sunday at 5.00pm, convert to other time zones here.

* Jan 13 - Elisabeth Lutyens' music with guest James Weeks. Rising star conductor and composer James Weeks discusses his highly acclaimed CD of Lutyens' choral music with me, and plays some of her music from it. Available after broadcast as An Overgrown Path podcast.

* Jan 20 - The Italian Job. Giosefffo Zarlino Motets (new recording from Ensemble Plus Ultra and Michael Noone), and Luigi Dallapiccola's Canti di prigionia.

* Jan 27 - Celebrating Messiaen. Excerpts from Messian's Vingt Regards sur l’enfant Jésus and Bach Toccatas played on the piano by Angela Hewitt.

* Feb 3 - Pilgrimage to Santiago. Music from the medieval Codex Las Huelgas and two complete sections from Joby Talbot's acclaimed 2005 choral work Path of Miracles.

* Feb 10 - A study in contrasts - Cage and Frescobaldi. Girolamo Frescobaldi's Canzoni framing John Cage's Concerto for Prepared Piano and Chamber Orchestra

More on Joby Talbot's contemporary choral work Path of Miracles here, and read what a critic thought of Luigi Dallapiccola's music here.
David Munrow photo from Testament's condensed CD re-release of his The Art of the Recorder and Instruments of the Middle Ages. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

The long tail reaches out

From today's Observer arts section. As I've said before, all classical music needs are more animateurs.
With thanks to that great animateur Alex Ross whose New Yorker article was reprinted in the Observer. There doesn't seem to be a web version of the article yet. I'll add a link later if it appears. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

4.5 hours of new music - it was incredible

When did a listener last describe a piece of new music to you as incredible? I've been filing away responses to my overnight broadcast on Future Radio of Alvin Curran's Inner Cities and thought this typical message was worth posting. Shows that there is an audience for contemporary music - if you can reach it.

Hi, I was listening to the show last night (around 12-1am maybe) and I heard a piece of music which lasted 4.5 hours long, preceded by an on-air phone call with the pianist from Belgium I believe. Could you please give me more information about this piece of music? I thought it was incredible.
Many thanks, TL

Proof that the music hasn't died on every radio station.
The score in my photo of the Future Radio studio isn't by Alvin Curran. But it is by another contemporary composer. Can any reader with supernatural powers tell me who the composer is? Photo (c) On An Overgrown Path 2008. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Inner Cities completed

Rod has left a new comment on your post "Surgeon General's Warning: Inner Cities":

... just tuned in and wonderful - thanx for the link!

Posted by Rod... to On An Overgrown Path at 1:39 AM

This comment was typical of many received here and at Future Radio - that's me in the studio above. Many thanks to the station for making the webcast possible and to Dan Nyman in particular for setting up the technical side of the all-night vigil. Also to Daan Vandewalle for his contribution, and to the many readers who listened via the internet.

Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Surgeon General's Warning: Inner Cities

"The German psychologist Dr. Weisenhutter interviewed the musicians of the Cologne Radio Symphony Orchestra and found them beset by psychogenic illnesses. The players are impotent. They hate new music. After playing it they cannot engage in sexual activity. This is understandable, for musicians are emotional people and if a musician is not convinced of the validity of what he does, his sexual life is bound to suffer" ~ from Boulez - Composer, Conductor, Enigma by Joan Peyser (Schirmer ISBN 0028717007)

Be prepared for a disturbed night, or worse. At 12.01am tonight UK time the first complete broadcast of Alvin Curran's Inner Cities will start. The four and a half hour cycle will be broadcast in full without any announcements or advertisements, and pianist Daan Vanderwalle will be introducing the performance with me. The programme starts at 12.01am on Wednesday December 5 in the UK, which is afternoon or evening Tuesday December 4 in North and South America. Convert to your local time zone here.

Read the full Inner Cities story here. Now, can I attempt some Putin style vote rigging? If you think projects like the complete Inner Cities webcast should be a regular feature please go to the Future Radio web site now, and send a message of support to the station via either the the studio messenger or email links. The station can't measure the internet listeners, but it can measure messages, so every response counts.

Photo credit Andrology.com Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

New music premiere for internet radio

Inner Cities are where you go to get debriefed, to watch Trisha Brown levitate on Bach in San Francisco; to help Cage squeeze lemons into his fresh taboule on 18th Street and watch David Tudor mix chili peppers and lasers at the Grand Hotel des Palmes; to play the Sydney Harbour like a bandoneon; to teach advanced-orchestration in the Greek Theater at Mills College with Pauline Oliveros and the ghost of Harry Partch; to shake Stravinsky's hand in the American Sector-Berlin and Varese’s in New Haven; to watch Kosugi dance his electric violin around Marcus Aurelius; to get thrown off stage in London as a warmup act for the Pink Floyd; to meet Stockhausen at a strobe-light show in Düsseldorf; to open windows on Cage’s cue for adding real cold air to his Winter Music; to camp out with Teitelbaum and Rzewski for Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point; to hear Terry and LaMonte’s landmark concerts at the Attico in Rome ...

Inner Cities is a twelve part cycle for solo piano that lasts for four hours twenty-four minutes and twenty-two seconds. Its composer Alvin Curran studied with Elliott Carter, and founded Musica Elettronica Viva with Frederic Rzewski and Richard Teitelbaum. The notes above and below are by Alvin Curran.

Inner Cities 10 is dedicated to the Belgian pianist Daan Vandewalle. His repertoire includes Ives, Ligeti, Lutoslawski, Cage and Clarence Barlow, and he has had works written for him by Fred Frith, Chris Newman, and Frederic Rzewski as well as Alvin Curran. Daan has played Inner Cities complete in concert, and has recorded it on the Long Distance label.

Inner Cities has never been broadcast complete to our knowledge. But on December 5th Future Radio is letting me go where others fear to tread. The four and a half hour cycle will be broadcast complete on that day without any announcements or advertisements, and Daan Vanderwalle will be introducing the performance with me. The programme starts at 12.01am on Wednesday December 5th, which is afternoon or evening the previous day in North and South America. Convert to your local time zone here.

Inner Cities described by Daan Vandewalle can be heard as a podcast from iTunes. If you do not have iTunes installed click here to download it. With iTunes you can subscribe to future On An Overgrown Path podcasts.

Inner Cities photographs are by me, and show the Cité du Livre and the Pavillon Noir in the Avenue Mozart in that most musical of cities, Aix en Provence. Alvin Curran has the last words ...

Inner Cities contain no "drive-by" anything; there’s merely back alleys, empty lots full of stubborn weeds and clear sky, trails of memory which may or may not lead anywhere or even have relevance to the music at hand. The bottom line: these pieces are a set of contradictory etudes - studies in liberation and attachment, cryptic itineraries to the old fountain on the town square whence flows all artistic divination and groping for meaning in the dark.

Inner Cities complete continues the proud tradition established by WHRB's classical music 0rgies. Yet more confirmation of the importance of the long tail of radio
Photos (c) On An Overgrown Path 2007. Listen by launching the Radeo internet player from the right side-bar, or via the audio stream, on Wednesday December 5 at 12.01am UK time. Convert time to your local time zone using this link. Windows Media Player doesn't like the audio stream very much and takes ages to buffer. WinAmp or iTunes handle it best. Unfortunately the royalty license doesn't permit on-demand replay, so you have to listen in real time. If you are in the Norwich, UK area tune to 96.9FM. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Erik Satie - twenty hours of Vexations

Portrait of Erik Satie by Santiago Rusiñol

'There is also one curiosity on this CD: a short quotation from Vexations - its "motif", made up of a theme and two variations - which Satie required to be played 840 times in a row; depending on the tempo chosen, this would take between twelve and twenty-four hours.

Without entirely playing the composer's game, for obvious reasons, Jean-Yves Thibaudet here simply reveals the different elements of the task, by playing the theme alternately with the two variations, as requested by the composer, then the theme again, this time followed by the two variations, one after the other.'

That is how Jean-Yves Thibaudet avoids the Vexations issue on his 5 CD set Satie - The Complete Solo Piano Music, and his performance of the work lasts for just 3 minutes 38 seconds. But at Cambridge University the pianists of Sidney Sussex College Musical Society are made of tougher stuff. On Saturday November 24th at 7.00pm UK time they are performing Vexations the way Satie intended, and the performance (poster below), in the College's Mong Hall, should last around 20 hours - non-stop.


This rare performance of Vexations is much more than an interesting curiosity. Today Satie is remembered for his Gymnopedies and Gnossiennes, and little more. But his piano music was a major influence on minimalist composers such as Philip Glass. Glass' early Piece in the Shape of a Square for two flutes is a homage to Satie, while Alvin Curran followed Satie in the adoption of epic time scales. Curran's Inner Cities for solo piano lasts for four and a half hours, and it is a work you will, literally, being hearing a lot more of On An Overgrown Path in the next few weeks.

Erik Satie's Vexations has an important place in the history of twentieth-century music. You can experience it in full via a live stream of the performance over the internet starting at 7.00pm on Saturday November 24th UK time - time zone convertor here.

Congratulations to Sidney Sussex College Musical Society for going where others dare not tread, and for putting Vexations on the web. The pianists deserve a credit. They are Kim Ashton, Thomas Athorne, Will Buchanan, Jesper Carlson, James Freeman, Paul Kilbey, Sarah Latto, Joe Scott, Lydia Slobodian, Emily Smith, Jamal Sutton, and Matthew Tait. The photo below shows the quadrangle in Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. There are worse places to experience twenty hours of Vexations.


Back story on music in Cambridge here.
Header image is part of one of the portraits of Eric Satie by Santiago Rusiñol. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk