'The Internet I'd grown up with, the Internet that had raised me, was disappearing...The very act of going online, which had once seemed like a marvellous adventure, now seemed like a fraught ordeal. Self-expression now required such strong self-protection as to obviate its liberties and nullify its pleasures. Every communication was a matter not of creativity but of safety.... When I came to know it, the Internet was a very different thing. It was a friend and a parent. It was a community without border or limit, one voice and millions, a common frontier that had been settled but not exploited by diverse tribes living amicably enough side by side, each member of which was free to choose their own name and history and customs.... Certainly, there was conflict, but it was outweighed by goodwill and good feelings - the true pioneering spirit.... You will understand, then, when I say that the Internet of today is unrecognizable ' - Edward Snowden Permanent Record 'I
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You might like to know that I have put three samples from the last concert onto the Voces website.
Go to www.voceschoral.webs.com and click on 'Listen to us'.
More passion than polish, but none the worse for that, and the audience feedback has been terrific. A pity about the unmuffled coughing...
With best wishes,
Martyn Warren, Director
Voces - Renaissance Choral Music
Newton Abbot
Devon
Voces previousl featured here http://www.overgrownpath.com/2008/03/what-price-music-of-unsung-master.html
One comment on your 'Wouldn't it be lovely' post this morning: I suspect that most classical musicians love to talk about their music - their passion. The problem is that, unless one is in the superstar category, the general media will only want to talk with a classical musician if he or she has something to 'sell' - either literally, as in concert tickets or CDs, or metaphorically in the shape of radical new ideas, great success, great disaster, or scandal. Admittedly my experience is at a pretty low level, trying to interest local/regional print and broadcast media, but I suspect it is typical.
Things have changed markedly in the last 10 to 15 years. In the past our regional newspaper had an arts editor, who attended events in person and interviewed artists - no more. The BBC local news programme had a 5-minute slot on a Friday evening previewing upcoming arts events - no more. I had no trouble interesting local radio in mini-features based around our music, and more than once have spent a happy hour in a radio studio chatting live about renaissance choral music and my choir - I don't expect that to happen again.
I am generalising from the specific, and I am sure that you will get opposing views.
Best wishes, and keep up the good work,
Martyn
Too often we, and I include myself in this, blame the musicians for attention seeking.
But in many cases the musicians are hostages, willing or otherwise, of the commercial/intermediary complex, and of the media and agents in particular.
Which brings us back to the question that my article linked to above asks. Who is benefitting from disintermediation in classical music? Is it the music, or is it the commercial/intermediary complex?
But I am becoming incresingly uncomfortable with the concept that "Classical Music needs all the help it can get."
Just think today's BBC Radio 3, Norman Lebrecht, and the Classical Brit Awards etc etc.
Classical music needs help, but it needs the right kind of help. Many of the problems facing classical music today have been caused by the greed of the middle feeders who have used the mantra that "Classical Music needs all the help it can get" to further their own agendas.
Defining the right kind of help is very difficult, if not impossible. But we can at least try.