When I am in the present I am only here 50 percent in the present.
The other 50 percent is consumed by a non stop rage that is only silenced when I sleep
Friday, January 17, 2014
Psychotic
That is what an artist has to be in today's world to be sane
There is no NY Philharmonic
There is no NY times
There is no MET
The only things that exists are what I choose to say exist
The rest don't count as they are illusions
Monday, January 13, 2014
illusion
I bought into the illusion of art ?
The illusion of immortality
The illusion of the possibility of one hearing our screams
The illusion of NOT living ones life in the present
The illusion of NOT living ones life in the world
Better to be like Rockefeller, Trump, or others like that see the world clearly
Live in the world and only for the present, the rest is just an illusion.
The illusion of immortality
The illusion of the possibility of one hearing our screams
The illusion of NOT living ones life in the present
The illusion of NOT living ones life in the world
Better to be like Rockefeller, Trump, or others like that see the world clearly
Live in the world and only for the present, the rest is just an illusion.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Artificial intelligence and the death of the modern orchestra
I am not commenting on whether I like this idea or not, I am just theorizing...
Once upon a time we had baroque orchestras and minstrels that wandered throughout the country side. These groups eventually became what is known as our modern orchestras that we hear in our sacred concert halls.
At the same time we go to hear these fine ensembles play, the computer age is rapidly developing. We now have music software programs such as Sibelius and Finale that can realize and perform scores on a somewhat primitive level, but good enough to use if you want to hear the music. Sample programs are getting more sophisticated as well. Gordon Moore's law at Intel states that computer power doubles every eighteen months. So it will only be a matter of time before computers with artificial intelligence will be able to read and realize a score, with feeling, as good if not better than any orchestra today.
This may sound like science fiction now, but when Jules Verne talked about going to the moon it was the same. I do not need to list all the other examples. The coming computer orchestras will not be limited by performing skill as the human being is. The range of instruments will be extended as well as the degree of performing skill. Composers will not be limited by the limitations of the human body trying to produce sounds from a physical instrument. I believe new computer sounds and instruments will emerge very quickly as this technology develops.
This will be the Golden age of the composer. Not being subservient to an orchestra to realize their art form. There will still a few orchestras that tour. They will be novelties like we go see early music groups. But the new way to hear serious music will be from a computer.
David Chesky
Once upon a time we had baroque orchestras and minstrels that wandered throughout the country side. These groups eventually became what is known as our modern orchestras that we hear in our sacred concert halls.
At the same time we go to hear these fine ensembles play, the computer age is rapidly developing. We now have music software programs such as Sibelius and Finale that can realize and perform scores on a somewhat primitive level, but good enough to use if you want to hear the music. Sample programs are getting more sophisticated as well. Gordon Moore's law at Intel states that computer power doubles every eighteen months. So it will only be a matter of time before computers with artificial intelligence will be able to read and realize a score, with feeling, as good if not better than any orchestra today.
This may sound like science fiction now, but when Jules Verne talked about going to the moon it was the same. I do not need to list all the other examples. The coming computer orchestras will not be limited by performing skill as the human being is. The range of instruments will be extended as well as the degree of performing skill. Composers will not be limited by the limitations of the human body trying to produce sounds from a physical instrument. I believe new computer sounds and instruments will emerge very quickly as this technology develops.
This will be the Golden age of the composer. Not being subservient to an orchestra to realize their art form. There will still a few orchestras that tour. They will be novelties like we go see early music groups. But the new way to hear serious music will be from a computer.
David Chesky
Saturday, December 8, 2007
American orchestras and the death of American culture
If we went to see West Side Story in China would it be Chinese Culture or American culture ?
As I walked by an American orchestra the other day I noticed they play virtually no new American music, mostly older European classics as we all know.
I suggest to the American orchestras to take off the American city they are named after from their mast heads and change their names to "The American Chapter of the society for the preservation of 19th century European culture".
Are most American orchestras really American cultural institutions or just a musical variation of a fine wine and cheese import shop?
Should an organization that does not promote American music be funded by public funds or grants?
If this is the artistic path they choose to take it seems to me that they should be funded by European governments and large European companies that want to expose their culture around the world.
These orchestras really add nothing to the culture of our society. Instead of nurturing and creating our own indigenous orchestral art form they just import European culture and put American composers out of work in the process.
Perhaps I am naive in thinking that a local orchestra is there to nurture American art.
Maybe we as an American society are too inept to create something of true value. Perhaps that should be left to the dead Europeans.
In reality these orchestras are just filters that choke our own culture from developing and producing a new American musical art form ?
The contemporary world of American orchestra's culture has destroyed the modern American composer by reducing him to a mere street peddler and taking the transcendent out of his art.......
David
As I walked by an American orchestra the other day I noticed they play virtually no new American music, mostly older European classics as we all know.
I suggest to the American orchestras to take off the American city they are named after from their mast heads and change their names to "The American Chapter of the society for the preservation of 19th century European culture".
Are most American orchestras really American cultural institutions or just a musical variation of a fine wine and cheese import shop?
Should an organization that does not promote American music be funded by public funds or grants?
If this is the artistic path they choose to take it seems to me that they should be funded by European governments and large European companies that want to expose their culture around the world.
These orchestras really add nothing to the culture of our society. Instead of nurturing and creating our own indigenous orchestral art form they just import European culture and put American composers out of work in the process.
Perhaps I am naive in thinking that a local orchestra is there to nurture American art.
Maybe we as an American society are too inept to create something of true value. Perhaps that should be left to the dead Europeans.
In reality these orchestras are just filters that choke our own culture from developing and producing a new American musical art form ?
The contemporary world of American orchestra's culture has destroyed the modern American composer by reducing him to a mere street peddler and taking the transcendent out of his art.......
David
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Chinese Jazz and the Modern Orchestra
Have you ever heard a Chinese jazz band?
Do you really want to?
Well I have. All the notes are right but something is quite not right. They just do not have jazz in their veins like the jazz musicians on Bourbon Street in New Orleans.
I have this running joke. I often call some of our American orchestras, "The American chapter of the society for the preservation of nineteenth century European culture", but I am starting to think this is not a joke. Perhaps this is the real function of an orchestra. After all it is a European sound machine.
America has its big swing bands and small jazz trios. America has its electric rock bands and Broadway as well. These are our contribution to the musical world. So perhaps the orchestra should stay as a European museum to preserve European tradition and culture.
Getting back to the Chinese jazz, I wonder when someone from Vienna hears our America orchestra playing Wagner, Strauss, Mahler, etc, are they secretly giggling quietly at us? Does it seem strange to them that these Americans are trying to play like us. Perhaps we think the American versions are good enough and maybe we do not know any better and are happy with what we produce. Or maybe there is another scenario,
Globalization in Music.
With technology the world is becoming such a small place.
Is globalization taking place in orchestra world as well?
Are all orchestras starting to sound the same and loosing their local sound?
Today, as in the old days, in Vienna, young students are groomed by their teachers to eventually step up and take their places in the local orchestras. The student’s teacher that plays the orchestra knows the sound of the orchestra and that student is finely groomed to fit into that slot seamlessly and continue the tradition and sound of the orchestra.
Today with open auditions any great player can walk into an orchestra, play a great audition, get the job and introduce his or hers own sound into that orchestra thus causing the orchestras to become watered down and globalized.
Is this good or bad?
It depends on what you want to do.
Preserve history or create new music?
Go to Brazil or Cuba and listen to the local bands. Their music is so rooted in their traditions that the music they play can only be imitated in other parts of the world. If you really want to hear a great Samba band you must go to Rio.
So if I want to hear a real Mahler interpretation will I have to go to Vienna as well?
When we hear Blues in America it has different local genres that make it more interesting, such as Kansas City, Memphis, Chicago, Delta and New Orleans. These cites have their own unique sound and this local color should be injected in serious orchestral music as well. It may not be better technically but it would make orchestral music more interesting and less homogenized. We should have different local styes for our orchestral compositions just like they do in American Blues.
This brings me to article that I wrote for the American Music center, “The Tokyo Syndrome” (the link is on the top of this page). It is about our ambivalence in not trying to create out own indigenous American orchestral sound. Are we going to be an orchestral nation that just copies what the Europeans did, or will we try to create our own new and exciting orchestral art form?
The piano I believe was a European invention as well, but Fats Waller, Art Tatum and Jelly Roll Morton managed to make that into a very American sound.
David Chesky
Do you really want to?
Well I have. All the notes are right but something is quite not right. They just do not have jazz in their veins like the jazz musicians on Bourbon Street in New Orleans.
I have this running joke. I often call some of our American orchestras, "The American chapter of the society for the preservation of nineteenth century European culture", but I am starting to think this is not a joke. Perhaps this is the real function of an orchestra. After all it is a European sound machine.
America has its big swing bands and small jazz trios. America has its electric rock bands and Broadway as well. These are our contribution to the musical world. So perhaps the orchestra should stay as a European museum to preserve European tradition and culture.
Getting back to the Chinese jazz, I wonder when someone from Vienna hears our America orchestra playing Wagner, Strauss, Mahler, etc, are they secretly giggling quietly at us? Does it seem strange to them that these Americans are trying to play like us. Perhaps we think the American versions are good enough and maybe we do not know any better and are happy with what we produce. Or maybe there is another scenario,
Globalization in Music.
With technology the world is becoming such a small place.
Is globalization taking place in orchestra world as well?
Are all orchestras starting to sound the same and loosing their local sound?
Today, as in the old days, in Vienna, young students are groomed by their teachers to eventually step up and take their places in the local orchestras. The student’s teacher that plays the orchestra knows the sound of the orchestra and that student is finely groomed to fit into that slot seamlessly and continue the tradition and sound of the orchestra.
Today with open auditions any great player can walk into an orchestra, play a great audition, get the job and introduce his or hers own sound into that orchestra thus causing the orchestras to become watered down and globalized.
Is this good or bad?
It depends on what you want to do.
Preserve history or create new music?
Go to Brazil or Cuba and listen to the local bands. Their music is so rooted in their traditions that the music they play can only be imitated in other parts of the world. If you really want to hear a great Samba band you must go to Rio.
So if I want to hear a real Mahler interpretation will I have to go to Vienna as well?
When we hear Blues in America it has different local genres that make it more interesting, such as Kansas City, Memphis, Chicago, Delta and New Orleans. These cites have their own unique sound and this local color should be injected in serious orchestral music as well. It may not be better technically but it would make orchestral music more interesting and less homogenized. We should have different local styes for our orchestral compositions just like they do in American Blues.
This brings me to article that I wrote for the American Music center, “The Tokyo Syndrome” (the link is on the top of this page). It is about our ambivalence in not trying to create out own indigenous American orchestral sound. Are we going to be an orchestral nation that just copies what the Europeans did, or will we try to create our own new and exciting orchestral art form?
The piano I believe was a European invention as well, but Fats Waller, Art Tatum and Jelly Roll Morton managed to make that into a very American sound.
David Chesky
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Will the next Diaghilev please stand up!
Is there an impresario out there that has the vision and balls to champion new American art?
Is there an impresario out there with the creative skills to market it to the public?
Is there a public in today's repressed times that wants its art to reflect contemporary culture?
Is there a public that wants to be challenged with new art, or do they just want to be comforted?
Diaghilev is, in my opinion, responsible for some of the greatest art ever created. Without him there would be no Stravinsky or Ballets Russes. Diaghilev championed new art and gave the world Stravinsky, Ravel, Debussy, Cocteau, Picasso, Fokine and Nijinsky to name a few. In his time the emphasis was on creating the new.
As I walk across the street I see a Lincoln Center poster for the world premiere of “Romero and Juliet” also there is a world premiere of "Sleeping Beauty". Am I on drugs? Wasn't this been done before, maybe one was 70 years ago and the other over 100 years ago in Russia? Are we going to be doing the same things over and over and over again until the next generation comes along and laughs at our reluctance to move forward?
In medieval times there were powerful forces that stunted art, all forward thinking and managed to stifle progress. In the early twentieth century Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes corrected that problem, at least in the arts. Now once again the circle is complete and we are back to the medieval way of thinking. If Diaghilev came back in a time machine and saw what was filling the concert halls today, he might think he pushed the backwards button.
David Chesky
Is there an impresario out there with the creative skills to market it to the public?
Is there a public in today's repressed times that wants its art to reflect contemporary culture?
Is there a public that wants to be challenged with new art, or do they just want to be comforted?
Diaghilev is, in my opinion, responsible for some of the greatest art ever created. Without him there would be no Stravinsky or Ballets Russes. Diaghilev championed new art and gave the world Stravinsky, Ravel, Debussy, Cocteau, Picasso, Fokine and Nijinsky to name a few. In his time the emphasis was on creating the new.
As I walk across the street I see a Lincoln Center poster for the world premiere of “Romero and Juliet” also there is a world premiere of "Sleeping Beauty". Am I on drugs? Wasn't this been done before, maybe one was 70 years ago and the other over 100 years ago in Russia? Are we going to be doing the same things over and over and over again until the next generation comes along and laughs at our reluctance to move forward?
In medieval times there were powerful forces that stunted art, all forward thinking and managed to stifle progress. In the early twentieth century Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes corrected that problem, at least in the arts. Now once again the circle is complete and we are back to the medieval way of thinking. If Diaghilev came back in a time machine and saw what was filling the concert halls today, he might think he pushed the backwards button.
David Chesky
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