The American Orchestra

The American symphony's have strangled the and silenced the voices of their own composers for too long. But soon things will change. The age of virtual orchestras will finally give American culture a chance to be heard, grow and develop with out the filters and strangulation of the American orchestral institutions that no longer care about their own culture but only in the preservation of the orchestral institution.

The American orchestras should be excluded from any public funding or grants. Let them be financed by the European governments and business from that culture they promote, preserve, and nurture.

The American orchestras have treated its composers with the utmost contempt and lack of respect. They never seek out anything new, or urge new young writers to create. They only have contempt for the new.

October 28 10:27 PM

I am sick

I am an addict

I cannot help myself

I sat around the house playing with the kids

Looking at the walls

How can I pass the time

What do I do next ?

beyond depression

lost

I need to get out of my depression

I run for my drugs

I pick up a pen

And start to write another opera

My wife is angered

She says NO

But I cannot help myself

I was born to write

It is the only thing in this world that makes me feel alive

The act of that instantaneous creation

The ink flowing off the pen

An new idea that never was

The adrenaline rushes into my veins like a junkie

The drug kicks in

I get off

If I do not write

I drown

It is as simple as that

I drown

 

We no longer celebrate anticipation in today's world

In the middle of my run of my new opera The Pig, The Farmer, and The Artist. I am amazed at the lack of interest and apathy form the world of classical critics. There is just silence. Writing a  new two hour opera means nothing. But I pick up the New York Times and read a new review of a girl playing Bach. Maybe that is news. It seems like the critics already have in their minds who is a worthy artist and who is not, and do not even bother to to experience the work. The name before the work means a lot more than the work itself. Better to see another bad production of Tosca than to see a completely new work by just another idiot composer not worthy of ink. Perhaps it was that this work was created outside the institutional venues. Maybe new art must be presented in the correct venue by the proper promoters in order to be taken seriously as art. In either case the composer is reduced to a mere street beggar pleading for someone to take a chance and listen to something new. As I write this letter I see myself dying slowly. All the work and effort means nothing if you are on the outside. They might as well just pick up a gun and pump a bullet into your head,it is the same thing, they leave you for dead.

 

What is the point for any artist to try to create something new in this apathetic climate  we live in today. Has it always been like this, if so it is a wonder that anything of any value was ever created

 

Classical Music

Classical music lives in a insulated box that has nothing to do with the outside world. Orchestras do not exist in todays culture for the creation of new interesting art. They exist to perpetuate the institution.

Since orchestras get most of their income from foundations and fundraiser there is no incentive for them to change. If Park ave patron X wants Brahms, they get Brahms. If Tommy from the East village that is cultural, inquisitive, and alive wants something new that relates to him, he is tough out of luck.
The only way to get orchestras to change is to require by the state that any of the public tax funds orchestras receive must go to creating and playing new American works. If people want to put up their personal money to champion European culture , that is their prerogative. But if it is the public money, then that should not be the case. Perhaps if modern classical composers where as organized and aggressive as the teamsters, something like this could be accomplished

The Artist & Strength

The most important thing an artist needs is strength

The strength to listen to your own voice

The strength  to paint your house blue when all others say it should be red

The strength to get up in the morning after a night of being chastised for listening to your own voice

The strength to still listen to your own voice when there are no rewards only disappointments

The strength to still create when you know no one will put any value on it

The strength to forge ahead when you are an unaccepted resented outsider

The strength to sit and re think and re calculate every move in order to breath life into your child

 

The classical world is like a giant oil tanker

It takes so long to turn or move

The problem is when it does turn, you are not around

How I envy the commercial artist

I should have done that, it would have been an easy a nice life

But no !!

I had to have the stupidity, and ego to listen to my own voice

The stupidity and nativity to try to create to try to get the best out of myself

God bless those that can live in a the world and be at peace with themselves

The Olympics

A gorilla can lift more weight than any man. A cheetah can run faster than any of us. A chimpanzee is a better gymnast than we will ever be, but still we hold our Olympians in the highest esteem.
However none of the above could ever write a symphony or a serious novel, and the men the create these are forgotten relics, just a caustic sore on modern society.

The Genre of new Music

If the orchestras and audiences cannot enthusiastically ( and that is the key word ) embrace new music the genre of classical will die and metamorphosis into a museum which for most part it is.

Just the fact the the genre has to have new music ensembles is an insult to the purity if the art form.