Lame Part 6: Pansies hiding behind advanced music degrees

It happens in every walk of life: those members of our society who minimally kept passing classes until they got all of the fancy degrees. Let me clarify before I continue that I am not talking as a generalization of anyone with a higher degree. I even hold one. There are many deserving individuals who have worked hard and used the knowledge of their degrees to better our society. I am talking about those who hide behind their multiple state college degrees and snag teaching gigs and community performing arts group director jobs and hang on to them until they die.

While attending various colleges and universities as well as teaching at them, I have seen these urchins of society protecting themselves by building barriers so thick that they stride right into retirement. They rarely perform and they are very opinionated about those who do. Often, when a talented student threatens their safety by questioning talents or exceeding them, the student suffers by being shot down with insults, bad grades, and lost performance opportunities.

The state Board of Regents is largely to blame. They want highly qualified teachers. Education is most often not an indicator of quality. They want clean nosed folks who won't rock the boat. Hell, Mozart rocked the boat. Beethoven rocked the boat. So did Verdi, Wagner, and anyone else who actually makes a difference in our lives. You don't get anywhere by being a good "t" crosser or "i" dotter.

This mentality breads apathy. It breads bad future leaders and it kills a true creative thinker. Why do you think the most creative people break out of pre-defined genres anyway? My point is simple and has been echoed for many generations. In order for anything but genres like hip hop to survive, we need dynamic teachers to teach not just the basics, but the dynamics.

Also, since many of these pansies that I speak of hold esteamed posts at colleges and universities, they also are elected to run community music ensembles and again spread their form of apathy to the masses. No wonder classical music is dead. We need another Bernstein or Solti, or might I dare, Mozart.

The universities in metro Atlanta can't muster even a semplance of a true music conservatory as long as they have losers leading. Look at GSU. It is dead from the top down. They can't keep an orchestra director, their dean inherited the position and is so weak, he couldn't pull a greasy hair out of a sick whore's ass. Their opera guy is worst of all. Ask him how much money he brings home from his summer workshop. I dare you to ask.

KSU can never get anything right. Their dean has his whole family tied in with good jobs. Hmm? I wonder what his motivation is? There really is no orchestra or opera program.

Clayton State has a great performance hall. Nothing else.

Emory has a token program.

What is wrong with these people? Doesn't anyone care beyond the ink on their paychecks?

Prove it!

Lame - part 5 pay per use choruses

Genius. That is the only way to describe the scamming concept of pay-per-use choruses. Let's see, the idea must have came like this: How can I make money? I can preach to simple minded folks who give me lots of money because I can exploit and feed from their naivety. Oh, wait. That has been done too many times and doing that will probably give me a "Do not pass Go - Go straight to Hell" card. Ah, how about this: I can start a community chorus and accomplish the same thing.

That seems to be exactly what The Atlanta Gay Men's Chorus (AGMC) and Michael O'Neal have done. The AGMC exploits the desires of some of Atlanta's gay men to get in a group and sing. Of course, it is also a means of hooking up with new partners and a great networking tool for them. They must pay excessive quarterly dues that almost completely supports the group and keeps them singing. They also do bake sales and the such. I haven't done that since high school band and vowed to actually make money at the profession of music instead of trying to convince people to pay for me to do what I like.

The worst of these must be the Michael O'Neal Singers. First of all, he who has an ego so large that his name must be prominently displayed in the name of a chorus should be loathed and ran out of town. But, lest we forget that these people feed off the nativity of the community and more so of their members. Maybe they should change the name to the Michael O'Neal Ego and Monetary Support Group. As a recent review from Peeyou at the AJC says, and I para-phrase, "O'Neal is great!"

If I am not mistaken, this is how his group works: All 135 members must pay several hundred dollars to become "auditioned" members. In addition, they must buy something like 10 tickets per show to additionally support the ego. If only the founders of Amway could have thought of something so great...

Lame - part 4

Community Orchestras:

Metro Atlanta's community orchestras are lame. That's not because they lack the talent or funding of the ASO, but because they lack imagination. They still develop shows and seasons in the same style and fashion of orchestras 50 years ago.

NEWS FLASH: The times really have changed.

The speed at which we, as humans, process information is much faster now than at that time thanks to computers, video games, and television. Having the patience to sit through multiple hours of a Bach passion work is more than even I can do.

I have heard time and again that if many famous composers were alive now that they would thrive more in the realm of jazz. This is probably true of many of them because it is ever changing and re-inventing itself. A similar characteristic of history's greatest composers. However, there is always the exception. Look at Aaron Copland. He lived throughout the jazz era and never touched it. But, his pupil and life-long friend, Leonard Bernstein embraced it and grew it.

Back to my initial point: Community orchestras typically do tried and true stuff and a pops series. Arthur Fiedler is dead. The tried and true works. It sells some tickets to old folks and young kids, but it sure as hell does not compete with anything else and you pretty much lose the 35-55 market. Of course, these people have the most disposable money and go out more often.

Also, I feel that the community orchestras are doing a disservice to the greater community by being tried and true and not provoking thought within the community.

When I look at the we-sites for the Dekalb Symphony and the Cobb Symphony, they bore to tears and so does their programming. Actually, the Gwinnett Community Symphony Orchestra seems to be the only group thinking outside the box. Good for them!

Speaking a little further out, I heard the Macon Symphony once. ONCE. Apart from their average at best programming, the conductor, whose ego is larger than the rest of the orchestra, played very strange interpretations. Everything concerned with that group seems to promote his ego. A very sad case. Of course, the Savannah Symphony, our state's oldest orchestra, folded because they couldn't do it for $3,000,000 per year. An even sadder case.

What is the problem with these groups? I think it is the fact that we have non-innovative people running them. Until the public demands more, they will always get less.

Lame - part 3

My sentiments are reverberated by a real writer. How interesting...

Cutting-edge challenge

In the wake of drying up money for the arts, the local scene seeks to revive its pioneer spirit

By Felicia Feaster

Published 05.16.2007
http://atlanta.creativeloafing.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=244876

First the good news.

There are more galleries, more museums and more theaters in Atlanta than there were 35 years ago when Creative Loafing was born a willful and spunky young cuss.

In population, metro Atlanta has grown from a podunk million in 1970 to an astounding 5 million today. And Atlanta's evolving art scene has naturally reflected that massive growth.

But is bigger always better when it comes to the arts?

And so comes the bad news: With that growth, Atlanta may have lost a bit of its "pioneer spirit" and a commitment on the national and local front to fund that "can-do" attitude.

Louise Shaw is a key figure in the local art scene's institutional memory, having served as executive director of the Nexus Contemporary Art Center (now the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center) from 1983 to 1998. She remembers a '70s art scene with an anything-can-happen energy that galvanized Atlanta's earliest art settlers to establish the institutions that make today's Atlanta the vital place it is.

"These were very radical, heady times," says Shaw, who came to Atlanta in 1973 and was around when some of the city's cultural stalwarts were born: the important artist-run Nexus (1973), the Nexus Press (1977), the city's Bureau of Cultural Affairs (1974), the beginnings of local arts criticism, IMAGE Film & Video (1976), the Center for Puppetry Arts (1978) and 7 Stages Theatre (1979).

Laura Lieberman came to Atlanta in 1975 and quickly became involved in the scene as editor in 1977 of the Atlanta Art Workers Coalition Newsletter, which would later develop into the important Atlanta-based magazine Art Papers.

"The City's Bureau of Cultural Affairs was creating a strong arts community using federal dollars to employ artists to work on community projects like Nexus, the Atlanta Art Workers Coalition and the Atlanta Women's Art Collective," she says. "It was an exciting and progressive time, politically and culturally."

Julia A. Fenton remembers an "idyllic time" for the visual arts when she moved to

Atlanta in 1968. She was director of activities at the Atlanta Art Workers Coalition in 1977, and remembers a time when Mayor Maynard Jackson knew all the players in the local arts scene. The city's too big now, she says, for that kind of intimacy.

"It was like a small town, really," says Robert Cheatham, Eyedrum Gallery's executive director, who became involved in the arts scene in the '70s.

If that decade was all about the city's artist mavericks and an important culture-affirming art mayor establishing the cultural firmament we now take for granted, the '80s and '90s saw a bolstering of the city's commitment to contemporary art both locally and nationally.

In the ‘80s under the helm of progressive Director Gudmund Vigtel, the High Museum committed itself to educating the public about contemporary art. Vigtel presided over a museum known for challenging shows that featured regional artists. And its groundbreaking exhibitions-such as 1972’s The Modern Image –of artists such as Eva Hesse, hans Haacke and Carl Andre have since become part of the art world’s contemporary art firmament.

The construction in 1983 of Richard Meier’s High Museum of Art building undoubtedly played a part in jumping membership up from 6,000 in 1972 to more than 45,000 today. And the construction in 1985 of the Michael C. Carlos Museum at Emory by another notable architect, Michael Graves, along with the debut in 1989 of the Atlanta International Museum of Art and Design (now the Museum of Design Atlanta), also solidified the prominence of museum culture in the city.

There have been some positive signs of improvement in the city’s art scene more recently, including the unveiling in 2005 of the High’s Renzo Piano expansion, the debut in 2002 of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia devoted to Georgia artists, the rise of the Castleberry Hill arts district, and the birth of important alternative galleries such as Eyedrum and Young Blood.

But for all the progress the Atlanta arts scene has made, some failure to evolve and just plain backsliding has also occurred. That is perhaps best symbolized by the end of the Arts Festival of Atlanta in 1998, after the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta brought national and international attention to the city.

In some ways, Atlanta's art-scene problems reflect a national mood when it comes to providing money for the arts. "Federal money for the arts is pretty much nonexistent," Fenton says.

And the recent disclosure that the city's daily, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, will no longer have individual reporters devoted to the classical-music and visual-arts beats gives an indication that Atlanta institutions are not where they should be in terms of seeing the value of the city's cultural scene.

Maybe what made Atlanta best initially – the energy and enthusiasm of its artists to innovate and the willingness of the city to fund them – can get the city back into the pioneering mode of the '70s.

"I think Atlanta has always had a great grassroots art scene," Shaw says.

And to see that, "all you have to do is go to other cities that don't have what we have here."

©1996-2006 Creative Loafing Media - All Rights Reserved

Posted by Atlanta Classical Music at 1:43 PM

Lame - part 2

The saga continues….

Continuing the discussion of Lameness in metro Atlanta’s Classical Music realm, let’s discuss the critics. (This is always fun.) They either set the tone or report on it, so they are very important in the scheme of things.

Unfortunately, there is really only one critic in Atlanta. Pierre Ruhe of the AJC. Creative Loafing has several people, who masquerade as classical music critics, but they don’t get around very much and hey, it’s Creative Loafing. How serious can you take a publication that advertises vaginal laser surgery? Maybe that advertiser should advertise on the ASO’s new building.

So, Pierre Ruhe. He is young with wiry red hair and very tall, but I won’t be critical of that. The opinion of many performers is that he often gives back handed compliments and is rather biased for the smaller organizations. I am not sure of his criteria, but I have seen shows by the Atlanta Opera and Capital City Opera that vastly differed in quality that he has reviewed. If I had not gone to each performance, I would have thought Capital City was phenomenal, world-class, and the best thing since sliced bread. On the other hand, I would have thought that the Atlanta Opera was a small community group. As I discussed in the last posting, I don’t feel that money makes the organization, but it can help. CCO, when it had an orchestra, was small and played fairly well. The AO orchestra is large and plays very well together. Maybe the AO interpretations are lame, but let’s also compare apples to apples.

Mr. Ruhe always seems to go with the flow with the ASO. He basically likes it all and never really gives any constructive feedback on the performances. I get so bored with the same template reviews that I often skim them.

He likes anything at Spivey Hall. Yeah, it is a great hall, but it is really in the middle of nowhere. Therefore, who cares?

He seemed to think Michael O’Neal and his paying singers are great. The Dekalb Symphony is great, even though it’s leader is dead. Atlanta Baroque is great, but needs leadership. Atlanta Chamber Players is great. He won’t go to the AGMC possibly in fear of being hit on? The Atlanta composers? Almost every group is great and could be a little better. Snooze.

The only real drama exists with his wrangling of the opera groups in town. The reviews of Americolor Opera Alliance are always poor even though they might possibly be the most innovative opera group in town. Granted, they are a vanity organization that only performs the works written by the founder, but at least they are doing some cool stuff. They seem to have balls and that is commendable.

Mr. Ruhe pretty much single-handedly took down William Fred Scott from his golden throne that he built at the Atlanta Opera. Granted, many of Fred’s productions were lame….very lame, but he did build more than anyone else. For all of his shortcomings, he made more headway than anyone before or since. Pierre was brutal in his handling of Fred. I think that was a war of egos that resulted in the near bankruptcy of that group. Ah, the politics of the arts. What a sordid tale. Now, I think the AO has a real snake in charge of the group. Wait until the new smell leaves that new Cobb county theater. Wait and see if that group doesn’t really start to smell bad to the entire arts community. Just read the comments that follow any of Pierre’s articles to see how truly upset people are with the changes. Not all change is good or smart. Now, the AJC is laden with Pierre’s articles about every damn brick laid at the new Cobb theater and the comments of AO about how straight it is laid. Speaking of laid, it is the arts community that is really getting screwed here. Pierre seems to be saving face by promoting the hell out of this group since his coup with Fred was successful.

With the little Capital City group, Pierre seems to have only reviewed since they got a new music director several years back. When that guy got fed up and left, Pierre blasted him and kicked him in the ass as he left. CCO vanity organization is about 9.5 on the lame scale.

My theory is that there is going to be some mass reorganization of the opera scene in town, possibly from a brand new group, but who cares?

Pierre Ruhe is probably a solid 10. his reviews are generic at best. He is a great fit here in Atlanta where lameness abounds in classical music. I feel that he does a great disservice to the arts in Atlanta and keeps the low level of expectations as the bar. Lame!

Lame

I hate to start this blog with the title, "Lame," but there is no other way to describe the current Atlanta Classical Music scene. It is not my goal to belittle or detract from greatness. However, it is my goal to expose the frauds and lame institutions that proudly boast their prowess and grandeur. This is the current bar that all organizations in metro Atlanta strive to maintain instead of thinking outside the box to create exuberant and life altering performances.

Let’s start at the top. The Atlanta Symphony is the largest performing arts organization in Atlanta and the southeastern United States. They are consistent and they perform very often. The problem is simple: If their product is directly related to their budget, then one can deduct that each time that orchestra steps on a stage costs almost $1,000,000. First of all, that is ridiculous. I am yet to hear a million dollar performance from them. I can barely muster up the will to pay $30 for a single ticket. That organization sucks the funding life out of the remainder of the innovative arts organizations in metro Atlanta. Many arts organizations felt the blow of the ASO’s $300,000,000 fund-raising efforts for their new hall. Now, they have changed their mind for a third time and want to use those naive people’s money to put that vagina-looking building on top of a MARTA hub.

The ASO has very well paid personnel. The conductor, who is decent at his job, makes about a half million dollars a year. That is much much more than any other arts group in the southeast. He isn’t worth that kind of money. How hard can it be to conduct most of the classical and baroque repertoire? Sure, there are many pieces that are very difficult to conduct, but the vast majority of pieces they tackle can be addressed by your local high school band director. The romantic period and more modern works are very hard. If the ASO plans to cater and be dumbed down to appeal to the most generic of audiences, then why pay so much for the product? It can be done for far less money with increased creativity and a higher artistic level.

Every now and then, they will tackle some new pieces and some mildly controversial pieces, but it is rare. That “middle of the road” mentality is safe but boring as hell. Shame on them for acting like they are fresh, new, and innovative. They are as stale and outdated as Lawrence Welk. I know very few classical music professionals who frequent ASO performances. The few times I have been in the last year, I see a sea of blue hairs peppered with a smattering of young kids who have never been to the symphony before. On the lame-o-meter, they score an 8.

More to come about other groups later….