Gosh, this one was found languishing! And I meant to chip in weeks ago. I have a certain amount of knowledge of spnm's workings. The role of Artistic Director is quite a long-standing one (at least since the late 1980s). The idea is that an individual musician, with a proven commitment to new music, is appointed for a year (or, more recently, sometimes two years). They are asked to devise a season or two of concerts and other events which can showcase the music of composers on spnm's shortlist. Sometimes this is a simple matter of programming them in straight-up-and-down concerts ('placing'); at others, it's a question of devising events, sometimes of a multimedia nature etc., which can provide opportunities for innovative or merely 'different' performing contexts. Recently, shortlisted composers have been invited to write new pieces and participate in professional development activities - in the past it was exclusively a matter of programming stuff they'd already composed.
Anyway, the Artistic Director (AD), as you can imagine, is paid a pittance for what is actually rather a lot of work. He/she liaises and plans with the Executive Director, has to submit plans to the Board and have them approved, spends hours negotiating and brainstorming with prospective performers (developing ideas, working on alternative performance spaces, initiating interactive projects etc. etc.). It's always been the case that a given AD, whether performer, composer, administrator, publisher or whoever, might, depending on their skills and experience, contribute to the series they create themselves. In recent years, Joanna McGregor, Steve Martland and Howard Skempton have done precisely that; and I think Rolf Hind is doing nothing more self-promotional than they did. In fact, one could argue that working with someone like Rolf in person is actually rather a good experience for an 'emerging' composer. And anyway, if a composer/performer like Rolf gets a couple of performance opportunities out of the deal for themselves, it's a well-deserved perk, I reckon.
I'm glad you brought this one back up, martle, because I'd meant to contribute at the time too, but couldn't quite think how to phrase it all without sounding negative or antagonistic. I see there've been more posts after yours, but I'm going to say what I respond to yours before seeing which way the discussion's headed since then.
I understood the role of Artistic Director to be much as you explained it: a sort of 'figurehead' who probably ended up doing quite a bit of work while being recompensed more in an 'honorary' capacity than with the sort of remuneration package a 'real' artistic director might expect. I think it was fairly obvious when Rolf was appointed that he sat quite comfortably in a line of such figures: Joanna MacGregor, Steve Martland and others as you mention. What I think is also undeniable, however, is that the spnm - not necessarily in its base-line activities, but in the way it chooses or sees fit to present itself in publicity terms - is increasingly aligned with a to my mind somewhat commercial trend in which 'new music' is presented as a sort of lifestyle choice. (This may be the subject for another thread, but I think the paradoxically increased London-centrism of the spnm, in which the rest of the country is now simply a source of possible 'touring' venues, is part of the same trend.) Certain aspects of Rolf's aesthetic preferences and choices make him a particularly telling choice of Artistic Director in that context.
I've got more than one thing in mind here (I don't think I was the only person to find the token politicising of the RIOT concert troublingly naive), but if I were to go out on a limb I'd say that Rolf's supposedly dual identity as composer/pianist - which after having heard several pieces by him I can only regard as an atonal version of the Stephen Hough phenomenon discussed on another thread on these boards - is hardly a good experience for an emerging composer, tending as it would to reinforce the view that all you have to do to be taken seriously as a composer is to be enthusiastic, willing to go along with a certain sort of photo-session- and slogan-based publicity, and preferably tick a few 'ethnic'/gay/'cool' boxes, Sunday colour supplement-style. This is not what all of us have in mind when we pay our spnm subscription fees.
