I want to say to every body a little out of topic that here Contemporary composer center (or something like that) is conducting some consultations around the country.
I don't know exactly what is going to be changed, but there are going to be changes.
For some reason they want to concentrate their efforts on promoting only prominent established composers.
This proposition does not go well with the rest I think.

Please forgive my intrusion on this thread. I know little about the situation in your woods.

Also I think that young people have to be intruduced to music very early (the earlier the better).
I don't think that the politbury should decide what kind of music they should be listening to (like in the USSR). The dictatorial thing in the USSR was very bad.

I entirely agree with you but we are talking about two completely different things.  Kids should absolutely have access to music lessons (including instrumental tuition) within the curriculum and paid for by the Education Ministry.  This should further extend into adult education so that "late-starters" have access to lessons either free, or for a token payment as a commitment of seriousness (this is a valuable resource and mustn't be wasted on non-attenders, those who fail to do any practice week-after-week etc).

However Outreach programmes from orchestras, opera, ballet, dance, theatre companies are unconnected with that.  The chance to experience a live artform shouldn't be restricted to the tiny minority whose parents might take them.  On top of that, what is presented is aimed at the level of the age-group for the presentation.  For example, I've seen successful projects which had groups of kids scurrying around the V&A looking at costume, fine art, sculpture etc, trying to explain what is "revolutionary" about Beethoven #3.   I've myself done a project called "Our Aida", which had kids singing (slightly simplified) bits of the chorus material from AIDA, alongside ENO principals,  and trying to tune into what the opera is actually about (a head-on racial conflict).  I apologise for stating the obvious here, but this, and peripatetic teaching should not be confused.


My reading of Ian's post is that he proposes putting Outreach work on a "sink or swim" financial footing elsewhere in the belief that the funds currently alloted to it can be reallocated to other activities he believes are more worthy of funding.  (If this is NOT the case, then may I ask what is achieved by the cosmetic operation to do the same work funded by a different Ministry?).  I believe it's entirely clear what Ian Pace intended - a snatch'n'grab of funding allocated to Outreach work, simply because such work fails to register on his radar.  I find this suggestion to be utterly appalling and unacceptable.

Perhaps Ian would like to clarify what his position is, having raised the subject in the first place?

re; 'necessary evil'  Richard, you admirably hit the nail on the head, but i'd suggest that it is so because of what
might be called the 'Freda Dinn' (aka 'singing together' en masse) model of inclusivity. imh experience dispensing with some sacred cows en route frees up such musical language as I can muster on the lines of the improvisation you rightly espouse as an educational priority. I'd go so far as to say that the spirit of improv in a broad sense is what contemporary music can bring to the table of the adult initiate who embraces it, and you have to believe that people can go straight to the allegedly abstruse byh means of an unclogged facilitation towards it.

I've had fairly extensive dealings with them, Ian (in capacities alluded to earlier) but I have not the faintest idea whence any such subjective judgements might originate. I imagine (but imagine only) that they have artistic 'advisors'; but I'm pretty certain that policy is more and more dictated by government agendas, and that their decisions about funding of particular 'sectors' and perceived social groupings (let alone individual performing groups etc.) are more and more directed by that. We should bear in mind that the Arts Council is, to all intents and purposes, a government department, under the same budgetary and policy restraints as any other. The boxes they have to tick! I feel very sorry for those within ACE who are passionate and committed, but under the thumbs of auditing and on-messageism.

You still don't get it, do you, Ian??   Does "cultural production" (carefully phrased by you so that it will fit the term "Means Of Production") mean only performances in concert-halls?   Or is a string-quartet performed in a school, or college, or hospital, or workplace, no longer a string quartet??   It's clear from your phrasing hear that you place NO value on anything performed outside your holy-of-holies, the Concert Hall.   In your ridiculous bleat about the "unfairness" with which the London Sinfonietta is funded, you ignore utterly the fact that the LS have been doing Outreach work for about 25+ years, consistently, constantly, and because they believe in doing it.  It is NOT separate from "cultural production" (as you ludicrously title it).  It is one and the same.

Will you now recant your suggestion that Outreach work should be cut from the Arts Council budget? 

Or are you going to [edit due to complaints] sulk about "not dignifying it with a reply"??

Normally we'd find you on your soap-box crowing about the rights of "workers" etc - but surprise-surprise, Ian Pace is proposing to axe projects which take performances into workplaces?   Because they're not part of "cultural production"??

Hear, hear, t_i_n.

Along with the prejudice against "the regions" I mentioned on another thread, there's also one against the kind of activities which go under the name of "outreach", the subtext being "if you're really successful at what you do, you have no need to bother yourself with that kind of thing", which many "successful" musicians (to their shame, in my opinion) do nothing to dispel. But it's also true that musicians are trained from the beginning to think of their concert-giving activities are the sole pinnacle of musical achievement, and they're trained in precious little else. The prospect of taking one's music outside the (relative!) "comfort zone" of concertising is something most of us aren't prepared for, and which some of us are far more skilled in than others. I was commissioned about three years ago to write a piece for the London branch of the CoMA (Contemporary Music-making for Amateurs) organisation, and I finished it (it's about six minutes long!) only last month, after dozens of false starts and failures in the attempt to avoid doing more than making an "easy version" of what I'd write for people like Ian or Ollie. And I'm still not sure whether it does what it sets out to do. In other words, a humbling experience rather than an easy option or an annoying necessity.

My feeling is that the problem here lies in making the distinction between "proper concerts" and forms of music-making which don't fall into that category. It's a distinction, after all, which hasn't existed for so very long in the Western tradition and only exists in most other parts of the world as a result of Western influence. It shouldn't be taken as read that this distinction will or should always exist. Concert audiences, after all, are hardly in a state of expansion.

I think that's very true, but it's rather more typical of work that was done in the earlier years of Outreach programmes (ie the late 1970s and 1980s) than what's being done now.   I was in charge of ENO's Outreach program for 3 years - in fact it was me who renamed it "The Baylis Programme", to draw a line between what had been done previously, and a new and more considered approach based on demonstrable interactivity, preparation, and follow-up.  I was also part of an Arts Council working panel to establish good working practices in this area (I ought to say that most of the best examples of Outreach work we found were in ballet and dance).  

Things have obviously moved on since then, and the Arts Council now have highly-developed criteria for assessing the value of Outreach programmes - I hope and believe there is very little "lip-service" stuff being done nowadays.  In point of fact the London Sinfonietta's outreach work has always been in the forefront of the most innovative projects in this area - they did some super stuff in connection with their Xennakis season last year, for example.

Musicians who take this kind of work seriously have often found it extremely challenging, and beneficial.  For example, we did a fairly "politicized" touring workshop of FIDELIO... a work too often associated with tricorn hats. I'd cast a baritone more known for doing light comedy parts as Pizzaro, because I thought he could bring something fresh to the role, and not play it as a cardboard "Captain Hook" kind of "baddie".  Part of the workshop involved a short presentation by a woman whose own (real-life) husband had been abducted by Pinochet in Chile (I ought to add that the sponsors of the workshop series, a Building Society, bravely "went with" this idea, after some initial misgivings).  During the workshop series I watched the baritone's performance grow in stature - instead of "another bit of work", it became a cause for him...  "this isn't just opera, this is something really valuable, it's about real people's lives for chrissake!"...  and the process went full-circle, with him giving speeches at anti-Pinochet meetings in his own free time (this wasn't part of the workshop, of course).  He grew so passionate about it that we had to have "de-briefs" afterwards with the kids, where he explained that he was only acting, and he wasn't really a maniacal dictator...


Blah, blah, empty blah, and not a sign of an answer from Ian on the topic.  But I didn't expect he'd be capable of one, in all honesty.


Yes, I can think of a pianist who fits this description exactly.

I mean Ollie Sudden, of course