Impasse or interruption?

Sometimes life feels like a rock in your way, refusing to move no matter how much you push at it.

Pushing against a rock in the Garden of Gods in Colorado Springs. Photo credit: J. Kormanik

My involvement in classical music appears that way. I have created new events, produced concerts to full-house reception, involved musicians, visual artists, and local businesses —  and continued to experiment with new ideas, new collaborations, while building new communities and relationships — all without a budget.

My last project — call for scores of multi-hand duets from living composers and performance / feedback in San Francisco on 15th May 2011 — is not yet over. I have yet to document the results of the sightreading, the performances, the feedback, and various details that I want to share.

My next project — piano house concerts and career management discussion panel in Utrecht, Netherlands on 1 – 3 July 2011 — needs to begin. I have booked organic wine tasting for that weekend. Two concert pianists are traveling from the USA to Italy, stopping in Utrecht just for this occasion.

Yet right this moment, after 2 weeks of traveling from Hawaii to Holland and a week of getting used to life on the ground again, I feel like doing nothing but play my piano that I’ve left behind since mid-October 2010 when my duo embarked on a concert tour of the United States to end in an experiment on that tropical paradise called Maui.

Could it be that the mountain of classical music is not an impasse but a mere interruption?

Perhaps I should consider music to be the rock that supports me while I tackle the rest of life’s challenges. Certainly I have been looking for a cause to serve — one that is greater than music itself, for music is not an end in itself but a means to a greater end.

Garden of Gods in Colorado Springs. Photo credit: J. Kormanik

Music for learning foreign languages, art for spatial intelligence

Through twitter, I found a blog that embedded the following video clip that spells out why we must not continue to cut funding to arts education. They are essential for creativity and for our capacity as human beings and not mere data processors.

It also explains why the musician friends I know are multi-lingual. Pick up a musical instrument when you’re young and open your world to a tonal propensity for foreign languages. Take art classes and develop your spacial intelligence.

Fundraise for a cause

My recent blogs about Maui Choral Arts fundraising for a matching donation and Denver-based Melissa Axel using Kickstarter to raise funds for her debut album had me thinking about the topic of fundraising.

In less than a week since its announcement, Maui Choral Arts has reached its target of $1,111 (i.e. before 11th Jan 2011) and will be matched by an anonymous donor.

Meanwhile Melissa Axel changed her target date to 2nd January 2011, to reach the goal of $7,000.

While Maui Choral Arts’ fund raising campaign announced at its recent concert (OFFLINE), Melissa Axel conducted hers online through her website, Kickstarter, Facebook, and other social network media.

In the book “Eat, Pray, Love” author Liz Gilbert used e-mail to raise capital to help a local medicine woman in Bali. She wrote to all her friends that’s what she wanted for her birthday, and she’d personally match whatever is raised. A friend of hers offered to double it. In a short period of time, she raised $18,000.

How are all these three examples similar?

1. They specify the cause they are raising money for. These are justifiable causes for survival.

2. The money has to be there BEFORE the goals can be reached. Maui Choral Arts needs money for its next season. Melissa Axel needs funding to record and release her debut album. Liz Gilbert’s Balinese friend needs money to buy a home.

3. The fundraisers ALREADY have a wide network of people, i.e. potential donors or friends of donors. The audience at Maui Choral Arts concert filled the church completely. The singers, instrumentalists, listeners, and others present had their own contacts. They could all be disciples of the fundraising cause if they wished. Melissa Axel invited more than 1,500 people on her Facebook event to join her fundraising campaign. Liz Gilbert used the power of her personal network to fulfill a personal wish.

4. The donors had compelling reasons to donate. If you want to hear another concert of Maui Choral Arts, you’d want to donate. If you want to obtain a recording of Melissa Axel, you’d want to donate. Put yourself in the shoes of the local medicine woman who needs a home of her own to raise her daughter and build a practice, you’d want to donate.

How are these three examples different?

Maui Choral Arts is based on Maui. It is a local cause, channeled through residents on the island. Melissa Axel, though based in Denver, cast her net wide — the Internet is global. Liz Gilbert’s cause was local but she sought donations from abroad, in fact, the other side of the world. None of her donors knew the recipient of her cause. But they were willing to contribute because of their connection to Liz.

How successful are benefit concerts in raising funds for a cause?

I recall my meeting with the late Jeroen Muller in May 2009. He had founded the non-profit “Disability Affairs” and asked me about getting musicians to do a benefit concert for the foundation. I was happy to help him but told him that musicians had to get paid. He was surprised about this, for he thought plenty of musicians (including conservatory students) would want to perform for free.

If so, why would my two music examples (Maui Choral Arts and Melissa Axel) require funding at all?

Deciding which cultural economics session to attend

Economists spend a lot of time figuring out the factors that influence a decision. They determine which factors are more important than others and to what extent they contribute to the decision making process. The availability of information is key to informed decisions. Also important is awareness of one’s preferences and values.

On the third day of this international conference on cultural economics, I had to choose one of 8 parallel sessions to attend from 09:00 to 10:30 before a half-hour coffee break and one of 3 panel discussions from 11:00 to noon. The rooms were dispersed on the ground floor, first floor, and second floor of the impressive and spacious building of Copenhagen Business School.

As a musician, I am interested in the topics to do with music, performance, concert production, marketing, copyrights, and musicians’ careers. As an individual, I am also curious what I could learn from areas outside of music, especially topics I have absolutely no background, on the assumption that I might be surprised and learn something useful.

In short, I could find every topic interesting. The 8 parallel sessions were arranged by topic. Each session offered three to four papers. The titles, authors, and abstracts were available online weeks ago. A majority of the 185 papers submitted for presentation (which ranged from a few pages to 30 or 40 more) were available as PDF download from the ACEI 2010 website.

If only I could clone myself or send agents to the ones I did not attend, I would be quite happy.

In the end I used the process of elimination to eventually narrow down to two sessions. Can you guess which session I chose to attend?

Cultural tourism 1:
care of historical belongings, good practice in Europe, cultural heritage routes in South Africa

Creativity 3:
cultural clusters and the example in Copenhagen, sustainable town development example of a Japanese town, Italian viewpoint of culture-led local development

Copyrights 3:
license and rights distribution for copyright uses on the Web, intellectual property rights case of 19th century Italian operatic music, effects of early music copyrights on composers’ careers

Art market 2:
role of digital information sources in the art market prices, expert evaluations in the Low countries, investment in visual art

Media 1:
influence of funding by advertising on diversity of TV broadcast, how broadcasting quotas harm program diversity, control European TV in the digital age

Funding 3:
do policy reviews matter study of arts in Australia, sponsoring in times of economic crisis

Demand 2:
threatre participation through attendance, consumer choice of theatrical productions, democratisation in the gastronomic market

Museums 3:
who contributes to the British Museum, pay as you go for museum pricing, causes of variation in museum attendance rate in USA, museum demand function estimation