About: Writings
Another Sort of Diplomacy
By Michael Gordon
The New York Times, The Score
April 1, 2007
I’m writing from Sicily, where I just arrived with my ensemble, the Michael Gordon Band. We’re playing a concert at the Etna Festival in Catania. As I’m sitting here in this beautiful Italian hotel, I’m thinking about how lucky I am to be able to travel around the world playing music. There’s no way that this could be possible without the weighty investment that most Western and Asian countries make in the arts. Those of us who perform and compose semi-popular music — that is, experimental, art, classical and jazz — cannot survive in the free market like rock, urban and country musicians do. Although there is a fan base for these more esoteric types of music that numbers in the millions, it just doesn’t add up to the large CD sales and stadium tours that the popular music stars enjoy. (...)
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Finding ‘Lost Objects’ in Germany
By Michael Gordon
The New York Times, The Score
March 22, 2007
(...) Concerto Köln, which has about 30 members, is a collective: They own their work and manage themselves. The members are involved in the creation of every project. This is very unusual. Orchestras usually are run from the top down. The board of directors hires the management, which hires the conductor and the orchestra. The low people on the totem pole are the musicians, whose professional lives are dictated to from above. Here with Concerto Köln, and with a few other orchestras that I have worked with (mostly in Europe), management is hired by the orchestra. The result is that the individual musicians are intensely involved in the major artistic decisions. (...)
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What If I Like Your Politics but Don’t Like Your Art?
By Michael Gordon
The New York Times, The Score
March 13, 2007
(...) One question I’ve asked in recent years is, If I don’t like your politics can I still like your art? Or put a simpler way, would you want a fantastic painting hanging on your wall that was made by a Nazi? It may sound like a bizarre question, but anyone with Carl Orff, Richard Strauss or Herbert von Karajan CDs in their collection should give it some thought. The throngs lined up around the block to see Karajan conduct the Berlin Philharmonic, as many New Yorkers did on repeated occasions, should have asked themselves this. And if we care about this question, do we need to examine the politics of other composers, like Wagner, whose views we know, along with perhaps Beethoven and Bach, whose views we know less about? (...)
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What Kind of Music Is This Anyway?
By Michael Gordon
The New York Times, The Score
March 5, 2007
(...) I have always felt uncomfortable with the word “classical.” It sends an instant message to most people that you are involved in something other. And, vainly, I am very aware that classical music has the squarest image on the planet. A bigger problem is that my music is not what most people think of as classical music. It doesn’t sound like Mozart, it is not genteel, will not serve as pleasant background music at a dinner party, and it can not be used to sell a Mercedes. (A passport control officer at Kennedy Airport once told Julia Wolfe that he thought all classical composers were dead.) (...)
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