This is a reprint of the first edi­tion of my e-mail newslet­ter.

For some time I’ve had a newslet­ter signup form on my web­site but this is the first time I’m actu­ally send­ing a newslet­ter out!

I plan on doing this 2–3 times per year. For more fre­quent info, see my web­site or Twit­ter. Unsub­scribe link at the bottom.

Con­tents

• Upcom­ing Con­cert: Halo Bal­let Pre­mière – 24 Oct 2010 – Toronto
• Upcom­ing Con­cert: Hockey Story – 20 Jan 2011 – San Diego
• Oksana G. Opera Devel­op­ment Workshop
• Results of Exper­i­ment: Can I Avoid Choos­ing the Music I Lis­ten to?
• Help Me Help You: Col­lab­o­ra­tive Audi­ence Building

Con­tinue read­ing “Newslet­ter: News, Con­certs, Events, <span class=“amp”>&</span> Crit­i­cal Thought” »

A recent arti­cle in Slate by Jan Swaf­ford got me think­ing about one of the major dis­tinc­tions between infor­ma­tion on the Inter­net and off the Inter­net. As I’ve been argu­ing for years, the way we inter­act with art has fun­da­men­tally changed. Swaf­ford looks at this from the per­spec­tive of a writer to argue “Why e-books will never replace real books”.

Basi­cally, it comes down to directed or active activ­ity ver­sus non-directed or pas­sive activ­ity. When you turn on the radio, the selec­tion is pas­sive. You can choose the sta­tion, but you can’t choose the pro­gram­ming. When you search for music on YouTube, how­ever, the selec­tion is always active. Con­tinue read­ing “Search­ing vs. Finding” »

The eco­nom­ics of art is a peren­nial source of debate. Pro­po­nents of fund­ing for the arts usu­ally fol­low one of two argu­ments. The first is that art con­tributes intan­gi­bly to soci­ety by con­tribut­ing a rea­son to live, as opposed to a way to live. The sec­ond is that art actu­ally con­tributes tan­gi­bly to the greater econ­omy through the hard work that many artists do for rel­a­tively lit­tle pay. In con­trast, those who oppose fund­ing for the arts argue that fund­ing is waste of money, because valu­able art will be able to sur­vive eco­nom­i­cally on its own any­way: good artists will be in high demand, cre­at­ing scarcity for their work, and hence ensur­ing them a com­men­su­rate level of income.

But art has never been a good fit to any mon­e­tary econ­omy, because money was not really designed to han­dle art. Con­tinue read­ing “Eco­nom­ics vs. Art: Why a good fit has never existed” »

I was intrigued last month when I received a mes­sage from web­site AudioMi​cro​.com ask­ing if I was inter­ested in a link exchange. They seem to be an inter­est­ing mix of a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent musi­cal “ser­vices” rolled into one, and I thought they might serve as a good model for com­posers who, like myself, are inter­ested in cre­at­ing musi­cal value online. Con­tinue read­ing “AudioMi­cro: Musi­cal Value Online” »

I just wanted to draw atten­tion to col­league and friend Lisa Bielawa’s new blog, which I think is a good exam­ple of the kinds of things com­posers should be doing more to stay in the pub­lic eye. Lisa won the Amer­i­can Academy’s Rome Prize this year and has taken the oppor­tu­nity to write about some of her expe­ri­ences in Italy and else­where. Con­tinue read­ing “Lend Me Your Ears” »

For a genre that claims to be part of the cut­ting edge, the avant-garde/new clas­si­cal music has been rel­a­tively slow to adopt online tools. I won­der about some of the ways we might improve the sit­u­a­tion. As I’ve writ­ten about before, the major issue of art today is orga­ni­za­tion, not con­tent, so if we assume there is some­thing in what we do that oth­ers might be inter­ested in, we need to find ways to reach them. Con­tinue read­ing “New Music and Online Tools” »