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The Post-Classical: No Coats, Ties or Stuffed Shirts
The Post-Classical Ensemble, which will play Aaron Copland's score for the 1939 film "The City" today at the Clarice Smith Center, has no fixed address or roster of musicians, hiring freelancers as needed per performance.
(Photos By Tom Wolff)
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"And this is the key: We have to recover this sense of spontaneity. I am still hoping somebody in the audience will just sing aloud some of the music while I'm conducting."
[an error occurred while processing this directive]But the primary focus, both he and Horowitz agree, is moving beyond the mainstream repertoire.
"I use the term 'post-classical' to identify what's going on at the borders, whether it's the border between China and the U.S., or gamelan and the symphonic orchestra, or West African drumming and jazz," says Horowitz. "And the most interesting composers -- people like Zhou Long, Lou Harrison and Steve Reich -- are all post-classical."
The strategy makes sense, because modern audiences are post-classical, too. Raised on a global diet of music -- everything from salsa to grunge rock to Japanese gagaku -- younger listeners can hardly be blamed for finding the traditional European repertoire narrow and Dead-White-Male-ish.
But that doesn't mean they're not interested in serious music; they just want it performed for 21st-century ears.
"One failing in the classical world is not really understanding the audience," says critic Greg Sandow, who teaches a course at Juilliard on the future of music. "Maybe the most important thing now is a real knowledge of pop culture and the world in which your music is going to be received. People who watch 'The Sopranos' -- as I do! -- are going to be a little restless listening to 'Tosca,' " he says, laughing.
In the end, according to several observers, the classical world may have no choice but to change. Bureaucracy-heavy institutions like the National Symphony Orchestra (with its $29 million budget) are competing for the next generation against more adventurous groups like the Post-Classical Ensemble -- whose lean, $400,000 annual operation gives it the flexibility to take risks.
"Symphony orchestras," Gil-Ordonez says flatly, "are going to disappear."
Sandow won't go that far but pronounces the situation "fairly dire." The age of the mainstream classical audience has been rising for 50 years; ticket sales have been dropping for the past 20, he notes. "Orchestras are finding it very restricting to keep 80 musicians under contract for 52 weeks, and that model is not really sustainable. The future may belong to smaller, more nimble organizations. We're still learning what works."
