Notes from Brightest Africa

May 24th, 2012

by Sedgwick Clark

I’m sitting on the porch of the Tinga Game Preserve in Kruger National Wildlife Park watching a herd of nearly 20 elephants feed down by the river. One of the kids is on his back rolling around in the dust, just as our bichons do in Central Park’s grass.

Shortly before, he was marching along behind his mother (I presume), followed by another adult elephant and another child—large, small, large, small. A pretty picture, and hard to take one’s eyes away. An hour ago they were to the left of the porch. Suddenly they were startled by something and stampeded wildly—but with surprising grace—to the right about 30 feet in front of us, braying and hooting vociferously. If only I had had our video camera poised!

Yesterday afternoon we were out in the bush with a guide and sited three giraffes, a white rhino, a rare black rhino, and a hippo, as well as several elephants and impala—the latter being as ubiquitous as deer in the Hamptons. This evening we saw a cheetah and a spotted leopard, as well as many elephants, baboons, and impala again. We heard lions roaring in the distance, but we still haven’t seen one. We have one more day . . . .

Peggy Kane petting a cheetah

Last Friday we visited the Hout Bay Music Project in Cape Town, the small music school for disadvantaged students I mentioned in last week’s blog. The students’ families have come to the city in search of a job, and they live in hastily built shacks of corrugated metal and found materials. The kids’ instruments are hardly more substantial. The school is run by Leane Dollman, a woman who is not paid but has raised money to keep the school going. The school teaches primarily strings and percussion, but also song and dance, and the kids put on such a routine for us when we arrived. Later, the teacher led a short concert of string arrangements for us. Amidst tuning up, a young cellist played Smetana’s Moldau. I walked over to him and told him it was one of my favorite pieces and that he had good tone. He beamed. He was a very serious young man, as well as one of the best dressed of the kids, and I encouraged him to continue. I’ll bet a little Yo-Yo Ma would help.

We came bearing gifts: 30 CDs of chamber and solo string music, sheet music from G. Schirmer, t-shirts from the New York Philharmonic, and baseball caps commorating Lincoln Center’s 50th year. Jonathan Rosenbloom, of Time Inc., had brought several issues of “Time for Kids,” which immediately captured the students’ interest. But when we tried to play some CDs, their stereo was found to be so wanting that we bought them a new Pioneer system from a local dealer. In response to my blog last week, Eric Gewirtz of Boosey & Hawkes wrote to me asking what his company could do. We’ll try to work something out. When one sees the power of the arts and how lives can be so affected, it’s impossible not to become involved.

Peter Clark with an owl perched on his hand.

Posted in Why I Left Muncie | Comments Closed

The Freelancer’s Elevator Speech

May 24th, 2012

By: Edna Landau

To ask a question, please write Ask Edna.

Dear Edna:

I am a freelancer who makes a career by juggling a number of projects in the music business. I am pleased to have reached a level of success that has me in demand for a truly diverse range of activities, including publicity, media consulting, concert production, promotional writing, audio production and freelance journalism. On several occasions recently, I’ve been introduced by way of a halting description, ending in: “what DO you do?” Clearly I need to be honing my “elevator speech”, but with so many different kinds of projects on my plate, it is difficult to do so, and even I wind up stuttering when trying to describe myself in a short phrase. Can you suggest ways that I can “brand” myself more cohesively, while maintaining career diversity? –W.N.

Dear W.N.:

Thank you for submitting such an excellent question. There is no doubt that people whose jobs are focused in one clear direction have the easiest time presenting their elevator speech, though they will want to say something special about themselves that distinguishes them from others. For example: I am an epidemiologist, working at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta and, over the years, I have been gratified to play a significant role in preventing the spread of potentially dangerous diseases to epidemic proportions. Your elevator speech is probably not your biggest problem, since an elevator ride in a medium to high building would give you a chance to mention all of the things you cited above. You could possibly say: I work in the arts and wear various hats at different times, including journalist, media consultant, publicist and concert producer. I’m very fortunate to enjoy that variety in my work and it brings me in contact with many fascinating people.

OK. Now comes the hard part – the brief introduction. If you know the profession of the person you are meeting, you might choose to emphasize one or two of the roles you play, above others. If you are meeting the editor of a magazine, you’d clearly want them to know that you are a freelance journalist and be less concerned that they learn about your concert production expertise. If you are meeting a young aspiring and ambitious artist, you’d want them to know of your experience in publicity, as well as audio and concert production. If you know nothing about the person you are meeting, I’d suggest you say: “I work in the arts as a publicist, media consultant and freelance journalist.” This doesn’t cover everything you do but subsequent conversation is likely to give you a chance to provide greater detail. There is very little you can do to ensure that colleagues and friends will introduce you the way you ideally would like to be presented. For example, it is very common that when introducing me, people say: This is Edna Landau. She used to run IMG Artists. Well, I haven’t done that for about five years but my reputation is based on that period in my life so it’s a comfortable answer for most people. I usually respond by saying that I’m very proud of my long tenure at IMG Artists but that I am now drawing great satisfaction from working in the areas of career advice and individual and institutional arts consulting. Anyone who possesses a variety of skills and is able to put them to use successfully should be very proud of their accomplishments. In the end, what you say in an initial introduction can be less important than how you say it. If your answer is imbued with genuine enthusiasm and pride, rather than with awkwardness over how exactly to categorize yourself, you are likely to gain the opportunity to fill in the blanks as a further conversation unfolds.

To ask a question, please write Ask Edna.

© Edna Landau 2012

Posted in Ask Edna, Managing Your Own Career | Comments Closed

Winds of Change at the Komische Oper: ‘Xerxes’ and ‘The Seven Deadly Sins’

May 23rd, 2012

By Rebecca Schmid

The Komische Oper champions a populist approach through German-language productions and contemporary stage concepts that for some opera goers is synonymous with the most vexing of Regietheater. While the emphasis of the company’s founder Walter Felsenstein on living theater above musical purity remains a locally prized virtue, the house’s attendance rate sank from an already low 61% to 59% last year while that of the Deutsche Oper increased by 11%. The critical reception to recent premieres such as Calixto Bieto’s “16 and older” Der Freischütz and Thilo Reinhardt’s phallus-ridden Salome has also been mostly unfavorable.

Yet as the adventurous tenure of Intendant Andreas Homoki draws to a close, the house may be headed in a new direction. The incoming Barrie Kosky, an Australian native who recently won England’s Laurence Olivier prize, has not only set out to change the ‘German-only’ policy starting next season but evoke the East Berlin house’s roots in operetta and the legacy of 1920s liberal culture, taking his own ethnic identity and sexual orientation as a case in point (“Will the ostentatious denotation ‘I’m Australian, Jewish and gay’ suffice as the motto for an Intendant?” quipped Manuel Brug in Die Welt).

As fate would have it, the last premiere of the Homoki regime leaves Kosky with fertile ground to usher in a new ethos. Handel’s Xerxes, staged by the coveted Norwegian director Stefan Herheim in his Komische Oper debut, has won understandably glowing reviews across the board. Herheim’s production, seem May 19, takes a deceptively historical approach by setting the opera in its 1738 premiere at the Kings Theater, but the action jumps back and forth between painted naturalist sets  (Heike Scheele) and an 18th-century backstage by virtue of a revolving platform, dissolving any sense of convention. The director calls the concept a “baroque Muppet show” in the program notes, playing with the existential levels of theater within theater and theater within life. At the end of the opera, the platform revolves fully to reveal the towering black walls of the Komische Oper’s actual backstage, with the chorus having shed their elaborate period costumes (Gesine Völlm) for their daily dress.

 
 
 
 
A baroque feast of sets and costumes in Herheim’s ‘Xerxes’ @Forster/Komische Oper

Xerxes is a court intrigue set in 5th-century Persia about a rivalry between King Xerxes and his brother Arsamene for the hand of Romilda, daughter of the prince Ariodate. Meanwhile, Romilda’s sister Atlanta vies for Arsamene. Handel’s version is based on an anonymous revision of a libretto by Silvio Stampiglia. The original cast included the castrato Caffarelli in the title role and other stars of the day such as the soprano Elisabeth du Parc, known as ‘La Francescina,’ in the role of Romilda. Disguised ruses and falsely assigned love letters provide for some chaotic buffo moments, while the opera explores the more serious themes of true love, jealousy and fate. In this sense, as the program notes point out, the opera can be considered a kind of dramma giocoso—a genre which Mozart and Da Ponte would ultimately make immortal—although officially it is still opera seria.

Herheim takes a strictly comic approach, poking fun at the singular arrogance of the title character in both his role as a narcissistic king and as a castrato. Xerxes (Stella Doufexis) sings the opening aria “Ombra mai fu” and parts of other numbers in Italian while the rest of the opera, with the exception of one aria by Arsamene, is sung in German. When the king spits out “Perfido!” (Traitor!) to Prince Ariodate upon learning that he has married Romilda to Arsamene, the production effectively mocks the passionate drama of Italian opera. Xerxes not only calls the shots onstage but within the Komische Oper itself, descending into the pit with the crucial line “what you consider love is often only deception and appearance,” holding up a hand to stop the conductor (Konrad Jünghanel) before bringing the house to darkness with a snap.

Stella Doufexis entertaining the audience as Xerxes @Forster/Komische Oper

Other gestures are just for the sake of having some laughs. During Xerxes’ aria’ “Più che penso alle fiamme del core,” the set is dismantled to reveal cabaret-style lights reading “Xerxes” which are then rearranged to read “Sex Rex.” Doufexis points to the first word as she sings of her passionate flames, an adolescent touch that nevertheless seemed to delight the audience. The third scene features oversized dancing sheep who, while amusing at first, grow wearing as they began to interrupt the music with their ‘baas.’ Still, Völlm’s costumes are so authentic and well crafted—from these creatures to the gilded suits and towering plumed caps of Xerxes and his army to the chorus’ Rafael-like cherub fare—that it was easy to forgive the occasional relapse into directorial indulgence.

The cast was generally strong throughout, delivering punch lines with persuasive comic timing while maintaining high musical standards. Doufexis anchored the production with a velvety timbre, skillful dynamic nuance and a keen sense of Herheim’s highly complex stage concept. When she stepped toward the audience at the end of the opera, eyes widened as if emerging from a time machine, it was hard to suspend one’s disbelief. The mezzo Karolina Gumos was a charismatic, rich-voiced Arsamene, nailing her coloratura in the aria “Amor, tiranno Amor” in which she begs Xerxes to soften. The Swiss soprano Brigitte Geller brought the right touch of beguiling charm to the role of Romilda with a ripe lyric timbre, and Julia Giebel wielded her slightly underpowered soubrette to satisfactory effect as the pesky Atlanta. Katarina Bradic made for an even-voiced, desperate Amastre, and Dimitry Ivashchenko brought a resonant bass to the role of Ariodate. As the servant Elviro, the bass Hagen Matzeit made a stand-out performance in falsetto voice as a disguised flower vendor. Junghänel, an early music specialist, led the orchestra of the Komische Oper in an incisive but muscular account whose charged baroque expression at times compromised a sense of flowing legato, instead underscoring the sharp accents of the German language.

The Seven Deadly Sins

Kosky could hardly have chosen a stronger statement of his vision for the Komische Oper than with his new production of Kurt Weill’s Seven Deadly Sins, which premiered February 12 and returned this month. To be sure, his 2011 production of Rusalka featured gutted sea creatures and a German libretto that was too much to stomach for this reader, who once learned Czech and trekked all the way to Prague to hear Dvorak in its authentic setting (call me a purist). But with his latest undertaking, seen May 20, Kosky reveals an aesthetic restraint that is the antithesis of the slap-happy stagings which dominate the Berlin house. Weill’s Seven Deadly Sins was conceived with Bertold Brecht for Balanchine’s Paris company ‘Les Ballets 1933’ as a ballet chanté for the composer’s two-time wife Lotte Lenya and the dancer wife of the British impresario Edward James. The score seamlessly weaves together popular song, cantata, and dance music, while the text refers to a single protagonist, Anna, who has been sent on a voyage throughout the U.S. to earn money for a small house her family is building in Louisiana. She is accompanied by a hedonistic alter ego whom she refers to as her sister—also named Anna—as she dances and turns tricks along the way, learning the consequences of pride, lust, avarice and other sins. The work conveys an even more direct critique of capitalism than The Three Penny Opera, with a prescient understanding of the difficulties that the writers would face upon their imminent exile from Germany.

As a prelude to the work, Kosky inserts a selection of seven Weill songs ranging from Berlin im Licht (1938) to Wie lange noch? (1944). Dagmar Manzel, a well-known German actress, emerges slowly from behind closed curtains to join her pianist (Frank Schulte) in a straight cabaret delivery in which she is lit by a single spotlight. As if to foreshadow the desperation Kosky creates in Seven Deadly Sins, Manzel desperately tugs at the curtains during Youkali, a tango that describes a fictitious utopia, only to pull them back entirely to reveal the orchestra for the central work. As Manzel recounts her travels from Memphis to San Francisco with mounting hysteria, occasionally breaking out into deliberately ungraceful ballet, the male quartet representing Anna’s family sings from darkened balcony boxes above the stage. The most powerful tableau emerges in Los Angeles, where Manzel flap dances with a frozen expression of agony. While guilt-ridden allusions to the horrors of World War Two have become standard fare in Germany, Kosky’s understated, expressionist touch was shockingly relevant in the city whose avant-garde culture once helped breed one of the most powerful artistic collaborations in history.

Dagmar Manzel in Weill's 'Seven Deadly Sins' @Monika Rittershaus/Komische Oper

Kosky does go a bit over the top when Anna shrieks hysterically above her family’s moralist incantations, and the invented a capella epilogue about a drowned woman was far too morbid for the spirit of this resigned yet hopeful satire, not to mention that Manzel’s voice was audibly spent by this point. The singer otherwise gave a gripping performance with her smoky voice, generous presence and dry dramatic detachment. That she may be considered slightly too old for the role is justified by Kosky’s concept which casts the entire journey as a memory; in the end Manzel pinches the flesh on her arms as if unaware of how she had aged. The male quartet formed a musically solid ensemble, and Joska Lehtinen brought a ringing, slightly scolding tenor to the father’s aria about Anna’s greed. The orchestra provided fine accompaniment under Kristiina Poska, its Germanic sound culture providing weight to Weill’s forward-looking yet rigorous harmonic development and wistful melodies.

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Posted in Berlin Times | Comments Closed

Am I Obligated To Accept Unsolicited Emails from Managers?

May 23rd, 2012

By Brian Taylor Goldstein

Dear FTM Arts Law:

I am the executive director of a well-established regional symphony orchestra. As with most orchestras, I frequently receive emails from managers and agents asking me to consider their artists. After a number of emails from the same manager all within the same week, I wrote and told them that I was aware of their roster and asked to be removed from their email list. He wrote back and said that because our orchestra was a 501(c)(3) and also received state funding, we were obligated by law to accept his emails. He also said that because we were non-profit, these were not “commercial” emails and we had no right to refuse his emails. Is this true?

First, someone needs to remind this manager that desperation is never a good sales technique! No, in addition to being generally obnoxious, the manager is wrong on every possible level upon which there is to be wrong in this instance.

The law the manager is attempting to reference is the CAN-SPAM act, a federal law that governs the sending of unsolicited commercial emails. This law states that anyone who receives an unsolicited commercial email has the right to request that he or she be removed from future mailings and places a number specific requirements on those who send such emails, including requiring the sender to provide an opt-out mechanism, a physical address, and to remove anyone who requests to be removed from the mailing list. It covers all commercial messages, which the law defines as “any electronic mail message the primary purpose of which is the commercial advertisement or promotion of a commercial product or service.” The law makes no exceptions for tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organizations. Under the CAN-SPAM act, anytime you ask someone to “buy” something or spend money, its considered “commercial.” Sending emails to promote an artist or an ensemble is just as “commercial” as sending emails soliciting donations or promoting a concert, a fundraising event, or any program where tickets are sold. As a result, any organization, for profit or non-profit, that sends such emails and fails to provide an opt-out mechanism and/or to remove someone from its email list upon request can be prosecuted for violating CAN-SPAM.

In your situation, you are the recipient of an unsolicited commercial email. The fact that you are a 501(c)(3) organization or an organization that receives public funds doesn’t alter the fact that the manager sent you an unsolicited email asking you to engage or hire an artist…and that makes it an unsolicited “commercial” email. Thus, in this case, the CAN-SPAM act protects you, not the manager, and you have every right to demand that you be removed from the manager’s email list. If he fails to comply with your request, the manager would be in violation of the CAN-SPAM act and you could report him to the Federal Trade Commission…or, at least, you would have every right to avoid his booth at APAP!

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For additional information and resources on this and other legal and business issues for the performing arts, visit ftmartslaw-pc.com.

To ask your own question, write to lawanddisorder@musicalamerica.org.

All questions on any topic related to legal and business issues will be welcome. However, please post only general questions or hypotheticals. FTM Arts Law reserves the right to alter, edit or, amend questions to focus on specific issues or to avoid names, circumstances, or any information that could be used to identify or embarrass a specific individual or organization. All questions will be posted anonymously.

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THE OFFICIAL DISCLAIMER:

THIS IS NOT LEGAL ADVICE!

The purpose of this blog is to provide general advice and guidance, not legal advice. Please consult with an attorney familiar with your specific circumstances, facts, challenges, medications, psychiatric disorders, past-lives, karmic debt, and anything else that may impact your situation before drawing any conclusions, deciding upon a course of action, sending a nasty email, filing a lawsuit, or doing anything rash!

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Posted in Agents, Artist Management, Law and Disorder: Performing Arts Division, Liability, Non-Profits, Presenters | Comments Closed

Hillary Hahn and Hauschka join Forces on ‘Silfra’; Riccardo Chailly and the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig

May 18th, 2012

By Rebecca Schmid

Hillary Hahn’s taste for the unconventional has in recent years taken her career onto a trajectory unlike that of most violin prodigies. Last October, she appeared on NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert Series improvising to traditional American melodies that inspired the works of Charles Ives, donning a fedora for the occasion. She maintains an active web presence, blogging and twittering about her life on the road, perplexing critics last year when she posted a Skype interview with a fish on YouTube.

Her latest project is a collaboration with the German master of the prepared piano, Volker Bertelmann (aka Hauschka). After playing together at the behest of folk singer Tom Brosseau two years ago in San Francisco, the duo began meeting regularly to improvise and ultimately decided to consolidate their endeavors on a recording with Deutsche Grammophon. The recently-released Silfra, named after an island outside Reykjavik that lies just between the European and American continents, is a collection of non-notated works documented at a studio in Iceland.

“We had a hunch,” Hahn said to the audience during a DG “Yellow Lounge “ concert at Berlin’s Club Asphalt on May 10. “We played, then we recorded just improvising together, and now we’re on tour to capture that spirit.” Their next stops include Los Angeles, Seattle, New York and Boston.

Hahn greets the audience at the DG Yellow Lounge © Stefan Höderath

The violinist, wearing a polka-dot dress and matching headpiece, seemed to revel in the freedom of entering the percussive and melodic layers of Haushka’s sound world. From my seat on a short wall at the far corner of the stage (the small basement venue was packed to the point that oxygen felt scarce), I spied wooden sticks, duct tape and tin foil inside the grand piano. Hahn responded with an intuitive, relaxed air to the whirring textures emanating from the instrument, from brief melodic gestures to full-thrust harmonics, yet her immaculate technique was always present. As she admits in an interview with local magazine concerti, she remains a perfectionist.

While several tracks on Silfra feature an atmospheric, minimalist blend that may not captivate those after ground-breaking developments in contemporary classical music, the album reveals a range of subtle ventures. One of the most effective works, at least for this listener, is fearlessly lyrical and neo-Romantic. “Ashes,” inspired by the eruption of Grimsvotn just a few days into recording, opens with a violin melody innocently inquiring into the underlying forces of nature against simple harmonic accompaniment. “No one walked outside. The birds went silent,” the musicians write in the liner notes. “The only sounds we heard were the one we made.”

The pieces all last under ten minutes with the exception of “Godot,” a slow exploration of Hauschka’s raw industrial sounds complimented by whinnying and other timbral exploration on the violin. The musicians write that the track is hypnotic in surround sound, which I haven’t been able to test yet. “Halo of Honey,” dedicated to Brosseau, traps the violin in a ghostly netherworld against crinkling and muted, distorted piano. The final track “Rift,” referring to the “deepness and isolation” of the island of Silfra, creates a sense of suspended time and nostalgia before launching into a mesmerizing minimalist tapestry. Hahn and Hauschka open the album with the last track they recorded, “Stillness,” which hovers in the upper registers of the violin and piano only to fleet by like an afterthought. Such free collaborations are rare in the classical music establishment, and while it may take an artist of Hahn’s stature to find the backing of a label such as Deutsche Grammophon, it could set a precedent for other soloists itching to explore another side of their creativity.

Mahler and Ravel with the Gewandhaus Orchester

A spring tour brought Riccardo Chailly and the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig to the Konzerthaus this week, a rare occasion to hear this fine orchestra in the German capital. For a moment I lost my orientation, as I’ve never heard a guest orchestra on the stage of the East Berlin hall, and the Leipzigers’ incisive string playing made me do a double-take. The program, seen May 15, opened with Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G-major featuring Hélène Grimaud, elegant as ever in velvet pants and a fitted silver jacket. The French pianist gave a poignant, introspective account of the nocturne-like passage that opens the middle Adagio movement while Chailly stood with his eyes closed on the podium. He subsequently summoned graceful entrances from the winds, particularly in the flute and English horn solos, while the piano continued as if trapped in its own world. Ravel’s brief use of bi-tonality in this movement is one of its most captivating moments, and Grimaud did not wander from a tender but focused pianissimo.

The opening Allegro, peppered with the quote of a falling melody from Gerschwin’s Rhapsody in Blue and jazz rhythms, received a vigorous if not muscular reading from the orchestra. Grimaud indulged in impressionist textures that, while evocative of the spirit in which Ravel synthesized the influences of his time into a personal blend, threatened to submerge the piano’s inner melodies in a bleeding wash of colors, such as through the passage of Spanish-inflected triolas in the section Meno vivo. While Grimaud’s ability to subsume emotion contributes strongly to her appeal, a bit more Sitzfleisch would have made the performance stronger. By contrast, she revealed a razor-sharp technique through the rapid chordal spans and arpeggiations of the final Presto, whose tempo Chailly kept particularly fleet. As a colleague noted, the brass could barely keep up speed.

Mahler’s Fourth Symphony, also in G-major, created a more serene atmosphere for the second half of the concert. Following the Mahlerthon that occupied programming during the composer’s centennial last season, this work feels as commonplace as a Mozart Symphony, yet it is hard to resist Mahler’s delicious harmonies and searing Lebensschmerz, particularly in the inner Adagio. The Gewandhausorchester plays with a directness that nevertheless conveyed a sense of inner torment beneath the vital sheen of sleigh bells and nods to Viennese Classicism in the opening movement. The strings produced an even, warm pianissimo.

Chailly created unbearable tension through his use of ritardando in the Ruhevoll (Poco adagio) movement, steering through tearful laughter before the gates opened for Das Himmlische Leben, a song from the Knaben Wunderhorn cycle. Soprano Christina Landshamer’s youthful, clear timbre captured the childish delight Mahler explicitly instructed, yet there was no sense of the subtle irony that emerges in a more dramatically nuanced performance. While she and Chailly gave clear emphasis to the final stanza’s critical line “Eleven thousand virgins/allow themselves to dance,” the delivery was almost too reverential, failing to provide a window into Mahler’s ambivalent spirituality. An elderly couple to my left was following the text with a nearly pious air, not sure whether to give in to the movement’s mordant satire.

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Posted in Berlin Times | Comments Closed

Transitioning From One Management to Another

May 17th, 2012

By: Edna Landau

To ask a question, please write Ask Edna.

Dear Edna:

I am a young conductor who has been fortunate to have management for the past several years as a result of having participated in a showcase and attracting someone’s attention there. While I must admit I have been disappointed with the number of engagements this association has yielded, several of which came through my own connections, I still consider myself lucky. Recently, I made the acquaintance of a manager who handles conductors whose careers are in higher gear than mine. He has shown what seems to be genuine interest in me and I am wondering if you can tell me how artists transition from one manager to another with as little disruption as possible. Thank you.—J.B.

Dear J.B.:

Thank you for your question, which I am sure will be of interest to a number of our readers. You do not indicate whether you have a representation agreement with your manager. If you did, it would probably spell out rather clearly the steps that would be taken should you wish to go to another representative or should your manager wish to terminate the current relationship. Typically, an initial management agreement is for three years, with a provision to extend for an additional period (often two years) or to roll over automatically each year, unless either party informs the other of a wish to terminate within a specified period prior to the anniversary of the date of signing the original agreement. This notification period could be as long as a year prior to the end date of the contract, or as little as 90 days prior. Once notice has been given, the manager will generally give the artist a summary of all current activity on their behalf. This would consist of contracted dates, dates not yet contracted but firmly held, and a list of presenters who have expressed interest for the coming season or two but where no specific dates have been held or a variety of dates have been discussed. The manager is then entitled to do everything possible to bring all potential dates to fruition and take full commission on anything contracted prior to the termination date. (If they are unsuccessful in completing that process, they might negotiate a split commission with the new manager who will finish things off.) As part of taking full commission, the manager is expected to service the dates when they transpire, even though that may be after the artist moves on to another management. If the artist elects to have the dates serviced by the new manager and the new manager agrees, there is no problem with that; however the initial manager is still entitled to full commission. The new manager might only be willing to service those dates for a small commission, in which case it is up to the artist to decide whether they want to pay it or not.

There are times when managers will bend the rules a little, especially if the old manager and new one are friends. In your case, since your current manager hasn’t been overly active on your behalf, they might be willing to let the new manager begin booking you prior to the termination of the contract, as long as they can finish up everything they started and take commission on it. Another possibility might be that they agree to share commission with your new manager in exchange for relaxing the exclusive booking right they have a right to enforce. It will be very helpful if your current manager takes the time to write to all the presenters with whom they have been in contact on your behalf to let them know of the impending change. Then, when you move to the new agency, your manager there should similarly let everyone know that you have come on board. If this coincides with the start of a new season, it will probably be apparent on the management’s roster where many tend to put an asterisk next to the name of new artists. If you have never had a written agreement with your current manager, there are obviously no obligations on either side but the above guidelines are both traditional and very sensible. It would be a good idea to propose that they be followed and you are likely to thereby ensure that there is as little confusion and disruption of the booking process as possible. Good luck!

To ask a question, please write Ask Edna.

© Edna Landau 2012

Posted in Ask Edna, Finding a Manager, Uncategorized | Comments Closed

Off to Africa!

May 16th, 2012

by Sedgwick Clark

I’m off for a two-and-a-half-week safari vacation in South Africa with PK and our favorite traveling buddies. From Cape Town and the wine lands to Kruger National Park to Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe, it will undoubtedly be a far cry from the MGM back lot and grainy second-unit location images impressed upon me since I was a kid. Whatever I’ll encounter, I may be sure it won’t be Maureen O’Sullivan, Grace Kelly, or Ava Gardner, although The African Queen and all those shots and malaria pills have made me a bit apprehensive of the smaller wildlife thereabouts.

One stop will be outside Cape Town to the Hout Bay Music Project, which teaches string and percussion students. We’re taking scores and sheet music from Schirmer Inc., t-shirts from the New York Philharmonic, caps from Lincoln Center, and plenty of CDs I’ve received over the years. I’ll bet the kids especially appreciate three of the multi-CD chamber-music sets released annually by Music@Menlo, which contain 73 works from the baroque to 21st century. But I’m also bringing CDs by Musical America honorees David Finckel and Wu Han, Gil Shaham, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Joshua Bell, and undoubted future honorees.

Steve J. Sherman graciously offered to show us how to use PK’s new digital single photo and video camera, so I’m hoping you will be seeing some photos of the music school next week.  In the meantime, its Web site is www.houtbaymusic.org.

Posted in Why I Left Muncie | Comments Closed

How Do I Draft An Engagement Agreement For My Trio?

May 16th, 2012

By Brian Taylor Goldstein

Dear FTM Arts Law,

I am a manager who will be writing contracts on behalf of a trio. They don’t have a corporation and there is no “leader.” They just get together and perform together. How do I handle their engagement fees so that I do not look like their employer? None of the three wants to collect the money on behalf of the others. So, that leaves me to disperse the money.  I know I must be careful not to appear as a producer or employer, so I want to be sure that I write my contracts properly, as well, handle the payment of fees.  So, when writing the actual contract, do I make it out between all three musicians and the presenter?  What if one of them is paid to his/her corporation? Does this make sense?

This makes absolute sense…and the answer is pretty easy! You want each engagement contract to be between the presenter and each of the individual members of the trio. Something like this: “Presenter hereby engages Musician 1, Musician 2, and Musician 3 to perform at ___________.” The same engagement contract would also specify that the engagement fee would be paid directly to you “as the agent of Musician 1, Musician 2, and Musician 3.” You can even sign the engagement contract, provided it is clear that you are signing “as the agent of Musician 1, Musician 2, and Musician 3.” (I know, you said you were their “manager”, but “manager” is a title that describes your duties. For purposes of determining liability, fiduciary duties, and other legal obligations, managers and agents are both legally considered to be “agents”).

Once you collect the fee, you can pay each of the artists directly. For you purposes, it doesn’t matter whether you pay an artist individually or pay the artist’s corporation. Nonetheless, you must issue a 1099 for the FULL FEE. In other words, if the total engagement fee is $3000, and you take a 20% commission, and everything is split evenly, then you would pay each artist $1000 and deduct a commission of $200 from each payment—but you would also issue a 1099 to each artist for $1000. Why? Because you are working for the artists, they are not working for you. If you don’t want to be perceived, either for liability or tax purposes as their employer or producer, then you need to set up the transaction so it is clear that it is the artists are paying you and you are not paying them. Technically, each artist should issue you a 1099 to reflect that they paid you a commission of $200. However, in my experience, as artists are even more adverse to paperwork and forms than managers and agents, it is highly unlikely that the artists will actually issue you the 1099. It doesn’t matter. You would hardly be the first person who received a payment without an accompanying 1099.  So long as you have issued a 1099 to each artist for $1000 and report your commissions on your income taxes, you are fine. It may drive your accountant a bit nuts, but they’ll deal with it!

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For additional information and resources on this and other legal and business issues for the performing arts, visit ftmartslaw-pc.com.

To ask your own question, write to lawanddisorder@musicalamerica.org.

All questions on any topic related to legal and business issues will be welcome. However, please post only general questions or hypotheticals. FTM Arts Law reserves the right to alter, edit or, amend questions to focus on specific issues or to avoid names, circumstances, or any information that could be used to identify or embarrass a specific individual or organization. All questions will be posted anonymously.

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THE OFFICIAL DISCLAIMER:

THIS IS NOT LEGAL ADVICE!

The purpose of this blog is to provide general advice and guidance, not legal advice. Please consult with an attorney familiar with your specific circumstances, facts, challenges, medications, psychiatric disorders, past-lives, karmic debt, and anything else that may impact your situation before drawing any conclusions, deciding upon a course of action, sending a nasty email, filing a lawsuit, or doing anything rash!

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Posted in Agents, Artist Management, Contracts, Employees, Independent Contractors, Law and Disorder: Performing Arts Division, Taxes | Comments Closed

The Fortress of Being: John Jasperse’s “Fort Blossom revisited”

May 12th, 2012

By Rachel Straus

In the women’s bathroom of New York Live Arts, each stall sported a small bottle of lower anatomy cleansing solution. Its odd presence must have been care of choreographer John Jasperse, whose erogenous zone oriented Fort Blossom revisited (2000/2012) held its New York premiere on May 9 in the Chelsea theater.

The hour-long work, for two nude male dancers (Ben Asriel and Burr Johnson) and two clothed female dancers (Lindsay Clark and Erika Hand), is not for the prudish. Anal cavities, penises and balls are seen, but after a while it ceases to be a big deal. Jasperse, who performed in the original production, expanded the length of his 2000 dance and changed the music to that of minimalist Ryoji Ikeda. Yet he keeps the work’s central conceit: the men are nude, the women are not.

Fort Blossom revisited hits all the proverbial buttons. In the work’s beginning, Asriel and Johnson simulate anal sex. Instead of a condom, they are physically separated by a translucent inflatable cushion, which deflates after five minutes of gentle bucking. Presenting and then pushing past (pun intended) the notion that a dance featuring two nude men must be about gay sex, Jasperse then tenders another idea. It is an aesthetic one. The women, dressed in red shifts, perform a slow, side-by-side unison duet. On their backs are red inflatable cushions, whose shape resembles butterfly wings. The upright women perform on a white floor. On the stage’s other side are the men who lie horizontally on a black floor. Later they form a cat’s cradle of sculptural positions. The contrasts between the two sets of dancers becomes conceptual rather than sexual.

When the men and women come together, it’s not the dramatic moment one expects. Instead Jasperse creates a human bumper car vision. With the inflatable cushions pressed to their bellies, the performers gleefully run and bounce off of each other. At the work’s end, they form a quartet and move in full-bodied spirals. After the pedestrian-like choreography from the previous 40-odd minutes, the last moments of Fort Blossom is a garden of delights. It no longer matters who is naked or clothed, who is male or female. The dancers momentarily escape the fortress of human labels. They soar through space, suspended on one leg with their arms floating behind, like kites in the sky.

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Posted in The Torn Tutu | Comments Closed

Angela Meade makes Berlin Debut; Peaches takes Opera Underground

May 11th, 2012

By Rebecca Schmid

The Deutsche Oper maintains a dedicated West Berlin following not only for its provocative stagings but sober concert operas showcasing star singers. Of nine “premieres” this season, four are in concert, and in the best scenario feature works known for their dramaturgical weaknesses. The house claimed in a press conference last season that it turned to concerts because of a need to repair stage machinery, although the format has also occupied programming in the past. The renovation has since been delayed until next season (rumors about the house’s financial woes aside). Following a performance of Bizet’s Les Pêcheurs de Perles with Patricia Ciofi and Joseph Calleja in December, the company opened Verdi’s I Due Foscari on May 9 featuring Angela Meade in her Berlin debut alongside the tenor Ramon Vargas and the legendary baritone Leo Nucci.

Verdi’s sixth opera has struggled to meet with popular acceptance since its 1844 premiere in Rome, according to scholarly speculation because it followed on the heels of his more dramatically gripping Ernani. The composer himself wrote to his librettist Francesco Maria Piave early on that the work did not “possess the stage qualities that an opera demands,” particularly in the first act, and later admitted that the opera suffers from being too gloomy. The story centers upon a political struggle in fifteenth-century Venice in which Jacopo Foscari, son of the Doge Francesco Foscari, is falsely accused of murder by the Council of Ten. Despite the pleading of Jacopo’s wife Lucrezia, the Doge lawfully goes along with the orders decreed by council member Jacopo Loredano, a family rival, and his son is sent into permanent exile. Jacopo subsequently drops dead, and his father follows suit just after relinquishing power to the council.

Much in keeping with the apocalyptic tone, the score is an interesting study in the early use of Leitmotifs, which lends the opera ideally to a concert staging. A lamenting clarinet foreshadows Jacopo’s tragic fate already in the overture, subsequently appearing to usher in the character before several of his numbers. Verdi designates Lucrezia with a fiery series of rising triplets in the violins, while the Doge is assigned a ruminative motive in the celli and violas. Even the council is indicated with a recurrent procession of woodwinds. The opera closes in on the intimate, inter-personal relations between the main characters, launching from arioso to cabaletta to duetto while revolving around an overwhelmingly grief-stricken tone.

Vargas was not in his best voice for his opening cavatina “Dal più remoto esilio” but warmed up to prove himself as touching and vocally assured a Jacopo as one could hope for in the preghiera “Non maledirmi o prode” of the second act, in which he begs for mercy after being haunted by a ghost of another victim of Venetian law. He brought a great deal of tenderness to the following duetto sequence with Lucrezia (Meade), in which he declares that their suffering is worse than death, with the singers bringing their voluminous voices into fine chemistry with each other. Meade captured the distraught heroine with warm, powerful tone, sensitive dynamic shading and velvety legato that did justice to the emotional range of Verdi’s deceptively simple melodies. She initially belted out a couple of climatic high notes that were overwhelming in this house—this young spinto may be one of few singers who is truly destined to sing at the Met—but she found the right restraint in her romanza with the Doge (Nucci) in the first act, and the ease with which carried easily above full ensemble numbers was a delight.

Leo Nucci, Angela Meade and Ramon Vargas at the Deutsche Oper © Bettina Stöß

Despite the fine performances of Vargas and Meade, it was Nucci who captured the soul of this opera most convincingly (at least for this listener). Though no longer in his prime, he has this role in his bones, evoking the authoritarian yet tortured nature of the Doge with diction and phrasing that threaten to be a lost art. His third act aria “Questa dunque è l’iniqua mercede,” in which he confronts the chorus about Jacopo’s innocence, consumed the audience in a sense of irreversible doom. Even when he grabbed his music stand upon Lucrezia’s announcement that Jacopo had died in exile, there was nothing forced about his performance. It takes an artist of this vintage to anchor a concert staging in which the audience only has the singers’ vocal and facial expression as dramatic reference.

The conductor Roberto Rizzi Brignoli also harnessed the orchestra of the Deutsche Oper, directly onstage behind the singers, to fine effect. While Les Pêcheurs de Perles had suffered from some untamed brass playing and steely phrasing under the young Spanish conductor Guillermo Garcia Calvo, Brignoli coaxed well-balanced, flexible lines, producing the most authentic Italianate inflections I have heard from this orchestra and never overwhelming the singers. The chorus of the Deutsche Oper lived up to its consistently excellent standards under director William Spaulding. The audience could not hold back its applause and “bravis” throughout the evening, an unequivocally warm response that contrasts sharply with the reception of the house’s Regietheater-prone premieres, although this was a particularly well-mannered, mostly retired crowd drawn from Berlin’s bourgeois boroughs.

Sick Peaches at HAU1

James Jorden, covering the Metropolitan Opera’s premiere of Anna Bolena on his blog Rough and Regie last fall, observed that lazy critics often veer toward the adjective “handsome, descriptive of any production that doesn’t feature actual vomit as a design element.” As I live one of the continental capitals of what could easily be designated as Eurotrash, I’ve been subjected to some pretty outlandish productions. But I never thought I’d ever see an actual simulation of vomit at the climactic moment of an opera. Then again, I did decide to go and see a production of Monteverdi’s Orfeo starring Peaches, a kind of underground post-modern Madonna whose sexually charged raps have designated her as Berlin’s notorious enfant terrible (at least according to a scathing review in the local paper Der Tagesspiegel). The opera was conceived for her in the title role at the HAU1 Theater in Kreuzberg, with preparation including a half-year of voice lessons and language coaching (the Canadian native had never sung opera and didn’t know a word of Italian). The production also featured an original Peaches ‘composition’ (read: rap) which she called “Sick Bitch,” and yes, she got sick at the end.

So much for preserving the innocence of what some consider the western world’s first opera (although it was really Jacopo Peri’s Euridice). Of course, it would be ridiculous to judge this wacko Orfeo, seen during its third run on May 4, through the lens of a real opera critic. The Tagesspiegel’s observation that the efforts to prepare Peaches for an opera “led to shockingly little”—calling her the production’s “big negative” rather than an asset—is posited on the idea that someone who has made a career as a punk rapper could learn to sing opera in six months and that the intention was to have her do so in the first place. The production featured a cast of young singers and the experimental chamber ensemble Kaleidoskop in the pit under Swedish conductor Olof Borman, but this Orfeo was above all a vehicle for Peaches to shock and provoke much as she does in her own acts.

The opera is cut heavily and lasts under two hours. Apollo never appears, and the score includes a Lachenmann-esque composition by Timo Kreuser to represent the stark conditions of the underworld—an interesting idea in principle, but it is hard to make the argument for cutting Monteverdi in favor of this uninspired squealing and creaking. Monteverdi’s opening ritornello was played as the audience entered the theater, with some initially shabby bowing and phrasing but more finesse as it recurred sporadically after the entrance of Euridice catwalking as she poured pieces of styrofoam into a circle. Following the heroine’s aria “Io la musica son”—during which a banner of pithy anarchic precepts such as “no leader” and “screw in the streets” descends—she pulls Orfeo, Peaches, into the circle and strips her down to a skin-colored nylon suit.

The ensemble numbers quickly turn into orgies with heavy stroking; during “Qui le Napèe vezzose…Fu viste a coglier rose” (Here the charming wood nymphs…were seen picking roses), Peaches (who was wisely left out of the ensembles) tosses latex gloves onto the singers who are already in the process of tying each other up. The centerpiece of the staging (directed by Daniel Cramer and designed by Mascha Mazur) is a brown hut entitled “prospect cottage” that looks straight out of a kindergarten; it is here that Eurydice will be nursed from illness in the underworld. Surgical masks and an oxygen machine are necessary to survive. Peaches, descending with a lyre with chains for strings, breaks the spell with some electronically-modified chanting and her rap: “Hell’s hot/I’m getting a cold…” while Eurydice bops around in the background. Orfeo’s magical powers enable her to exorcise his (her?) lost beloved, manifested ever so elegantly with what I’ve described above.

The following ensemble number “E’ la virtute un raggio/Di celeste bellezza” (Virtue is a ray of celestial beauty) emerged like balsam to the senses, and indeed the musical quality of the actual classical musicians present had increasingly held its own. Ulrike Schwab was a coquettish Eurydice, with a pleasant lyric voice that probably would have been even more effective had she not been so consumed with the director’s instructions. The countertenor Armin Gramer, managing to elegantly pull off a tight, strapless gown, gave a stand-out performance as Speranza and in two other small roles. The mezzo Sabine Neumann warmed up by the second half to give a fine cameo of Proserpina. I won’t even bother criticizing Italian diction because there are simply too many areas where a critic could nitpick, not to mention the less than ideal acoustics of the theater. As far as Peaches’ attempts to sing opera, she was irritating at best with the exception of the opening lines of “Tu sei morta” upon losing Eurydice. She managed to convey some poignant emotion and carry a slightly legato tune, which was a relief after the rasping and muted shrieking to which she subjected her vocal chords throughout most of the evening.

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Posted in Berlin Times | Comments Closed

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