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MUSIC SHORTS
News Briefs
April 15, 2001
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By Janos Gereben
The Sky May Well Be Falling, for Real
In my nonmusical life, which is writing about technology, lately I've been composing dozens of obituaries a week — for companies going out of business, not only dot-coms but more "old-fashioned" computer companies as well, and even the suppliers and allies of those falling by the wayside. During the great boom of Silicon Valley, contributions to the arts were slow to start and slow to pick up. But in the late '90s, there was some momentum, just in time for the roof to cave in. The situation now looks as it did before the days of small donations, all the way to nonparticipation. There is a nasty coincidence as well: a new administration in Washington, which will not increase or even maintain the pittance doled out by the federal government.
There is even worse news. The companies now folding without honoring their obligations to customers or paying any severance wage to their own workers will not make the contributions they had pledged. And at the same time, the laid-off professionals and those now living without any security at all are unlikely to attend performing arts events. And if they do, they will look for lower-priced tickets and bargains.
Ironically and sadly, in the middle of energy-, gas-, and food-expense inflation, it's just a matter of time before opera companies and symphony orchestras start reducing ticket prices, further losing revenues. It's liable to be months, maybe a couple of years, before this powerful combination of revenue/contribution/audience reduction turns around. Meanwhile, just as in the computer industry, the strong and the worthwhile will survive — maybe.
Tower Cuts Back on Classical Music Susan Elliott writes in the current issue of Musical America that Tower Records issued a memo to all 113 of its U.S. stores to stop buying CDs from Allegro, Harmonia Mundi, and Qualiton. Tower, the largest retail customer in the world, can cripple distributors with such a move. Universal, Sony, BMG, EMI, and others are not on hold, because they agreed to deep discounts and a 360-day delay on payments in most cases (called "360-day dating"). Reportedly, Nonesuch, Teldec, and Erato may also be on what is not called a blacklist, but . . . There is also a report, unconfirmed, that Sony is about to drop its classical CD price from $18.95 to $12.95. Tower is facing some grave financial difficulties, and there have been recent reports of a possible bankruptcy. In the unlikely case of a Chapter 11, all of Tower's inventory would be considered assets to be liquidated — the biggest record sale in history — but also a complete wash for the distributors whose products were sitting on the shelves. Chances are this is not something the distributors would allow to happen, regardless of the effort and sacrifice they would have to make. (Payment after two years, perhaps? The mind reels.)
John Cage and Counterfactual Computation Perusing the current Proceedings of the Royal Society, you might come across a scientific tribute to John Cage and, specifically, his composition 4' 33'' — the one in which the pianist sits in silence for that amount of time. Computer scientists Graeme Mitchison, of the University of Cambridge, and Richard Jozsa, of the University of Bristol, were inspired by the idea, especially by the audience response of applauding after four minutes and 33 seconds of nothing. What if, they asked, there could be a computer giving a response without ever being switched on? Their proposed "counterfactual computation" taps into worlds in which the computer did run in order to extract the result into a world in which it did not. Like Cage's piece, this feat is not about doing nothing, but rather about doing nothing in the time normally allotted for doing something. "Due time must be allowed for the machine not to run," say the study's authors. To determine the outcome of a computation while the machine stays off, they employ a quantum computer, something far faster than existing computers. Using the principles of quantum mechanics to achieve massively parallel processing, quantum computers are expected to perform many logic operations at the same time. (Even after decades of study and effort, the actual building of a quantum computer is still in the future.) But imagine, say Mitchison and Jozsa, that such a computer exists. Quite apart from streamlining information technology, this hypothetical machine would highlight, "in a particularly poignant way," the counterintuitive nature of quantum physics, creating a parallel to Cage's feat of making the audience applaud (or hiss) in response to nothing. Quantum systems can exist in two incompatible states at once, a condition known as "superposition." The most famous example is Schrödinger's cat, which can be both alive and dead if its fate is determined by a quantum superposition of two possible outcomes. A quantum computer uses such superpositions to enlarge its computational power. A superposition generally collapses into one state or the other if measured — we can never actually see a superposition, even as we cannot hear Cage's work, except in another dimension.
Lafayette: Bicoastal Opera Washington, D.C.'s seven-year-old Violins of Lafayette joins Sonoma's 20-year-old Redwoods Festival to create an organization presenting 17th and 18th century repertory under the name of Opera Lafayette, both in California and on the East Coast. The company debut is scheduled for September 1, with a Charpentier double bill of Les Arts Florissants and La Malade Imaginaire (music for Moliere's play), featuring dancer-choreographer Catherine Turocy and soprano Christine Brandes. The performance is scheduled for the new Jackson Theater of the Sonoma Country Day School, in Santa Rosa, followed by a benefit event at the Chalk Hill Estate Vineyards in Healdsburg. For information, see Opera Lafayette.
Patrick Summers Crosses the Bay Michael Morgan this past year has been sharing his podium at the Oakland East Bay Symphony and at the Sacramento Philharmonic more generously than most music directors of short-season orchestras. He has announced just one for next season, and it's a noteworthy choice. Patrick Summers , prominent with the San Francisco Opera and the SFO Center and now music director of the Houston Opera, will make his debut with the OEBS during the orchestra's next season, its 13th. Summers will conduct works by Corigliano, Wagner, and Dvorák. World premieres scheduled for the orchestra's 2001–02 season are Jack Perla's score for the upcoming film Emperor Nero and works by Marco Beltrami, Ellen Hoffman, and Noah Schwartz, something of a prodigy. He's a ninth-grader at the Crowden School in Berkeley. Both Perla's and Hoffman's works were commissioned by the James Irvine Foundation.
Summer Music Academy up North The Santa Rosa Symphony's 24th annual summer music academy will be held at Sonoma State University, July 2–27. Instructors include violist Linda Ghidossi-DeLuca, cellist Corinne Antipa, bassist Karen Zimmerman, and others. For information, see Santa Rosa Symphony.
Girl Lets Hair Down, Composer Gets Therapy Lou Harrison's 1954 opera, Rapunzel, is scheduled for a fully staged performance (how high the tower?) at this summer's Cabrillo Music Festival in Santa Cruz. The six-act work, which runs under an hour, will return to the festival, which staged the West Coast premiere in 1966. Festival director Marin Alsop conducts. The cast features Jennifer Foster in the title role, Wendy Hillhouse as the Witch, and Sanford Sylvan as the Prince. One of his largest serial works, Rapunzel was part of Harrison's therapy work (as he told his biographer) at Black Mountain College, following his breakdown in the early 1950s. He used William Morris' libretto because of its poetry and psychological complexity and the way in which it mirrored some of the problems he was struggling with in that period. The Cabrillo Festival, July 30 through August 12, will also present two performances of Philip Glass' The Photographer, with Alsop conducting and playing the violin solos. Maria Basile is choreographer. For the festival's concerts, Alsop has scheduled performances of works by Jennifer Higdon, John Adams, Christopher Rouse, James MacMillan, and Einojuahani Rautavaara. For information, see Cabrillo Music Festival. (Janos Gereben is arts editor of the Post Newspaper Group and technology editor for www.the451.com. You can contact him at janos451@earthlink.net.) ©2001 Janos Gereben, all rights reserved |