Sandow Seminar

Greg Sandow is one of my "regular reads" and this post is a great example of why that is. His main concern is revitalizing the connection between society and "classical" music. As a music therapist I'm wishing him all success because I feel that on balance, the more people experience live music, the better off they are. 

The reason this post is a good example of what he's up to is that it's mostly written by commenters on his blog. He openly invites and encourages folks to share in the discussion. He's also very good at ignoring bad manners and focussing on the content of what people have to say rather than responding in kind. (This was more of an issue some time ago.) Few blogs have such a great community of commenters with such a wealth of ideas. 

I wanted save a link to this particular post for a couple of reasons. One of the comments is by Jeffrey Agrell, another of my "regular reads". He has a great list of ideas of how to enliven the presentation of music and enhance the connection between the performers and the audience. This aside of his really jumps out, though:

>>>The only ones who don't make it to the concerts are the other music faculty - almost none of them have ever attended one of our concerts (although they all have opinions about it...).<<<

So much of the problem is that many in the classical music establishment feel no need to explore new avenues. I guess the assumption is that what they're doing has worked for generations so there's no need for them to even think about changing. It's a truism in the psych world that you can't fix a problem if you're busy denying it exists.

It was also through this post of Greg's that I found the blog of Erica Sipes. She's a classically trained pianist and cellist. The subhead of her blog says:

MY PASSION IS TO HELP OTHERS IN THE COMMUNITY, YOUNG, OLD, AND EVERYONE IN BETWEEN, FIND RELEVANCE AND JOY IN LEARNING, PERFORMING OR LISTENING TO CLASSICAL MUSIC.

Whereas I'm working more from the angle of helping amateur players (albeit some at a professional skill level) get together in various small ensembles and she's working mostly, though not exclusively, at a professional level, I was delighted to see someone else thinking that part of the answer to what Greg is working on has to be revitalizing live music on the grass roots level.