What I Want My Concerts to Be
This post is a result of working through The Savvy Musician, a great book about making a living in the art music world.
Today I’ve been brainstorming about concerts and recitals, and what my ideal product would look like.
I don’t think that programming, outside of choosing good repertoire, is really that big of a deal. I strive to choose repertoire that’s not overplayed. There’s plenty of recordings of the classics for guitar, and plenty of concerts only feature them. I want something different.
The real thing is in presentation. I want to look like I’m having fun on stage. I want to smile, and give the audience a sense that I’m really enjoying myself. I want this because I do enjoy myself. And I’m tired of going to concerts where the performer looks terrified. So there’s that aspect of presentation: I want to project an abundance of enthusiasm for the guitar combined with quiet confidence and a solid performance.
That other stuff…
My encounters and opinions of the art music world can largely be summarized by having a knowing irreverence for tradition. That is, I’m not terribly interested in the traditional benchmarks of success (competition wins, etc.) nor am I particularly in love with the formality of art music concerts. In short, I think the stuffiness puts an unacceptable distance between the performer and the audience.
Here’s the thing, the stuffiness is not a result of the repertoire. It’s a result of the attitudes of the musicians. I want to avoid that at all costs. If there were some way I could project my irreverence on stage, I would do it. Maybe there’s something to be said for choosing the right concert clothing to project this.
What I want
- Play good, semi-obscure (but likable!) repertoire
- Project my enjoyment on stage
- Project a sense of quiet confidence
- Display my irreverence for the art music world’s stuffy formality
This somehow reminded me of a(nother) story about my old guitar teacher. I guess would sometimes be hired to play music at dinner receptions and the like, and mostly played from a classical repertoire… but he told me sometimes he would get irritated that nobody was paying attention, so he would tune to drop D and just play tritone power chords (D5 and Ab5, I guess) until somebody noticed.