Osvaldo Golijov – A Composer of Passion and Controversy

Osvaldo Golijov grew up in an Eastern European Jewish household in La Plata, Argentina. Born to a piano teacher mother and physician father, Golijov was raised surrounded by classical chamber music, Jewish liturgical and klezmer music, and the new tango of Astor Piazzolla.

After studying piano at the local conservatory he moved to Jerusalem in 1983, where he immersed himself in the colliding musical traditions of that city. Upon moving to the United States in 1986, Golijov earned his Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania.

In the early 90’s Golijov began to work closely with two string quartets, the St. Lawrence and the Kronos. Both ensembles were the earliest to project Golijov’s volatile and category-defying style in its full form. In 2002, EMI released Yiddishbbuk, a Grammy-nominated CD of Golijov’s chamber music, celebrating ten years of collaboration with the St. Lawrence String Quartet. This recording contains Last Round, the Golijov piece to be performed by the Two Rivers Chamber Orchestra on November 7, 2015.

Golijov’s masterpiece is the St. Mark Passion, which visually reimagines Bach’s Passions on the streets of Cuba and Brazil.  It was commissioned for the European Music Festival, to commemorate the 250th anniversary of Bach’s death. The work was premiered in Stuttgart on September 5, 2000, where it received a 25-minute standing ovation and was widely hailed by critics as establishing a new voice for classical music at the dawn of the 21st century. A true pan-American passion, this is a theatrical and original carnival of South American singing, dancing and drumming. It turned Golijov into the most feted young composer in America.

In 2003, Golijov was awarded the MacArthur Fellowship for his work to that point. Since then he has composed a number of works for the singer Dawn Upshaw. He is Loyola Professor of Music at the College of Holy Cross in Massachusetts.

Golijov’s career has not been without controversy. He came under scrutiny in 2011 for a series of high-profile commissions that were either delayed or cancelled. Questions of musical plagiarism have also been raised about Golijov. An article in The New Yorker in 2012 detailed the claim that Golijov had copied the work of composer Michael Ward-Bergeman in Golijov’s Sidereus, a work commissioned by thirty-five orchestras that was supposed to be 25 minutes long, but turned out to be 9 minutes.

One thing that can be said for certain about Golijov is that his music is spirited and unusual. We will write more about Last Round in a future blog post. 

New Elephant Ivory Rules Affect Travel with Musical Instruments

As part of a strong new effort to combat trafficking in African ivory, the Fish and Wildlife Service has issued a proposed rule for public comment.  The rule would affect any musician who intends to travel internationally with musical instruments containing ivory.

If all the features of the proposed rule are made final, orchestras and musicians will be able to travel internationally with instruments containing ivory under certain conditions. Most importantly, the ivory in the instrument must have been legally acquired before February 26, 1976.  So many antique instruments may qualify.

Also, to qualify for international travel the instrument cannot have been transferred from one person to another in pursuit of financial gain or profit after February 25, 2014. The instrument must also be accompanied by a valid CITES musical instrument certificate.  A CITES certificate establishes that the ivory contained in the instrument was legally acquired before February 26, 1976.

The proposed rule was published in the Federal Register on July 29, 2015 and will be open for public comment for 60 days.

Curtains?

Michael Kaiser has run the Kennedy Center, the Royal Opera House and The American Ballet Theatre. He knows arts management. His new book Curtains? The Future of the Arts in America paints a disturbing picture.

Kaiser recounts the flourishing of the arts in the period between 1950 and 2000 made possible by the burst of national pride and economic development after World War II. He then shows how and why arts organizations have hit a major speedbump in the 21st Century. Many prominent arts organizations, such as the New York City Opera, simply went out of existence and others faced crippling strikes and programming cutbacks.

Kaiser blames the decline on several factors. Arts patrons are abandoning the subscription model, in which subscriptions to an entire season are purchased in advance. The subscription model offers convenience to the patron and improved cash flow to the organization. Now arts organizations are forced to spend more to market each performance but face resistance to ticket price increases.

Kaiser also blames recent economic instability and the rise of competing entertainment choice like streaming movies on the internet. But his special culprit for the decline of arts organizations is the aging of the arts consumer coupled with a lack of arts funding for the schools. He notes that as a nation we are failing to produce replacement generations of fine arts lovers.

Curtains? ends with Kaiser’s prescription for the survival of the arts. He recommends that arts groups build a family of supporters, not just ticket purchasers. He notes the success of minor league baseball in doing just this. He also recommends that arts organizations imagine exciting programming and then find the funding for it, rather than programming down to the decreasing budget, which does not satisfy or excite arts patrons.

Kaiser’s book is thought provoking. It is designed to create anxiety among arts organizations and patrons and to suggest a plan of action to reverse the trends. Here’s hoping it succeeds.