Hopeful Signs

There is no doubt that we live in turbulent times. As of this writing, the state of Louisiana is drowning under catastrophic flooding while southern California is on fire. The world is reeling from one savage act of violence after another on an almost weekly basis. As if all this were not enough, the American people are embroiled in a bitter Presidential election cycle that is dramatically polarizing our society. It is easy to despair in such times. One looks somewhere…anywhere…for the slightest glimmer of hope and good news. Here within the local confines of Atlanta, at least within the Arts and the Music community in particular, there are some encouraging signs. Three pieces of musical news have recently buoyed my spirits.

First, there is the great turnaround in the fortunes of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra; certainly a crown jewel of the musical arts community here in Atlanta. It was only two years ago that the symphony had locked out its musicians for nine weeks, delayed the start of the concert season (canceling many performances) and sought to reduce the number of full-time orchestra members to 76. Management insisted that due to a dire financial situation, these actions were absolutely necessary if the orchestra was to survive. Those on the other side (including the musicians, community members, the national press and even this blog) argued that the cuts were too Draconian and that if implemented, there would be no orchestra left – at least not at the same caliber it had been. The acrimony on both sides was so intense that the ASO’s president resigned and the future of this great orchestra looked bleak.

What a difference two years make! A few weeks ago, as detailed in a recent article in ArtsATL.com, the ASO announced that it had closed its 2015-16 fiscal year with a budget surplus for the second straight year! In more good news, the ASO Musicians’ Endowment Fund had raised over $20 million on its way to an expected $25 million goal this year. The grim outlook for an important cultural institution in the city, as well as the nation, suddenly has a much brighter forecast.

The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra - back on track!

From a wonderful and hopeful turnaround at the city’s artistic heart, I am thrilled with some good news coming out of my place of employment, Georgia State University. I have been a faculty member at this institution for well over 20 years. In all that time, the dream of truly elevating the Arts seemed nothing but wishful thinking. However, several years ago, as part of the university’s Strategic Plan, the creation of a new College of the Arts was mandated. July 1, 2016 marked the official beginning of this newly created College. (For more details, check out the press release.) For a long-time faculty member such as myself, this hardly seems real. Georgia State University has recently catapulted itself into one of the largest universities in the country with an enrollment just over 50,000 students. Its reputation for innovation within an urban environment is rising throughout academic circles nationally. It is clearly a rejuvenated institution on a mission. That the Arts would now be elevated within this context is extremely significant.

Atlanta has already become a very hot destination for film and TV productions with such big budget movies as Captain America: Civil War and Spiderman: Homecoming as well as highly rated TV series such as The Walking Dead filming in town and helping to make the city another great center for the entertainment industry. With the turnaround of the ASO at the highest professional artistic level and the creation of the new College of the Arts within the state’s largest university located in the very heart of the city – just two train stops from the Woodruff Arts Center – Atlanta seems poised to also become the next great artistic center in the country.

While the changing fortunes of the ASO and GSU are a bit outside my personal pay grade and influence, there is a personal endeavor with which I am associated that I consider another very hopeful sign for the cultural life of the city. Over the summer, I spent three very long and productive meetings setting up the strategic plan for the nascent SoundNOW Contemporary Music Festival. As a co-founder of the festival, it was a desire of mine to spotlight the great work being done in contemporary classical music by the many professional chamber ensembles in the city of Atlanta devoted to the music of our time. It is a simple idea. Set performances by the various groups in town to occur within a one-week period of time to draw attention to not only the great local performing artists in Atlanta but also to the city’s diverse and excellent community of composers. You can read about the first festival in a recent ArtsATL.com article.

The SoundNOW Artistic Board at a recent strategic planning
meeting! (Pictured L-R: yours truly, Caleb Herron, Brent
Milam, Olivia Kieffer & Amy O'Dell

It is a wonderful sign that the inaugural festival was very successful given its initial scope and mission. However, as laudable and interesting as this event was, the real trick is to replicate, sustain and grow this initiative. With the amount of strategic planning I and the other members of the artistic board have put in over the summer, coupled with the fact we have already set the dates and booked initial groups for our second festival (April 2-9, 2017), I am very optimistic that this annual event has the potential to elevate contemporary classical music in Atlanta in much the same way that the ASO and GSU are elevating the Arts in general within the city.  

From the highest echelons of the Woodruff Arts Center all the way down to our personal initiatives, hopeful signs abound in Atlanta. But, so what? What does all this matter? What difference can these small, albeit hopeful, signs within one American city possibly make amid a world tortured by violence, political rancor and natural disasters on an almost biblical scale? I firmly believe that the Arts are one of the great civilizing forces in human society. However, the Arts are very difficult to nourish and maintain. It is always easier to destroy than it is to create. It is always easier to hate than to love, forgive and listen past our own prejudices to truly understand where our neighbor is coming from. The hard work of creative expression is an important exercise we must pursue in order to better our society and, yes, even our natural environment. A civilization truly sensitive to creative expression does not easily slip into practices that harm our world. That is why the Arts are so critically essential to humanity. That’s why they should be celebrated, cultivated and taught to our children. Budget surpluses in an orchestra, re-organizations within a university and the development of grassroots artistic endeavors in and of themselves are not really important. Taken by themselves, they are, at best, anomalies within a dreary environment. However, when considering them together, a pattern emerges. These types of hopeful signs describe what deeply motivates a community. To persevere and create great Art as well as make it possible to reach higher creative heights despite all the bad news crashing in around us tells the story of at least one city’s optimism and desire for a better and more peaceful society.

Good news and hopeful signs in our little corner of the world may yet translate to better news for a very troubled world in the long run. We all have the power to make it so.

Do we have the desire?

SaveSave

What It Takes

As the summer days quickly pass away, I’m beginning to accept the inevitability that a new academic year will soon arrive. It won’t be long before I find myself standing in a classroom filled with young composers trying to help them master their craft, find their respective artistic voices and establish meaningful careers. In gathering my thoughts on how to once again approach these topics, there are two events that provide me some direction.

The first event was a conversation I had with a graduating composition student this past spring. For a final lesson, this student simply wanted to spend some time over coffee talking about what comes next. The conversation began with a simple question: “How do you know if you are successful?”

The second event was actually a series of short trips. This summer, my wife, daughter and I made several college visitations. My daughter, a rising high school senior, is interested in pursuing a career in Musical Theater. This desire is at least as daunting as my own desire was at her age to become a composer – perhaps more so. I can certainly relate to being strongly drawn to an artistic field that is ruthlessly competitive and offers little in the way of financial security. The administrators of the various musical theater programs we visited all spoke about the admission requirements and, more importantly, how their respective degrees would aid our young performer in getting on Broadway. Listening to these administrators, I couldn’t help but notice that many of the basic points in their respective conversations were very similar to the response I gave to my graduating composition student. The necessary tools for achieving success, it seems, may be the same irrespective of discipline. 

After thinking a bit more about the similarities between my conversation with a student and an administrator’s conversation with my daughter, I believe there are four major components to a successful professional career:

1. Talent

Whatever talent I may have is made to look better by
surrounding myself with super talented folks like
DJ/Composer Jennifer Mitchell (L) and Conductor
Georgia Ekonomou (C) - Photo taken after the premiere of my
commissioned work, "Eyes Wide Open" - April 27, 2015

Whether it is a composer holding a fistful of commissions or a Broadway actor holding an Equity Card and a contract for a long-running show, talent is the first and primary component for anyone who wants to be successful in the Arts. Sadly, this is the one component that no one can simply acquire via education and hard work. One is either born with the necessary creative aptitude or one is not. I love baseball, but no amount of wishing or training would have ever allowed me to throw a 95 mile-an-hour fastball. Possessing innate talent, however, certainly does not guarantee success. It is simply the prerequisite that allows one in the door. It’s not even enough to have the talent and the desire to develop one’s gifts.

2. “I can’t not do this.”

Recent performance of my "Long
Journey Home" given by the Lake
Superior Chamber Orchestra. 

I believe that a successful artist must be absolutely compelled to engage in their discipline. When I was a senior in high school, I was briefly torn between pursuing a degree in music composition and another field outside of music altogether. As I contemplated entering the non-musical field, I found my mind constantly devising ways that I would still be able to compose. It soon became apparent to me that I was going to find a way to write music no matter what the “day job” might be. For me, composing music is not just an enjoyable activity; it is as necessary as food and drink. It’s irrelevant whether I enjoy or desire certain foods. I am absolutely compelled to nourish my body or perish. While it may sound a bit dramatic, the creative drive approaches that level of importance for a successful professional artist.

Often, students receive the advice to “do what you love.” This is not entirely accurate. There are many times that I agonize over a piece of music I am writing. In those times, I can promise that am not experiencing joy or doing “what I love.” In fact, sometimes, I actually hate the drudgery of the process. However, I simply cannot not compose. This is different than “wanting” to compose. Despite creative agony, societal indifference to my endeavors and low pay, I nevertheless continue to write music anyway. There are joyful payoffs to be sure. However, my engagement in the field runs far deeper than simply “doing what I love.” I have always been driven to hone any talent I was given at birth and develop it to its full potential. This drive gives me the strength to make the considerable sacrifices necessary for a successful professional career.

3. Thick Skin

For every great opportunity like this, there
are many rejection letters!

Many people think that being an artist means one is “sensitive.” This may be true when discussing a person’s relationship to the natural world, the world of ideas or the creative process. However, artists cannot harbor for long any sensitivity about their personal successes or failures with respect to their work. I’ve written about rejection before in this blog. It’s never easy, of course, to get the word that your work has been passed over. However, it is a fact that there are far more failures than successes in the careers of most artists. This is certainly true for an endeavor as esoteric as contemporary classical music composition. Most professional composers do not receive major commissions, grants, prizes, recordings and stellar professional performances of their music on a regular basis.  Often, it seems that success is only an occasional visitor making brief appearances in the life of the composer while rejection is a constant and unwanted companion. So how does one push onward in the face of seemingly constant disappointment? In addition to the drive to create (described above) I believe it’s important to also perform a bit of a personal and honest artistic inventory:

• Do I truly have the talent?
• Sure, my family and close friends may think I’m the next Beethoven but what outside objective validation from a broad group of professionals in my field (teachers, performers, music critics, presenters, conductors, etc.) attests that I do, indeed, possess the basic tools?
• What is my level of commitment?
• Do I view my art as a hobby or side interest?
• Do I have a job outside of my creative pursuit that prohibits my constant and uninterrupted pursuit of artistic expression?
• What am I prepared to sacrifice for my art?

Honest answers to these questions will help determine an artist’s level of commitment. This honest inventory will also lead naturally to either the formation of a thick skin or to a realization that a professional career in the arts is not one’s true path in life. Rejection may always hurt, but that is just one of the many sacrifices an artist makes. Peer review of work can be a subjective process but it never hurts to also acknowledge that there is always someone more talented out there. A better response to rejection should be, “What am I prepared to do now?” I also find it helpful to remember a famous quote attributed to Theodore Roosevelt: “Comparison is the thief of joy.”

4. There is No Plan B

Even if one has the necessary talent, the relentless drive to create and a thick skin there is one last component that most successful professional artists must have: no Plan B. One of the consistent takeaways my daughter heard in her college visitations was that to be successful in the audition process, a person must be all the way in. There is no dipping in a toe or easing slowly into the water. There is no hedging of bets and keeping several disparate irons in the fire – just in case. A successful artist never had a Plan B because it simply never occurred to them that they would not be successful.

The wonderfully talented students of the  Paideia Chamber
Orchestra rehearsing for the premiere of my piece,
"Eyes Wide Open" this past April.    

In presenting these four components to success, I stress that I am speaking of what I believe it takes to be successful in a professional career. I’m speaking to those who forsake a “regular” life in favor of pursuing their art exclusively as their primary vocation. I do not mean to suggest that only professionals should engage in art or that the Arts should only be taught in rarified Ivory Towers for the Gifted. Quite the contrary! I believe many people are born with various artistic talents and gifts. They use these gifts as an integral part of their non-artistic vocations or contribute to the general health of artistic expression in various non-professional or semi-professional settings within their respective communities. They may just simply love and support the Arts. For these reasons, and for the general health of a civilized society, I believe a vibrant Arts education is essential for everyone. But that’s a topic for another blog post.

A tangible measure of success - Athanasios Zervos performs
my "Tonoi X" for solo soprano sax at the  17^th World Saxophone
Congress – Strasbourg, France • July 10, 2015     

What separates successful professional artists are the levels of commitment and sacrifice they are willing – no, compelled – to give to their art. Such commitment will usually result in some tangible measurement of success. Ultimately, there is also another way that I think any artist can be reasonably sure of true success: there must constantly be an acceptable dissatisfaction with one’s career. Acceptable dissatisfaction never falls into self-pity, envy or jealousy. For the composer, being acceptably dissatisfied with a career simply is the grateful recognition of past successes (no matter how meager) and a belief that the next piece will be better; that the next composition will somehow do a better job of articulating a personal artistic voice.

Despite what a trophy case may or may not reveal, I believe that true success is the result of talent, hard work, a thick skin and a single-minded devotion to the creation of art. Given this foundation, how did I answer my graduating student when I was asked, “How do you know if you are successful?”

I am successful so long as I remain grateful for my gifts, confident in my abilities, diligent in my work ethic, unconcerned with comparing myself to others and realize that there is always much to learn and more room to grow. The rest always takes care of itself.

Coda & Prelude

I have arrived at a familiar annual benchmark: the beginning of a new calendar year. With the turning of a page in the calendar and a few days of rest between semesters, I can’t help but sift through the remnants of 2014 before plunging fully into this new year.

The back half of 2014 was certainly dominated, at least within the confines of this blog, by the lockout of the Atlanta Symphony musicians by the Woodruff Arts Center (WAC) board. A few weeks after my last blog post in October, a resolution to this painful start to the symphony’s 70th season was reached. As far as I can tell, the bleeding has been stopped and healing has begun. The musicians agreed to a new four-year contract and on November 13, 2014, the orchestra was back in business with Maestro Robert Spano leading the the symphony and the ASO Chorus in Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9. I was on hand the next week (November 22) to hear performances of Debussy’s Première rhapsody (featuring principal clarinetist Laura Ardan), Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 and the Symphony No. 3 by Atlanta based composer Richard Prior. The symphony was still using many subs as many of the regular ASO members had not yet returned from out of town gigs they had accepted during the lockout. Nevertheless, the atmosphere in Symphony Hall was electric, The orchestra gave a heartfelt and wondrously musical performance and sounded as though much of the rust accumulated by weeks of walking a picket line instead of playing concerts had been shaken off. What struck me about the program selection was that it seemed to be a microcosm of everything that this orchestra does best. It was a concert that first featured a truly wonderful soloist from the very ranks of the ensemble itself. I have had the very good fortune of working with Laura Ardan on several projects in the past and know from personal experience that she is an exceptional artist. It was great to be reminded that this ensemble is comprised of many such exceptional artists throughout. The concert also spotlighted a relatively new composition. The programming of contemporary orchestral music has long been a hallmark of Robert Spano’s tenure at the helm of the orchestra. As a composer, I have always  admired this significant facet of the orchestra’s artistic vision. Finally, the concert reminded us all once again that the ASO can deftly move from the contemporary to convincing and riveting presentations of some of the greatest works of Western Civilization as exemplified by Beethoven’s fifth symphony. 

As good as it was to be back in Symphony Hall and hearing great music being performed by an elite orchestra, I still could not shake some troubling thoughts. First, the newly inked four-year deal will not guarantee that musician salaries will return to pre-2011 levels or even reach those levels by the end of the contract period. Second, in addition to other concessions, health insurance costs for the players have also gone up. Finally, there are still many questions surrounding the finances of the WAC and how it allocates funding to the symphony. Despite these shortcomings, the musicians did win one significant victory. The WAC board had pushed hard to dictate the size of the orchestra. This was an egregious demand and ultimately, the line in the sand that the players would not cross. The new contract stipulates that the compliment of the orchestra will grow back to near its pre-2011 level of 95 players. While this is still smaller than other major symphony orchestras, the restoration of performers nevertheless allows the group to remain at the status of a top tier professional orchestra. 

So if I examine the glass as half full, the orchestra emerged from an acrimonious stand-off with administrators and won a hard fought victory over the size of the ensemble; a critical component to maintaining artistic integrity. Without this victory, the ASO would have been reduced to a regional training orchestra and lose its luster as one of the finest orchestras in the country. If, on the other hand, I look at the glass as half empty, I see a struggle that resulted in lower pay and higher insurance costs for the musicians and a battle that merely returns the group (almost) to where it was back in 2011 in four years time. Then there is the WAC board. It still calls the shots for the orchestra and its chairman, Douglas Hertz famously described the symphony supporters and musicians as “crazy people” (http://artsculture.blog.ajc.com/2014/10/04/woodruff-arts-center-board-leader-takes-stands-on-atlanta-symphony-crisis/). I can’t help but be nervous about what lurks ahead in four years when this contract ends.

Still, things could have turned out much, much worse. The ASO musicians as well as the musical soul of the city of Atlanta have been spared. I choose, therefore, to look at the glass as very much half full.

My first film credit!

This goes for 2014 in my personal corner of Atlanta as well. Aside from blogging about the ASO lockout, I spent my year writing music for wonderful musicians, receiving performances at national and international festivals and conferences and even having the great fortune of seeing a commercial film featuring my first significant film score widely released. Yet, I can’t help but ask myself some honest questions. Should I have written more music? Received more performances? Generally, been more active? 

The honest answer is yes. I should have done more. That’s why, as I shift my attention from the year now gone and look forward, I am excited by my upcoming commissions, opportunities and scheduled performances of my work. With the lockout of the ASO resolved, I somehow feel as though the creative environment in Atlanta is more secure, at least for the time being. With the musicians back at work, it’s time for me to do the same. The Holidays are over, 2014 is in the books and the manuscript paper is empty!