Ok so it happened. I conducted part of it. It was really really really fun. Here is part 1:

The responses were amazing to read …

There was a GOOD REVIEW…

A BAD REVIEW …

A blogger and “industry professional” WHO TOTALLY LOSES IT… sample quotes: “And really, I think I’ll stop now, because I’m feeling more than a little cruel right now, even though (to be perfectly honest), I’ve pulled a few punches in what I’ve just said, no matter how critical I might have seemed.” and “During intermission, I talked to some orchestra professionals I know, and none of them were happy. Two even left, one out of boredom, the other with a sense (I think it’s right to put it this way) of faint disgust.”

I love the idea of “orchestra professionals” walking out of the building with “faint disgust.” What would they do if they were “deeply disgusted” at a concert? Maybe someday all “orchestral professionals” will unite and save classical music. Oh yeah, they’re already in charge. (just kidding, some of my best friends are “orchestra professionals” haha).

So how was the MUSIC? I think generally what was written was true: not fully refined, but enthusiastic. Some of it was even quite rough at times, like the Harrison piece I conducted. But it all sounded way better than when we started it a day or two earlier. All of my colleagues who were helping to prepare this concert were impressed and moved by the process, even if it didn’t meet the highest technical standards. We all knew it wasn’t going to be perfect, and that was an unusual and liberating feeling. For those of us involved, meeting these intrepid musicians was inspiring — and it was a privilege to help them get their orchestra rolling. There was deep joy in the process.

I think that’s what we all were so excited about. It was a moment in history, a bold experiment, well-funded (for once). The fact that it came together as it did on the musical, technical (meaning stage-changes, lights, video), personal, and audience level was exhilarating. I’ve never seen an undertaking that complex come together so fast, and so well.

Finally, the orchestra itself had a special quality, different than, say, some of the other brilliant young orchestras at conservatories and music festivals around the world. It think what set these musicians apart is that they actually took the time (and had the nerve) to audition on YouTube. To me, that implies a certain sense of adventure, lack of cynicism, and desire to have fun. I wonder if I would have done it? If I hadn’t, it probably would have been for cynical reasons.

So yes I was moved, inspired, energized, and more. I’m so glad I was a part of it, even if it was far from perfect. Looking at the faces of the orchestra and my musician colleagues, I don’t think I was alone. It was fun. And in classical music, believe me, we need more fun.

It seems to me that music-making in the classical world is a struggle between joy and perfection. That’s because those rare peak performances are instances of joyous perfection (maybe that’s because Bach has been such a huge influence on all of us). But what about those moments when we don’t reach the top? They usually fall into one of two sub-categories: “rough and joyful” or “perfect and lifeless.” I’m afraid “perfect and lifeless” is the more common category of the two, because it’s safer, and implies hard work. The YouTube Symphony made a case for more “rough and joyful,” music making I think. And that’s a good thing.

PS check out Jeremy Denk’s YouTube Symphony VLOGS. They capture the vibe really well. Plus I’m in them! making quips. I’ve included part one below.

On my way to NYC for the YouTube Symphony.

As I was packing, I was listening to Radio David Byrne. There’s a lot of new, interesting stuff on, including the new Dirty Projectors album which hasn’t come out yet. (They are my favorites these days along with some others on the playlist: St. Vincent, Final Fantasy, The Bird and The Bee). What’s great is how Byrne-influenced all this music is. The Children of Byrne & Eno have grown up and continued the tradition of artsy, beautiful, witty, world-influenced, electronic music! Yay!

And I discovered a recipe for Chicken Fried Bacon.

And I’m now on twitter (eoutwater), if you’d like to keep track of me that way.

End Transmission.

The Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony’s biennial OPEN EARS FESTIVAL has launched its 2009 website. Candadian composer Peter Hatch and I have put together an eclectic musical world to explore: super-engaging music crossing many genres.

Some highlights:

R. Murray Schafer residency (he’s a great, truly great, Canadian composer)
The Music of Lou Harrison
The Books (one of my favorite electronic music groups)
Turtle Island String Quartet
David Lang
Francisco Lopez (Spanish sound artist who blindfolds the audience!)
Hard Rubber Orchestra (a new music big band from Vancouver)

… and the list goes on. Check it out! It’s all worth hearing, and even worth a flight to Kitchener!

The Composer is Dead, an incredible project I did with Lemony Snicket and Nathaniel Stookey is out in stores! It’s a book with a CD of the San Francisco Symphony conducted by yours truly. I’m so so so proud of this project. Here’s a nice YouTube promo that was done. I’m even in a few shots!!

It’s Sunday afternoon, and I’m decompressing. It was a busy week.

We had TIME FOR THREE here this week, who played in our Intersections series. They got a good REVIEW in our local paper, The Record. The end of the review is really funny to me though. The reviewer comments that the orchestra didn’t have enough to do during the concert:

“Perhaps this show belonged with the symphony’s Pops series (where I would probably go see Tf3 again for all the froth and fun). While applauding Outwater’s efforts to challenge the boundaries of symphonic music in this series, I vote for more intersection and less wallpaper.”

Now I happen to agree strongly with the reviewer that the orchestra didn’t do enough. It’s a problem with Time for Three … they don’t have enough charts yet. They’re working on it. Even so, I couldn’t resist bringing them to KW asap., despite the fact that the orchestra would be sitting most of the time. In an ideal situation, the orchestra should have had more to do. No doubt.

But what’s funny to me is that he’s suggesting what does and doesn’t belong in the INTERSECTIONS series, a format I INVENTED only four concerts ago! That’s kind of cool — it must mean that the four shows that we’ve done already have a common vibe …

The real intention is that INTERSECTIONS is a completely flexible format, and that includes some concerts where the orchestra plays a lot (like the electronica show earlier this year) and sometimes not so much. It’s about whatever is new, interesting. In the case of Time for Three, the music they play is an intersection: it’s impossible to categorize as bluegrass, classical, country, hip-hop, etc. That’s why I think they belong in this series.

At any rate, this particular critical response shows the human need to categorize art, which is not what art is about, ultimately. But that tension has been around since the beginning of criticism.

There were some extra events around this concert, including an apres-concert gathering at the Jane Bond in Waterloo. Good turnout of musicians, staff, and audience. And we had a party at my place earlier in the week to attract new folks to the KWS. It was a younger crowd, and they got to hear Time for Three up close. Here’s a video of them playing for the party. It was their first time as a group in Canada, but they chose the right music to impress the Canadians! Soon they’ll figure out it’s not “Tom Horton’s” and then they’ll really be in business.

So I have a cool board of directors at the KW Symphony. For my electronica concert with Mason Bates last night, I was given THIS SHIRT. Which I wore during the concert. We also started the show with the lights down and Mason spinning and giving a moody introduction before we launched into Aphex Twin’s “Cock/Ver 10,” arranged by Stefan Freund for Alarm Will Sound’s“Acoustica” CD. The orchestra and I snuck onstage under dim lights — it was full rock concert mode. The concert was recorded and will be broadcast in a little while by the CBC, with lots of good interview material with me and Mason.

Our Intersections Series opens at the University of Waterloo tomorrow night:

On the program:

Aphex Twin - Cock/Ver 10
Mason Bates - Omnivorous Furniture
Jonny Greenwood - Popcorn Superhet Receiver

As you may gather, this program is about the intersection of orchestral music and electronica. Hope you can join us. Mason is fun to work with, and it warms my heart to hear the KW Symphony rip through hyperspeed drum-and-bass beats with such aplomb.

And now totally unrelated … one of the most fascinating media moments in recent history. This just happened. Watch the whole thing.

There were two concerts in SF this week imported from NYC. I guess you could call them “new music” concerts, though both concerts transcended that label and were more like “cool, engaging music” concerts.

On Monday night Nico Muhly* came through with Doveman and Sam Amidon, violist Nadia Sirota and Oren Bloedowand played at the Swedish American Hall on Market. The crowd was a bit small, and the concert was a bit long, but there was a lot of good stuff. I’ve been interested in Nico’s music for a while now, and was happy to finally meet him and hear him live. He’s getting a lot of press and attention these days, but I think for good reason. He stands out me for several reasons. First, he seems to actually understand pitch and harmony and knows how to put both “up front” in his music — so rhythm and texture don’t COMPLETELY dominate like they do in 99.9% of “new music” I hear. It’s refreshing to my rhythmically battered ears. Second, he really has a quirky and distinctive compositional voice and seems to be concerned with interesting and peculiar things. In both of the big pieces he played “Keep in Touch” and “The Only Tune,” he moves from a kind of sensual vibe, to a fetishy vibe, to a SCARY vibe and back again. That scary side of beauty and sensuality and form comes up in some film and literature these days, but not a lot of music. It kind of reminds me of the intricate map of emotions Hume draws out in his Treatise on Human Nature. The corner of the map Nico is exploring seems to be: “Things are really gorgeous and feel really good … now what can happen from here?” Well, all sorts of things. I look forward to hearing more. The other folks in the band were distinctive: Sam had a haunting detached folk voice, Nadia rocked on viola. I couldn’t understand what Doveman was saying most of the time but it seemed to be ultra-emo. Definitely an original combination of traveling musicians.

*Fashion Note: Nico Muhly wore a floor-length shawl for the whole concert. Well done, sir.

On Thursday, Ronen Givoney brought his Wordless Music series to SF with a sold-out concert featuring the Magik*Magik Orchestra, Benjamin Shwartz**, Joan Jeanrenaud, and William Winant. Many more people from the SF scene were there (probably because many of their friends were playing in the show), along with hipsters, “new music” fans, and Radiohead fans. There was music by John Adams, Fred Frith, Mason Bates, Arvo Part, and Jonny Greenwood. The music wasn’t easy to listen to, but the audience was rapt. BEHOLD THE YOUNG AUDIENCE FOR ART MUSIC!!! Many orchestras are looking for them, and they were at the concert that night. I felt like I had finally made a sighting after a five-year quest for a rare type of iguana. Why did they show up? Because Ronen and Co. know what music these folks actually want to hear, and how to reach them. Exploring the links on this post might be a good start if you’re curious about what the YOUNG AUDINECE might be interested in hearing.

** Fashion Note: Benjamin Shwartz wore a black shirt and WHITE SKINNY PANTS at the concert. Nice.

…so I think it might be a good time to BLOG a little bit.

Since I’ve been in LA and SF, I’ve taken it a lot of music … The Album Leaf, Devendra Banhart, Gilberto Gil, Stevie Wonder, and Matmos. The best concert was … wait for it … STEVIE WONDER. I was in the presence of a real living music god. I haven’t felt that way since I was around Ella Fitzgerald back in the day or Rostropovich - you get the idea. Please don’t miss seeing him live if you get the chance. He sounds perfect, his band and orchestra is hella tight (the string players DANCE for a good part of the show), and he somehow manages to play three hours of happy songs without being tedious. That is not easy. In fact I don’t know of any other living musician who has explored so many iterations of joy and happiness with such success. The other concerts were great too but … STEVIE … wow, how fortunate I was to have seen that.

I was in KW last week doing some VISIONARY PLANNING for the orchestra, and one thing we discussed is how to be innovative, I mean really innovative. One thing that always comes up is programming. Heck there was even a BIG ARTICLE about this in the New York Times recently. I, for one, didn’t find any of the programs mentioned particularly innovative, but I did find most of them good, artistic, musical experiences. I’m looking for more. It’s not the food that’s bad, it’s the the room, the vibe, the tired, non-inclusive, ritualistic, society-oriented presentation of music that the orchestra biz hangs on to for no good reason and which does them no service. Now there are some hardcore chowhounds like me who will go eat great food in an unappealing setting, ’cause the food’s just so damn good. But if I were a chef (and I am, d’orchestre), I would want my meals served in an attractive, modern place with good lighting and a hot wait-staff. The atmosphere of an orchestral concert is generally similar to the kind of stuffy restaurants Monty Python used to make fun of (with “waffer-thin” mints). I know some of the halls are old, but the vibe could still be spiced up quite a bit. With programming, I think there’s nothing new under the sun. It just has to be good.

I just got back from Chautauqua which is a strikingly unusual place. It’s a retro-utopia for intellectual white people. These folks (and there are thousands of them in this gated community) will go to a foreign policy lecture in the morning, then go water skiing, then see the symphony, opera, or ballet at night. This happens every day. It’s full of Victorian houses shoved really close together which goes against my personal idea of a summer retreat (which is to be in the woods far away from most people). All this being said, it’s an inspiring thing to see so many people willing to give up their personal space to spend the summer with ART and IDEAS … at the same time. I’ve never seen anything like it.

While there I had a long chat with a conductor friend who has a different take on music and programming than I do. He’s fiercely committed to a few pieces he really believes in — at the expense of many others. He was very proud of how small his repertoire was. I was kind of put off by that (Symphonies of Wind Instruments is BAD? Copland only wrote one good piece?), but I also admired how much he loved works he loved. I like lots of music, but sometimes feel I’m being stretched thin as a result of my broad tastes. I guess we all commit sins as artists, either by liking too little music (like him), or too much (like me).

Damn — I’m still stuck at O’Hare, even after all this blogging.

…for a reprise of last year’s Sgt. Pepper concert. Lots of fun stories and pictures to follow on this blog, I’m sure. And my readership goes way up thanks to the Cheap Trick fans. Yesterday, I dropped by SF Opera for a reading of The Bonesetter’s Daughter. I’ll be assistant conductor of that show in August, and the score looks very colorful and fun. The composer, Stewart Wallace, and the conductor, Steven Sloane are cool, and I’m looking forward to the teamwork involved in opera … it’s a lot different than traveling from place to place by yourself to conduct. Steven Sloane went to my rival high school, Palisades High (aka PALI aka the Dolphins). We were laughing about that. Oddly enough, across the street at the Symphony, David Robertson is conducting. He went to my high school (Santa Monica High, aka SAMOHI, aka the Vikings) as well. It’s weird that three conductors from rival high schools are in one place. It’s happened before though — Michael Tilson Thomas used to face off with Leonard Slatkin back in the day in the LA-based nerd contest “The Knowledge Bowl.”