Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Posicore and beyond....

Another late night here.  It's crazy, but I can now see the light at the end of the tunnel.  The music is almost all written.  I just have one more piece to finish.  The next rehearsal is on Friday.  I am very excited because my good friend and very talented vocalist Maeg O'Donoghue-Williams-Sukarwanto is joining us for this rehearsal.  I wrote her a piece based off of an Indonesian poem she recited for me. 

I realize that my blogs up until now may be coming across kind of posicore.  Posicore is a word friends and I have made up to describe people who are overly positive, in a not-very-connected-to-the-real-world kind of way.  Beyond the excitement and exhilaration, there have been some frustrations.  I have spent a lot of time wondering why it is that most people do not care if new works of music are being created at all.  How many people actually go out to hear music that is adventurous or pushing boundaries?  I would say its an extremely small fraction of the population.  In so many ways music has no right to be a business, it's more spiritual than that.  Because it is so commercialized, the people that are presenting music or people on the radio try to guess what people will like and play to the lowest common denominator.  Of course there is great music being made that is doing well, but it is incredibly hard right now to push through to the masses if your music is hard to describe or makes an audience think.
It is also interesting that even amongst those of us who are trying to get more avant-garde music to the people, we can't even support each other.  I received my copy of the Earshot Jazz magazine (Seattle's jazz publication) this month, only to find out that they did not do any coverage of the event at all.  And this was not for a lack of trying.

I have been working very closely with good friend and fabulous clarinetist/publicist Beth Fleenor to get the word out on the shows.  She is why I am doing this blog and she built the website.  Her company, The Frank Agency, has been doing the publicity.  It has been a lot of fun to brainstorm with her and work on all of this.  Even though I wish music was less connected to business, it is still my profession.  I do also enjoy the business details (publicity, booking, grantwriting) and think it is important.  Right now there is no way around tending to these details if you are serious about trying to make your own music.       
I do spend a lot of time worrying and working to try to get the word out about the shows.  I will continue to do so.  I really want as many people there as possible.    But ultimately I have to take my strength from writing the music and playing it with the band.  Otherwise, all of the other stuff could truly discourage me.

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