Downbeat.
tap... tap tap... this thing on?
Ah. Excellent. Always difficult to know just how to start these things, but let's go with this: welcome, one and all, to the first official Minnesota Orchestra blog! Over the coming weeks, months, and (hopefully) years, conductor Sarah Hatsuko Hicks and I will be using this space to take you behind the scenes here at Orchestra Hall, and introduce you not only to the music that we love, but to the truly fascinating cast of characters that populates the Minnesota Orchestra. As you can see from the menu above, we'll also be adding podcasts in due course (read: as soon as we finish reading Podcasting for Dummies and staring blankly at the opening screen of our editing software), fielding questions about music and the music business, and generally doing whatever we can to give you a fresh look at an art form that's frequently accused of being hidebound, elitist, and out of touch with anyone born after 1934.
(Feel free to insert your own bitter joke here regarding an orchestra thinking itself cutting edge for launching blogs and podcasts 5 or so years after everyone else in the Western hemisphere did the same thing. Trust me, we've heard them.)
As you've probably noticed, this blog and the rest of the Inside The Classics site are loosely tied to a new series of Minnesota Orchestra concerts launching this November with Sarah on the podium and me on the microphone. Each show will see us presenting one complete, uninterrupted piece of music after intermission. Before intermission, we'll do our best to take you into our backstage world, showing you what goes into an orchestral performance as well as into the composition of the featured work. That sounds awfully dry, but trust me, it won't be. Sarah and I both abhor the conceits of the stereotypical orchestra concert, and we'll be doing our best to knock as many of them down as we can.
Still, what I think orchestras (and the music business as a whole) need most at the moment is not more shameless self-promotion, but an honest embrace of the world that we tend to assume falls outside our target demographic, so I want to be clear that this blog was not created as a marketing device to lure you to our concerts. Even if you never set foot in Orchestra Hall - even if you don't live anywhere near Minneapolis and the last concert you went to was in a cramped bar packed full of shrieking college students and wailing guitars - we hope that we can provide something you'll find worth reading on a regular basis. Stuffy reputations aside, the world of a professional orchestra is a deeply fascinating one, filled with a bizarre combination of big talent, bigger egos, and incredible music. We intend to take you there, and if possible, leave you inside forever.
Ah. Excellent. Always difficult to know just how to start these things, but let's go with this: welcome, one and all, to the first official Minnesota Orchestra blog! Over the coming weeks, months, and (hopefully) years, conductor Sarah Hatsuko Hicks and I will be using this space to take you behind the scenes here at Orchestra Hall, and introduce you not only to the music that we love, but to the truly fascinating cast of characters that populates the Minnesota Orchestra. As you can see from the menu above, we'll also be adding podcasts in due course (read: as soon as we finish reading Podcasting for Dummies and staring blankly at the opening screen of our editing software), fielding questions about music and the music business, and generally doing whatever we can to give you a fresh look at an art form that's frequently accused of being hidebound, elitist, and out of touch with anyone born after 1934.
(Feel free to insert your own bitter joke here regarding an orchestra thinking itself cutting edge for launching blogs and podcasts 5 or so years after everyone else in the Western hemisphere did the same thing. Trust me, we've heard them.)
As you've probably noticed, this blog and the rest of the Inside The Classics site are loosely tied to a new series of Minnesota Orchestra concerts launching this November with Sarah on the podium and me on the microphone. Each show will see us presenting one complete, uninterrupted piece of music after intermission. Before intermission, we'll do our best to take you into our backstage world, showing you what goes into an orchestral performance as well as into the composition of the featured work. That sounds awfully dry, but trust me, it won't be. Sarah and I both abhor the conceits of the stereotypical orchestra concert, and we'll be doing our best to knock as many of them down as we can.
Still, what I think orchestras (and the music business as a whole) need most at the moment is not more shameless self-promotion, but an honest embrace of the world that we tend to assume falls outside our target demographic, so I want to be clear that this blog was not created as a marketing device to lure you to our concerts. Even if you never set foot in Orchestra Hall - even if you don't live anywhere near Minneapolis and the last concert you went to was in a cramped bar packed full of shrieking college students and wailing guitars - we hope that we can provide something you'll find worth reading on a regular basis. Stuffy reputations aside, the world of a professional orchestra is a deeply fascinating one, filled with a bizarre combination of big talent, bigger egos, and incredible music. We intend to take you there, and if possible, leave you inside forever.
posted by Sam at
2:58 PM
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