[Dixielandjazz] Too many musicians, not enough gigs

[Steve barbone]

I'm with you Ric. IMO "Live" performances of music in front of regular
folks, is where to solution is. Classical and Jazz genres and musicians and
promoters are much too inbred. Most try and perform live only in front of a
shrinking audience of self appointed experts. Either at Festivals such as we
are familiar with in OKOM, or in Concert Halls.

What results is simply a proof of the law of diminishing returns.

Expanding the audience for either Jazz or Classical is a very simple task.
However, most musicians and band leaders automatically reject it for one
nonsensical reason or another.

Music Educators? IMO many, if not most, are simply trying to protect their
turf and so they too reject any ideas that might imperil their power. For
example, too many of them get a young sax player in hand and insist that
he/she transcribe/play every Bird Solo published as a method of learning
jazz saxophone, improvisation, or jazz in general. Utterly stupid.

Someone asked why there are no stylists today. Simple answer is that the
kids have been TAUGHT to copy and, please excuse my language, that is simply
Bullshit from the teaching musicians. If you teach copying, you get
semi-clones once removed from the original and the music is degraded.

For another general audience concert report, see this one from our concert
at a Township Park last Thursday. They loved it, notwithstanding that  5 out
of the 7 of us in the band were subs. Bear in mind we do not use charts, but
we all speak "Jazz". Audience about 300 people + 50 kids who besieged
Jonathan for his autograph when it was over. (No, you don't get that from a
CD either.)

>"Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2005 13:43:52 -0400
To: "Steve Barbone" <barbonestreet at earthlink.net>
Subject: The Magic of Concerts by Barbone Street Jazz Band.

Steve, just a note to thank you so much for the concert on Thursday night in
Buckingham Township...Everyone enjoyed the music so much - it was a really
great night.  Jonathan was a special added feature that we enjoyed also.
Thank you all very much."

I am still getting raves from people who attended."
>Mary Jane Atkinson

Cheers,
Steve Barbone

"Ric Giorgi" <ricgiorgi at sympatico.ca> wrote

> I quite firmly believe that "coulda, shoulda and woulda - didn't" and
> there's no point crying over spilt milk BUT... there is another way of
> looking at this "too many musicians, not enough jobs" situation.
> 
> As far as the classical music business goes, the funders, granters,
> institutions and managers and yes the musicians also, have created the hole
> they're in and they may well be able to get out of it without radically
> scaling back the music-education faculties product. Goodness knows there
> aren't enough really good music teachers out there. And, as a truly great
> OKOM trumpet player and singer, Dr. Bob Gibbs used to put it to his students
> at Potsdam, 'If you go into performance, your first question after
> graduating is "Where can I borrow the money to get to my first audition? If
> you go into music education, your first question is "What colour would I
> like my new car to be?" All this aside, my point is....
> 
> CDs, streaming internet, radio, DVDs and any other form of recordings of
> music performances ARE NOT MUSIC. They are recordings of music but they're
> not music. Music is something that happens when live performers interpret,
> recreate or create music for live audiences. If there were a way for us to
> get our society to buy into that argument, there wouldn't be enough
> musicians for all the performing opportunities that would be created.
> 
> This is not to denigrate the work of all those who collect, make listenable
> and distribute YKOM. It is invaluable work and the results are a treasure
> for all of us. But the product is not music, it's a "still-life" recording
> of some musicians making music. In many ways it's like the still-life
> painting that is infinitely beautiful and a joy to look at, but that
> still-life is not the flower or fruit or whatever that it represents.
> 
> Would the reaction of the 60 plus kids at the live venue you described the
> other day on the list have been the same if a DJ had plopped a CD of the
> same performance into a CD player? I doubt it. It's important to emphasize
> this point to live audiences. Often, they don't get it for a long time. It
> took me a while to get it when one of my bass teachers, Tom Monahan, kept
> making the point. I have no doubt that some folks on this list will argue
> with my point of view and that's great because as one of your great American
> writers put it once "Where all think alike, no one thinks very much".