"Nightlife" Colombia

http://colombiareports.com/events-nightlife.html

Wikileaks

http://www.semana.com/multimedia-nacion/colombia-estados-unidos-vecinos/3903.aspx

Quotes I have received

Maestro Chris: I think there are some sound positions here. What do you think? Let me know.

Quotes:

"Instead of over-specialization and the exclusive pursuit of perfection dictated by the demands of the recording industry, let us instead strive for excellence, a broader set of skills for our musicians, and a new responsibility by our musicians to the community...
Let’s release our musicians’ creative potential in a directed and synergistic way for a whole community. Musicians are brilliant and wonderful people and can do anything; we need to trust their judgment and direction and creativity... "

The new model would not be based on confrontation and dysfunction. It would be about a shared vision, ownership, and musician empowerment...

"Orchestras could then focus upon community interaction with an educational bias. Musicians would have multiple functions and responsibilities, many of which would be self-managed and created in the community..."

"They would work as individuals but also as leaders in ensembles, and would come together in the larger ensemble of the full orchestra..."

I find the quotes you sent me full of double speak.  For example, "Musicians are brilliant and wonderful people and can do anything".  It is true I can do plumbing if I have to but it ruins my hands for performing.  While a musician is often involved in teaching, the article glorifies the multi-tasking idea.  To me they are separate things/issues. Performing is a full time job.  I can not stress this fact enough.  Performing involves concerts and rehearsal and lots of practice.  But perhaps I digress. First of all, Bogotá is not the States.  I don't see the problem as the same despite Uribe's push to gringoize the social system and particularly the way in which we think of money and the use of it.  For us, the OSNC and Colombia, the argument you forward is putting the cart before the horse in my opinion.  It would suggest that there is no audience for classical music in Colombia and no support.  However, if you look at concerts even in pueblos it is easy to find enthusiastic people who will fill the church if they know there is a concert.  Just look at the concert recently at Gaitan:  packed house of people paying as much as $300.000 for a ticket. What we need is a professional orchestra first, before you think about diversity.  We DO NOT HAVE A PROFESSIONAL ORCHESTRA. Fundraising, promotion, consistency is what we need first.  That and a full compliment of musicians in the orchestra!  Extranumerarios are not an orchestra. We need serious funding.  What we have now is amature.  One of the tragic aspects of the quote and one the main thrusts behind it is the theme of teaching "the young talent".  Young talent to do what?  There are no jobs for the young talent.  There is a lot of money in Colombia.  Just look at the bribes those guys got for transmilenio. Double our budget in corruption for just one of them!  Look at all those people who showed up for the Gaitan concert.  The money is there but we need a good product, which we still do not have, then we need to sell the product.  This takes a lot of fundraising and convincing over a long period of time.  There needs to be a solid system in place and long term goals with a way to sustain it...in this case it is very much a political issue.  Minds at the very top need to be changed.

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I find it remarkable that so many want to throw in the towel on orchestras. The musicians role is to make great music. That doesn’t leave time for a whole lot of ambassadorship. That said, most orchestras have been doing community and educational work for decades. If they had stopped, then shame on them. The problem lies entirely with management, plain and simple. The musicians simply want respect and decent earnings. The management seems to want to keep it to themselves, to over-control everything, and the blame most likely falls in the weird training they must receive as “arts administrators.” Remember when one man and a small staff ran a whole orchestra? It can be done. And that a young musician’s training is being warped from being a superb musician to being a jack-of-all-hats, is most alarming.

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One only has to look back to their “A” and “B” scenarios in the initial negotiotions to see that incorporating closer ties to the community was no admirable vision, but rather a pressure tactic. How typical of poor managers to ignore the views of those in the field, dictating what must be done to solve the industry’s problems to the out-of-touch players. The similarity to haughty academics is not surprising, but remains tiresome.

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Rather than blaming the players for this sad state of affairs, those who love their symphony orchestras should applaud the musicians of the DSO for refusing to be guinea pigs for their management’s short-sighted, punitive “vision”. No one is saying that community involvement isn’t necessary, but to look at the DSO management’s plan as some sort of beacon for positive change is naive. 

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Should musicians perform in schools? Absolutely. Should this be a substitute for quality general and instrumental music education programs in schools? Absolutely not. We must be careful that in their reinvention, orchestras do not absolve the public school education system of its responsibility to provide substantive arts education from K-12. Exposure to the arts is critical to a ‘complete’ education, and school administrations are derelict in their responsibilities if they let programs whither because of a perceived shift in public priorities.

Over the past two decades, as music programs whithered and dissappeared, orchestras and orchestral musicians were passive bystanders; we realize now to our peril. No amount of ‘community outreach’ is going to quickly make up for this gap in education.

Maestro Abreu has been steadfast in his assertion that the success of Sistema is that it is a social not a music program. It may be time to sell this idea to our educators.

Dear Mr. President

Dear Mr. President,

I have been very pleased with your new and fresh view to government.  However, I am dismayed by your treatment of the Arts.  The Arts define humanity and at the moment we are very poor indeed in this area.  The Arts are appreciated by all walks of society both rich and impoverished.  I have seen many concerts full of people of very humble means, I have seen their faces and their happiness listening to so called "classical" music.  YOUR National Orchestra is YOUR ambassador of music that represents COLOMBIA.  At the moment we are like beggars! If it is worth doing, which it is, it is worth doing well!!  So many, SO MANY young Colombians are looking toward the National Orchestra for leadership in the Arts, in "classical" Music.  Why?  Because it provides hope, discipline, the "mystic" quality of life.  Yet, the orchestra is treated like an economic burden!??  This is incorrect.  Mr. President, how much I would like to enjoy a tinto with you to discuss this hidden but important subject with you.  For too many years, the treatment has been shortsighted, short term.  It is time to look at the big picture, to see the Arts and the orchestra as the AMBASSADOR to the world that it can be and should be, and for it's leadership role for the young talent, those willing to sacrifice and excel in their desire.

Five minutes Mr. President.  That is all I need to convince you to think big, to think First World and not Third World.  Our neighbors to the north have many many orchestras.  We in Colombia Can have just four or five great orchestras and be the pride of the Americas and most importantly, the pride of Colombia!

Sincerely,

Chris Jepperson

ClariBogotá 2010

ClariBogotá 2010

ClariBogotá has come and gone:  The first large scale clarinet gathering in Bogotá.  By all accounts it has been a great success with scores of clarinetists in attendance and performance and with teachers and performers of the highest stature.  The festival and competition was apparently organized around the arrival of Wenzel Fuchs who was invited to perform with the Orquesta Filarmónica de Bogotá.  Colombia’s own Benito Mesa was here along with Hans Dietrich Klaus who were both on the roster of performers and “talleristas”.  Congratulations have to go out to the organizers who put together such a complicated event in such a short period of time and with such little resources.

The guest artists displayed a wide range of styles and temperament, from the understated Hans Klaus to the hyper and extrovert Benito Mesa.  I appreciated Hans Klaus most in his masterclasses which showed patience, attention to detail and his years of experience which would show up often in very subtle ways.

Benito mentioned the importance of being humble and always looking to improve and Wenzel talked about the comradery he feels between teachers here in Bogotá and how pleased he was to see it.

The contest showed off the many fine students that you can now find in Colombia.  As is probably typical for a competition, the emphasis appeared to fall to fingers over musical lines and this showed up in the second round of the competition stage of the festival when various competitors performed with technical prowess but were rather cold.

Speed and exaggerated corporal movement was the norm in the performances of Mesa and Fuchs.  Benito used a great deal of vibrato especially in the first movement of the Fantasy Pieces by Schumann.  Fuchs too used some vibrato although less than Benito.  In general, the tempos of Fuchs were on the quicker side.

We should consider the number of clarinetists that were at the festival.  It was a sign of the great success of the festival and at the same time a sobering reminder of the lack of work in Colombia for musicians.  We have to ask where all this young talent will go.  It is a sad trend that free market ideas rule so heavily and so often at the cost of arts which struggle to be profitable.  Colombia appears to be in the grip of this phenomenon precisely when there is so much young talent looking to express itself.  If we can’t go back to a friendlier government then it is time to tap into the patronage of business and private donors.  This is a tough sell in Colombia as there is not much of a donor history but it needs to be changed.