Hi everyone. I am getting a bit personal here because times are changing and music journalism is changing too. I have an exciting announcement:
I'm about to launch a new website!
I am in the process of designing a new website to meet the changing needs of arts journalism in Western Australia. I'd appreciate your thoughts on what this might look like. This is your chance to shape the face of music journalism in Perth!
The West Australian newspaper has taken over the Sunday Times, foreshadowing the changes in media ownership laws which were passed in the Senate just last week allowing greater monopoly in the Australian media industry.
The arts pages in the West Australian have covered far less of the WA arts scene and often used non-specialist writers. Last month OperaBox's entire opera season of Manon passed without a review from any of the local press.
Other media organisations have stepped up their coverage of WA in small ways: the Australian Book Review and more notably Limelight magazine have been publishing more reviews from Perth.
The online Perth Arts Live has folded and a new arts site SeeSaw Magazine has launched.
The national Senate has launched an inquiry into the Future of Public Interest Journalism. A hearing was held in May and findings will be passed down on 7th December.
I've had the opportunity to rethink the way I contribute to the arts scene. Perth has a thriving arts scene and I am more convinced than ever that I want to be part of the debate, to be known as someone who champions the WA arts scene. I've enjoyed new opportunities as a public speaker as well as expanding my writing to The Guardian, Limelight, ABR and The Australian newspaper.
Despite this I've lost a lot of income and done more work for free than I would've liked. And I've been saddened to watch the media coverage of the arts continue to shrink. Which has led me to this exciting period of developing a new website. This is where I want to hear from you:
What do you look for in conversations about the arts?
What would you be interested in hearing about?
What format works for you: podcast, listicle, reviews, interviews?
One of the benefits of the huge media shakeup is there are now so many different ways to do journalism. What do you think are the best ways to do music journalism? The best ways to document, critique and champion classical music and its practitioners?
Please post comments below or contact me at rosalindappleby(at)gmail.com
Your suggestions will be part of the new version of Noted, coming very soon!
Despite the chilly Canberra weather the atmosphere this past week at the Women in the Creative Arts conference has been incredibly warm. The academic papers, panels, performances and the rigorous discussions were all under-girded with encouragement and cheers of support.
WICA composers, performers, academics. Photo William Hall
I was able to witness the impact Women of Note has had in the landscape, something I hadn't realised from Perth. I was told countless stories about how my book had influenced people in their commissioning, their perfoming, and their careers.
Photo William Hall
I was overwhelmed by how much people felt supported and affirmed by my work. And it was so exciting to see the next generation of composers learning from the work of their forebears:
"....I confess to my shame I hadn't heard of Margaret Sutherland before now..."..
".... a couple of years ago I read your book and decided I wanted to meet Helen Gifford, to see her, to commission her..."
"...the bridge building you are doing for the music industry is so important..."
Liza Lim, Natalie Williams, Mathew Dewey (ABC), Naomi Johnson (ABC), Lisa Cheney
There are are significant changes afoot around the visibility and celebration of our women composers and I am so excited to be part of it. 47 papers, 4 recitals, 5 keynotes and 3 panels later I think some of the changes are going to stick this time around. In the immediate future:
* Cat Hope has offered to host the conference next year at Monash.
* Vanessa Tomlinson will be rollling out her research from Queensland University to include every tertiary institution documenting the works that are being performed in graduation recitals.
* Joanna Drimatis is collating a database of graded works for performance by schools and community groups.
Add that to the ongoing work from the Hildegard Commissioning Project, the findings from the APRA/AMCOS commissioned report on results from RMIT research, the Skipping a Beat report, the Australian Women Screen Composers report, and there is a sense of growing awareness and action toward increasing visibility for women composers.
I'll post my keynote paper soon to add to the discussion.
With the magnificent composer Judith Clingan
I have the satisfied feeling that my book has done what it was meant to do.I sold out of copies of Women of Note at the conference. Which means my print run with Fremantle Press is finished and it is time for an eBook.
So now it is time to head back home to my family, filled with a warm glow, and work out where to from here.
Huge thanks to Natalie Williams and ANU for hosting this incredible event.
My Opinion piece for The Guardian was published today.
I
am really pleased to be able to document nationally the exciting energy in the
industry at the moment around women composers. The article is already
generating a storm of comments. Got to love a controversial topic!
Australia's
female composers are having a moment. We need to harness that energy.
“Everything
I’ve ever wanted to do would’ve been easier had I been a boy. But never mind, I
never paid much attention to it, I just marched in and there I was.”
These
fighting words come from Peggy
Glanville-Hicks (1912-1990), arguably the most famous female composer
in her time and one of the first Australian women to march into the
male-dominated world of composition.
Back
then, the costs were high: Glanville-Hicks’s colleague Margaret Sutherland was
married to a psychiatrist who thought a woman wanting to compose music was a
sign of mental illness, while many women had to lie about their gender in order
to be published. The positions on the boards and in the institutions were held
by men who also received the majority of the commissions.
Today
women make up 26% of Australian composers, sound artists and improvising
performers. It’s not close to gender parity but the figures do stack up well
internationally – the only country to fare better is Estonia with 30%. Women
make up about 20% of American and Polish composers but, for most countries, the
average is a woeful 15%.
Women
have also made a significant contribution to Australia’s music history, often
punching above their male contemporaries. Sutherland almost single-handedly
pioneered modernism in Australia music and, in 1938, Glanville-Hicks was the
first person to represent Australia at the International Society of
Contemporary Music. Anne Boyd smashed through the glass ceiling to become the
first woman and first Australian to be appointed professor of music at the
University of Sydney in 1991. Today Liza Lim, Mary Finsterer and Elena
Kats-Chernin are likely to rank higher internationally than their male
contemporaries.
Sadly,
however, the majority of women still struggle with visibility. According to
musicologist Sally Macarthur, women’s music represented only 11% of the works
performed at new music concerts in 2013. In the concert halls where the more
conservative orchestras reside, it is far rarer to hear a work by a female
composer – dead or alive.
But
a new surge of energy is bringing female composers into the spotlight. In
August, hundreds of women, including myself, will gather at the Women in the
Creative Arts conference in Canberra as part of a wave of industry activism –
hopefully, they say, for the last time.
On Monday night I had the privilege of presenting the pre-concert talk at the launch of Musica Viva's national Beilman & Tyson tour. I've often thought it would be a lot of fun to give a pre-concert talk, and I was right!
Selling books at Perth Concert Hall
I enjoyed preparing by reading scores and listening to violin sonatas by Mozart, Janacek, Saint Saens and Jane Stanley, and I enjoyed sharing my discoveries with the audience. The sonatas essentially chartered the development of the violin sonata genre from the 18th century to present day. They were well-crafted in their different ways. Each was built around a motif or pool of notes that generated the structure of the entire work. My goal was to highlight those themes so the audience could recognise them in performance. It makes such a huge difference to the listening experience if the audience feels they are following the musical conversation.
One of the pieces on the program was by Australian composer Jane Stanley, so I was also invited to sell copies of Women of Note at interval. What a fabulous opportunity! It's nights like these where I really love my job!
It is always hard to know whether these public speaking gigs have been a success or not, but I received overwhelmingly enthusiastic responses from the audience, including from a self-described 'concert virgin' who said I was his life-saver and had been very interesting. I was also told I was difficult to hear, a serious issue given most in the audience were elderly and probably struggling with hearing complications. I will have to project my voice more in the future!
My greatest challenge was to present the music of Jane Stanley in a way that was going to help open the ears of the audience to a musical language they were less familiar with. Stanley's music is unique and incredibly beautiful. Here is an excerpt of what I shared:
JANE STANLEY b Sydney 1976 Cerulean Orbits
Stanley follows a tradition of female Australian composers who have made significant
contributions to Australian music. 25% of Australian composers are women, more
than almost any other western country. Women began being recognised as
composers at the beginning of the 20th century. Margaret Sutherland was the mother of
women composers in Australia and her impact was huge – she almost
single-handedly pioneered Australian new music in the first half of the
century. She was one of the first
composers to develop a uniquely
Australian musical voice. She had a hard life, married to a psychiatrist
who thought a woman wanting to compose music was a sign of mental illness! She
once said
“My musical life has been a frustration of half promises, then bad
performances, followed by no more performances. The world at large thinks a
woman can’t be creative. A woman can contribute in a special way. I don’t think
that women want to write the same thing as men, but their contribution is no
less important.”
I
share that with you as an example of the difficulties women have had and in some
cases are still having trying to find equal footing in the male dominated world
of composition. Research done in the last few years shows there are still
visibility issues for women composers who are under represented in
commissioning, concert programs, radio programs and as staff in music education
faculties. Which is why the Hildegard project and its commissioning of women
composers is so important. Because there
are SO MANY fabulous women composers out there, particularly in Australia,
where as I mentioned 25% of our composers are women, far more than for example
the UK and Finland who clock in at 13% and the US which has 20%. It really is our best kept secret and I am
delighted to see Musica Viva celebrating this with the Hildegard commissioning project.
Jane
fits into what I would call the emerging 4th generation of Australian
women composers. She was born in the 70’s when the definition of classical
music had broadened considerably since the days of Sutherland. Jane is a fairly traditional composer
in that she writes for traditional instruments as distinct from electronics or
noise or performance installations. Jane has studied her craft very deeply - studied
with the greats of Australian composers: Peter Sculthorpe, Ross Edwards and Bernard Rands in the US.She has participated at the Wellesley
Composers Conference, Tanglewood and Aspen Music Festival. She also completed
a PhD in composition at University of Sydney under Ann Boyd, from whom she
learned an appreciation for space and silence.
Stanley is now
Lecturer in music at University of Glasgow where the Scots have embraced her
and aren’t letting go – she has been there 10 years. Jane tells me she is very
sad she is unable to return to Australia for the premiere of this work. The
reason is because has a two month old baby who is still a little small for flying.
As
a composer she has established very distinctive voice. In
most of her works there is an absence of recognisable time signature or pulse.
Which gives a floating, drifting, stasis. It has a hazy weightlessness. It is beautiful and otherworldly but also sometimes
wild.
The composer
indicates in the program notes of Cerulean Orbits that the two
instruments are orbiting around each other. Their music is drawn from the same
pool of notes and the composer allows them sometimes to blend, sometimes to
antagonise each other.
You
will notice the piano is emancipated from being a purely accompaniment
instrument; both instruments are complete equals. In fact the piano often treated like
violin – as a single line shared between the two hands rather than block
chords.
Analysis:
The music is very
carefully crafted – it is not just random notes! Piano
begins with a sextuplet of semiquavers which is the thematic core of the work. (Play sample on piano). This
is the pool of notes getting introduced that will be the core of the piece. Then the violin
enters and hovers on B for 6 bars. In the score the piano part is marked ‘smeared’ and the violin par ‘featherlike’. Jane’s textural style is coming through - it is very tactile; the composer wants us to experience this like it is
coming into contact with our skin! There are huge variation of dynamics and articulation
the composer has written into the score giving it an instant intensity even
though it is flowing and gentle.
The piano
part is typical Stanley - scattered notes over a sustained pedal, sounding like droplets.
Notes are grouped in 3's, 5's, 6's, spread across the beat so the effect is
unpredictable, ungrounded, pulseless, a bit of a nod to Luciano Berio’s piano
writing.
The middle
section is where it gets wild, the score is marked "pulsating... hammered... propulsive... fff " It is excited and busy, the sort of music that
causes audiences to say “It’s not music,
its too noisy.” Did you know Mozart’s
music was criticised for the same thing? Archduke Ferdinand criticised one of
Mozart’s pieces for having "too many notes”! Mozart’s ideas exploded beyond the
perimeters of what was usual or predictable and people found it hard to digest.
It sounds so elegant and simple to us now. So don’t be put off by the ‘noise’,
instead recognise it as fresh thinking that our ears aren’t yet accustomed to.
The
sense of calm returns at the end of Cerulean Orbits, and the sextuplet from the opening
is heard again. This time the piano gets the repeated B’s. it is a floating, spacious ending.
The challenge
with contemporary music like this is how to make the ideas and phrases clear
even when the usual signposts that our ears are used to from traditional music
aren’t there?
Two
Tips:
Listen
to the texture. Some of Jane’s music
is sparse so you get to listen to the beauty and colour of each note as it
passes. There are also great washes of sound and the contrast between the
textures is like listening to a trickling stream compared to the crashing waves
of the ocean.
Watch
the performers - they help with
this: it is their job to bring out the different colours in each phrase, to make
each note extremely beautiful. Their body language will hopefully cue the mood
changes, to draw us in so we are enthralled.
Western Australia's new media monster has arrived!
Seven West Media's proposal to purchase The Sunday Times and perthnow.com.au has been given the green light by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.
The statement released today said "Following an extensive review, the ACCC has reached the view that the proposed acquisition is, on balance, not likely to substantially lessen competition for either consumers or advertisers."
The Commission justified its decision saying "many consumers in WA are now getting their news online or elsewhere" and "most (advertisers) acknowledged that print advertising was of declining importance". The findings also mentioned Fairfax's WAtoday.com.au and the ABC's dedicated online website as alternative online news sites.
I guess it is now a case of wait and see what shape the new enterprise will take. Will it be a creative, exciting and thought-provoking journalism platform? Or will it just be The West Australian published seven days a week?
Forgive the weighty title but a series of events recently have left me contemplating the future of the industry I work in.
Last month The West Australian lost forty staff or the equivalent of one quarter of its work force. The job losses were mostly redundancies taken by staff including a senior editor who expressed disillusionment with journalism's clickbait-generated focus on kittens, puppies and Kim Kardashian's behind.
It's sad to see the paper losing such quality staff. But perhaps those taking redundancies are the lucky ones. The resultant reshuffle at the paper has resulted in overworked staff covering multiple roles often in areas they have no interest or knowledge.
It has also spelled the end for freelance contributors. After fifteen years of writing for the paper I was told my contributions were no longer required. In-house staff would now be covering the arts reviews. Almost the entire freelance section for the arts pages has been cut in a huge loss of industry knowledge for the paper.
Seven West Media's proposed acquisition of the Sunday Times is another issue creating uncertainty in the local journalism world. There are concerns about the impact of a media monopoly caused by the amalgamation of the state's two newspapers and Chanel Seven television. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission will hand down its findings on Thursday 15th September. The West has given no indication what it plans to do with the Sunday Times and journalists everywhere are holding their breath.
The situation in WA is a mirror of what has been happening on the east coast and all over the world in the past 5-10 years. The rise of digital news has meant not only less readers for traditional print media but also less advertising revenue. There is now more news content available than there is advertising dollars to support it.
Arts Journalism in Crisis
The losses seem most acute in areas of journalism that require in-depth investigation and specialist knowledge. The arts in particular are taking a hit - very few papers or websites are publishing classical music reviews. It is an international crisis for the arts industry. Whether The West intends to allocate reviews to non-specialists or to cut the arts reviews entirely, it spells an unhealthy future for WA's thriving arts industry.
I believe criticism is an essential part of a healthy arts scene. Reviews don't just provide artists with grabs for their self promotion; a good review will also evaluate and creatively express the experience for the audience, interrogate the concepts being presented and hold accountable organisations who are often receiving substantial government and philanthropic funding to pursue their artform. The contribution of critics should provoke debate, inspire excellence, and above all celebrate the art form. My (rather lofty!) endeavour is that my words will have the same richness, integrity and excellence as the music being performed on the stage.
The Arts pages were one of the few areas in The West's pages that were focusing on local news. Like local sport these events are created by locals, attended by locals and should be covered by the local paper. The WA Symphony Orchestra's artistic manager Evan Kennea predicted the biggest impact on WASO would be felt not by conductor Asher Fisch whose career is already internationally established, but by people like composer-in-residence Lachlan Skipworth whose composition for the 2017 program may not get reviewed. If the local paper doesn't cover it, who will?
Well of course there are the bloggers, some of whom do classical music reviews. There are issues with online writing though. Firstly it requires discernment by the reader because not every blogger is the expert they appear. Secondly, it doesn't pay! Digital revenue has bypassed news sites and gone to Facebook, Google, Seek etc. I don't know any online blogger making an income as a music journalist. It is mostly volunteer work, which makes it difficult to buy food! (Read an interesting post about disillusionment with blogging by UK critic Jessica Duchen here.)
Photo by Tom van Hoogstraten
What will the future be?
At a Future of Journalism panel discussion in Fremantle earlier this month there was a lot of shrugging going on. No one really knows what the future will look like. The trends are changing so often and the leading newspapers in the UK and US are madly leaping between online/print/paywalls/free content to try and stay ahead.
What was most clear from the panel is the conversation has changed. News is no longer the property of the traditional media figureheads. Facebook and Google hold the reigns of news distribution and the increase in public interaction around news gathering and sharing means journalists must now participate in a dialogue. Many journalists are morphing into 'content gatherers', 'infotainers', 'aggregators'.
Apparently none of this is new. The arrival of CNN Cable News revolutionised the news 36 years ago. More newspapers died in the 60's when TV arrived than are folding today. The news industry has survived cataclysmic changes before.
There is hope.
Martin Turner, sub editor from Community News pointed out that social media has started to address the (im)balance of power inherent in newsrooms which until now has been dominated by white middle class men.
Joseph Fernandez, associate professor in journalism at Curtin University says there is hope; 'the fourth estate' is not in danger. There is still power in telling a story and giving information. So how do we maintain a (paid) presence for investigative specialist journalism?
I've recently heard two success success stories worth sharing.
Peter Law, head of news at the Sunday Times, painted a surprisingly healthy picture of WA's Sunday paper. The paper is bucking the trend and has in fact increased its readership by 3.5% or in real terms an additional 17 000 readers. Their online website Perth Now is Perth's most popular news site with a viewing increase of 16% this year. Together the Sunday Times and Perth Now have 1.5 million readers. Their staff team is small, young, innovative and attracting a younger readership. They are also breaking significant stories that are generating the WA news cycle.
Peter argued that print carries gravitas and can be a force for change. His paper's focus is on content that is important but also readable. Sunday Times journalists are being creative about delivery and working alongside program designers to make their content attractive.
When Andrew Batt-Rawden discovered in 2013 that Limelight magazine - Australia's national dedicated arts magazine - was on the verge of insolvency he declared 'not on my watch'. He purchased the magazine and under his management and the editorial leadership of Clive Paget the glossy monthly has grown from a debt-ridden shrinking magazine to breaking even. Batt-Rawden has doubled advertising revenue and expanded the magazine's previously eastern-biased coverage of events to a a more national focus. It is now the only national print media to be providing coverage of arts events in Perth.
While the magazine's subscriptions continue to fall, the online website is hugely popular. The magazine is about to launch an Australian Cultural Fund campaign to overhaul its website and broaden its coverage. Batt-Rawden is also investigating nanotransactions as an alternative to a paywall and a philanthropically-inspired 'Friends' patronage system. He is one the few in the arts industry I've spoken to who is thinking innovatively about how to continue and enrich arts journalism in the digital age.
What do you think?
I'm interested in hearing stories about how the changes in WA's media landscape are effecting those in the arts industry and those consuming the news.
Is anyone else missing reviews from their favourite arts critic? Are there people worried about where to send their press release? Who is wondering what gigs to go to or how last night's concert was received?
Perhaps someone has a favourite source of arts news they can share. Or a story of hope?
And I'll do my best to keep you posted about how I go finding a way to do arts journalism in this uncertain world!
