Being a citizen of a technological age we currently live in, the possibilities of expansion in the performing arts are endless. Now, music can be shared with everyone, not just those privileged individuals, and all music can be shared not just “high art”.
Although the Willimantic orchestra is generally described as a classical chamber orchestra, the possibility of hip, new music is always available. This coming concert we will be performing works from Andrew Lloyd Weber’s “Phantom of the Opera”, Rogers and Hammerstein, Georges Bizet’s “Carmen”, and Leonard Bernstein’s “West Side Story”. Although we are a classical orchestra, we are going to show our patrons how classical music is not just Bach and Beethoven.
As numbers in community performing groups are declining, it is forcing the number OF community performing groups to decline. And yet, somehow these “cookie cutter” pop sensations are making a breakthrough. None of which have substance to their music, nor do they even write it themselves. They have a team of “writers” in a studio who push buttons, layer some preexisting drum and beat tracks and, boom! Call it a song.
It reminds me of the scene in “The Goonies”, where they have to play the bone organ, and the girl performing says she does not know if the note she has to play is a B flat or an A sharp. It is a very negligible instance of ignorance in the movie but one that irritates me, nonetheless.
If only we could go back to when artistic music was in a revival. “This reversal of the long-standing opposition to public support of the arts was triggered by a combination of factors, including a desire to demonstrate to the world the value of US culture” (pg 13).
If we utilized the new methods of funding, such as leveraged investments, establishing new regional institutions to spread past New York and other metropolitan areas and to establish more conservatories and visual arts schools, as the book outlines on page 13.
I know that in our area there is a magnet school on main street Willimantic, and a magnet school on University of Hartford: Hartt School of Music’s campus. But aside from those two I couldn’t tell you were there may be more. I have a friend who attends Boston Conservatory, but it is a very small school of approximately 700 students.
When I was going through my primary education, I flip flopped a lot about whether or not to go to a real performing arts school, like Julliard or Berkley, but the audition process scared the bejibbers out of me. I ended up applying here at eastern as a mathematics major, only to change from that to my real passion of music, halfway through my third year. Although I did not have to audition, I know that I will have to for graduate studies, and I am not sure whether I can personally handle that or not.
I can say that the people I have met along the way have changed my life more than any of them will ever know. As a Math major, you generally interact with the same type of people. Very cut and dry personalities. But musicians come from all walks of life, are interested in everything under the sun. I have met people who build their own electronic instruments, a man from Uganda, vocalists, guitarists. People can even come in from nothing and take an introductory course and fall in love.
The wonders of music are endless. Music is its own language, and that language is universal. Not all noise is music, but some see it that. Music is organized noise. And I absolutely love this definition of music. I hope to be someone who can carry on musical educations of children all over. To spread music is to spread joy.
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