So there was a recent premiere of a work by Jennifer Higdon by percussionist Colin Currie that got great reviews. Why is this important - because orchestras are still scared to program a percussion artist to solo with their groups. Think about it: how many concerts have you been to that featured a percussionist? The problem is still of course repertoire. Hey, we've only been doing solo stuff since the 20th century but we are trying to catch up as fast as we can. Of course part of our rep. problem also is the percussion as noise or novelty concept. But, there are some pieces out there that are gorgeous to listen to. For example, Jacob Druckman's "Reflections on the Nature of Water" is one of the most beautiful pieces I have ever heard. Notice I didn't say PERCUSSION piece. As long as we can keep getting composers like Scwhatner, Higdon, Chen Yi, Torke etc. to write for us we will get there.

Now, on a related note I recently read a great interview with the So Percussion Group in our journal (Percussive Notes). I really liked is that this group is very actively commissioning new works. But the most refreshing thing to me was when they started talking about concert programming. They said that when they started out they tried to play to the audience and pick pieces that were lighter and more audience friendly. What they discovered is that idea didn't sell too well. Why? because they as performers weren't into that music! When they started playing the works they wanted to play (and thought were worth performing) the audience actually had a more positive reaction because they could feel the passion of the performers for what they were doing. Granted, there was more explanation invloved to help the audience understand what they were hearing but it worked.

I have also seen the same thing here at recent performances my school's ensemble has done. I made the decision to start programming only pieces that I really felt strongly about us doing because I think that care will come across to the audience. So this fall we did the most "avant garde" work we have ever done here. The piece included large expanses of silence interrupted by brief snippets and colosr of sound. It was wonderful to listen to. And you know what: the audience mostly got it (at least as much as they did when were programming TO them).

The moral of this story: we don't have to program down to the audiences expectation because then we as artists lower ours. If we are passionate about what we are playing, and the audience can sense that, maybe they will come along for the ride.

Here is the url for the interview if interested:
http://www.pas.org/research/archive/Dec05/articles/0512.10-15.pdf