[Coco] OT: Wanna hear?

[Dennis Bathory-Kitsz]

At 08:18 PM 10/4/04 -0700, Jim Cox wrote:
>Drat!  I really like it.  Now this is meant as a 
>compliment,  but that would be great music to play D&D by 
>:D  It sounds like it would be a great film score for a 
>good fantasy film.
>
>I once asked about your music and that email is some where 
>in Golum's cave, so let me ask again, what music of yours 
>is out there.  I've search but not found anything.

A long story.

One of the great disappointments for living composers is the staggering
expense of recording. I have one electronic piece commercially released,
the 63-minute "Detritus of Mating". (It's on the Malted/Media label and can
be found on CDBaby.com). My 4-minute electronic piece "iskajtbrz" is on
"Unlimit," from Japan, but not available in USA. Three very short pieces
(zeyu, quanh, and sweeh) are on "The Frog Peak Collaborations Project," a
2-CD set from Frog Peak Music (especially interesting because it was a
web-wide collaboration done way back in 1996).

That's about it until next year, when Malted/Media releases a 2-CD
collection of my electronic music.

The problem with orchestral music is cost. In the US, it's completely
prohibitive. A 10-minute orchestral piece can cost upwards of $25,000 to
record (mostly union scale issues). Many composers with the cash are
heading for eastern Europe, where excellent recordings can be arranged for
1/5 of that cost -- including the recording session. My radio show co-host
David Gunn had a CD come out on Albany Records. It was chamber music, and
after all expenses of musicians, editing, and production, the cost was
$11,000 for 60 minutes of music. If every copy sells, it loses $5,000.

So labels in the US have given up on classical music, except repeating all
the old stuff over and over where costs are absorbed. The cultural
dedication has evaporated. Despite the fact that for the past 10-15 years
we've entered a new golden age of what I call nonpop, the commercial forces
that run the labels wouldn't invest in it anymore. The steadfast dedication
that CBS, for example, used to have is now gone. The pop releases used to
fund the nonpop ones under the assumption that, at least for most of
recorded history, nonpop was always a patronized form, whether government,
royalty or church -- and represented a kind of research & development area
of the musical arts. But this market says, hey, artists are gonna do their
stuff for free anyway, so why pay for it?

So the new free market theocracy has pretty much destroyed the serious
contemporary arts in the U.S. as badly as the old Soviet system did in the
eastern bloc. Instead, we have replaced culture with cash, and the latest
emigration of artists to Europe, Australia and Asia is a symptom of that
(similar to the emigration of jazz artists to Europe in the 1950s).

Ah, well. Don't get me started. It's pretty soulless these days, so work
such of mine is a labor of love on all sides. The Vermont Symphony tour was
funded by everyone from local foundations and individuals down through
Willy Racine's Jeep dealership. We still have remnants of committed culture
up here.

Dennis