Future of MusicX Detective Work for Joel Hoffman

Steve Reich

Music08, latest edition of the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music's enterprising new music festival MusicX, takes place June 15-22 on the CCM campus.  This year's guest composers are Steve Reich, Jack Body and Frederic Rzewski, who will work with a cadre of invited young composers, CCM faculty and guest artists including the renowned contemporary music ensemble eighth blackbird.

   There will be master classes and free public performances in Werner Recital Hall, Corbett Auditorium and the Great Hall of Tangeman Student Center, where the festival will conclude June 22 with the Cincinnati premiere of Reich's Double Sextet.  Premiered by eighth blackbird at Carnegie Hall in April, Double Sextet was co-commissioned by CCM and a consortium comprising Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Orange County Performing Arts Center in California, the University of Richmond (where eighth blackbird is ensemble-in-residence), the Southbank Festival in London and the City of Liverpool.

    It may be the last hurrah for 12-year-old MusicX, discontinued last fall, effective in 2009, along with virtually all of CCM's summer programs, including AccentX for talented high school musicians (held concurrently with MusicX), the Opera Theater and Festival of Lucca, Italy (founded by the CCM opera department) and instrumental and vocal workshops of all kinds.  Excepted were programs offered through the CCM Preparatory Department and the Great Wall Academy in Beijing, China, which is independently funded.

   Instead of complaining, however, when MusicX fell to the budget ax, founder/artistic director Joel Hoffman took a cue from Dick Tracy:

Joel Hoffman

   “My strategy for the future of the festival is inspired by the way police detectives work  If there’s a crime to be solved, the logical and intelligent way to go about it is by looking at every pathway that looks like it has the potential for being the right one.  You follow each pathway, without favoring one over the other, and in time, one will emerge as the right one.”

   To insure the continuation of MusicX, one of CCM’s windows on the world, Hoffman investigated several possibilities. 

   The first, to keep the festival in Cincinnati, would “almost certainly” mean no festival it in 2009, but with possible resumption in the future, he said. 

   A new administration, led by incoming CCM dean, Douglas Knehans, takes over in September.  Still, "it’s not as if an enormous pile of money is being handed to CCM just because he shows up,” said Hoffman...  “He has to go out and find it, and nobody in that position would make a commitment to continue something that’s been cut, or make any commitment for the future until that person has grown to understand what it means to do it or not to do it.  By the time he (Keeshan) might conclude that it’s a program worth supporting, it would be too late for me to organize it with the kinds of people I bring.”

   The roster of MusicX guest composers since 1996 reads like a who’s who of contemporary music:  John Harbison, John Corigliano, Frederic Rzewski, George Rochberg, Augusta Read Thomas, William Bolcom, Milton Babbitt, George Crumb, Aaron Jay Kernis, Michael Torke, Bright Sheng, Louis Andriessen, Chen Yi, Kaija Saariaho and Michael Nyman, among others.  For a complete list of guest composers and MusicX programs, visit www.ccm.uc.edu/musicx and click “archives.”

   Another possibility is the Hindemith Foundation in Blonay, Switzerland.  “I’ve already been talking with them.  It’s a music institute halfway up a mountain overlooking Lac Leman ( Lake Geneva) and it was actually built for things like this.  I’ve already got a time next summer and a budget, and I’ve been talking to the director.  If we do it there, it would mean that it would not be a CCM program, but a free-standing music festival in Switzerland.  I’ve talked to people I’d like to invite and have lots of positive reactions.  The main problem is that there’s a funding gap right now that I don’t know how to fill.”

   “A third possibility would be to do it in Chicago,” said Hoffman.  The well known contemporary music ensemble eighth blackbird, which has been at the core of Music X for many years, lives there. “Also, there’s no such thing as a new music festival in Chicago, at least at that time of the year.”

   Another possibility would be to transfer the festival to another American university.  “I would love for it to stay here.  On the other hand, the school has made it very clear that it’s not a priority.”

   Hoffman, who heads the composition department at CCM, doesn’t argue with what he calls “a choice” by the CCM administration.  “It’s based on the understanding of what in times of financial difficulty, are the elements of the core of the program.  At a certain point, the person and people in charge are the ones who are responsible for defining what that core is.  If they say the core doesn’t include new music, then it doesn’t, at least at CCM.  I don’t agree with that choice, but I respect it because it’s either this group of programs that gets preserved and others jettisoned, or some other configuration.

   “I just want to say one thing: this is happening at a time when the number of people who applied for this festival from all over the world, was so much more even than last year.  A lot of people know about Cincinnati because of this festival, people who otherwise just wouldn’t.  I'm not going to pretend that it's had an impact on the same level as the Cincinnati Symphony or Opera, but it's a significant component of the cultural life of the city."

   Still, for Hoffman personally, "the real value of the festival is something different.  With the single intention of trying to bring a group of people to Cincinnati, some of whom pay to be here and some of whom get paid to be here, I will have assembled a crowd of about 40 people -- not counting all of the CCM graduate students which makes it around 120 -- who have various kinds of formal and informal interactions.  What does it for me is that so many times in so many different ways, much later I find out that collaborations or relationships have been formed that lead to really good things."

   Hoffman sees it as "setting up a whole bunch of chess players on a board.  I kind of guide the game to some extent but a lot of it has to do with things that are completely un-orchestrated by me, and they lead to wonderful things."

   As for the future of MusicX:  "By the beginning of September, I need to either accept that it's not going to continue, or at least not any time soon, or I need to have made a decision as to where it's going to be and then just work on it that way."

   For information about Music08, including a complete schedule of programs, see www.ccm.uc.edu/musicx