The Chicago Chamber Consortium is a network of seven chamber-music groups (Rookwood, CUBE, the Exsultate Trio, the Burgundian Consort, the Chicago Ensemble, the Chicago String Ensemble, and the American Women Composers, Midwest) that would normally be in competition for audiences and financing. Instead they have banded together to save money on their publicity, management, booking, and grant writing. I recently talked with three women from the consortium about some of the chronic problems of chamber groups: Maria Lagios, a voice teacher and soprano in the Exsultate Trio who’s also known for her roles with Chicago Opera Theater and is president of the consortium; Patricia Morehead, an oboist, composer, and member of CUBE and the American Women Composers, Midwest; and Susan Pellowe, an administrator for the consortium but not a musician. I myself have sung roles at Chicago Opera Theater and have sung for years in the Lyric Opera chorus.
BM: Is this a problem of chamber music as opposed to symphonic music or opera?
ML: Chamber musicians will give their time endlessly to get it the way they want it.
PM: Oh, yes. We’re tied back into what the marketplace will buy and sell–lots of concerts for Mozart, who’s been dead 200 years, but no concerts for contemporary composers living and working right here in Chicago. The music establishment in this country is run strictly by the market. It’s not run by artists, it’s not run by composers–and it used to be. We’re talking about keeping an enormous museum of music alive. It is not the music of our time; it is not the music of our culture. It’s just a museum piece.
ML: The other thing is that “popular” music has become so much a part of American life and even European life. American pop music has become so prevalent, and this new-wave or new-age music–it’s placebo music. It’s for an empty mind frame. Maybe it’s because we’re an overstimulated society that people want this kind of music, are attracted to it. They’re so constantly bombarded with things that they seek that as a form of release.
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PM: Well, contemporary music is so eclectic that you really cannot label what is happening, because everything is happening. And it may be that, viewed from the next century, the classical music of this country will be jazz and nothing else. Jazz is now being accepted, is becoming part of the conservatory. Jazz is now called an art form, which is also synonymous with not making a living at it anymore.
PM: You’re right–he knows how to steal from the best. But there are other film composers who have written a score that is totally original–the score for Aliens, for example. There are some electronic composers, some very serious atonal composers in the film industry who have written, in the horror-film genre or the space-odyssey genre, some scores that are first-rate. But the film score is like an opera score; very rarely do you separate the score from the film. You don’t listen to the score separately until you’ve seen the film and can re-create it in your mind’s eye. Opera is somewhat the same thing. You can re-create the opera in your mind because you have that relationship.
