I finally posted the live recording from the concert pictured above, which took place last May 30 at Baloard in Montpellier, France.
This was the third of three shows the Empty Cage Quartet played with French clarinetist Aurelien Besnard and guitarist Patrice Soletti. Each of us contributed original music, and we combined these pieces into extended suites for the live gigs. Both sets from this concert are available as free mp3 downloads at my archive page.
I was teaching my Music Education class last night and the topic was arts in elementary education in the climate of NCLB, specifically focusing on this TED Talk by Sir Ken Robinson (embedded above), and this New York Times article from a couple of years back. We were talking about the systematic dismantling of arts education in public schools since the late 1960s, the political figures who have been primarily responsible for it, and what a tragedy it is that we have now raised several generations of students that have been progressively more deprived of the arts as a creative and expressive outlet. To make things worse, they are simultaneously being fed on some of the most image-driven (rather than content-driven) pop culture in modern history.
Suddenly (inevitably?), the conversation drifted a bit toward conspiracy theory, and the fact that music, poetry, and art were all central to the counterculture and protest movements of the 1960s. Is it any coincidence that our cultural, economic, and educational systems have been gradually and dramatically transformed over the ensuing decades? Instead of a unified, expressive, and conscience-driven conception of the arts, youth today are generally pushed to think of music, image, and language as little more than a narcissistic and ultimately selfish display of hipness and an affirmation of personal status. We no longer celebrate or encourage our great intellectuals, poets, musicians, philanthropists - instead we fetishize and commodify empty spectacle and bling...
Convenient, but for whom? Is it any wonder that during times of political and ideological oppression, the production of artists and musicians is stunted by the educational institutions that are shaped and regulated by those in power?
...is a trumpet player, composer, and improviser whose recordings are available on the Clean Feed, pfMENTUM, Nine Winds and Evander Music labels. He has lectured on both music and visual art, and currently teaches courses in jazz and American popular music at Bakersfield College.
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