This is a past event.
Wed, Dec 2, 2020 8pm
Virtual Event
Our weekly Faculty Artist Series presents our Faculty Scholars in lectures on various topics. This presentation has been prerecorded, and may be viewed starting at 8 p.m.
https://youtu.be/PVG6VzodGtQ
PROGRAM
Ryan Ebright, musicology – Title & Abstract:
Incubation and Integration: The American Music Theater Festival and Anthony Davis’s X
Over the course of its nineteen-year existence, the Philadelphia-based American Music Theater Festival (AMTF) garnered a national reputation for fostering and presenting innovative, often experimental, works that blurred the lines between opera, theater, and musical theater. Its location was key to its success: far enough from New York City to cultivate a spirit of creative independence, but close enough to take advantage of the larger city’s talent pool. This geographic and institutional balancing act was part of AMTF from its inception in 1983, when the festival’s co-founders Marjorie Samoff and Eric Salzman threw their support behind Anthony Davis’s nascent opera X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X, which went on to receive its official premiere at New York City Opera (NYCO) in 1986.
This paper uses AMTF and the development history of X to examine the role of festivals and institutional networks in the creation of new American operas, as well as the inter-institutional politics, mechanisms, and aesthetics of contemporary opera production. Over the course of its four-year gestation, X (or portions thereof) was developed through The Kitchen, Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), NYCO, Springfield Symphony, and AMTF. The heterogeneity of these institutions perhaps is best illustrated by the fact that when X came to NYCO, Davis and the opera’s creative team became the first artists to—in effect—racially integrate NYCO’s nearly all-white orchestra by requiring the inclusion of Davis’s jazz ensemble, Episteme.
Drawing on new interviews with Davis, Samoff, and others, as well as archival materials held at BAM, the New York Public Library, and Davis’s personal files, I argue that AMTF functioned as an artistic incubator whose dedication to aesthetic experimentation was matched by an equally strong commitment to political progressivism. This latter, unstated element of AMTF’s mission resulted in a short-term transfer of institutional values, one with significant economic ramifications for NYCO. Ultimately, I build on Naomi André’s work on black opera and William Robin’s studies of new music institutions to reveal and critique the racial topography of American opera in the 1980s and its legacy today.
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Justin Johnston, music industry -- Title & Abstract:
The Flowers That We’d Grown Together: Taylor Swift, Scott Borchetta and Contemporary Issues in Music Copyright Law
In November 2019, the American Music Awards presented Taylor Swift with the prestigious “Artist of the Decade” award. Behind the veneer of a glossy award show, Taylor Swift found herself embroiled in a copyright dispute with her long-time business rival, Scooter Braun. In the months preceding the event, an intellectual property case grew into a larger discussion about artists’ rights, the challenges women face in the music industry, the diminishing power of record labels and the rising influence of social media marketing.
In this presentation, I will untangle the underlying copyright issues including the songwriters’ and record labels’ rights. When placed in a broader historical context, one finds that record labels have traditionally maintained a significant legal advantage. However, the expanded influence of social media paired with the democratization of access through digital streaming create a more level playing field for artists of every caliber.
