Guided tours at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam

On a visit to Amsterdam recently I had an unexpected free morning so I made the most of my chance to visit the Van Gogh Museum 

As I got to the entrance I found a large group of pupils from a local primary school, not altogether attentive to their teacher’s requests for quiet and to form an orderly line. In fact, it was clear that some of them wouldn’t even have been there, given the choice.

What a delight it was to see the same children, half an hour later, as they were given their guided tour by the museum’s expert educators. Here was one group, open-eyed at the guide’s explanation of painting techniques and brush strokes as they stood in front of the sunflower field painting; there was another group obediently raising their hands to answer questions about the artist’s last works, and here were the children of another group copying the guide as he half covered his eyes to gain insights into yet another masterpiece.

I have written before about the great work at another museum, the CaixaForum Museum in Madrid 
where I was impressed by the wide range of activities on offer. I have also noted in another post how the Netherlands are working hard to fund arts institutions to promote social inclusion in the arts 

For families who take their own children to the Van Gogh Museum there is plenty to do, including a free treasure hunt, a children’s audio tour and workshops for children at the weekend. According to the museum’s brochure, children can even celebrate their birthday party there.

For myself, I was pleasantly surprised to see works by a number of Van Gogh’s friends and colleagues, including Paul Gaugin and Henri Toulouse Lautrec.

So, for full information visit the website, or follow the Van Gogh Museum on Twitter:  @vangoghmuseum

Thanks to the Van Gogh Museum for a great exhibition, and congratulations to their expert educator/guides for bringing the greatness of this painter into the lives of young children. 

Job vacancies in the cultural sector

Q: When is a jobs listing site not a jobs listing site?

A: When it contains so much information that the listing of vacancies represents only a part of the site’s interest.

This is true of two European sites: LabforCulture and FábricaCultural 

LabforCulture describes itself as: The networking platform for information on European arts and culture. Linking you across borders

Among the job vacancies currently listed here are a few:

·         Event Manager / Dancer / Choreographer: Interested in any organisation 
Denmark , Denmark / Danmark

·         EU funding expert in culture: Civil Association CODE 
Belgrade, European Countries outside the EU

·         Actor and clown : Risos e Sorrisos 
Porto , Portugal

·         Short Term Experts (cultural policy): Regional Monitoring and Capacity Building Unit 
Not fixed; Armenia; Belarus; Moldova, Austria / Österreich

LabforCulture serves as a platform for campaigning in favour of support for the arts, it offers a forum for young researchers and promotes a responsible debate about climate change and the place of the arts in that debate. The great thing is that membership is open, making it possible for persons from disparate backgrounds and workplaces to contact each other. LabforCulture provides updated information on festivals, conferences and events of interest around Europe. All of this is thanks to funding from numerous public and private sources, all of which are identified and acknowledged.

Among the current crop of writing on the site is a piece highlighting Ludmila Petrova´s work in The changing dynamics between artistic creativity, economy and cultural policy, based on her research for her PhD at the http://www.eshcc.eur.nl in Rotterdam.
I enjoyed Ludmila Petrova's article  very much as she tackles the difficult questions of public finance of the arts, how accountability in the arts needs to be approached differently from other areas of public support, and the extra challenges faced in the light of the economic problems. Hers is an extensive article in a Q&A format: I will just highlight a few points here and hope that you will go directly to the source to read on.

Ludmila Petrova is clear that lumping all artistic activity together for the sake of bean counting is not a satisfactory approach: the creative industries, which undoubtedly generate revenue for private profit and the public purse, and which New Labour used to crown Cool Britannia (squirm), need a more refined critique. Quality is an absolute pre-requisite:

“ With my research I suggest that creativity and innovation are characteristics we cannot take as granted for all art, instead they show themselves only when they yields qualitative changes within the existing art domain, succeed to transform an old one in a new one or to create a new one. “

At the same time, quality and outcomes have to be promoted and measured differently from other areas of public life and spending. The very nature of genuine artistic creativity depends on an environment of freedom and is unpredictable in its results, all of which places more hurdles on the difficult path to meeting official targets and statistical analysis.

“What plays a critical role here is the fact that on one side, policy instruments are constrained by clear objectives and norms, derived from specific institutional settings including administrative procedures. And on the other, artistic creativity is driven by values of freedom, nonconformity and authenticity.”

She has some practical suggestions for cultural organizations faced with the task of finding increased financial support:

 “to rethink their marketing strategies to attract new audience and extend the old one; to reassess their price formation; to discover possibilities for additional support from donation, sponsorship and income from merchandising of products and services.”

Ludmila Petrova´s work in the  CREARE Summer School in Cultural Economics with Arjo Klamer is also detailed in this article, and will be of interest to many.

You can read another perspective on arts funding in the Netherlands featuring Janneke van der Wijk,  Director of the Muziek Centrum Nederland  in my review of a conference which took place in Madrid on Social Inclusion.

I also have written a review of a recent European Union paper on culture

I have written before  about Fabricacultural, the Spain based site. 

I mention it again because it is related to the work of LabforCulture, its dual funding is also similar, and because there are so many interesting things to read there. The latest jobs vacancies bulletin includes posts not only in Europe but also in the USA, and  there is an updated list of courses and workshops to browse.

Both Fabricacultural and LabforCulture offer a fascinating range of contacts, news, research and opinion pieces over and above what so many persons in Europe and around the world are interested in at the moment: job vacancies. 

Afrodisian Orchestra: Starting European musical history all over again!

“Satie was, in a manner of speaking, starting European musical history all over again”.

Right, Alex Ross is way over the top, but then what else can you expect from someone who titles his collection of essays on 20^th century music: The Rest is Noise I read this line, on page 49, on the way out before going to Madrid´s brilliant jazz bar  Sala Clamores
I went to Sala Clamores to  hear the Afrodisian Orchestra playing their latest offering,  featuring arrangements for big band of Satie´s works for piano. This was a classy gig by a classy outfit. Things took time to warm up, partly because, let´s be honest, we only really know the Gymnopedie piece, and the director held that back until the end of the second half, and partly because there were several  tunes in a gentle three four beat, which did not generate the most  energetic response.

Still, on these gentle tunes there was some exquisite solo work, above all on saxes. There was an extremely interesting use of clarinet in several of the tunes, giving a welcome touch of Ellington. In the second set the Afrodisian Orchestra played tunes from their previous cd´s, and this included an amazing screaming trumpet solo by Freddie Hurtado, which for me was worth turning out for all by itself.  The grand finale was the Gymnopedie, difficult to balance the major 7ths which Satie places often in the middle of the chord on the piano, and resolving this conundrum for a big band is not simple. Step forward Miguel Ángel Blanco, and you see his magic at work in this, as in all the other arrangements. 

Several years ago I saw him lead a wonderful big band in his superb arrangements created to showcase the trumpeter Jerry González  I am sure that many of us in the Centro Cultural de la Villa, as it was then called, expected to see the formation, fronted by Jerry, and masterminded by Miguel Ángel Blanco, sweeping across Europe to headline jazz festivals in one country after another. The musical material was excellent and the arrangements were fantastic, full of interesting voicings and exciting rhythms. 

So what happened to that project? I was thinking about this just now as I was reading a book about the band leader and trumpeter Harry James, world famous for his success as a crossover artist from hit jazz to commercial music in the ‘40s in the US. He is also (in)famous for his use of vibrato as an expressive element in his playing. The point is that, according to  "Trumpet Blues - the life of Harry James" by Peter J. Levinson, Harry James suffered 3 years of hardship on the road and near bankruptcy as he tried to make a go of running his own band.

Certainly it is not an easy business, but I would like to have seen more of the Jerry González project with Miguel Ángel Blanco, and I know I am not the only one. I must remember to ask my friend Kevin Robb who was among the excellent sax section that night, what became of it all.

Thank you, the Afrodisian Orchestra for a great concert, and for transporting many of us who have enjoyed playing the Gymnopedie alone at the piano into a different sound world, amplifying the expressive range of this beautiful music.

 For reviews of other jazz concerts, see these earlier posts:

 Kike Perdomo, Eclectic Voices with Scott Stroman Shepherd University Ara Malikian 

 When all is said and done, maybe you have to forgive Alex Ross his hyberbole, because his heart is in the right place, and nobody can be all bad who describes the eccentric French composer’s impact as:

 “the supernatural poignancy of Erik Satie”