Composing, Collaborating, Compact Discs

    Warning: This is a thread of a composer's rambling thoughts......if I make generalizations about people who create music and other arts, it is usually because I learned the hard way that some generalized behaviors are self-defeating. People cannot perform the arts if people do not create the arts. One of my favorite lines in an old movie is from All About Eve: 'When will the piano learn that it did not write the concerto?'

     I have always been energized and proud that I could write music and also play the piano and sing. I seem to do everything in multiples: not being satisfied with a film and theatre production entity called World Oceans Arts, my friends and I also created AcquaTroupe. We gave AT the mission of bringing the arts into live performance.The late great composer Karel Husa once told me I was most fortunate in being able to perform my own music. Many composers sing badly and cannot play any instruments. This does not mean they cannot compose great music, but for some it makes the journey more difficult.

     Unless a creative artist makes art solely for his or her own enjoyment and never shares it, art is always a collaborative effort. Artists need inspiration, they need an audience, and they need a support group. Being a composer or writer or photographer or sculptor can be very lonely, unforgiving, and exhausting.....or at least they need massive intervention from a greater power. So for a composer, collaboration must always be part of the equation. Even though I am a pianist and reasonably good singer, if I write music for any other instrument I most often need to bring one or more performers into the mix.

     Compact discs, i.e. recordings of any sort, are very much on my mind right now. The percentage of new classical pieces which have actually been recorded for the world to hear is extremely small. In this age of easy and astounding technology, this might surprise many people. If you write a piece of music, just record it! After all, good recording technology is cheap and even the composing part can be done by a computer. Well, that is true.......but most composers want the best possible recording of their piece, the best performers they can find, and a result they can be proud of. Not many people are able or willing to work for free; since artists usually have to work especially hard just to earn a reasonable income, the recording process gets expensive really fast.

     Why not just put all of our compositions online and never have to pay for studio time and hard copy CDs and advertising and all the rest? Every composer asks these questions........and this leads a composer to think about legacy, about the future. Will anyone a hundred years from now hear my music? This is a profound question which may not matter at all to some composers, but it terrifies others. A composer's legacy consists of his/her letters and journals and selfies and memoirs written by friends....but above all, it consists of the composer's music. If that music is not preserved in sound, it eventually disappears. 

     Soon I will blog about the difference between a composer and a songwriter (if there is one). I have been asked about this many times. Other queries from friends and fans has led me to start creating vlogs which are available online for just pennies, about what it means to be a composer in today's world. I love pouring out my thoughts and sharing them in this fashion. You can email me at jamesgibsonallarts@gmail.com if you want to know more about the vlogs.

     I am thrilled that we at World Oceans Arts and AcquaTroupe are sewing ties among composers and collaborators, and sharing those efforts in our series of CDs. Elsewhere on our sites you will find ads for "Living Piano Music", the newly released compact disc of some of my piano pieces. Profits from that project all go toward helping support developing artists in music, film, theatre and more as they build their careers against heavy odds. I invite you to add that CD to your collection....and if you have already decided that you don't need more CDs because 'everything' is on youtube, consider this: long-playing records and typewriters and costumes from previous eras and hard cover books and ancient coins are all earning far higher profits on the collectors' markets than ever before......so if you think technology is replacing our need to own any physical items, think again.....and you just might help preserve a poor composer's legacy in the process.

--James Gibson

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