Arts Professional Story: Clancy Newman
What is it like to be an artist connected to Chicago and the Midwest? Are there certain expectations and/or benefits associated with the area?
Clancy Newman, Chicago Chamber Musicians (CCM) Ensemble Artist and Cellist
Chicago is a great city. It’s big, but it doesn’t belong to that proliferation of big cities on the east coast, where I spend most of my time. It has great musicians and great art, but without the east coast attitude.
What is your favorite audience?
The audience is a very important part of a performance. As I play, I can usually sense the level of audience involvement. Although I would love my audiences to be younger and more diverse, I am happy to play for anyone who has a passion for music, patience, and an open mind.
What pieces in 2008-9 are you excited about?
I’m very excited to play the Brahms F major viola quintet. I requested the piece because it’s the only work of chamber music for strings by Brahms that I’ve never played (other than the string quartets). However, the piece I’m most excited about is Beethoven’s Opus 131 string quartet. Many people consider it the greatest piece of music ever written. I loved playing Opus 132 a couple years ago -- it may be my all-time favorite piece -- so this experience should be great.
New compositions?
Of course, since I’m a composer, I think that it’s important to perform new music. But I also think that we should take the audience into consideration, both when writing music and programming it, without sacrificing integrity. The days of scaring audiences away are coming to an end at last. Hopefully the damage wasn’t irreversible.
Where are you from?
Albany, NY.
If you weren’t a musician…?
I’d probably be a writer. Writing involves a similar process as composing, and I love good literature.
What type of music do you listen to in your spare time?
As a teenager in the nineties, I listened to alternative rock and then classic rock (Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix, etc.). As a composer, I think it’s good to know what’s floating around out there. More and more, however, I’m struck by the inherent vacuous-ness of most pop music. Its stench is impossible to avoid. I despise insincerity, especially in art.
How did you get involved in CCM?
At Marlboro, I worked with Joe Genualdi several times, most notably playing Schoenberg’s second string quartet. Several years later, he called me out of the blue to ask if I wanted to play in a CCM Composer Perspectives concert with Aaron Jay Kernis. I agreed, and I had a really wonderful experience, playing exciting new music with brilliant musicians. After that, I played several other concerts with the group, and I always had a great time. When they asked me to join, I was happy to say yes.
What have you learned about music in Chicago?
Until I came to play with CCM for the first time, Chicago was a mysterious place to me. I had never really been there. It was strange to think that there was this gleaming metropolis halfway across the country that I did not know--a city with skyscrapers as tall as New York’s, with a lake so large that you couldn’t see to the other side, and a symphony with a storied past. When Joe asked me to come and play a concert with CCM, I was very excited… at last, I would get to discover Chicago for myself. It was a thrill to play with such great musicians, in a place far removed from New York and the East Coast.
What resource organizations have been helpful to you?
Several organizations have helped me in the past. Astral, in Philadelphia, helped me out with support and advice when I joined their roster in 2000. The Naumburg Foundation, who booked me many good concerts and also jump-started my career in 2001 when I won their competition. Also, the Avery Fisher Foundation, who gave me a career grant in 2004, which gave me publicity and money to pursue a recording project.
What are some useful lessons to know about the business of music?
I don’t think much about this. I’ve unfortunately become rather cynical on this topic. The music world has a dark, ugly under-belly.
What practical advice would you offer aspiring musicians?
Don’t be distracted from the music. If you concentrate one hundred percent on your craft and what you have to say, you can live a life of fulfillment, regardless of what the worldly tides bring your way. Without your integrity, you are an artistic nonentity.
What are the goals for you career or music?
I have no real goals for my career, other than that I hope to find a way to devote more of my time and energy to composing. As for musical goals, I hope to continue to improve as a cellist and composer, and to create music that justifies the view that humanity is worth saving.
Clancy Newman won the coveted first prize of the prestigious Walter W. Naumburg Competition in 2001; Naumburg presented him in recital at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, a performance that garnered enormous critical acclaim. He was also named the recipient of a 2004 Avery Fisher Career Grant. A winner of Astral Artistic Services’ year 2000 National Auditions, he was the first Astral artist presented in recital in Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts. The recipient of many competition prizes, Newman received his first significant public recognition at the age of 12 when he won the Gold Medal for Strings at Australia’s Dandenong Youth Festival, competing against instrumentalists twice his age. A member of Chamber Music Society Two of Lincoln Center, he has appeared as soloist with the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. and with the Julliard Orchestra in Avery Fischer Hall.