Veryan Weston
Reference: New funding cuts for music
Dear
It seems that 2008 is going to be one of the worst years imaginable for contemporary music, or at least the kind of contemporary music I am connected with. Over the last thirty years as a fulltime active musician with qualifications up to and including a masters in composition and experience which has taken me to many places in the world, I can, for the first time ever, categorically say that this country is now one of the most deprived, backward and ignorant when it comes to actively supporting their own artists involved in certain key types of contemporary music.
The reason why you probably have not heard of me, although I am fifty-seven years old, is that nearly all my work has to be abroad, and as a result of these recent cuts, there is even less likelihood that I or most of my colleagues will ever get to play their music in suitable venue/s with an appropriate fee anywhere in UK, and so your knowledge of our musical involvements is even more likely to be ignored.
2008 started disastrously with the announcement that the Red Rose Trades and Labour Club in Seven Sister’s Road, which has been a creative haven and meeting point for literally thousands of very important and memorable concerts is to be turned in to a snooker hall. This means that two or three weekly events which have been going now for many years have to finish. Incidentally, I would imagine that neither you nor any of your staff have ever been to this venue to see a concert. Keeping away from grass-roots concerts like this, except for perhaps the more prestigious ones you organise yourselves, will enable you to cut funds for similar projects as there are no feelings of guilt because - out of sight is out of mind, and ignorance is strength.
Meanwhile by completely removing funding for the London Musician’s Collective you have successfully removed another vital source of oxygen for many kinds of new music. This organisation is now nearly forty years old and has provided a very substantial platform for many musicians. In fact, probably the last fairly paid concert I have done in this country, was for them.
Meanwhile I am told that Serious Music (or Productions) will be having their funding DOUBLED. To make such decisions as these I find completely irrational and irresponsible. By doing what you have done, you have simultaneously propagated a museum culture, in the form of jazz, which anyway is able now to attracted some reasonable commercial support, at the same time as stifling many new music projects that were dependant on being nurtured in order to yield wonderful fruit later.
I apologise if the tone of this email seems aggressive, but I am very angry and upset with what is happening in the world of so-called art where diamond skulls and ‘winners’ take precedent over the thriving majority in the arts where collectivity and collaboration are being abandoned.
Yours faithfully
Veryan Weston
Dear
It seems that 2008 is going to be one of the worst years imaginable for contemporary music, or at least the kind of contemporary music I am connected with. Over the last thirty years as a fulltime active musician with qualifications up to and including a masters in composition and experience which has taken me to many places in the world, I can, for the first time ever, categorically say that this country is now one of the most deprived, backward and ignorant when it comes to actively supporting their own artists involved in certain key types of contemporary music.
The reason why you probably have not heard of me, although I am fifty-seven years old, is that nearly all my work has to be abroad, and as a result of these recent cuts, there is even less likelihood that I or most of my colleagues will ever get to play their music in suitable venue/s with an appropriate fee anywhere in UK, and so your knowledge of our musical involvements is even more likely to be ignored.
2008 started disastrously with the announcement that the Red Rose Trades and Labour Club in Seven Sister’s Road, which has been a creative haven and meeting point for literally thousands of very important and memorable concerts is to be turned in to a snooker hall. This means that two or three weekly events which have been going now for many years have to finish. Incidentally, I would imagine that neither you nor any of your staff have ever been to this venue to see a concert. Keeping away from grass-roots concerts like this, except for perhaps the more prestigious ones you organise yourselves, will enable you to cut funds for similar projects as there are no feelings of guilt because - out of sight is out of mind, and ignorance is strength.
Meanwhile by completely removing funding for the London Musician’s Collective you have successfully removed another vital source of oxygen for many kinds of new music. This organisation is now nearly forty years old and has provided a very substantial platform for many musicians. In fact, probably the last fairly paid concert I have done in this country, was for them.
Meanwhile I am told that Serious Music (or Productions) will be having their funding DOUBLED. To make such decisions as these I find completely irrational and irresponsible. By doing what you have done, you have simultaneously propagated a museum culture, in the form of jazz, which anyway is able now to attracted some reasonable commercial support, at the same time as stifling many new music projects that were dependant on being nurtured in order to yield wonderful fruit later.
I apologise if the tone of this email seems aggressive, but I am very angry and upset with what is happening in the world of so-called art where diamond skulls and ‘winners’ take precedent over the thriving majority in the arts where collectivity and collaboration are being abandoned.
Yours faithfully
Veryan Weston
posted by Benedict Drew at 1:34 PM
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