BBC - try this one for size

Readers who think I have a down on my old employer, the BBC, should try this one for size.
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Pliable said…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7700816.stm
6:10 pm
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Twenty-one years ago I wrote about an article on NewMusicBox  that forecast the age of music streaming, and included the following quote from the article: A world where music is available via the latest technologies for a single monthly subscription charge. A world with unlimited access to a huge range of music. A world where the music business will explode and reinvent itself. A world where listeners are empowered, and the reach of new music is limited only by your own imagination. A world where the major record companies aren’t invited to the party. A world where music becomes a utility on tap, just like gas and electricity. A world where music is like water.  It can be argued that streaming has empowered consumers by offering instant gratification. But two decades ago, in my post I expressed concerns about the advent of 'music like water' with these words: "Music-like-water won’t bring a utopia where every recording, of every work, by every composer from Evaristo Abaco ...
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Classical music shoots itself in the baton

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On An Overgrown Path has been preoccupied recently - some would say obsessed - with the absence of black conductors at the BBC Proms , and recently highlighted this Sunday's admirable concert at the Festival Hall by the Chineke! Orchestra, a professional orchestra made up entirely of black and minority ethnic musicians. So a big splash by Tom Service in the Guardian about Sheku Kanneh-Mason, the soloist in Sunday's concert, should be be good news. But instead it simply provides another example of how classical music is shooting itself in the baton. Tom Service is employed by both the Guardian and BBC . (Some would argue that the Guardian and BBC are one and the same ). So in his article Tom Service mentions the BBC in the sub-head seen above, in the opening paragraph, and four more times in the body copy. The immensely talented Sheku Kanneh-Mason is of course a BBC property as he won the 2016 BBC Young Musician competition and is the subject of a BBC Four TV document...
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Exclusive - David Munrow on the record

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The music police are already telling us how we will be celebrating the Chopin bicentennial this year. So, never one for musical correctness , my header photo honours another giant of the piano, in status if not in stature, who is buried literally in the shadow of Frédéric Chopin. Michel Petrucciani, compositeur - pianiste de jazz , died in 1999 aged just 36. He is buried alongside birthday boy Chopin in the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris and his pianistic genius has featured several times On An Overgrown Path . Père Lachaise has more musicians per acre than any other burial ground, and they include Georges Bizet whose headstone is seen below. Bizet's grave is surprisingly understated for France's most famous musician and the dates on it are a sobering reminder that he was the same age as Michel Petrucciani when he died. Adjacent to Bizet is the more contemporary resting place of Georges Enescu who died in 1955. Enescu (Enesco in France) taught Yehudi Menuhin , Arthur Grumiau...
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As a Wagner conductor he has no equal

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New music from the old world

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These photos were taken by me in 2008 at independent record retailer Prelude Records in Norwich. Jordi Savall's impromptu viol recital and signing session preceeded two performances at the Norfolk and Norwich Festival. One was a solo recital by Jordi in Peter Mancroft Church ; the other was an immensely moving performance of his visionary Jerusalem multicultural project at the Theatre Royal*. As reported here Prelude Records closed earlier this year; it was a victim of predatory online retailing, and today its premises stand empty awaiting occupation by a mobile phone or E-cigarette retailer. The Norfolk and Norwich Festival has been the victim of savage funding cuts , but continues in a more modest form due to the dedicated work of its small management team. A few days ago I wrote about a two-thirds empty Snape Maltings concert and proposed that classical music's heartland is facing a perfect storm caused by the convergence of the shifts in consumer tastes and the r...
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Death on an unimaginable scale

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Dreadful though it would have been if 12 passenger jets had been blown up over American cities, how can this be described as death on an "unimaginable" or "unprecedented" scale? The daily kill rate over the first two months of the Rwandan genocide averaged 11,500. Is that more imaginable because the people were African? Letter from Rev Jenny Dyer , Coventry, in today's Guardian Image credit - BBC News: Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk If you enjoyed this post take An Overgrown Path to The act of killing from 20,000 feet
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It had been performed in the great barn at Snape Maltings , of course ... Arvo Pärt, who was present only because his own work was being premiered the following day, sat in the row in front, dressed in a long, brown raincoat like a seedy French detective. He’d leaned forwards, a thumb buried in his huge dark beard, his balding head shining above the long hair, hunched and concentrated. He was all elbows, a lot thinner than Jack had expected, and kept nibbling the ends of his long fingers, too restless for an Old Testament prophet. His wife sat next to him, looking owl-like behind huge spectacles. She often spoke for him in interviews and Jack was more nervous about what she might say than of Pärt himself ... Jack took a bow afterwards and then, once the clapping had subsided and the house lights had gone up, surveyed members of the audience from the side. Among the silvery, distinguished heads there was a lot of winking, a lot of confiding of patient fortitude and thin-lipped smirks, p...
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Violinist, conductor, composer, and improviser Pekka Kuusisto recently announced he would pausing his professional engagements in the United States in the following message: I’ve decided to stop working in the United States for the time being.  I want no pressure placed on any of my colleagues to come to the same conclusion.  Love and solidarity Predictability his decision was greeted by an outpouring of bile on the classical music industry's online resource of choice Slipped Disc . Just as the decision of respected American composer John Luther Adams to relocate to Australia  was greeted with similar bile . Here is just one comment posted in response to Pekka Kuusisto's decision: Sanctimonious piece of shit. Never going to another one of his concerts. The US didn’t kill Iranian school girls for performative violence. This false accusation is disrespectful to the US military which gives Pekka his freedoms. Online forums always attract nutjobs. But this thread is a conti...
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