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Showing posts from February, 2012

What sparked the Mahler revival?

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Hull Truck Theatre , which "makes real theatre for real people", brought Dennis Kelly's DNA to the Wolsey Theatre Ipswich yesterday - production shot above. Three quarters of the good sized audience were school parties as the play is a GCSE English set text. Direction is by the National Theatre's Anthony Banks and the composer and sound designer is Alex Baranowski who works in theatre, TV and film. So a receptive young audience was exposed to quality contemporary music without entering an 'uncool' concert hall . Is incidental music for the theatre now an overlooked art form? Is contemporary classical music too obsessed with having the platform to itself ? What part did Luchino Visconti's Death in Venice play in the Mahler revival ? Also on Facebook and Twitter . We paid for our tickets for DNA, readers who are able to catch its extended tour should not hesitate. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the pu

Is dumbing up classical music's next big thing?

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The problem today is not one of restricting classical music to any single audience. On the contrary, it is a matter of making concert going a necessary experience and consequently a social activity that is essential to a community as a whole. This cannot be achieved by popularising classical music in a naive way. This cannot be achieved by adapting classical music to the needs of its audience. It cannot be achieved either by limiting classical music to the expectations of an elite. Such a role for classical music can only be created on the basis of a new audience with the intention of serving all those members of a community who see classical music as a possibility of renewal for themselves. To create that manifesto I took the text of Peter Brook's 1969 funding application for his Centre International de Recherches Théâtrales and simply substituted the words 'classical music' for 'the theatre'. Brook's funding application was successful and resulted in milestone

Wine, women and Buddhism

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Lawrence Durrell, who was born on February 27th 1912, is celebrated as the author of two of the great achievements of twentieth century literature, the Alexandria Quartet and the Avignon Quintet, and also as a peerless travel writer; but the story of how he embraced Buddhism towards the end of his life is less well known. The accompanying photos shows the great hall of Dashang Kagyu Ling monastery in La Boulaye, France and I took them when I visited the monastery, which is also known as Temple of a Thousand Buddhas , a couple of years ago. The Temple, which follows the Vajrayana tradition of Tantric Buddhism , was consecrated in 1987 and Lawrence Durrell played an important role in raising funds for its construction. Gnosticism and the Christian heresies of Europe and the Near East provide the spiritual thread from which Lawrence Durrell's novels are woven, but he also had a deep interest in the mysticism of the Far East. In 1982 Durrell and his friend Jacques Lacarrière were ex

Breaking - exclusive on the Oscar winners

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Oscar van Dillen (left) is a contemporary Dutch musician and composer. His studies included North-Indian classical music (sitar, tabla, vocal) with Jamaluddin Bharatiya in Amsterdam, bansuri with Gurbachan Singh at Berkeley, California, classical and jazz flute at the Sweelinck Conservatory in Amsterdam, and medieval and Renaissance music with Paul van Nevel in Leuven (Belgium). He now teaches world music composition and jazz, pop and world music department at the Conservatory of Rotterdam. In 2003 van Dillen's first CD, de Stad (the City), was released on Cybele Records . Do follow that last link for a treasure house of contemporary music. Biography via this link . Oscar Stranoy is a contemporary Argentinian composer who studied with with Guillermo Scarabino , Guy Reibel , Michael Levinas , Gerard Grisey , Hans Zender , and John Carewe . He works in Europe and the US, and lives in Paris. Biography here , personal website via this link . Oscar Straus (1870-1954) was a Vien

If that is what classical music is, it's really grim

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My co-presenter at this evening's Britten Sinfonia pre-concert event in Norwich is violinist Pekka Kuusisto - seen above. While researching the talk I came across this in a 2007 Guardian profile : Not that he's in sympathy with anything that might be described as crossover. Perish the thought. A few years ago, one of Kuusisto's UK visits coincided with the Classical Brit awards, and he found himself watching them on TV, agog for all the wrong reasons. "Andrea Bocelli got some kind of lifetime achievement award, and then the Opera Babes performed, and the Planets - and so the whole country is being taught to believe that this is what classical music is! It's really grim, you know? I was shocked". Less grim is the news that the first four New York performances of Missy Mazzoli's new multi-media opera ' Song from the 'Uproar: the Lives and Deaths of Isabelle Eberhardt ', which presumably will not feature in the Classical Brits, have sold out - m

If you dig Led Zeppelin try this Janacek

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Music journalist Stephen Davis emails "I'VE BEEN DIGGING " JANACEK CHORAL WORKS " ON HARMONIA MUNDI... I DROVE TO MANHATTAN LAST WEEKEND AND LISTENED TO THE "SIX MORAVIAN CHORUSES" ON MY JAG'S ALPINE SPEAKERS AT HIGH VOLUME. INCREDIBLE!" At first it may seem strange that the biographer of Led Zeppelin and ghost writer for Michael Jackson digs Janáček. But in fact Janáček's choral works, with their use of Bohemian and Moravian folk themes, provide a bridge between art music and popular culture. Stephen collaborated with me on my posts about art music colliding with popular culture in Jajouka, Morocco. Read them here and here . Janáček's Choral Works was bought online. Impecunious UK readers should note HMV.com offer lower prices and a faster service than Amazon. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk Also on Facebook and Twitter .

New chief conductor but the same old tune

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News came today that Sakari Oramo, seen above, will be the next chief conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Which means he will conduct at the BBC Proms. So first I googled ' Sakari Oramo Proms ', which told me that his most recent Proms appearance was in 2011 with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic and soloist Alice Sara Ott. Then I googled ' Sakari Oramo agent ' which gave the result ' Harrison Parrott ' . Next I googled ' Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra agent ' which gave the result ' Harrison Parrott '. Finally I googled ' Alice Sara Ott agent ' which gave the result ' Harrison Parrott '. Great conductor but plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. . Also on Facebook and Twitter . 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 a

Classical music is excited about the wrong things

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Ask anyone in the business what is the biggest challenge facing classical music, and it is odds on their reply will revolve around funding cuts, inadequate music education and ageing audiences. It is also a dead certainty that retrogressive attitudes within classical music itself will not feature among the challenges. Which is puzzling when you look at what classical music gets excited about. The New Year started with a global concert by one of the most reactionary institutions in the arts world . This was followed by the Mahler ringtone in a teacup and then came the world premiere of two minutes of music by a long dead composer vigorously spun by a social media agency retained by the audience hungry BBC with a little help from their Guardian angel . All of which was enough to convince the general public that classical music had somehow manouvered its cerebral cortex into the proximity of its nether regions, even before it turned out that the Brahms "discovery" was the p

Aldeburgh's poignant song without words

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A Catalan proverb tells how Qui canta, els seus mals espanta - 'He who sings, frightens away his troubles'. After the Spanish Civil War the traditional Catalan lullaby El Cant Dels Aucells - 'The Song of the Birds' was adopted by Republican refugees in French internment camps and went on to become a global anthem for the Catalan cause in Pablo Casals' cello arrangement . A young Jordi Savall heard Casals play at the Prades Festival and in 1988 the Catalan viol player recorded 'The Song of the Birds' with his wife the soprano Montserrat Figueras and their children Arianna and Ferran . The Astrée album featuring 'The Song of the Birds' launched Montserrat Figueras on a richly productive musical and humanitarian career that ended with her tragically early death in November last year. Her final album Mare Nostrum was recorded under the shadow of the cancer that was to take her from us. It includes 'The Song of the Birds', but the lullab

A Swiss-born female Lawrence in man-drag

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While I was developing my interest in the cultural explorer, Sufi adept and libertine Isabelle Eberhardt composer Missy Mazzoli and director Gia Forakis were engaged in the far more arduous task of creating their multi-media opera on the same subject. ' Song from the Uproar: the Lives and Deaths of Isabelle Eberhardt ' opens at The Kitchen, 512 West 19th Street, New York on February 24. Now Gia writes to tell me that two of the five performances have already sold out following Justin Davidson's critics' pick billing in New York Magazine which previews the production as "a multimedia don’t-call-it-opera dramatizing the story of the intrepid Isabelle Eberhardt, a Swiss-born female Lawrence in man-drag". As Isabelle herself once wrote “The way I see it, there is no greater spiritual beauty than fanaticism, of a sort so sincere it can only end in martyrdom.” More on my fascination with Lawrence in man-drag here . Graphic is sampled from the cover of the Pete

Brass bands and Xenakis are not a crazy mix

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When I wrote yesterday's headline 'Salvation Army band plays Xenakis' I realised it was a compromise. Twitter and other social media demands brevity, my headline needed to imply a clash of styles, but I knew it ran the risk of being interpreted as disparaging Salvation Army bands. I did consider 'Palm Court orchesta plays Xenakis' but a quick Google check suggested the term 'Palm Court Orchestra' might leave North American readers baffled. (Was I wrong on that?) So I ran with the Salvation Army reference despite some misgivings. Which means I was not surprised to receive the following very constructive email from a reader: Brass Bands and Xenakis are not such a crazy mix. When Norway's Einkanger-Bjorsvik Band appeared at the Saturday night concert of the 2007 Brass in Concert Championships (the UK's leading brass band entertainment competition) they included in their programme Xenakis' Rebonds, played by one of their young percussionists. The

Salvation Army band plays Xenakis

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In a post on the BBC Radio 3 blog network controller Roger Wright tells us he will be broadcasting 200 hours of non-stop Schubert in March and that the audience for Radio 3's breakfast programme has increased by 25%. Now there can be no dispute that the increase in breakfast audience has been achieved by moving the station down market . Confirmation of this is provided by the 5.4% decrease in Radio 3's total audience for the same period , a key statistic mysteriously omitted from the controller's blog post. Which raises the question of how can Radio 3's breathless race to the bottom be reconciled with 200 hours of Schubert? The answer lies in one word - distinctiveness. BBC network controllers spend a lot of time in meetings with brand consultants; these are the guys with designer stubble, iPads and BMW X5s who preach that you can do anything with a brand provided that you mix in the occasional distinctiveness . This dogma explains why Radio 3's dash to beat Cl

Now where did he put that Rumi CD?

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'I thought I saw a Sufi cat' was more than an opportunist title for my recent post . Muslims are taught that cats should be cherished and loved and they often appear in Islamic folklore. The biographer of the Sufi poet Rumi tells how shortly before the poet's passing a cat came to him and meowed sadly. Rumi smiled and explained to his followers that the cat had told him: "Soon you will go to the heavens where you will find peace. But what will I do without you?" Rumi's cat did not eat or drink anything after the poet died and survived for only seven more days. The Sufi's followers buried the cat close to Rumi's tomb in Konya. In the photo above the resident Overgrown Path feline is searching for Ali Reza Ghorbani's musical tribute to Rumi. Read more about that CD in Songs of rebirth defy the mullahs . Photo is (c) On An Overgrown Path 2012. Advertising agencies, pet food manufacturers and others offering pots of money for Ginger to model for t

Music on the other side of the great celebrity divide

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This path leads from music education in Norfolk England to Thomas Adès in New York. Members of the Britten Sinfonia are seen here working as part of the In Harmony project which uses music to bring positive change to the lives of young people in some of the most deprived areas of England. I took the photos this morning at Larkman Primary School and the young musicians seen in them will be joining violinist Pekka Kuusisto and me for a pre-concert event in Norwich on February 25th at which they will play Prokofiev, Tchaikovsky and Pachelbel. After their performance Thomas Adès conducts his Concerto for Violin, felicitously subtitled Concentric Paths , with Pekka Kuusisto as soloist, and music by Couperin, Ravel and Stravinsky. The Norwich concert is part of a Concentric Paths tour by the Britten Sinfonia, Thomas Adès and Pekka Kuusisto; the other venues are Dijon (Feb 11), Cambridge (Feb 20), Lincoln Center, New York (Feb 22), London, Queen Elizabeth Hall (Feb 27), and Dublin (Fe

Classical music has many saviours

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In June the scene above will become the most talked about concert venue in the world when Gustavo Dudamel and the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela give an outdoor concert in Raploch, Stirling . Scottish artist Bill McAnally's watercolour shows Stirling Castle which will provide the spectacular backdrop for Gustavo Dudamel's concert on midsummer's day June 21, 2012. The original painting hangs in our dining room as a reminder of the years we spent living on the edge of the Raploch in the 1980s; it was here that our son started school and our daughter was born. Gustavo Dudamel's concert is being staged by Sistema Scotland and is part of the visionary Big Noise Raploch project which is working to create a children’s orchestra centre. Almost all the ingredients are in place for an unforgettable concert in June, a world class conductor and orchestra playing in a magnificent natural setting to promote music education. What more could we want? Well, I think we n

Postcards from a forgotten concentration camp

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'Shortly after arriving at Prades, I visited some of the concentration camps - there were a number nearby, at Rivesaltes, Vernet, Le Boulou, Septfonds, Argelès - where the Spanish refugees were confined. The scenes I witnessed might have been from Dante's Inferno . Tens of thousands of men and women and children were herded together like animals, penned in by barbed wire, housed - if one can call it that - in tents and crumbling shacks. There was no sanitation facilities or provision for medical care. There was little water and barely enough food to keep the inmates from starvation. The camp at Argelès was typical. Here more than a hundred thousand refugees had been massed in open areas among sand dunes along the seashore. Though it was winter, they had been provided with no shelter whatsoever - many had burrowed holes in the wet sand to protect themselves from the pelting rains and bitter winds. The driftwood they gathered for fires to warm themselves was soon exhausted. Score

Unfortunately there are no complimentary tickets

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A couple of quotes that caught my eye. First a nomination for pseuds' corner from the ECM website's listing for Tim Berne's newly released Snakeoil : Tim’s tough alto is heard with Oscar Noriega’s earthy clarinets, Mat Mitchell’s cryptic piano, and Ches Smith’s tone-conscious drums, tympani, gongs and congas. Secondly a contribution to the recent overturning established intermediaries thread . It comes from director Gia Forakis' promotional email about her multi-media opera Song from the Uproar: the Lives and Deaths of Isabelle Eberhardt : Unfortunately, there are no complimentary industry tickets for this production. However, student discounts and discounts for groups of ten or more are available. No need to apologise Gia, remember it was Isabelle Eberhardt who wrote - "We are, all of us, poor wretches, and those who prefer not to understand this are even worse off than the rest of us". Header and footer images are from the newly released Artwork in Progre

We have the music but they have the money

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When the Santa Barbara Symphony enjoyed a $23,000 hike in ticket sales by adding concert visuals were they leveraging twenty-first century technology or were they recreating a centuries old synaesthetic experience? Synesthesia occurs when stimulation of one sensory pathway leads to involuntary experiences in a second sensory pathway. The most common form of synesthesia is the neurological condition which causes words and numbers to be perceived in colour, but the condition can occur with any of the senses and in less dramatic forms. The subject is under-researched, but a mild form of synaesthesia may explain why visuals at a concert enhance the audience's perception of the music - for a simple illustration of the importance of sensory crosstalk try watching this video with the sound muted. Sound, sight, smell and movement can all contribute to synaesthetic experiences. Towards the end of his life Karlheinz Stockhausen reinvented mono-sensory classical music for a multi-sensory

Not so sweet for the birthday of Prince Charles

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News that the Queen's Diamond Jubilee is to be celebrated with a concert promoted as a joint venture between the BBC and Gary Barlow featuring Elton John, Paul McCartney and Lang Lang prompts me to reblog this from my 2008 post Tippett in focus : Above is Georg Solti's recording of the symphony missing from the Colin Davis' Tippett cycle, the 1977 Fourth which was a Chicago Symphony Orchestra commission. The Decca recording did appear on a CD coupled with The Knot Garden , but is now deleted. The LP coupling was Tippett's Suite for the Birthday of Prince Charles commissioned by the BBC in 1948 to celebrate the birth of the heir to the throne. I am told by someone who tried to programme the Suite in the royal presence some years ago that Charles hates the piece. Which must make it very good music indeed . Also on Facebook and Twitter . Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analys