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Showing posts from May, 2013

Leonard Cohen’s showdown with Herbert von Karajan

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[Leonard Cohen's 1975 European] tour unfolded largely without incident, apart from… the showdown between Marty Machat and Herbert von Karajan in Berlin when the famed conductor , still rehearsing the Berlin Philharmonic, refused to let them in to do their soundcheck. ‘Marty’s ego and von Karajan’s ego – that was quite something,’ Lissauer recalls. That vignette appears in the immensely enjoyable I’m Your Man: the Life of Leonard Cohen by Sylvie Simmons. John Lissauer produced two of the singer/song-writer’s albums, and Marty Machat was a music industry lawyer who managed both Leonard Cohen and Phil Spector. When Cohen had a crisis of confidence prior to appearing at the 1967 Newport Folk Festival and pleaded “I can’t sing”, Machat responded “None of you guys can sing - when I want to hear singers, I go to the Metropolitan Opera”. More on Karajan's ego here . Also on Facebook and Twitter . I’m Your Man was borrowed from Norwich library. Photo montage is my work. An

Anyone need extra hands at a festival somewhere?

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'I've got some time this summer. Anyone need extra hands at a festival somewhere?' Posted by John McLaughlin Williams - seen above - on his Facebook page. Need I say more? Photo credit Yanko Dimitrov. JMW can be contacted via my email in the sidebar. 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). Also posted on Facebook and Twitter .

Lost in explanation

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Can you imagine music without explanation ? Elmediator is a multi-genre and multimedia performance venue in Perpignan, France. This post is also available via Facebook and Twitter .

Do not do as you have always done

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Man lives in a state of imagination, in a dream: no one sees things as they are. To him who says to you: “What shall I do?” say to him “Do not do as you have always done; do not act as you have always acted” – from the Sufi epic Conference of the Birds . My photos show the remains of the Rivesaltes internment camp in Languedoc, France. It was one of the notorious camps built by the French government in 1939 to house Spanish Republican refugees fleeing from Franco’s fascist forces. It is estimated that 15,000 of the Spanish refugees who crossed the border in La Retirada died in internment camps in Northern Catalonia, and another of these camps at Argelès-sur-Mer has featured here previously . Rivesaltes achieved particular notoriety as the camp was used by the Vichy government to hold Jews and other so-called “undesirables” after the French surrendered to the Nazis in 1940. Despite being in the unoccupied zone more than 2250 Jews including 110 children were deported from the cam

Boulez greeted him by turning his back

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When, in 1951, Henri Dutilleux presented his vibrantly diatonic First Symphony, Boulez greeted him by turning his back. That is Alex Ross writing in The Rest is Noise and Dutilleux's vibrantly diatonic Symphony is one of the works in a new five CD overview of his music. There is much notable music in the oeuvre of this underrated composer, and also a sub-text that is relevant to the challenges currently facing classical music. Dutilleux (b. 1916) reflects his fascination with time and memory in his compositions, and uses involuntary memory to link past, present and future. His music is certainly not retrogressive. But its message is that, despite Boulez , we cannot turn our backs on the past; a very relevant sentiment as classical music struggles with denying the past and reinventing itself as a child of the digital age . Virgin Classics' Dutilleux box also includes his Second Symphony, the Cello Concerto composed for Mstislav Rostropovich , the Violin Concerto commissione

Classical music can learn a lot from our feline friends

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This cat lives in the house in Assas that was the home of the legendary harpsichordist Scott Ross from 1984 until he died of an Aids related illness five years later. I took the photos a few days ago on the front porch of his little house in Languedoc and they may be more than just charming images. Because Scott Ross’ biographer Michel Proulx tells us that the harpsichord master adopted a black and white female cat while living at Assas. So could we be looking at a hitherto unknown member of a great music lineage? The sleeve notes of Scott Ross’ first LP identified him as a cat lover; in later years his cats accompanied him on transatlantic flights and his feline friends provided the only lasting relationships in an otherwise solitary life. Anthropologist Desmond Morris has observed that “artists like cats; soldiers like dogs”, and there may be a scientific explanation as to why musicians in particular are attracted to cats. As this extract from Akif Pirinçci and Rolf Degen’s b

Noise on the beach

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Someone is listening to the twentieth century in this tabac on the beach at Argelès-sur-Mer. Which is understandable as twentieth century culture ebbed and flowed in this part of Catalonia - peace activist, Trappist monk and advocate of inter-religious dialogue Thomas Merton was born in Prades , and that town’s most famous resident Pau Casals worked to relieve the hardship of Spanish Republican refugees in the notorious Argelès internment camp shortly before Alma Mahler passed through as she fled from the Nazi s, while the life journey of the less fortunate Walter Benjamin ended here . Many have paid homage to Catalonia , and the ebb and flow continues in the new millennium as the region’s independence movement gathers momentum. Also on Facebook and Twitter . Photos are © On An Overgrown Path 2013 .

Walking the walk with Alma Mahler

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Today it is different. The steady war of propaganda avalanches loosed by press, radio and film makes it impossible for the thought to hear itself. It wavers, weakens and ends up in resignation. And the worst of it is that the evil is not confined to the "totalitarian" parts of Europe, but that it is spreading and infecting the intellectual life of all nations with a strange anarchy mixed of doubt, discontent and confusion. That extract is from a lecture given in Paris by the the Czech writer Franz Werfel in 1937. The evil that Werfel spoke of forced him, together with his wife Alma - seen above - to flee Vienna a year later and follow an arduous path to freedom in California. For part of their journey they had to walk - with Alma carrying the autograph score of a Bruckner symphony - along the torturous path seen below. The path is in the region of south-west France where the hills known as the Albères reach the Mediterranean. These hills are the eastern extension of the P