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Showing posts from April, 2016

Gone analogue

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The moral is not 'less technology' but more ' other things ' Quote is by Huston Smith from his prescient pre-social media book Beyond the Post-modern Mind which was published in 1982. Sunset was photographed by me at Agadir , Morocco.

Will the world end if the master musicians stop playing?

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Brion Gysin died in Paris in 1986. I remember he always used to say that if the Master Musicians of Jajouka ever stopped playing, the legend holds that the world will end. He often worried about the chronic poverty of the musicians, and the diluting effect of contact with the modern world upon the ancient music. But the Pipes of Pan survive to this day. That is William Burroughs writing in the sleeve notes for Apocalypse Across the Sky , Bill Laswell 's recording of the Master Musicians of Jajouka. The Master Musicians first achieved global recognition through Brian Jones' LP The Pan Pipes of Jajouka which was posthumously released in 1971. William Burroughs wrote his note in 1992, and the gloomy prognosis that if the master musicians stop playing the world will end has been the repeated message of the classical music industry in recent years. But just how true is that prognosis? Almost half a century after Brian Jones brought their ancient music to the modern world, t

It rains on the just and the unjust alike

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Both these photos were taken by me at the Nizamuddin Dargah in Delhi. One of the most revered Sufi saints, Nizamuddin Auliya (1238 – 1325) was responsible for the Chishti Sufi Order spreading through India, and was the spiritual master of Amir Khusro (1253–1325), who is regarded as the father of qawwali. We were at the Sufi shrine for a late night Ramadan qawwali celebration; it was June just before the monsoon was due to break, and the weather was stiflingly hot and humid. Cats are cherished by Muslims , and as the celebration commenced we were joined by the cat seen below. Which gladdened us as we had left our own ginger cat in boarding kennels three weeks previously to travel in India . When the ecstatic music started the cat shinned up a pillar of the shrine and sat on a cross-beam listening contentedly. As midnight approached I felt drops of water on my head, and turning to my wife said "At last the monsoon has arrived". I looked up to see thousands of stars and

Dumbing up is the way to reach new audiences

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Sitting with Jude Mansilla in the CanJam room at the 2015 Rocky Mountain Audio Fest he told me, "When I started the Head-Fi site I imagined it a 'gateway drug' to two-channel room-based audio." Judging by the attendance and activity in the CanJam area, headphones have become more than a gateway - for many young and old audiophiles they're a final destination. That is Steven Stone writing in the The Absolute Sound . For an audience ranging from young to old the immersive experience of headphone sound has become a destination , yet classical music remains fixated on a different destination - the 19th century convention of the proscenium arch soundstage. In an insightful essay in The New Enquiry Elizabeth Newton posed the question: "Audio fidelity is more a matter of subjective emotion than empiricism. But what are we trying to be true to?" Her question generated considerable discussion on the audiophile website AudioStream , with one protagonist opin

There should be an industry award for self-promotion

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These days there is a classical music industry award for almost everything . So it is inexplicable that there is no award for self-promotion: because it seems that talent and experience now count for less than self-promotion . So I hereby propose a new award. The winner will be the classical music personality with the highest score calculated as follows: (number of glowing reviews re-tweeted) x (number of selfies on social media) x (number of self-serving advertorials). Sponsors for the Overgrown Selfie award are welcome. Yes, that header photo actually happened . Any copyrighted material is included as "fair use" for critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Also on Facebook and Twitter .

New architecture and new music for a new audience

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Tomorrow's post features a contemporary Requiem that replaces the Catholc liturgy with an eclectic selection of syncretic texts including one by Bahá'u'lláh, the founder of the Bahá'í faith. The photo above was taken by me when I visited the Bahá'í Lotus Temple in New Delhi, which was designed by the Iranian-American architect Fariborz Sahba . The Bahá'í faith is the youngest of the world's independent religions; it is monotheistic and based on Revelations delivered by Bahá'u'lláh who was born in Tehran in 1817. Baha’i was the world's fastest-growing religion between 1910 and 2010; however the number of followers is still very small compared with the other great traditions. No definitive figures are available, but the total number of Bahá'í followers worldwide is estimated at 8 million. Because the Bahá'ís are considered heretical by orthodox Islam, members of the faith have suffered widespread persecution, particularly in Iran . S

Fifty shades of Sorabji

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When Tallis' Spem in Alium became a bestseller after being featured in the soft-porn movie Fifty Shades of Grey , Tallis Scholars ' founder Peter Phillips declared "It doesn’t matter to me how people encounter Tallis, as long as they do". His refreshing viewpoint prompts me to suggest that a lot more people would encounter the woefully neglected music of Kaikhosru Sorabji if an enterprising director used his ' Le Jardin Parfumé, Poem for Piano ' in a suitably titillating movie. 'Le Jardin Parfumé' was inspired by the treatise The Perfumed Garden written by the 14th century Berber author Sheik Nefzaoui, although the muted dynamics of Sorabji's score do not reflect the treatise's climactic prose. I do not want to stand accused of slipping a disc , so I will now turn to someone better qualified to describe The Perfumed Garden . Here is Linda Coverdale 's description, taken from a footnote she provides for her masterly translation of Ta

The importance of fitting the narrative

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In an email exchange with a musician friend I remarked on to how my reference in a recent post to the 'sadly maligned Joyce Hatto' and my link to her recording of Bax's Symphonic Variations were both met with a stony silence. In reply my friend wrote: And no wonder the glaring silence around Hatto; that tempest made all the critics look amateurish. It is a shame that fraud on her husband's part has deafened the music world to Hatto's manifestly genuine qualities. I guess her real story just doesn't fit the narrative. Which reminded me of how relevant these words of Krishnamurti are in our media-moderated age , in which nothing is more important than fitting the narrative: We are second-hand people. We have lived on what we have been told, either guided by our inclinations, our tendencies, or compiled to accept by circumstances and environment. We are the result of all kinds of influences and there is nothing new in us, nothing that we have discovered for o

Happy birthday to a legendary recording producer

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That photo shows a 1970 Kingsway Hall session for the EMI recording of Vaughan Williams' The Pilgrim's Progress . From left to right are Ursula Vaughan Williams, Christopher Bishop (producer), Sir Adrian Boult , John Noble , Ian Partridge, Gloria Jennings, Christopher Parker (balance engineer), John Alldis (chorus master), Sheila Armstrong and Marie Hayward. During his career at EMI Christopher Bishop produced legendary recordings with Sir John Barbirolli, André Previn, Sir David Willcocks , David Munrow, Carlo Maria Giulini, Sir Adrian Boult and many others. Christopher was born on April 1st 1931; he is enjoying a well-earned retirement in rural Suffolk not far from Aldeburgh, and I am sure readers will join me in wishing him a very happy birthday. It is a scandal that in an age when so many minor media celebrities receive recognition with State honours that Christopher Bishop's contribution to British and indeed global culture has never been recognised with a suit

"I have rarely worked so hard at a piece..."

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Arnold Bax , who is seen above, lived in the White Horse public house at Storrington, Sussex from 1941 until his death in 1953 . His last published symphony, the valedictory Seventh , was composed in 1939 and while living in the White Horse it is thought that Bax only composed a few minor works. But there is a spooky story that suggests an Eighth Symphony may have originated from the composer's favourite watering hole. The White Horse is reputed to be haunted and a later resident told how Bax's rooms had a 'live' atmosphere and that furniture moved mysteriously and doors opened of their own accord. Both Bax's bedroom and his workroom are now used to accommodate guests, and in 1986 when a musician stayed in the composer's work room he felt a Bax-like presence which filled the room with "an almost flashing energy which made the air literally mobile". After this experience the musician composed a work for piano titled 'Arnold's Ghost', a