tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8060605.post673913134488043874..comments2024-03-26T15:57:13.443+00:00Comments on On An Overgrown Path: Negro at home, maestro abroadUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8060605.post-58671335431975393902015-04-12T09:18:53.263+01:002015-04-12T09:18:53.263+01:00Thank you, Dr. Jones, for the compliment and for w...Thank you, Dr. Jones, for the compliment and for writing such a much-needed work and so helping fill a huge lacuna in classical music literature. I shall get in touch once I've got hold of it and read it with the mixture of pleasure I know your writing will give me and the inevitable distress in what is not a happy story. And I shall now have a beady eye alert for your future writings, which I hope will be copious.Philip Amoshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11739418522974972567noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8060605.post-16797674132163555292015-04-11T22:26:30.217+01:002015-04-11T22:26:30.217+01:00Thank you for your thoughtful comment. Let's h...Thank you for your thoughtful comment. Let's hope a great many public libraries will add my book to their inventory. I look forward to hearing from you once you've read the book.Dr. Joneshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14064244496730159856noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8060605.post-53499294263934193132015-04-11T22:15:50.037+01:002015-04-11T22:15:50.037+01:00Looking forward to it, Sergio!Looking forward to it, Sergio!Dr. Joneshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14064244496730159856noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8060605.post-35440589660986692652015-04-11T06:19:00.315+01:002015-04-11T06:19:00.315+01:00I will be interviewing Rufus Jones will about his ...I will be interviewing Rufus Jones will about his Dixon book on my radio show on WHPK-FM Chicago on Weds April 29thS.M.https://www.blogger.com/profile/06643285652474314109noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8060605.post-5644623154831840372015-04-11T06:18:40.233+01:002015-04-11T06:18:40.233+01:00I will be interviewing Rufus Jones will about his ...I will be interviewing Rufus Jones will about his Dixon book on my radio show on WHPK-FM Chicago on Weds April 29thS.M.https://www.blogger.com/profile/06643285652474314109noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8060605.post-42174651014761602322015-04-10T13:35:09.760+01:002015-04-10T13:35:09.760+01:00May I add a comment, albeit right off the subject ...May I add a comment, albeit right off the subject of the post. It has astonished me to realize, daily perusing All-Top, that I have not seen one mention of the death of Roy Douglas at 107!! If anyone wants to know why there should be, I can only urge them to read his obituary in the Telegraph. His life is like a scan of British music in the 20th century, from his years as a sort of amanuensis to Vaughan Williams, his work with Walton, with Addinsell, his arrangement for Les Sylphides, and a very odd bit of help he gave Moisewitsch. I found it astonishing in the whole.<br /><br />Also, the obituary of Peter Katin is striking for how early he caught on to, and scorned, those emerging trends in classical music that have led to the present mess, much discussed in your posts, Bob. Another one well worth a read. Pray forgive the digression of this!Philip Amoshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11739418522974972567noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8060605.post-43294183823066333072015-04-10T12:08:21.482+01:002015-04-10T12:08:21.482+01:00I am delighted to see the publication of a work on...I am delighted to see the publication of a work on Dean Dixon. I seem to recall writing on here some time ago that a concert performance of Dixon conducting Beethoven's G Major Concerto with Clara Haskil, who looms large in my pantheon of piano gods and goddesses, had me been so enraptured by his conducting that I had to listen again at once, then to focus more on Haskil. <br /><br />It disappoints me that the book costs $70 U.S., which means it will likely be closer to $90 in Canada, where I now live. A little synchonicity here in that just yesterday I noticed that a work on Greek philosophy by an immensely distinguished classicist and friend of mine, Shirley Darcus Sullivan, is $164 (USED!) on Amazon. The latter I can in some degree understand, for it is so specialised in subject that it is what I call a 'University Book', one unlikely to be bought other than by academic libraries and by scholars in the field (for whom the cost is tax-deductible).<br /><br />But I do not by any means consider Jones' book to be such. It is at heart about ethnic and racial discrimination, and the fact that it focuses on a classical musician should be secondary. Discrimination in any context is of relevance to all, regardless of context. Indeed, Dean Dixon's story is far more revealing of how endemic discrimination is then would be another telling of the Rosa Parks story, stirring as that is. We know well the story of such blatant racism, but far less well racism of an immensely more insidious type.<br /><br />And so, I shall urge that my own district system of 26 libraries buy the work -- they spend more than that on thirty PB copies of Danielle Steele's latest or on multiple copies of the autobiography of some current teen idol or one lavish book on wine.<br /><br />I am not missing the obvious here -- the publishing industry. I love Rowan and Littlefield, for from how many other publishers would we get a reprint of Pirro's 1907 work on Bach's aesthetic or a biography of Pachmann? Such a publisher has to ask such prices. What bothers me though, for I know well the process of getting a book published, is that Jones was unable to secure a much larger, less academic, more commercial publisher for a book that needs the widest possible circulation among those concerned with discrimination or unaware of it in this form. With good marketing that would have taken it outside academic circles and made possible a lower price. I can only urge people to request that their public libraries acquire the work, and mayhap suggest to others do the same. African-American and classical musicians of other races or ethnicities excluded from the music world deserve that. And Dean Dixon should now receive the acclaim of which he was so sorely deprived.Philip Amoshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11739418522974972567noreply@blogger.com