Stravinsky - oh wow sacred cow!

'The more new things we try — the more we step outside our comfort zone — the more inherently creative we become, both in the workplace and in our personal lives ... It turns out that unless we continue to learn new things, which challenges our brains to create new pathways, they literally begin to atrophy, which may result in dementia, Alzheimer’s and other brain diseases. No one is sure why, but scientists speculate that getting out of routines makes us more aware in general' This extract from a New York Times article by Janet Rae-Dupree could be the mission statement for the Michael Clark Company's Stravinsky Project.

Last night's double-bill by the company at the Norwich Festival, showed the power of working outside comfort zones with an ultra-modern Rite using nudity in the sacrificial dance as a talisman against dementia. Budgetary comfort zones also took a battering as the forty-minute Rite in the first half used the economical four hand reduction, while for the second half two more Steinways, a supplemented Britten Sinfonia, four soloists, the New London Chamber Choir and conductor Jurjen Hempel were added for a marginally less modern, but still sublime, twenty-five minutes of Les Noces - see header production shot.

Visual comfort zones were also up for grabs, with the second half of Les Noces (except it wasn't - see below) opening with a stunning video of Stravinsky himself conducting the closing pages of The Firebird (how did the players ever follow his beat?), with the maestro's virtual performance drawing enthusiastic applause from both the live and recorded audiences before the real dancing started. The Stravinsky video filmed at the Royal Festival Hall was courtesy of the BBC, and is a timely reminder of the priceless riches locked away in the BBC archives while their 'culture channel', BBC4, fights Alzheimer’s with challenging programmes such as Val Doonican Rocks.

Aural comfort zones become dead-meat with the Michael Clark Company with the exemplary musical forces 'benefitting' from substantial amplification and remixing via a state-of-the-art sound system. Strange when the words don't actually come from the mouths of the New London Chamber Choir, but if it stops dementia who is complaining? (Apparantely some of the audience did by walking out of the previous evening's performance of a different programme which featured very loud music by the Sex Pistols and Wire).

Pesky box-office comfort zones were also ignored by billing the two works as Mmm.. and I Do rather than The Rite and Les Noces. Thankfully there are some big sponsors behind the Stravinsky Project, but I wonder whether the 40% audience capacity would have been bigger had the publicity talked a little bit more clearly about a good old fashioned Rite of Spring?

But overall one of the most stimulating and dementia defeating evenings we have spent in the theatre for a long time. And the headline is for real, it is back-projected during The Rite, sorry Mmm... .

Now watch a video sample of Mmm.. here, read about the four pianists in Les Noces here and about the piano reduction of the Rite here, while Stravinsky has a topical Tibetan connection here.
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Carter on Cage

'This reminded me that when Elliott Carter visited Keele University on October 17, 1977, he answered questions in front of an audience after a recital of his music. He was asked, "Mr. Carter, what do you think of John Cage?" and replied "I don't think of John Cage."'


This quote comes from editor Peter Dickinson's introduction to CageTalk (ISBN 158046 2375), a book which I strongly recommend. Dickinson's English roots and the fact that much of the material originates from BBC interviews gives this Cage anthology a refreshingly cosmopolitan feel. The interviewees include Merce Cunningham, Bonnie Bird, David Tudor, Virgil Thomson, Karlheinz Stockhausen, La Monte Young and Pauline Oliveros. I will be dipping into CageTalk again several more times, meanwhile Cage is happening here and Carter here.
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Eat your heart out RIAA

Everywhere else it is doom and gloom in the record industry. But here is one retailer giving the thumbs up. He runs a market stall in the Jemaa el Fna in Marrakech and official figures show that more than 90% of CDs and DVDs sold in Morocco are pirated, with an industry spokesman saying "every artistic endeavour is affected". Based on my recent visit I would put the piracy rate higher; during nine days in the country I did not see a single legitimate CD on sale. But then, even the BBC gives permission for file sharing for personal use.


Now playing - music of the gnawa communities found in the southern areas of Morocco. The repetitive rhythms and looping riffs of gnawa that are the signature sound of evening in the Jemaa el Fna originated in black African religous rituals and trance and are provided by drums and the gimbri, the long-necked lute seen on the label above, supplemented by iron castanets called karakeb. Hypnotic stuff, but I'm afraid my CD (above) the from the Société Chamusic of Marrakesh label is a pirate copy, legitimate discs were simply unobtainable. What does one do? At least YouTube has some interesting material and Amazon France has a range of non-pirated CDs.

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At last - music treated as music

In the week when the BBC, EMI and UK media decided that Nigel Kennedy is the future of classical music I greatly enjoyed a new CD from an independent Belgian label that proves that there is still life beyond the celebrity circus.

Llibre Vermell from the Ricecar label is an imaginative realisation based on these anonymous words in the famous medieval manuscript in the Abbey of Monserrat: "Sometimes the pilgrims who are holding vigil in the church of the Holy Virgin of Montserrat wanted to sing and dance, but they were only allowed to sing respectable and pious songs". The CD brings together the Namur Chamber Choir as the pilgrims, the Psallentes as the monks and the excellent boys choir Les Pastoureaux as the choirboys of the Abbey together with period instrumentalists under the direction of Christophe Deslignes. The boy's choir are, for me, the real stand-outs on an exceptional disc, how refreshing to hear young voices in early music.

The recording, which derived from a 2007 Festival de Wallonie concert, is a total delight from start to finish. It combines musical scholarship (which is more than can be said for Kennedy's cadenza in the first movement of his new Mozart concerto recording) with more exuberance and sheer joy in music making than I have heard for years. A mixed programme, which moves between Gregorian Chant, music from the Le Llibre Vermell and dance, avoids the inherent monotony of so many early music discs, while producer Jérôme Lejeune and engineer Philippe de Magnée make the magnificent space of the Église Saint-Apollinaire in Bolland an integral part of the performance.

Research carried out some time back reported that the average classical CD is played 1.3 times after purchase, so the five playings that my copy of Llibre Vermell has received in three days must prove something. I can't offer higher praise than saying I am sure David Munrow would have been delighted with this new release.

EM Forster mused in Howards End - "I wonder if the day will ever return when music will be treated as music". This highly recommended recording is welcome proof that the only thing that needs to spin in classical music is the CD.

More young voices in early music here.
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Proud to be a music anorak

Nice to see classical vinyl generating excitement in today's Guardian, but not sure about the headline - 'A music anorak's treasure trove' which suggests classical music is some kind of nasty habit. Also it appears from the piece that the Guardian (and BBC's) Tom Service doesn't have a record deck. I'll let you into a secret. I don't have an iPod, but I do have a Thorens TD125, which I guess also makes me a turntable anorak.

Elsewhere in the Guardian a late tribute to Herbert von Karajan adds little original but is good for a laugh with my old EMI colleague Peter Alward describing Karajan as 'very shy, a simple man with simple tastes'. Which is the best description of a very large yacht and Falcon 10 executive jet I've ever come across.
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Market forces and music collide - again

Canada’s oldest national orchestra is being axed by CBC Radio. Since 1938, the CBC Radio Orchestra, which is the last radio orchestra in North America, has been an invaluable part of Canada’s music scene. The axing is driven by cost savings which have also resulted in the mass culling of classical broadcasts.

Sign the online petition to sign the orchestra here. I hope that the fine CBC musicians will take strength from the story of how, when market forces and music collided in the past at the BBC, the threatened musicians fought back successfully.
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Now it's Carla and Sarkozy the opera

Today's Guardian reports - 'The whirlwind romance of French president Nicolas Sarkozy and Carla Bruni is set to reach the operatic stage. The highlight of English National Opera's 2009/10 season is the newly commissioned A Dangerous Liaison with a libretto based on the French best-selling book Carla and Nicolas: Chronicle Of A Dangerous Liaison by Chris Laffaille and Paul-Eric Blanrue and music by Damon Albarn.

Singing the lead roles in the production scheduled to open in September 2009 are Michael Ball and Charlotte Church. The new opera is a joint production with the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris and New York City Opera and will also be broadcast on BBC4 TV. ENO chief executive Loretta Tomasi said "This exciting new opera follows on from our critically acclaimed productions of Kismet and Aida and underlines our commitment to engage with new audiences".'

Read more about Carla Bruni's musical connections here
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Goodbye Western art music

The storm was so bad even Peter Grimes would have stayed at home and watched BBC TV's repeat of a Steptoe film on its so-called culture channel. But a good-sized audience braved the worst Easter weather for decades to travel to Snape Maltings on Good Friday for a celebration of something more multi-cultural.

The collabaration between between early music group The Dufay Collective and the Spanish-based Al-Quimia was the outcome of one of Aldeburgh Music's pioneering artist residencies. This musical exploration of the multi-cultural society that flourished in Andalucia seven hundred years ago was a high risk project; this isn't exactly mainstream repertoire and hybrid projects such as this are rarely box-office hits. But that's not what Aldeburgh is about. Britten and Pears created Snape to celebrate the holy triangle of composer, performer and listener and on Friday evening, despite the stacked odds, the spirit of place prevailed and the vital electricity sparked from composer through performers to listener.

In fairness it wasn't so much a collabration as a triumph for Al-Quimia. When the two groups played in concert the collabaration really added no more than a strengthened rythym line. But when the players of the Spanish group took centre stage the music soared, and the Dufay musicians were quite content to join the audience in silent admiration. And what a vindication of Britten and Arup Associates' acoustic vision for Snape, even from our seats at the back of the 830 seater hall the nuances of the oud, dumbek, nay flute and kanun were crystal clear.

I have written here before about adventurous programming such as the celebrated concert comprising an Ockeghem Mass and a Mahler symphony in Berlin in 2000, while none other than Philip Glass has said that world music is the new classical. So, now Aldeburgh Music has seen what electifying musicians Al-Quimia are, please can we have a concert with a set by them in the first half and the Britten-Pears Orchestra playing Messiaen's might multi-cultural Turangalila Symphony in the second? Yes, I know there are boring problems like the platform lay-out. But I live close to Aldeburgh and will happily help swap the oud for the ondes Martenot and oboes in the interval.

Now see the art of the mosque.
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Overgrown Path goes Dutch with the BBC

It's a good job I love the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. Because I just noticed I've been promoting their tour of Holland.

Read the BBCSO blog about their Dutch tour here. 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 errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

The BBC Proms - a sad history

Overgrown Path has been saying it for years - BBC Proms - a multicultural society?, BBC Proms 2006 lacks eternal feminine, Music gets in the way of running BBC Proms, and BBC Proms last night - I flee the country.

Now other people are saying it - Hodge attacks Proms: they're narrow and lack the common British values: The culture minister, Margaret Hodge, will today criticise the Prom concerts as one of many British cultural events that fail to engender new common values or attract more than a narrow unrepresentative audience.

At last people are finally waking up to the fact that the BBC Proms in their present form are outdated, irrelevant and unworthy of the BBC's marketing hype as 'the world's greatest music festival'. But government intervention will only make the situation worse, unless the cause of the problem is tackled.

History is the key to understanding the present problems. The first Promenade Concert took place in 1895, and it was twenty-seven years later that the BBC became involved and broadcast the first concert. In 1945, exactly fifty years after the first Prom, the BBC took over as sole managers. The 1970s and 1980s were an Indian summer for the Proms with William Glock, Robert Ponsonby and John Drummond in charge, Pierre Boulez and Bruno Maderna were on the podium and The Soft Machine, Imrat Kahn, and David Munrow on stage.

The problems started in John Drummond's reign and the writing was on the wall in 1990 when Last Night conductor Mark Elder was replaced at the last minute due to his dissenting views on the Gulf War. (It is interesting that Elder's reputation has grown has grown since then, while that of the Proms has declined). In 1996 Nicholas Kenyon succeeded Drummond as Proms director, starting a period when the broad music vision pioneered by Willliam Glock and others was subordinated to the marketing plans and ratings measurements of the post-John Birt BBC.

To sum up Kenyon's twelve years as Proms director, which earned him a knighthood and another top job in the music establishment, I need only repeat my prophetic words written in February 2007 - His tenure at the Proms has been marked by unimaginative planning which totally failed to reflect the diversity of today's contemporary music, and his programming repeatedly backed personal hobbyhorses at the expense of important voices.

The Proms will only start to reflect a broad musical and cultural vision when the stranglehold of BBC Radio 3 is broken. The joint position of Radio 3 controller and Proms director dates from the end of the Indian Summer in 1987 when John Drummond was appointed to both positions. Like Nicholas Kenyon, his successor Roger Wright now holds both positions. The joint responsibilities create a disastrous conflict of interests in which the 'day job' of network controller invariably takes precedence over the concerts. So everything else is subservient to the broadcast schedule, including the music and timings.

To start the rejuvenation of the Proms the positions of Proms director and Radio 3 controller must be separated and 'Chinese walls' built between the broadcasts and the concerts. Birtian internal cross-charging should be instigated, with the Proms cost centre charged for the million of pounds of free BBC Radio 3 promotion it benefits from. This free promotional air time makes it very difficult to promote competitive, and broader, festivals in London during the Proms season. Can anyone really support a position where the BBC control the concerts, the promotional medium, the resident orchestra, the radio and TV coverage, the new music commissioning budget and more?

That word more is an interesting one. With a few exceptions a government minister and a music blog have been the sole critics of the Proms' tunnel vision. Margaret Hodge's criticism is reported in the Guardian; surely that bastion of liberal journalism would be one of the concert series' most vocal critics? Well, the Guardian's chief music critic Tom Service is high profile and a smart guy. But he is also a BBC Radio 3 presenter, writes for BBC Music Magazine and contributed a chapter to the book seen in my header image. The Proms - A New History is a recent publication and the consultant editor is none other than Nicholas Kenyon.

And yes, I've been an enthusiastic Promenader from the 1970s to the present day and I'm even linked from the BBC Proms website.
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Meanwhile back at Choral Evensong

A year ago there was quite an outcry when BBC Radio 3 controller Roger Wright announced an 'improvement' to the network's schedules which involved moving the weekly live broadcast of Choral Evensong from Wednesdays to Sundays.

Roger Wright has just announced another 'improvement' to the schedules. Choral Evensong is being moved back to Wednesdays.

More Choral Evensong fun and games here.
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Harmonia muddle

BBC Radio 3's CD Review programme has been on a jolly to Arles in the South of France. The event was French label Harmonia Mundi's 50th anniversary sales conference, and payback time came last Saturday when the BBC programme played the contents of the conference goody bag and gave several senior French executives a lot of valuable airtime to promote the Harmonia Mundi solution for today's turbulent classical music market.

In simple terms the Harmonia Mundi solution is internet bad and independent sector good. Now I am a huge fan of both Harmonia Mundi recordings and independent record stores and feature both here frequently. The header photo of the excellent Harmonia Mundi store in Avignon was taken by me last September and I have spent an awful lot of Euros in their French stores over the years. So congratulations to Harmonia Mundi on fifty wonderful years, and it's great to find such solid support for independent bricks and mortar stores. But just a minute, look at this ...


Open this link. You will see that Harmonia Mundi are trading on the internet as part of the Amazon Marketplace. You can buy Stockhausen's Kontakte on Wergo (a Harmonia Mundi distributed label) online direct from Harmonia Mundi for £10.73 delivered in the UK which is competitive with the price in leading independent record store (see comment from Harmonia Mundi below). And you don't even need to visit Amazon, just buy from Harmonia Mundi's own online store.

To find out what was really happening I ordered Kontakte direct from Harmonia Mundi. My copy arrived in 48 hours, which is faster than I could have got it from an independent store, and it even came with the business card of John Falla, Harmonia Mund's direct sales manager. Great service; but why are Harmonia Mundi cutting out the very independents they claim to support? Could it be that their private view on the future of the independent bricks and mortar sector differs from their public position?

Harmonia Mundi make great CDs, and you cannot blame them for running with the hare and the hounds in today's turbulent music market. But they are going about it in a muddle-headed way. A top independent record store I spoke to before running this story didn't know about their Amazon Marketplace presence, and, not surprisingly, was very unhappy when I told them. And it's a pity that BBC Radio 3 swallowed Harmonia Mundi's bait hook, line and sinker without doing any research. But then the bouillabaisse in the South of France is very good indeed.

Now here is a contemporary composer saying independent record labels never failed me yet.
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What exactly is live music?

"Way more than 50% of our output is live music ..." claims BBC Radio 3 controller Roger Wright in a revealing article about a new jazz radio station in today's Guardian.

But Radio 3's definition of live is slightly different to yours and mine. As I reported here in February 2007 virtually all evening concerts on Radio 3, except the Proms, are pre-recorded. But the BBC counts these recordings as 'live' performances, and the text streamed with their FM broadcasts describes them as 'live concert recordings'.

In a wonderful example of BBC corporate-crapola Radio 3 defines 'live' as any music recorded with an audience present. Which has important implications both for musicians who earn their living from live music making, as these recorded 'live' performances can be repeated, and for audiences, who may find real concerts with living breathing musicians disappearing.

If Roger Wright turned up at a concert hall for a 'live concert', and found a pre-recorded performance being played through speakers wouldn't he feel cheated? It's not a stupid question - that's what is actually happening in my header photo. Read about it here.
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What a Karajan at the BBC

Apologies to readers, who like me, tuned in vain to BBC Radio 4 at 7.15pm this evening to hear the 'reassessment' of Herbert von Karajan's life and work that I mentioned in one of today's post.

I picked up information on the programme from today's Guardian radio listings which highlighted the Karajan programme. This information would have been supplied by the BBC publicity department. As programmes sometimes change I went to Radio 4's webpage. This clearly says:

19:15 Front Row 23 January 2008
Arts news and reviews with Mark Lawson, including a reassessment of the life and work of Herbert von Karajan as the centenary of the maestro's birth approaches.

Just to make sure doubly-sure I googled 'BBC Radio 4 Karajan' and found another page on the BBC website which confirmed that the programme was being aired today at 7.15pm. So I linked to it.

At 7.15 there was no Karajan feature, no explanation, and no apology. Like so many things the BBC does today, totally hopeless.

In the old days at least we made our mistakes with style.
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If I were predicting the future ...

On July 28, 2007 Overgrown Path ran a story saying 'The BBC is launching “Proms Idol ... the winner of the BBC2 show will take charge of an orchestra during the Last Night Of The Proms at the Royal Albert Hall next year.

Today's Guardian reveals 'The BBC has just commissioned a new reality TV series called Maestro, in which seven celebrity would-be conductors will go head-to-head on the podium before orchestras and choirs. The winner of the series, expected to air on BBC2 this summer, will step up to conduct an orchestra during the Last Night of the Proms at London's Royal Albert Hall in September'.

On February 1, 2006 Overgrown Path ran a story predicting Classical music nightclubs are the way to go, and followed it up on June 9, 2007 with a report about live classical music in nightclub.

Today's Guardian runs a double page spread on how Cool young clubbers in Berlin are flocking to a night with a twist: all the music is classical, and orchestras play live.

On January 7, 2008 Overgrown Path ran a story saying 'If early music is the surprise of 2008 perhaps EMI's new owners will make their acquired assets work for them by releasing a box of the complete David Munrow recordings with decent documentation instead of sub-licensing them for peanuts to other companies while also giving them away piecemeal on their own budget label?

Today's Guardian runs a story headlined Artists' ally makes his exit from EMI.

On January 14, 2007 Overgrown Path ran a story about Taser stun guns headlined The zeitgeist of the YouTube generation.

Today's Guardian runs a full page story headlined 'For those who like a little music with their personal protection: the Taser that plays MP3s'.

As Norman Lebrecht wrote in the Evening Standard on 8 November, 2006 'Until bloggers deliver hard facts … paid for newspapers will continue to set the standard as the only show in town.'

If I were predicting the future ...
Photo of where the Overgrown Path begins (c) On An Overgrown Path 2008. And yes, that is this post on the screens - I was predicting my next article. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Great music making doesn't need surtitles

"I completely agree with you, but can't say so publicly because I depend on work from the BBC" is a message I am receiving with increasing frequency. And the confidential messages are coming from some surprisingly high profile personalities.

Monday's post about the knighthood for former BBC Radio 3 controller and Proms director Nicholas Kenyon generated a record number of private messages of support. As well as dismay over the knighthood for the creator of BBC Radio 2.5 there was also widespread outrage that there was no similar award for one of the greatest ever champions of British music.

Vernon (Tod) Handley was born in 1930, and has probably recorded more British music than any conductor, living or dead. He is an acclaimed interpreter of Elgar, Bax, Vaughan Williams, Finzi, and many other composers. I can remember a Gerontius with his Guildford orchestra and choir in 1976 that was as good as any I have ever heard.

But Tod isn't just a specialist in the English pastoralists. His cycle of the Robert Simpson symphonies (except No 11) for Hyperion is one of the great achievements of the gramophone. He has recorded Elizabeth Maconchy, and his cycle of the Malcolm Arnold symphonies for Conifer (now re-issued on Decca) is another great recording landmark. Despite these achievements, and despite a proliferation of musical knights, Tod Handley was only given the lower honour of a CBE in 2004, an award usually made to businessmen and local government officials.

But is it really surprising? Robert Simpson's music was famously black-listed by the BBC. And under Sir Nicholas Kenyon there have been no BBC Proms performances of Arnold's symphonies for more than a decade, since the Second in 1994 in fact. And, quite scandalously, the acclaimed Ninth has never been performed at the Proms.

Great music music making doesn't need surtitles. But Tod Handley should receive the award he so richly deserves.

Not surprisingly I didn't get a Christmas card from the BBC this year. But one of their orchestras still loves me. And it is the right one. Now read about another forgotten maestro.
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Happy long tail to all my readers

Right at the end of 2007 the Observer ran a story that shames the whole classical music community, including this and other blogs. It was about the BBC's rejection of director Tony Palmer's Vaughan Williams film, a news story that was featured prominently by the Observer and several music blogs, including this one. It now appears that the rejection letter quoted in the coverage was a publicity-seeking hoax, although the identity of the hoaxer remains unclear - read the full account here.

This story neatly sums up a year in which relevance became the order of the day, and swapping the long tail of culture for the short head of the mass market became the number one priority. 2007 saw Norman Lebrecht's attempts to go mass market hit the buffers, while William Barrinton-Coupe's efforts on behalf of his late wife met a similar fate. It was also the year when the Royal Opera House went mass market with its advertising, BBC TV went mass market with its classical music programming, Deutsche Grammophon went mass market with its CD covers, John Foulds went mass market with his World Requiem, the BBC Proms went mass market with its crooners, and the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra went mass market with its concert attire and politics.

'Relevance' is in and the long tail is out. But it doesn't always work as Dominic Sandbrook recounts in his excellent book White Heat, a History of Britain in the Swinging Sixties? 'Many Protestant churchmen, alarmed at their inability to reverse the long decline in church-going, concluded that 'relevance was the order of the day'. According to Grace Davie, the churches, besotted like so many other institutions by the 'desire to be modern', consequently 'looked to the secular world for a lead and borrowed, in some cases rather uncritically, both its ideas and forms of expression'. It was in this period, for example, that liberal churchmen first began wielding guitars, introducing handclapping into the Anglican rite and generally conducting themselves like frustrated pop singers, a tactic that failed to attract many new parishioners and often alienated those still loyal to the Church of England'


In 2008 On An Overgrown Path will stay focussed on the long tail, and now playing is Satori (1999) for solo harpsichord by John Palmer. A long way from the Anglican rite, Satori describes the spiritual awakening during Zen meditation. This penetrating work, with its long silences is influenced both by the composer's friendship with John Cage and by his deep involvement with Japanese culture. Adventurous and thought-provoking new music from the enterprising Sargasso label, which revels in promoting the long tail. Check out good length MP3 samples here.

The CD has excellent sleeve notes by Peter Burt, including this one for the title work - A koan, for instance, is that type of apparently nonsensical question by means of which students in the Rinzai school of Zen are trained to transcend the limitations of verbal reasoning, the most famous example perhaps being Hakuin's 'What is the sound of one hand clapping?' (My own mischievous answer has always been that it is the audience reaction at the average new music concert).

Peter Burt neatly disposes of the long tail versus mass market conflict with these words - All this picturesque 'Japaneseness' might make it sound as though the listener to this CD is in for a comfortable session of 'New-age' easy listening. But be warned: someone who submits himself to the ascetic severities of Zen monastery life could hardly be expected to opt for facile and superficial artistic solutions, and the musical language of John Palmer's work is uncompromisingly Western and modernist. It demands of its listener, no less than of its creator, an attitude of disciplined seriousness. Deeply rewarding listening.

Which eloquently sums up the long tail listening experience.


* Celebrate the new year with some more long tail - my David Munrow on the record programme is being repeated on Future Radio by popular demand at 7.00pm on New Year's Day, click here for the audio stream.

Sand mandala header photo from my 2007 post about the Free Tibet campaign. And no apologies to all those who think politics, music and sport don't mix. With the Olympics in Beijing in 2008 it is a subject I'll doubtless be returning to. Sand mandalas are a motif in Martin Scorsese's film Kundun which also deals with the Chinese occupation of Tibet, and I featured Philip Glass' score for the film on internet radio in November. My middle photo is from Going Buddhist which featured the music of Lou Harrison, the footer image is from Zen and the art of new music about Jonathan Harvey's music, and there is another contemporary music Koan here from James Tenney. Lots of long tail links for the new year.
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Today's BBC - the envy of the world?

Envy? Try some other 'Es' ... Expensive, egregious and ennobled.

The source of that 'envy of the world' quote is here.
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BBC wants Vaughan Williams premiere

"One of television's most imaginative film-makers has condemned Mark Thompson's leadership of the BBC as a 'catastrophe' and accused the corporation of undermining its worldwide reputation by insulting the intelligence of viewers.

Tony Palmer, who has won more than 40 awards including Baftas, Emmys and, uniquely, the Prix Italia twice, criticised the director-general after the BBC turned down a documentary of his. The film, about English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, has been produced by Five instead.

Palmer said he received an extraordinary rejection letter from a BBC commissioning editor explaining that, 'having looked at our own activity via the lens of find, play & share', it had been decided the film did not fit with 'the new vision for [BBC] Vision'.

Bizarrely, Palmer said, the letter concluded: 'But good luck with the project, and do let me know if Mr. V. Williams has an important premiere in the future as this findability might allow us to reconsider.' Vaughan Williams died in 1958."

This story in today's Observer may help explain why I, and many others, are so critical of today's BBC.

The fiftieth anniversary of the death of Ralph Vaughan Williams falls on August 26, 2008. I will be starting the celebrations on my Future Radio programme on Sunday January 6. Unlike the BBC I haven't looked for an important premiere by Mr. V. Williams. Instead, I'm making do with his overture The Wasps and 'Glorious John' Barbirolli's blazing account of RVW's magnificent Fifth Symphony - for me not just one of the composer's greatest works, but also one of the masterpieces of twentieth century music.

Header photo was taken in better times at the BBC, when Michael Tippett's Second Symphony was being rehearsed at their Maida Vale studios. From left Sir Adrian Boult, Michael Tippett, RVW, Ursula VW and John Minchinton. More Vaughan Williams here.
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New music premiere for internet radio

Inner Cities are where you go to get debriefed, to watch Trisha Brown levitate on Bach in San Francisco; to help Cage squeeze lemons into his fresh taboule on 18th Street and watch David Tudor mix chili peppers and lasers at the Grand Hotel des Palmes; to play the Sydney Harbour like a bandoneon; to teach advanced-orchestration in the Greek Theater at Mills College with Pauline Oliveros and the ghost of Harry Partch; to shake Stravinsky's hand in the American Sector-Berlin and Varese’s in New Haven; to watch Kosugi dance his electric violin around Marcus Aurelius; to get thrown off stage in London as a warmup act fo