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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
Music blogs go respectable next Monday (Oct 29) when I give a talk at Cambridge University. My subject is Blogs - the new wisdom of crowds? and I will look at why music blogs are so successful, and what their impact really is. The conflict between traditional journalism and the new bloggers will be considered, and new media opportunities such as webcasting will also be discussed.
I will be explaining how On An Overgrown Path started, present some readership data, and give inside tips on how to create a successful blog. And, of course, no presentation from me would be complete without a scholarly mention of Norman Lebrecht and BBC Radio 3.
Full details of the talk at Pembroke College are available on the Cambridge University website, and there is limited space for visitors. Any other organisations interested in a similar presentation please contact me via overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk.
Now read how blogging is doing it for our time.
Wisdom of Crowds is a book by James Surowiecki - recommended. Picture credit Rocky Music. 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 other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
Today's Observer seems determined to follow the BBC down the slippery slope to editorial oblivion. No less than two pages are devoted to a vacuous article whose title, 'From Iggy to Gigli: my journey to the Proms', says it all. Observer journalist Sean O'Hagan is given some free tickets to help puff the BBC Proms to the crossover audience, and reports: - At other times, though, I was totally baffled by what I was hearing. And some of it was simply was too much to take in, particularly, though it pains me to say it, the more modern stuff: Adams's Symphony No 4, and especially Sam Hayden's cacophonous Substratem.
If we ignore the misspelling of Sam Hayden's Substratum and a later incorrect reference to the "Soweto String Quartet", I am sure John Adams' would be surprised to learn that he has written four symphonies, and even more surprised to find one of them confused with Charles Ives Symphony No. 4, which was in fact performed in the July 17 Prom.
But as another journalist and BBC presenter, the inimitable Norman Lebrecht, recently wrote: - Esoteric as it may seem, the supposed fraud shows up the flaws of a classical blogosphere that trades in unchecked trivia. Classical blogs are spreading but their nutritional value is lower than a bag of crisps. Unlike financial blogs, which yield powerful and profitable secrets, classical web-chat is opinion-rich and info-poor. Until bloggers deliver hard facts and estate agents turn into credible critics, paid-for newspapers will continue to set the standard as only show in town.
Now read about a great journalist who wouldn't have made those kind of mistakes
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 other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
Michael pays penalty for driving while unfit - Singer given 100 hours' community service - Judge's best wishes to star before Wembley concert ~Guardian June 9 (above).
Conductor jailed for groping youths - An orchestra conductor was jailed for nearly four years after using his "god-like" status to grope a string of gifted teenage musicians ~ Guardian Unlimited June 4 (below).
Robert King links 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 other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
It's goodbye great music journalism and hallo 'advertorial'. For confirmation look no further than today's Guardian film and music supplement which devotes its front page and a full inside page to two Elgar stories. The main article is a reheating of the familiar story about Elgar not being appreciated outside England spiced-up with a few snide comments about authoritative Elgar interpreters.
The byline of this page 3 lead story is Sakari Oramo, principal conductor of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO). But the copy, which plugs CBSO performances of the Dream of Gerontius and makes the case for a biennial Elgar festival (hosted by the CBSO perhaps?) is all too obviously written by the orchestra's PR department. At least the 'advertorial' source is transparent, the piece ends with the footer - The CBSO plays The Dream of Gerontius at Symphony Hall, Birmingham (0121-780 3333) on June 1.
Below the CBSO puff is yet another Elgar 'reappraisal', this time by David Pownall, which reheats the critical rejection of the composer's Second Symphony. Again the advertorial source is obvious from the footer - David Pownall's Elgar Rondo is broadcast on Radio 3 on June 3 at 8.30pm. Details of Radio 3's Elgar programming are at bbc.co.uk/radio3/classical/elgar.
It's a pity that Guardian Arts Editor Charlotte Higgins didn't spend the money saved from journalists fees on copy checkers. The previous day's Guardian story about the newly published photos of Hitler at Bayreuth said: The photographer was hosted by the chairman of the Bayreuth chamber of commerce, who was a member of Hitler's inner circle - as was British-born Winifred Wagner, the composer's widow. Readers of my recent article Phantom of the Opera will know, of course, that Winifred was not Richard Wagner's widow, she was the wife of the composer's son Siegfried.
Elsewhere in today's Guardian Andrew Clements shows that music journalism can be more than toothless advertorials. In his review of ECM's new recording of Valentin Silvestrov's Sixth Symphony Clements writes -
Though the ECM catalogue embraces a huge range of contemporary composers, from Lachenmann and Kurtag to Steve Reich and Meredith Monk, it has a weakness for the composers of the post-Shostakovich generation from the former Soviet Union. One of those is the Ukraine-born (in 1937) Valentin Silvestrov, who in the 1970s seems to have flirted with compositional techniques imported from the western European avant garde before settling upon the limply anecdotal style of his later works. One of those is the achingly empty Sixth Symphony, completed in 1995, which takes up this disc. It's built in an arch form, with linked pairs of movements flanking the central 25-minute one that begins with a reminiscence of the Adagietto from Mahler's Fifth Symphony. Unfortunately, Silvestrov lacks Mahler's gifts as a melodist or as a musical architect, and like the other movements this lapses into posturing gestures. The over-heated essays in the CD booklet do Silvestrov few favours either.
Great music journalism from Andrew Clements, but the over-heated essays elsewhere in the Guardian do Elgar few favours either. Why not let the music critics write the features and the orchestras play the concerts?
Now read more about Guardian advertorials
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 other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
Much coverage elsewhere of Tim O'Reilly's proposed blogging code of conduct, although thankfully it is not needed here as the readers On An Overgrown Path are a very civilised bunch. But the dire quality of much of today's 'user generated' content was brought home to me recently when I read Norman Finkelstein’s life of the pioneer of broadcaster journalism, Edward Murrow. Where today can you find the equivalent of this economic but powerful prose describing London in 1939 weeks before the outbreak of war, when the city’s children had been evacuated to the safety of the country?
‘It’s dull in London now that the children are gone. For six days I’ve not heard a child’s voice. And that’s a strange feeling. No youngsters shouting their way home from school. And that’s the way it is in most of Europe’s big cities now. One needs the eloquence of the ancients to convey the full meaning of it. There just aren’t any more children.’
Everyone in the media, from newscasters to bloggers, should study Edward R. Murrow’s style. His mentor was Ida Lou Anderson, at Washington State University, and she taught him to use pauses and intonations to best advantage, and to use as few words as possible to make a point. “She demanded not excellence so much as integrity,” Murrow later said, and he told his staff, “You are supposed to describe things in terms that make sense to the truck driver without insulting the intelligence of the professor.” Broadcast historian Erik Barnouw described Murrow’s prose as having “a quiet dignity. It avoided stuffiness and also the condescension of folkiness. It abhorred the frenzied – it favored short, concise statements.”
On April 15 1945 Ed Murrow described the Nazi concentration camp at Buchenwald outside Weimar for CBS listeners. When the dedication ceremony of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC took place in April 1993 it included a reading from Murrow’s account. I wonder how many blog posts, newscasts and YouTube videos will receive similar treatment in fifty years from now? Here is what they will be measured against:
Permit me to tell you what you would have seen, and heard, had you been with me on Thursday. It will not be pleasant listening. If you are at lunch, or if you have no appetite to hear what Germans have done, now is a good time to switch off the radio, 
for I propose to tell you of Buchenwald …. There surged around me an evil-smelling horde. Men and boys reached out to touch me; they were in rags and the remnants of uniform. Death had already marked many of them, but they were smiling with their eyes … When I entered, men crowded around, tried to lift me to their shoulders. They were too weak. Many of them could not get out of bed. I was told that this building once stabled eighty horses. There were twelve hundred men in it, five to a bunk. The stink was beyond all description …
In another part they showed me the children, hundreds of them. Some were only six. One rolled up his sleeve. D-6030, it was. The others showed me their numbers; they will 
carry them till they die … There were two rows of bodies stacked up like cordwood. They were thin and very white. Some of the bodies were terribly bruised, though there seems to be little flesh to bruise … Murder had been done at Buchenwald … I pray you to believe what I have said about Buchenwald. I have reported what I saw and heard, but only part of it. For most of it I have no words … If I’ve offended you by this rather mild account of Buchenwald, I’m not in the least sorry.
With Heroic Truth, the Life of Edward R. Murrow by Norman H. Finkelstein is printed on demand by Authors Guild Backinprint.com ISBN0595348068. Now read how few words can tell a huge story in Childhood Luggage.
With thanks to the US 2nd Air Division Memorial Library in Norwich for their invaluable collection of American titles, which includes With Heroic Truth. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included for "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 other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
The
Formula 1 season gets under way in Australia this weekend with the corporate spin machines reaching peak revolutions, and the paid-for-media are swallowing it lock, stock and barrel - literally. Today's Guardian is gushing in its praise of Jody Scheckter (left) - "Formula 1 driver turned farming evangelist in Hampshire" and journalist Matthew Fort promotes Scheckter's latest business enterprise with this purple prose:
There are other great organic farms in the country, but Laverstoke Park is more than just a place of agricultural production. It's a kind of university of organic production, a centre for experiment and knowledge. Jody Scheckter stands in front of his long barrows of compost. In the background, the sun dances on the grass on the gentle curve of a green field on which fat, healthy-looking sheep stand nose down, placidly lunching away.
I guess the Guardian simply didn't have space to write about South African born Scheckter's other business ventures, which include founding FATS Inc. Do take a trip over to their website, here is the executive summary from it:
FATS, Inc. (Firearms Training Systems) is a leading provider of simulated training solutions that improve the skills of military, law enforcement and security organizations around the world. FATS provides judgmental, tactical and combined arms training experiences, utilizing quality engineered weapon simulators.
The U.S. Postal Service purchased the first FATS training solution in 1984. FATS has created more than 1,200 training scenarios and 300 distinct simulated weapons. FATS has sold approximately 5,200 training systems in more than 50 countries worldwide.
The company serves U.S. and international customers from headquarters in Suwanee, Georgia, with branch offices in Australia, Canada, Singapore, Netherlands and the United Kingdom.
Elsewhere the website tells us FATS Inc "provides firearm training systems for law enforcement, military, and hunters," so all those "fat, healthy-looking sheep .... placidly lunching away " down on Scheckter's farm had better look out.
Now read about the Zeitgeist of the YouTube generation.
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 other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
In today’s Evening Standard and online Norman Lebrecht declares ‘until bloggers deliver hard facts … paid for newspapers will continue to set the standard as the only show in town’ and goes on to take a swipe at On An Overgrown Path’s story about the BBC King’s College broadcast. Now I don’t think for a moment Stormin’ Norman has an axe to grind even if he does write for a paid for newspaper and presents a BBC Radio 3 programme, but his blustering cannot be ignored. Among the many accusations he flings around are that I do not deliver hard facts, I trade in unchecked trivia, and I did not check my story with the BBC, so let's look at these points.
Not hard facts - I reported that the BBC had announced a 1956 Argo commercial recording as a 1954 BBC broadcast. Here is a transcript from the broadcast of the presenters introduction:
' This week's broadcast of choral evensong.... Today, a stunning broadcast from 1954, a service from the chapel of King's College Cambridge. The choir was conducted by Boris Ord, who was Director of Music from 1929 to 1957..... '
Both Lebrecht and the BBC now admit that the broadcast was the 1956 Argo recording, but the transcript above shows it was announced as 'a stunning broadcast from 1954'. Can the facts be any harder than that? No, despite attempts to obscure them by a BBC and Lebrecht smokescreen of 'erased tapes.'
The story was not checked with the BBC and was unchecked trivia - before running the story I checked a number of sources including a choir member on the 1956 Argo recording who had heard the broadcast. This choir member had raised the deception with the BBC and received an automated response from them, and nothing has been heard since. Lebrecht's ability to get a response from the BBC surely cannot be connected with the programme he presents for them?
Elsewhere Lebrecht says 'online blogs won't be required reading until they start focussing on the facts' - a soundbyte worth closer scrutiny. On April 5th 2006 a journalist called Norman Lebrecht wrote the following in a paid for newspaper "in fact, no label had issued a (Beethoven) symphonic cycle in three years, and none was likely to do so again." When I read this I immediately emailed Norman to point out that Osmo Vänskä and the Minnesota Orchestra were currently recording a Beethoven cycle. Back came a blustering reply that 'confidential sources said the Minnesota cycle would proceed no further'. Unfortunately Lebrecht's facts were well and truly out of focus, symphonies 3, 4, 5, 8 and 9 are now available.
I can only agree with Lebrecht's statement that 'paid for newspapers will continue to set the standard'. 
The only problem is it is a double standard - among Lebrecht's scoops today are that On An Overgrown Path 'flagged up this week's John Taverner premiere through the blogging of its soloist, Nicholas Daniel'. Norman, any music blogger focussed on the facts will tell you Nick Daniel was giving the first performance of a work by the contemporary composer John Tavener, and that John Taverner was a 16th century choral composer.
For more on Norman Lebrecht's blusters take An Overgrown Path to Wagner downloads and Beethoven cycles
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 other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
