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Beware of the classical music nimbies

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Ezra Pound proposed that in moments of transition there are almost always moments of clarity. Today, classical music, the arts, and culture in general have all reached a moment of fundamental transition. But in classical music, where is the clarity?  It is incontestable that classical music has reached a moment of transition. Until recently it was struggling to connect with the young rewired audience . But today the problem is far more fundamental. A decade ago the mature cohort despaired at youngsters whose life experience - including music - was confined to the screens of mobile devices. But now the entire Western population - in fact my recent time in India suggests the entire global population - experiences almost every aspect of their life through a mobile phone. In every age group attention spans are diminishing, social media has become the primary tastemaker, entertainment is valued above enlightenment, instant gratification rules, and  quality expectations have dimin...
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You cannot aggregate taste

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My recent listening has included Ballett by the legend of German electronic music Klaus Schulze . Spanning four discs for its CD re-release ,  Ballett 1,2,3 & 4 expands Schulze's established electronic sound palett by the addition of violin, flute, cello and oboe. He explains, or rather dismisses, the neo-classical style of the pieces as follows:  'Because of the cello, the songs of course have a slightly classical feeling. But: No! Though I like to connect electronic music with classical sound and structures, I won't suddenly start to compose "classically". Just as I won't publish the many poems I had written before doing my German studies, or exhibit Sunday paintings like McCartney – never mind the fact that I can't paint. I will also never write an autobiography; I stick to that which I'm good at. I never had any hobbies besides music, whether it be painting or writing. I always made music, as if focused on one thing only'. Ballett is m...
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New verb for a new year

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To netflix = to align an artform with the genre's lowest common denominator to increase audience size.  Example of use = BBC Radio 3 has been netflixed .
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Our gods have left us

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Olivier Messiaen was a wise being who valued the spiritual. His  Turangalîla-Symphonie  is influenced by the Indian rhythms that underpin Shiva's dance, and the work's title is derived from Sanskrit. Above is the album cover of  the 1978 recording  with André Previn conducting the London Symphony Orchestra. While in India recently my reading - in fact re-reading - included Aki Cederberg's Journeys in the Kali Yuga . Here is an extract: Ours is an age of great dispossession. It is a time of war, terrorism, genocide, corruption, and economic and ecological disaster. But even more than these things, the great dispossession we face is an internal or spiritual one. This dispossession is discernible at almost every level of life and existence. Our gods, however we might perceive them, have left us. Our soul is barren and disconnected from the roots that nourished its growth and formation. We have lost our inner compass and are floundering around, aimless and lost, in pur...
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Each human being is unique

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They thought that it would be a disgrace to go forth as a group. Each entered the forest at a point that he himself had chosen, where it was quite darkest and there was no path. When there's a way on a path, it is someone else's path; each human being is a unique phenomenon. That is Joseph Campbell  with a prescient warning of the dangers of the wisdom - 'friends', 'followers' & 'likes' - of online crowds. He was writing in Goddesses: Mysteries of the Feminine Divine  describing the entry of the Grail Knights into the forest in Minnesänger Wolfram von Eschenbach's  Parzival . The accompanying portraits of eight unique phenomenon were taken by me during recent visits to Crete and India.  My listening while travelling was predictably varied. One of many highlights was Andrew Gourlay's Parsifal Suite constructed from Wagner's opera. Andrew Gourlay conducts the London Philharmonic Orchestra in an exceptionally sonorous recording - complet...
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Mad Rush

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The traditional Buddhist depiction of the hell realm as places of extreme heat or extreme cold is terrifying in its own way as anything that medieval Christianity has to offer. According to ancient Tibetan scriptures, the hell realms are located at a great distance below Bodh Gaya , the place in India where the Buddha attained enlightenment. Commenting on these scriptures, the Dalai Lama has pointed out that this would theoretically place hell in the middle of America. That extract is from Mick Brown 's recommended book The Spiritual Tourist .  Portrait of Philip Glass is by  Luis Alvarez Roure . It is in the collection of the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery and graces the cover - thankfully and bravely without intrusive typography - of the recent Philip Glass Solo album. Mad Rush on that album is a piano transcription of the organ piece written by Glass in 1978 for the flexibly-timed arrival of the Dalai Lama at the cathedral of St. John the Divine (New York) to gi...
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Zakir Hussain - Remember Shakti

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Zakir Hussain, who has died at the far too young age of 73, made a huge contribution to the Indian classical tradition. Just a few examples from my own CD library are the 1993 Royal Albert Hall Concert for Peace with Ravi Shankar, the 1997 concert recording from Stuttgart with sitarist Ustad Vilayat Khan, and the 1990 concert in Passaic Valley Auditorium, New Jersey with sarangist Sultan Khan. Elsewhere tributes have lazily centred on Zakir's collaborations with George Harrison and Van Morrison, supplemented by the usual YouTube videos. So I want to highlight two other collaborations which highlight just what a visionary genius Zakir Hussain was. Arguably Zakir's furthest left-field project was Tabla Beat Science with bass guitarist, producer and demolisher of comfort zones Bill Laswell . This collaboration, described by a reviewer as "hard-hitting westernised electric fusion...a cross-cultural technical extravaganza", produced two remarkable CD releases, Tala Mat...
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