A troubled cure ... for a troubled mind

The Gramophone has a not unexpected development in the Joyce Hatto story.

Now read A troubled cure ... for a troubled mind.
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Travels beyond TripAdvisor

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These photos were taken on my recent spirit quest in Morocco to the Sufi shrine of Sidi Chamharouch, which is seen above. A 75 minutes drive from Marrakech brought me to Imlil where the road ends and the mountains begin. The hamlet of Sidi Chamharouch - which is one of those blessed places which returns a blank in a Trip Advisor search - is at an altitude of 2350 metres and is reached by a tough and potentially dangerous two hour climb up a rocky path. Access is impossible for wheeled vehicles and supplies are brought in by the mules seen in my photos. Beyond Sidi Chamharouch is Jebel Toubkal, which at 4,167 metres is the highest mountain in North Africa. During my trek I was struck by the similarity between the High Atlas and Ladakh on the border of India and Tibet . Film director Martin Scorsese was also struck by the similarity. With Tibet a no-go zone he used this region for location shooting of his 1997 movie Kundun ; this depicts the Dalai Lama 's flight into exile fro...
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Most music is only meant for a certain group of people

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Back in 2016 I recounted how I was impressed and moved by Anna Thorvaldsdottir's In the Light of Air . Recently I have been similarly impressed and moved by her Archora and Aion performed by the Iceland Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Eva Ollikainen. Anna Thorvaldsdottir's music combines the two essential of being both accessible and challenging. And, sadly, it is that challenge that probably explains why her music has failed to gain the traction it deserves in todays comfort zone-delimited culture .    Today it is perfectly acceptable, no praiseworthy - for classical music and other great art to be tailored to the needs of the lowest common denominator. It is less acceptable - no politically incorrect - to echo Benjamin Britten's credo that " Music demands ... some preparation, some effort ". So, at the risk of once again being politically incorrect, I reprise the words of another great under-appreciated woman musician, Alice Coltrane . This quote comes from...
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The purpose of puffery and closed-mindedness

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There is a neat inversion of yesterday's theme of modern orchestras being influenced by baroque performance practices in the double CD above. About Baroque features the unusual combination of contemporary music and period instruments. It was the product of an innovative funding initiative by the Siemens Arts Program that brought together the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra and five leading young composers in a series of workshops and rehearsals that allowed the composers to understand the sonic potential of period instruments. The output from the programme was five new works from Michel van der Aa , Juliane Klein , Rebecca Saunders , Benjamin Schweitzer and Nadir Vassena written specifically for the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra. These were captured in concert performances and released on About Baroque in 2006. Let's make one thing clear, About Baroque is not ersatz early music. It is very contemporary music written for a leading period instrument ensemble. And how well it wo...
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Master musician who experienced the pain of genius

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