On An Overgrown Path

Nice picture of the new head office for Chinese Central Television (CCTV) elsewhere . Read more about television and the media in China, not from me but from the BBC : 'With more than one billion viewers, television is a popular source for news and the sector is competitive, especially in urban areas. China is also becoming a major market for pay-TV; it is forecast to have 128 million subscribers by 2010. State-run Chinese Central TV, provincial and municipal stations offer a total of around 2,100 channels. The availability of non-domestic TV is limited. Agreements are in place which allow selected channels - including stations run by AOL Time Warner, News Corp and the Hong Kong-based Phoenix TV - to transmit via cable in Guangdong province. In exchange, Chinese Central TV's English-language network is made available to satellite TV viewers in the US and UK. Beijing says it will only allow relays of foreign broadcasts which do not threaten "national security" or ...

To start the week two excellent reasons why this new release of Peter Maxwell Davies' chamber music is good news. First, it's great music passionately played by the chamber ensemble Gemini and vividly recorded in the slightly dry acoustics of Studio 1 at the Department of Sound & Recording at the University of Surrey. (The department is very highly rated and has offered a tonmeister course for many years). The main work on the CD is Ave Maris Stella from 1975 which lasts for almost 30 minutes. This is classic early Max, writing before he was seduced by the plush sounds of the symphony orchestra and string quartet. Strange isn't it how composers like Maxwell Davies and Ralph Vaughan Williams produce some of their best works on religous themes yet are non-believers? Worth the purchase price alone is Dove, Star Folded from 2001 which, unusually for Max, is based on a Greek Byzantine hymn; John Tavener had better look out . The second reason why this CD is good news is...

'Box-ticking' gets short measure in an enterprising concert of new music from Germany and England at The Warehouse, London SE1 on April 10th with the Uroboros Ensemble conducted by Gwyn Pritchard . Here is the programme: from Germany Peter Helmut Lang - Dominoeffekt ** Karl-Heinz Wahren - A capricious and romantic meeting ** Johannes K. Hildebrandt - Bruchstück II * Lothar Voigtländer - Salmo Salmonis * from Britain Ross Lorraine - end piece ** James Weeks - The Catford Harmony ** Gwyn Pritchard - Ensemble Music for Six Joe Cutler - Three Quiet Pieces ** = World première * = UK première It's an adventurous programme that's refreshingly free of the 'box-ticking' that sanitises so much programming today. And it's not just classical music that suffers from the 'little boxes synodrome'. Here is a thought-provoking extract from a Guardian article about art commissions. 'Today it was announced that Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster will be th...

'Favourite stoned listening included electronic music by Luciano Berio ; the IBM computer singing 'Daisy, Daisy'; John Cage's Indeterminacy - some stories were longer than others, but he read each one in two minutes, some speeded up, others very slowly; a two-volume Folkways recording of a Japanese Zen ceremony - on one track a bell rang once a minute, and it was always great when it finally rang; and lots of the latest squeals and shrieks from the ghetto: Albert Ayler's Bells and Spirits Awake; Ran Blake ; Pharoah Sanders ; Sun Ra and his Solar Arkestra (photo above); Eric Dolphy's honking bird imitations; Free Jazz by the Ornette Coleman Double Quartet: two reeds, two bassists, two drummers, two trumpets, thirty-eight minutes of spontaneous collective improvisation with no preconceptions' - Barry Miles recalls stoned listening with Paul McCartney in the out-of-print but not out-of-mind In the Sixties . Now playing - The Brad Mehldau Trio's...

French first lady Carla Bruni has some interesting classical music connections. Her mother Marisa Borini is an actress and classical pianist who is reported to have had an affair with Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli . Depending on your sources Bruni's biological father is Maurizio Remmert, an Italian businessman who now lives in Brazil Marisa or Marisa Borini's husband, the contemporary composer Alberto Bruni Tedeschi seen in my header photo. Alberto Bruni Tedeschi's distinctions included writing four operas and having one of them filmed with a cast including Charles Aznavour , his own daughter Valeria Bruni and Isabel von Karajan , the daughter of the conductor . President Sarkozy seems to appreciate ladies with musical connections. His divorced second wife, Cécilia Ciganer-Albéniz , is the great grand-daughter of Spanish composer Isaac Albéniz . Which, interestingly, means the families of both the President's second and third wives are of Sephardic descent . Any copy...

Britain is having a love affair with all things French. As well as hosting the current state visit by President Sarkozy and his new wife we have the first IRCAM academy in the UK in April. Is it a sign of these devolved times that the event is not in London, but is being hosted by the BBCSSO and led by Jonathan Harvey in Glasgow on April 7-12? Or is it because, as I've said here before , the BBCSO is on a roll? Read more in today's Guardian , including the inside track by Jonathan Harvey on new IRCAM technologies. One of the few books to explore IRCAM is the snappily-titled Rationalizing Culture, IRCAM, Boulez and the Institutionalization and the Musical Avant-Garde . Anthropologist and Cambridge don Georgina Born spent a year in IRCAM in Paris producing her ethnographic analysis and if both the title and the book itself reads like a Ph. D. thesis it is not surprising as that is how the book originated. Which means that, unlike Joan Peyser , Georgina Born leaves Boulez'...

1968 was a year of upheaval. It was the year of sex and drugs and rock and roll and saw the assasination of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy , the accidental death of Trappist monk and social activist Thomas Merton , the Tet offensive in Vietnam, the rise of the anti-war movement , the student rebellion that paralysed France , and the growth of the civil rights and women's movements . Stockhausen composed Stimmung , Hair opened on Broadway, the Beatles released their White Album and a Lindsay Anderson film put an African version of the Latin Mass at the top of the UK charts. Finally, as a reminder that history rarely repeats itself, but its echoes never go away , in October 1968 Tommie Smith and John Carlos made their controversial protest in support of the Olympic Project for Human Rights (OPHR) on the podium at the Mexico Olympics. While society was in upheaval elsewhere Dom Charles was completing the remarkable work of art seen above in the Abbey church of the Bene...

Which work, composed in the first decade of the twentieth-century and still in the repertoire today, has a score that calls for chorus, soloists, organ and a large orchestra including small and large gongs, antique cymbals, glockenspiel, tambourine, triangle and an ancient Jewish instrument with religous connections? Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Pierre Boulez was born on March 26, 1925. Quite obviously my photo is not of Boulez, but this path leads to him. The photo was taken at the Italian Institute in London in 1965, Paul McCartney is talking to Luciano Berio and between them is Barry Miles who was a key figure in the 60s counterculture. The photo comes from Miles' memoir In the Sixties which places Berio, Cage and others alongside better known icons of the decade and is one of the best books on the period. Like so many good books today it is out of print, but is still available if you search. One of my favourite Berio CDs is the 1984 Erato recording of his Sinfonia with the New Swingle Singers and Orchestre National de France conducted by birthday boy Pierre Boulez . The Sinfonia is the composer's best-known work and blends Samuel Beckett , Martin Luther King , Claude Levi-Strauss and, of course, Mahler in Berio's unique style. Barry Miles went to Cirencester Grammar School where his music teacher was ...

When composer and conductor Peter Paul Fuchs died on March 26, 2007, I marked his passing with two tributes written with John McLaughlin Williams . At the end of the second article I wrote the following - We now have information on Fuchs’ music, but don’t have any photographs of him. Any photos for publication would be very gratefully received. After writing that a student of Fuchs, Adrian McDonnell , who is now conductor of the Orchestre de la Cité Internationale in Paris, emailed me. He is in contact with the composer's widow Mrs. Elissa Fuchs in North Carolina who kindly supplied the photographs and biography that I am publishing to mark the first anniversary of his death. This is the only comprehensive resource on Fuchs on the internet and I am very grateful to Mrs. Elissa Fuchs, Adrian McDonnell and John McLaughlin Williams for making it possible. I have ported the article to Wikipedia so it will reach the widest possible audience. Peter Paul Fuchs was born on Octobe...

Regular readers will know that monastic orders are one of my interests, so it will come as no surprise that I have been greatly enjoying ECM's new release of music by Meredith Monk . Impermanence is a moving meditation on the transitory nature of life that expands Monk's distinctive vocal writing to embrace a range of instruments including piano, elephant bells, marimba, vibraphone and, my favourite , a bicycle wheel. A beautiful CD that is recommended. But am I the only one that now finds ECM's signature out of focus monochrome cover art an irritating cliché? More on ECM cover art 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

Today's Guardian reports - ' One of London's most successful violin restorers and traders, Florian Leonhard, is hoping to attract investors to his alternative investment syndicate as more conventional assets look increasingly vulnerable to an economic slowdown. The Fine Violins Fund, which counts cellist Julian Lloyd Webber among its directors, has so far raised €16m (£12.5m) towards what it hopes will be a €60m syndicate investing in the most precious pre-19th-century violins, mainly from Italy. Leonhard intends to invest in 50 violins valued at about $1.5m each - many of them beyond the means of the musicians who play them. The instruments will not be locked away in a bank vault; they are to be loaned out, without charge, to promising musicians, 30 of whom have already been identified. The syndicate claims to benefit not only because the instruments' quality is maintained by regular use, but also because violins that are linked to the early career of performers who g...

Arturo Toscanini was born on March 25, 1867, in Parma, Italy. Happy birthday Maestro! March 25 is also Independence Day and a national holiday in Greece commemorating the 1821 uprising against the occupying Turks that ended with the birth of an independent modern Greece in 1832. It is wonderfully appropriate that Toscanini's birthday and Greek Independence Day fall together as he was a conductor who hated compromise . Sadly the Greek struggle for independence did not end in 1832, and in the twentieth-century it had to endure invasions by the fascist forces of Italy and Germany , the subsequent Civil War and a military junta . Here are the words of that great folk hero, activist and composer, Mikis Theodorakis, who fought on the side of right in all three conflicts. So far death has only been defeated by art. All those who tried to reach immortality through violence, power or money have failed. There is no temporal dimension to immortality. Its distinguishing mark is one of qual...

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 sparke...

This photo shows John Cage and Daisetz Suzuki in 1962. Now playing is Cage's 36 Mesotics re and not so re Marcel Duchamp which is dedicated to the Japanese video artist Shigeko Kubota and includes this quote from the Zen teacher Daisetz Suzuki: 'There is no difference between life and death'. In the Harmonia Mundi recording the text is sung by Paul Hillier and spoken by Terry Riley . More on Daisetz Suzuki here and here. Cage Talk, dialogues with and about John Cage is available from Boydell Press . Photo credit Yashuiro Yoshioka. 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 Rite of Spring is celebrated today in another culture. March 22, 2008 is the start of the Hindu spring festival of Holi (Phagwa in Bhojpuri ). My photo was taken last week at the gorgeous JAS Musicals shop in London which make the sitars seen in the photo. Now playing - Tarun Bhattacharya santoor with Shiv Shankar Ray tabla on The Art of the Indian Santoor on the wide-ranging ARC label . The santoor is a hammered dulcimer (photo below) related to the Hungarian cimbalon and Chinese yang qin and is used for Hindustani raga , four of which are heard on the CD. Now read about the perils of Eastern tuning . Header photo (c) On An Overgrown Path 2008. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

'A man who has never seen the world, never lived as a stranger among foreigners, who has never known a life and culture other than his own is in some way limited. He cannot help but feel his own way of life to be superior, to be the only way. This was one of the poisons I saw seeping into my company in Iraq from the beginning: parochialism, ignorance, knowing nothing about Islam or the Middle East, or any other society outside American cities like Tampa or St. Petersburg... Many people believe in good and evil. Just that, that simple: good on one side, evil on the other. By default, we are always on the good side. This means that any who oppose us must logically be evil. Buddhism tends to take a circumspect view of good and evil, avoiding that distinction entirely and instead speaking of "positive" and "negative" actions as measured by their effect in the world. It is never as final and absolute as good and evil. Yet duality invades every level of society, from...

Back in 2006 my article about Mahogany Opera's excellent production of Britten's Curlew River was followed by a discussion about operatic double-bills. Nice to see it wasn't just an academic discussion, the company is presenting a double bill of Walton's The Bear and Stravinsky's The Fox at Aldeburgh and London in April. Also good to see the art of poster design isn't dead. More details here and another classical music poster boy 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

After John Cage in Bruges Stockhausen has been happening in London. Take a leading rock music venue with no seats and a bar across the back wall, pack in three hundred experimental music fans, add contemporary music specialists Daan Vandewalle (piano - making his UK debut) and Chris Cutler (percussion) and a dodgy piano, and you have last week's Stockhausen tribute. The first half of the SPNM promoted evening at the Luminaire deep in darkest Kilburn was devoted to emerging British experimental artists and in a neat move the audience was given a free CD recording of the set at the end of the evening. In the second half Stockhausen's Klavierstucke I-IV and the improvised version of Kontakte were coupled with two tributes in which Robin Rimbaud (electronics) joined Daan and Chris. First came a solo from Robin, Retuning Stockhausen , which used samples of the composers music. A very off the wall evening ended with Opus 2128 based on Stockhausen's curiously suppressed ...

A charming and previously unpublished reminiscence of an 11-year-old Gustav Mahler (photo above) comes to An Overgrown Path from Elissa Minet Fuchs former ballerina with the Ballet Russe and the Metropolitan Opera. Mrs. Fuchs (see photo below) is the widow of conductor and composer Peter Paul Fuchs who was the subject of two tributes here when he died last year. A reader drew Mrs. Fuchs' attention to my articles and she has very kindly supplied me with material, including previously unpublished photographs, on her husband for a full appreciation to be published here on the first anniversary of his death next week. Among the material was this memory of a young Gustav Mahler. Peter's grandfather on his mother's side, Alois Rusicka, was born in a small town in Czechoslovakia not far from the Austrian border. He was a law student - pursuing his degree and an amateur musician, a cellist. On one of his visits home, he was approached by a tavern keeper. He was asked to meet ...

Today's Guardian asks 'is this the most exciting thing to have happened to classical music this century?' - Thomas Adès? Osvaldo Golijov? or even Gustavo Dudamel? - er .. no . They were demanding jazz and rock and roll way back . Image credit Matrix Business Coaching .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

Another 'digital concert hall' has been launched. Dutch media company CommuniServe B.V. are promoting http://www.monteverdi.tv/ (above) as a resource offering 2,500 hours of classical concerts, blogs, reviews, a downloadable music catalogue and several classical radio stations. A different take on the digital concert hall 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

In June last year contributor Antoine Leboyer wrote here about the trivialisation of music at Paris' venerable Théâtre du Châtelet with these prophetic words - ' There are no real operas save, perhaps, a rarity by Roussel which looks more like a vehicle for Bollywood director Sanjay Bhansali . Maybe this reflects the new director’s vision for classical music, but, for Parisian audiences, Le Châtelet is becoming the temple of crossover and mass-market entertainment'. Andrew Clements' review of the Roussel rarity, Padmâvatî, in today's Guardian confirms that Antoine's prediction was spot on - ' A director of real flair and imagination might breathe life into the piece. But the Châtelet production has been handed over to an all-Indian team led by Mumbai film director Sanjay Leela Bhansali, who has simply come up with a series of inert tableaux, to which some coarse acting and risible choreography adds nothing at all. It is just Bollywood camp, and even the o...

Classical music and an "evil cult" are unlikely bedfellows. But my fun story Stockhausen, chaotic music and communism about the oboeist of the Divine Performing Arts Orchestra proved to be a bit more serious than I thought. Several readers have pointed out that the orchestra and The Epoch Times newspaper which ran the story are closely connected with Falun Gong . A BBC website is headed ' Falun Gong - an evil cult?' and goes on to say 'Claiming to be an ancient technique of self-development, Falun Gong is an eclectic mixture of Taoist and Buddhist principles with a sprinkling of extraterrestrials ... On 22 July, 1999, Falun Gong was declared an 'evil cult' by the Beijing authorities, and totally banned , meriting 'a serious ideological and political struggle that would have a bearing on the future of the Communist Party and the State ... in terms of typical cult techniques, Falun Gong is given a 50:50 Yes/No rating by Time Asia. While it is led by...

While much attention is being devoted to the demise of 'bricks and mortar' music stores has the disappearance of a much-acclaimed online retailer slipped under the radar? Many commentators, including me, lavishly praised Peter Maxwell Davies' MaxOpus website with its' paid-for audio file downloads when it launched several years ago. Here is what I wrote - 'It is simply a first class internet resource, and a commercial one to boot ... A brilliant concept, with inspired execution.' But where is MaxOpus today? The composer's pioneering online venture has been returning an 'Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage' message for some time now, although his publisher still links to it . Temporary technical gremlins, too much too soon or just a victim of Max's problems with his business manager ? Information and updates, as ever, welcomed. Now playing - Peter Maxwell Davies' Image, Reflections, Shadow played by The Fires of London with Gre...

Free music is all the rage and a long-running series of free concerts is being used to boost audiences for contemporary music in London. Music of Today is an innovative eight concert series given by the Philharmonia Orchestra in the Royal Festival Hall before regular evening concerts of mainstream repertoire. The deal is you turn up for the free concert at 6.00pm which features an introductory talk by series director Julian Anderson plus a free programme (is the UK alone in having outrageously over-priced programme books?) before paying normal prices for the main concert at 8.00pm. You don't need to buy tickets for the main concert to attend the free one, you can simply enjoy the contemporary music and go home if you choose. The 6.00pm concerts are not 'bolt-ons', but are meaty and challenging programmes with a different conductor specially booked for the event. Last Thursday we were in London to hear Diego Masson conduct Iannis Xenakis' Anaktoria and Thalleïn i...