Has the tide turned?


Now that's more like it - dumbing up.

Above Oblivion's Tide there is a Pier ...
Photo taken on Aldeburgh beach (where else?) (c) On An Overgrown Path 2008. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

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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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John Cage's crazy creativity

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Crazy wisdom, as exemplified by the celebrated but controversial  Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche , is wisdom gone wild. It is wisdom expanded beyond conventional intelligence and beyond the concept of ordinary people. Similarly, crazy creativity is creativity gone wild, and the importance of the threatened art of crazy creativity is seriously underestimated in today's  algorithmically flattened culture .  Social psychologist and scholar Donald T. Campbell   has proposed that dependence on random mutation does not just apply to human evolution, but also to creative evolution. So no random mutation in the creative process means no development. All creativity depends on taking old ideas and combining them in new, unusual, and sometime wrong ways. Without this vital mutation there would be no variability, meaning all art would become nothing more than a replica of the preceding art.  John Cage's pioneering work is one outstanding example of crazy creativity combinin...
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A great mind that found expression in great music

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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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New music for old instruments

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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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On that sleeve for his 1985 recording of the Goldberg Variations , Scott Ross is seen standing in the grounds of Château d'Assas in Languedoc. It was here that many of the harpsichordist's great recordings were made. Then, as today, the château dwelt in the twilight zone between grandeur and dereliction, and thirty years ago the recording sessions were regularly interrupted by the sound of rats scurrying across the floor. Scott Ross was born in Pittsburgh in 1951, and moved to France with his mother following the death of his father in 1964. He studied at the conservatoires in Nice and Paris, and first came to Château d'Assas in 1969 to give music lessons to the grandson of its owner Mme. Simone Demangel . When an early music academy was established at the Château d'Assas, Scott Ross gave masterclasses and became a frequent visitor. At first he stayed in a room in one of the towers, but from 1983 he rented a small house across the road from the château. The photos b...
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