On An Overgrown Path

Julio Cortázar's novel Autonauts of the Cosmoroute , which tells the story of a road trip across France in a Volkswagen motor home, featured in my recent post On the road with Lutoslawski . And in a neat piece of synchronicity our recent road trip across France took us to a campsite where we found these two wonderful examples of Lutoslawski on wheels. A couple of years back we discovered Robert Schumann on wheels in Germany. While you can read aboout the Majic Bus 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 errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Valery Gergiev's London Ring isn't exactly resounding . Don't say you weren't warned . 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 errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Philip Glass is seen above with the Dublin Guitar Quartet in St. Patrick's, Dundalk in July 2008. The quartet performed Brian Bolger's transcriptions of two of the composer's string quartets with the man himself present. Downloads of Philip Glass introducing the concert and excerpts from the performance can be heard on the quartet's MySpace site . In response to my recent Gorecki on guitar post Brian Bolger asked me to tell readers about the availability of the Philip Glass files, and also pointed out that the Dublin Guitar Quartets Deleted Pieces CD being is not deleted (go figure!). It is available via iTunes , the quartets MySpace site , from Road Records and from several portal download sites. Paths intersect here. Louth Contemporary Music Society's gorgeous CD A Place Between , which includes two works by Valentin Silvestrov, led me to the Dublin Guitar Quartet. From the LCMS' website I notice they have commissioned Silvestrov to write Five Sacred Songs...

July 20 , 2009 - “sounds and silence” at Locarno Over a period of five years, Swiss filmmakers Norbert Wiedmer and Peter Guyer followed producer Manfred Eicher and the artists of ECM around the world. In footage from Estonia, Tunisia, Germany, France, Denmark, Greece, Argentina and elsewhere, their documentary movie “Sounds and Silence”, captures aspects of the music-making process at ECM, and gives glimpses of unique players and composers at work. Amongst them: Arvo Pärt, Eleni Karaindrou, Dino Saluzzi and Anja Lechner, Anouar Brahem, Gianluigi Trovesi, Marilyn Mazur, Nik Bärtsch, Kim Kashkashian, Jan Garbarek and many others. “sounds and silence” has been selected for the Locarno International Film Festival, and will have its world premiere at Locarno’s Piazza Grande on Saturday, August 8, 2009. From ECM website . Horizons touched by ECM here. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and w...

Judging by the emails offering free CDs, the major classical labels have finally realised that people buy music after reading about it here and on other leading music blogs . Elsewhere BBC Radio 3 famously offer bloggers a little bit on the side from their inexhaustible expenses account to write about their programmes, while others have received this message from Amazon: 'As a top reviewer, we would like to invite you to join Amazon Vine. Open to a limited number of customers, Vine members receive pre-release and new products--free of charge--in exchange for customer reviews'. I do not have a problem with free CDs, books or concert tickets per se and they sometimes feature here , although I do have a problem with the BBC's barely coded offer of accomodation and travel "in return for support". But would I be writing about Letting Go of the Glitz - the true story of one woman's struggle to live the simple life in Chelsea if Amazon Vine had not offered me a ...

'Ce qui compte dans une vie, c'est l'intensité d'une vie, pas la dureé d'une vie.' The photo shows what Jacques Brel meant when he said 'What counts in a life is its intensity, not its duration'. It comes from the sleeve of the CD compilation Brel infiniment . 2009 is the 80th anniversary of Jacques Brel's birth. He died in 1978 aged 49, and is buried on the French Polynesian island of Hiva Oa close to the grave of Paul Gauguin . Jacques Brel's songs have been performed by an astonishing range of artists from Dave van Ronk through Frank Sinatra and The Kingston Trio to contemporary rock band Beirut . There is even a CD titled Classic French Songs that puts him alongside Debussy, Duparc, and Fauré and the lesser known but very interesting Jean Ferrat . More on Jacques Brel here . Brel infinement was bought from Leclerc in St Gilles-Croix-de-Vie, France. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purp...

The dance piece Walkaround Time was created by John Cage and Merce Cunningham in 1968 . Merce Cunningham died on July 26 aged 90. Read about John Cage and Merce Cunningham at Black Mountain College 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 errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Second from right on the CD sleeve above is Helmut Schmidt , who was the Social Democratic chancellor of West Germany from 1974 to 1982. He was the fourth pianist on a 1985 Deutsche Grammophon recording of J.S. Bach's Concerto in A minor BWV 1065. Christoph Eschenbach (a personal friend of Helmut Schmidt), Justus Franz and Gerhard Oppitz were the other pianists. It was not the German politician's first visit to the recording studio. In 1982, while still chancellor, he recorded Mozart's Concerto in F major for three pianos and orchestra, K242, also with Eschenbach and Franz, but with the London Philharmonic rather than the Hamburg orchestra, and for EMI instead of DG. Then on course there is Condoleezza Rice. While secretary of state in the George W. Bush administration she practiced keyboard diplomacy in between hunting for weapons of mass destruction. Staying in America, when Leonard Bernstein tried to mix politics and music he more than met his match in the form of ...

If 1967 was the 'The Summer of Love' , 2009 is turning into 'The Summer of Lean Forward Festivals'. The lean forward further Les Orientales in France in June was a hard act to follow. But Contemporary Art Norwich 09 has picked up the theme magnificently with its mixture of visual and performance art . Last night we were at CAN 09's first ( and free ) UK showing of Argentian-born Mariano Pensotti's La Marea (The Tide) in Norwich, which is where all my photos were taken. Linking threads through Mariano Pensotti's work are the expressive use of video as a narrative element, juxtaposed with live performances and site specific events. These work as urban interventions where fictional scenes are played in a real context. La Marea is the ultimate street theatre. It takes place in a shopping street late in the evening. The performance consists of nine scenes, some inside shops and others directly on the street, as above. The scenes are played simultaneously and ...

The qualities in him that specially appealed to youth were his irreverence for tradition and office, his indifference to vested interests and inflated reputations, his contempt for current morality, his championship of unpopular causes and persecuted people, his vitality and humour, and above all his inability to take solemn people seriously. Hesketh Pearson on George Bernard Shaw (above), who was born on July 26, 1856. GBS trivia -he is the only person to have been awarded both the Nobel Prize for Literature (1925) and an Oscar (1938). These were for his contributions to literature and for his work on the film Pygmalion , respectively. Shaw on Elgar 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 errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Paradoxically, the work's deliberate archaisms now seem to strike a notably contemporary resonance in the context of the current popularity of the music of religous composers such as Pärt and Górecki. John Pickard writes about Edmund Rubbra's Meditations on a Byzantine Hymn in a perceptive sleeve note for the CD seen above . Rubbra composed his Meditations for solo viola in 1962 and later made the two viola arrangement recorded by members of the Dante Quartet . Rubbra's string quartets, which are the main works on the disc, are well worth investigating, particularly the taut Fourth from 1977, which is dedicated to Robert Simpson . Wonderfully committed playing from the Dante Quartet and glorious Snape Maltings sound engineered by Tony Faulkner in 2001 for Dutton . I paid £10 delivered from an online seller . Rubbra dedicated his Sinfonia Concertante for Piano and Orchestra (1934) to his teacher Gustav Holst. The photo below shows Rubbra (left) with Holst and students...

My recent post about Louth Contemporary Music Society's new CD of Tavener, Pärt, Knaifel, Silvestrov, Cage and Górecki attracted a lot of attention. One of the founders of LCMS, Eamonn Quinn, noticed that my Jordi Savall podcast uses Steve Reich's Nagoya Guitars as a signature tune; so he sent me an interesting CD of contemporary guitar music from Ireland. The Dublin Guitar Quartet , seen in my lower photo, play eight-string and eleven string guitars. The extended range of these instruments allows them to specialise in arrangements of contemporary music, and their repertoire includes transcriptions of Philip Glass' First and Third String Quartets. Their CD Deleted Pieces , which Eamonn Quinn sent me, includes a very striking arrangement by quartet member Brian Bolger of the second movement of Henryk Górecki's Quasi Una Fantasia String Quartet No. 2, a work originally commissioned by the Kronos Quartet. Other composers on the CD are Kevin Volans , Dublin rock band R...

Because Every Hair Is Different by Marlene Haring ; billboard, St George's Street. Dream - Spontaneous Combustion by Olaf Brzeski ,Resin and Soot, 2008. Monitored Landscape No. 12 by Robin Tarbet , Live Installation, 2009 William Goldman wrote that 'art tells you uncomfortable things that you perhaps don't want to hear, truths that you may not be comfortable to hear' . My photos were taken at Contemporary Art Norwich 09, a bi-annual event that uses the visual arts to demolish comfort zones with devastating effect. Contemporary Art Norwich 09 runs until 31 August, and also includes the work of Polish performance artist Tadeusz Kantor, whose Sea Symphony featured here recently . Highlights from CAN 07 here. Photos (c) On An Overgrown Path 2009. 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 errors to - overgrownp...

Jonathan Lennie of Time Out and myself are discussing the BBC Proms on BBC Radio 5 Live at 12.00 (midnight) tonight, July 21/22. Webstream here , programme should be available on BBC iPlayer for seven days. 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 errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

A gold-plated copper gramophone record is carried on the two Voyager spacecraft launched in 1977. The Voyager Golden Records include music selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth. The recordings are intended for any intelligent extraterrestrial life form, or far future humans, that may find them. The Voyager spacecraft do not have a specific destination, and will not come close to any identified star for 40,000 years. NASA's playlist for intelligent extraterrestial life is here , Neil Armstrong's Apollo mission playlist is here . Photo taken at Saint Jean de Monts, France and is (c) On An Overgrown Path 2009. Research source Wikipedia . Report errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Everyone knows that on July 21, 1969 Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin became the first men to walk on the moon, during the Apollo 11 mission. But do you know what music Neil Armstrong listened to during the Apollo mission? The clue is the photo above, the answer is 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 errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

My recent article on Les Orientales , a multi-cultural music festival that understands the difference between art and entertainment , attracted a lot of interest. I promised to return to Les Orientales with further posts, and today I am looking at recordings of music from Saint-Florent-le-Vieil. There is no better starting point than the CD seen above and below, which was released by the festival organisers last year to celebrate ten years of Les Orientales . Twelve tracks recorded at the festival by French radio station Jet FM convey the unique atmosphere of the festival and really show what Philip Glass meant when he said : 'By the early 1960’s, the world of new concert music had reached a virtual dead end. By that I mean there were more and more composers writing for fewer and fewer people. That door turned out to be much bigger that I thought,I thought it would lead to Indian music. Actually, it led to World Music – and that continues to this day.' The bad news is that th...

A day in the life of the future of classical music . A CD of Paul Hindemith's wind quintet and complete solo organ music has just been released on the Britten Sinfonia's own label . Image credit BBC. 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 errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Yesterday's post reflected on the visual similarities, as captured by photographer Alexander Lauterwasser, between Stockhausen's music and a jellyfish . The image above comes from the same sequence of photos by Alexander Lauterwasser, and shows the pattern created by one of Pierre Boulez's compositions. Below is a pattern created by using Paint Shop Pro to modify the colours in a photo of a particularly delicous salad we enjoyed at a waterside restaurant while cycling around the island of Noirmoutier in France. A Google search returned no connections between Boulez and salad. But it did remind me that the expression ' salad days' is one of countless added to the English language by Shakespeare . 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 errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

The BBC's latest Freedom of Information disclosure , which itemises the expenses of senior staff, makes interesting reading. BBC Proms director and Radio 3 controller Roger Wright, whose salary is over £190,000 , spent £1308.83 last September on 'internal hospitality' for 'staff entertainment/annual event' . That must have been quite a party, but not enough it seems. Soon afterwards another £1032.85 went on 'Internal hospitality, Staff Entertainment, Annual Event - Radio 3, Perf Groups, Proms Awayday'. It is not all bad news though, and I do draw some consolation from the £38 spent in February this year on '4 CDs featuring Arnold , Stanford, Villa Lobos' . But does this mean the the BBC record library has been closed? - presumably to save costs. But all these are small change compared with the £6083.24 which Roger Wright claimed for 'Hotels - Room' on his personal expenses across twelve separate claims, the majority of which fall within the ...

Karlheinz Stockhausen's music created the pattern above; Alexander Lauterwasser captured it by transferring the sound waves from a Stockhausen composition into water, and photographing the results using reflected light. Below is an image of a jellyfish photographed by me on the beach in western France and colour adjusted using Paint Shop Pro . I Googled to check whether anyone else had spotted the links between Stockhausen and jellyfish, and yes, they have . More on Alexander Lauterwasser's fascinating sound patterns 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 errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

It is a point worth remembering that the Proms were originally launched as a private venture. For the first thirty-two years of their run there was no public endowment of any kind. This was a stalwart achievement. Yet there was no lack of enterprise. Before the year 1900 well over a hundred works had received their first London performance at the Proms. The total, incidentally, now stands at between eight hundred and nine hundred, of which approximately one-third have been by British composers. Beyond all doubt, the long run of the concerts is largely due to those who in the early days (aided and abetted by Sir Henry) possessed the foresight and the good sense not to build on a 'virtuoso' basis in respect of either artists or composers. The first consideration was, in the beginning as it is now, to present all that is great in the world of orchestral music, whether new or old, classical or modern; and a particular style of concert was thus established from the start. Artist and...

But the worst consequence of computer-assisted composing is that it is dehumanizing music. With the human touch inherent in any performance autocorrected digitally, we lose much of the element that gives music its emotive contours. Sometimes, playing slightly behind the beat or slightly below the correct pitch is what makes a piece inspiring. And as we continue to formulaically fit compositions into the strict guidelines that computers give us, musicians will cease trying to innovate and taking risks. They become stymied in their exploration of an art whose beauty fundamentally stems from its limitlessness. Although computers must be given credit for a spectrum of art that would have otherwise been inexpressible, this trend could very well change an art form into Paint by Numbers. This quote from an article titled How Pro Tools is destroying music raises many interesting points for classical music, despite its origins in the world of rock. Production software such as Pro Tools has b...