Then you win

First they ignore you,
Then they laugh at you,
Then they fight you,
Then you win.
-Mahatma Gandhi, who was born Oct. 2, 1869.
A peace symphony here.
Photo taken at the Lac du Der Chantecoq, France is (c) On An Overgrown Path 2009. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

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Watch Michel Petrucciani video online

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Back in January 2005 I wrote about legendary jazz pianist Michel Petrucciani (right), and that article remains high in my 'popular pages' listing after fifteen months. Since writing that piece Overgrown Path reader Andrew Nathan and I have been tracking down Petrucciani video footage, and just this week Andrew came up with an absolute gem that is available free on Google video. In my original article I wrote that Michel Petrucciani was a 'pianistic genius' , and it is no coincidence that he is buried in the Pierre Lachaise cemetery in Paris alongside Chopin. This 38 minute video with excellent sound (and a bonus guest appearance from the gorgeous Charlotte Rampling ) is not just essential viewing for jazz fans, it should be watched by all students of the piano - whatever their discipline. Just click here to view this important document. (The video is not hosted by On An Overgrown Path , this is a link to an external site). And to set the video into context here is m
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The Berlin Philharmonic's darkest hour

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Wilhelm Furtwängler was born on 25th January 1886. He was Music Director of the Berlin Philharmonic from 1923 to his death in 1954, and held this position for the twelve years that Hitler was in power. In January 1945 he was conducting in Vienna, and fled from there to Switzerland where he remained until the Battle of Berlin ended in the defeat of the Nazis. The musicians of his orchestra remained in Berlin during its darkest hour. Here is their story: On 28th March 1945 the Russian forces commanded by Marshal Georgy Zhukov were just twenty miles to the east of Berlin. A month previously Albert Speer had been replaced as Nazi armaments minister after trying to persuade Hitler that defeat was inevitable. Speer now turned his energies to preventing the musicians of his adored Berlin Philharmonic from perishing in the inevitable final battle. Reich Commisioner Dr Joseph Goebells, who was in charge of the defence of Berlin, had ordered the entire orchestra to be drafted into the Vol
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Why cats hate Mahler symphonies

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My recent post ' Your cat is a music therapist ' was well appreciated judging by site traffic. So here is a codicil which raises some interesting points about synaesthesia. Reportedly Alexander Scriabin, Jean Sibelius, Olivier Messiaen, György Ligeti and Franz Liszt were among the classical composers who experienced cross-over between sensory channels. The impact of narrowing sensory bandwidth as music moves from a live to a recorded environment, and then from analogue to lossy digital formats is little understood and little researched.But it may have important implications for classical music's attempts to reach a new audience, and, topically, it may be very relevant to the post-COVID experience of Zoom concerts and live music in socially distanced auditoriums . I will discuss how what we see influences what we hear in a forthcoming post. Meanwhile here is an extract from Akif Pirinçci and Rolf Degen ’s book Cat Sense which explains the synaesthetic impact of a Ma
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Music blogger heal thyself

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Two of the First Ladies of music blogging have sparked a useful debate on the future of music blogs. Elaine Fine started the ball rolling on Musical Assumptions with her generally pessimistic post The Gradual Fall of Musical Bloggery . In it Elaine candidly shares readership data for her blog, which shows an apparent decline of more than 50% over a seven month period. I say apparent, because in a comment on Elaine's post I raise the point that during this period many readers have migrated from desktop to mobile internet access, and the traffic monitoring services are very fallible when it comes to tracking mobile access. Which means the apparent drop in readership for Musical Assumptions may not be a drop at all, but simply a change in technology platforms. Lisa Hirsch takes a more bullish view in her response on Iron Tongue of Midnight , suggesting that readership fluctuations are simply due to the "ebb and flow of blogging". Although Elaine's concern about
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Nada Brahma - Sound is God

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Who am I? - attacca

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Censorship by web proxy

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Master musician who experienced the pain of genius

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