The irony of freedom

'The bitter irony, the irony of freedom, is that choice opens doors to anterooms - that is all' - Todd Gitlin, The Sixties
The sixties - Oscar Peterson or Karlheinz Stockhausen?

Photo taken at Essaouira, Morocco and (c) On An Overgrown Path 2010. 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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Philip Glass half empty

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As a big fan of both Philip Glass and Tenzin Choegyal I greatly admired their collaboration on the 2020 album The Last Dalai Lama . So I was particularly looking forward to their Be The Sky project. This was released by Philip Glass' Orange Mountain Music (OMM) label as a download last year to celebrate the 90th birthday of the His Holiness the Dalai Lama , and has only just appeared as a CD release .  Unsatisfactoriness - dukkha (Pali) - is at the core of Buddhist teachings. It describes an inherent sense of unease, incompleteness, or imperfection underlying all worldly experiences. Which, unfortunately, pretty well sums up Be The Sky .  Dukkha sets in from the start of the first track Snowy Mountains which features  the choir of the Tibetan Children's Village in Dharamsala . Tenzin Choegyal's dranyen (3-stringed Tibetan lute) is far too prominent and the mix is skewed heavily to the left channel. As on Heart Strings , which was the stand out track on The...
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A great mind that found expression in great music

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My life was changed by a Henry Wood Promenade Concert on 4th August, 1975. In the second half Sir Adrian Boult gave us Vaughan William's Fifth Symphony , and the blazing intensity of that performance remains unmatched, in my experience, in the concert hall or on record. Sir Adrian's 86 years had no relevance to his music making. Music, not age, was what mattered then. In the summer of 1975 punk was at its peak and the Vietnam War had ended after Communist forces took Saigon in the spring. Back with classical music, Pierre Boulez was in his last season as principal conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, which was at the top of its game , while William Glock's golden period as BBC controller of music and Proms administrator still informed music making in London. Your life could be changed for £1.30, which was the price of a balcony seat in the Albert Hall. All of which set me thinking, what price today's BBC Proms? In 2009 Promenade Concerts are one of few remaining...
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The purpose of puffery and closed-mindedness

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New music for old instruments

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Danish thread

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The thread continued through a visit to Denmark last week. We flew Ryanair to the university city of Arhus. After getting off the airport bus in the city centre we set off on foot to the SAS Radisson Hotel , (which was very comfortable but is a typical convention hotel, although we weren't there for a convention, just got a great deal from Expedia - this post is starting to sound like all those other geeklogs about open source conferences in San Francisco isn't it?). Our route took us straight past an excellent bookshop, Hinges Antikvariat in Banegardsgade, which had displayed in the window Monasteries of the world: the rise and development of the monastic tradition by Christopher Brooke (photographs by Wim Swaan Publisher: Ware, Hertfordshire : Omega Books , 1982, c1974.ISBN: 0-90785-330-7 DDC: 271.0094) which I swiftly vacuumed up for 200 Danish Kroner. A wonderful book, with a very good text supported by excellent photographs and really good plans. The main reason for v...
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Most music is only meant for a certain group of people

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Classical music's next big thing is Karajan 2.0

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John Cage's crazy creativity

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