Perhaps thinking really is the best way to travel


This photo is an outtake from the visit to Sainte-Nazaire in France that resulted in my 2010 post Musique Concrete. In the background is the famous Sainte-Nazaire bridge and on the left is a cruise ship being fitted out in one of the city's dockyards. I remember wondering at the time what would happen if one of these ships fell on its side. And let's not forget the many connections between classical music and cruise ships.

Also on Facebook and Twitter. Photo is (c) On An Overgrown Path 2012. 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 great free MP3 download fallacy yet again

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"Orchestras must embrace new technology following a BBC experiment that highlighted the huge demand for classical downloads. More than 1.3 million people downloaded Beethoven's symphonies for free during a two-month period last year. That proved there is a large untapped market for classical music, according to US critic, composer and consultant Greg Sandow. " From BBC News report on last week's Association of British Orchestras Conference. Pliable says if I offer free Beluga Caspian caviar from my web site and there are 1.3 million takers does that prove "there is a large untapped market" for Beluga Caviar? And elsewhere some rather more rigorous research comes up with thought provoking results which I would have thought would have been of interest to critics, composers and consultants at a major orchestra management conference: "Music downloading creates listener apathy - internet downloading and MP3 players are creating a generation of people who
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Glenn Gould - the ultimate download

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My personal overgrown path is leading back to the radio studio, and that has set me thinking recently about how to create programmes that are distinctive, inclusive and personal. Over in Holland the creator of Big Brother , Endemol , has its own formula for distinctive broadcasting, and this week launches De Grote Donorshow ( The Big Donor Show ) which gives three dialysis patients the chance to win a dying woman's kidney - or not. Back in 1969 Glenn Gould took a different approach to producing great broadcasting when he created his 'contrapuntal radio documentary' The Latecomers . The main subject was the new Canadian province of Newfoundland , but there was a second subject of solitude, isolation and non-conformity seen from a cultural perspective. The Latecomers , with its basso continuo of the ocean, is both a land-mark in twentieth-century broadcasting and a seriously neglected aspect of Gould's work. Now, thanks to reader Walt Santner, you can hear the whole
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Free Mozart MP3 downloads from Danish Radio

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After the outcry over the Beethoven Symphony files the BBC saw sense and didn't offer any free audio downloads in their Bach Christmas. But now Danish Radio are at it. As part of their Mozart celebrations Danish Broadcasting Corporation are offering free downloads of nine of Mozart’s symphonies played by the Danish National Radio Symphony Orchestra. The first downloads are available on January 27 with Symphony No. 15 in G-flat. This is followed by symphonies Nos. 41, 36, 40, 23, 15, 34, 39, 17 and 35. If you must, here is the link for the downloads . But be warned it is in Danish, and AltaVista's Babel Fish translator doesn't handle Danish! Presumably after the outcry in Denmark there will be no Mendelssohn downloads from Danish Radio for the 160th anniversary of his death in 2007. Then it is over to you New Zealand Radio ... With thanks to fellow blogger Jon Lund for this story Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co d
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A treasure trove of Stokowski downloads

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A Japanese site has a treasure trove of recordings by the legendary conductor Leopold Stokowski ranging from 1917 acoustic recordings to 1953 electric recordings. All were 78rpm shellac releases, and the site claims they are copyright free. There are a lot of very fine things to listen to including two complete Tchaikovsky symphonies, a complete 1941 No 4 recorded with the NBC Symphony in 1941, and a 1940 Symphony No.6 'Pathetique' with the All American Youth Orchestra . Thanks go to US reader and internet sleuth Walt Santner whose research uncovered these, and the Norwegian historic MP3s , for us, and to the unknown Japanese webmaster for making them available. Stokowski was the role model for today's jet set maestros. Born in North London in 1882, a short distance from what was to become EMI's famous Abbey Road Studios , he started his musical career as organist in St James' Church, Piccadily . He moved to the US in 1905, and ten years later became a naturali
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The Berlin Philharmonic's darkest hour

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That which colors the mind

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This recording by Owsley Stanley of sarod master Ali Akbar Khan featured in a recent post here . My further reading came across the following unpublished epitaph to Owsley Stanley - popularly known as 'Bear' - by his daughter Rhoney Gissin Stanley . It provides a refreshing contrast to today's social media influenzas : Bear was a man who walked his talk, who challenged the cult of personality and wanted the attention of others to focus on his work with sound, his art, and his philosophy, not on him.
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Classical critics need to talk sound sense

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The truth about those French orchestras

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Berlin Philharmonic's first woman conductor

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