On An Overgrown Path

My recent post Music of things was adroitly distilled by Alex Ross and tweeted onwards . Which prompts me to return to a 2011 post on the same theme which arrogantly contemporized a celebrated teaching of Benjamin Britten. Disruptive technology has moved on in the last four years, so here is a new version of that teaching on the primal stream: Anyone, anywhere, at any time can listen to the B minor Mass upon one condition only - that they subscribe to a music streaming service. No qualification is required of any sort - faith, virtue, education, experience, age. Thanks to the internet music is now free for all. If I say music streaming is the principal enemy of music, I don't mean that I am not grateful to it as a means of education or study. But it is not part of true musical experience. Regarded as such it is simply a substitute, and dangerous because deluding. Music demands more from a listener than a Wi-Fi connection. It demands some preparation, some effort, a journey to...

Conflicting reports about the condition of Joni Mitchell give serious cause for concern. Joni's music has been a constant in my life for more years than I care to remember. Two years ago, with ironic tongue in cheek, I quoted her lyric of how "They paved paradise and put up a parking lot" in a post describing the ecological rape of the laid back surf & spliff Berber village of Tamraght in southern Morocco. That post showed a photo of a mechanical digger working on an unidentified building project. A few weeks ago I returned to Tamraght to find that the diggers had finished their work, and had built...... the parking lot seen above. A post in 2009 described how in 1970 Joni took a career break and spent time in Europe, where she composed many of the songs on her, arguably, greatest album Blue . The lyrics of Carey on that album refer to the seaside village of Matala in the south of Crete where she lived with in caves with an alternative community during the sum...

Joyce DiDonato undoubtedly has a peerless vocal technique, but she also has a peerless technique for pushing media hot buttons. At the last night of the 2013 BBC Proms Ms. DiDonato had journalists eating out of her hand when she dedicated a performance of the gay anthem 'Somewhere over the rainbow' to 'voices silenced' over gay rights . Then in February this year her record label Warner Classics carpet bombed journalists with a video of her singing at the Stonewall Inn - see image above. The accompanying press release told how she sang at the birthplace of the gay rights movement as a "tribute to victims of intolerance and injustice". Media hot buttons were not so much pressed as hammered and the video went viral in response. With just one exception , the media assiduously ignored the inconvenient truth that less than three months later - on May 1st to be precise - Joyce DiDonato was taking her own Drama Queens project to the Royal Opera House in Muscat...

There's a story about a Sufi master who was walking with one of his pupils, near a huge field. In the field there was a man who was digging holes. This man had dug two hundred holes two feet deep. Observing this the pupil, the pupil asked, "O my master, what is he doing?". "I don't know. Let us ask him," the Sufi answered. They called him over, and asked what was the purpose of digging so many holes just two feet deep. "I'm looking for water," the man said. The Sufi master told him, "It's unlikely that you will find water by digging two hundred holes that are only two feet deep. You have a better chance of finding water if you dig one hole two hundred feet deep. That Sufi teaching* came to mind when I read details of the 2015 BBC Proms . Header photo was taken a few days ago outside the Zaouia Moulay Idriss II in Fez, Morocco, where I was attending the Sufi culture festival. *Sufi tale is adapted from When You Hear Hoofbeats T...

A post here a few years ago discussed how the legendary conductor Bruno Walter was a disciple of the Austrian philosopher, educationist and founding figure in the Theosophy movement Rudolf Steiner. Theosophy is a syncretic tradition, but the discovery on Amazon of the recording seen above was still a surprise. Bruno Walter was of course one of the great interpreters of Wagner ; which gives a whole new meaning to the question Are we ready for an Islamic interpretation of Wagner ? Also on Facebook and Twitter . Any copyrighted material is included as "fair use" for critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s).

In 2015 the big new technology trend is the ' internet of things '. In this the focus shifts from software to physical objects , with digital technologies moving from being an end in themselves to a tool that increases the utility of 'things' such as cell phones, coffee makers, washing machines and wearable devices. The internet of things provides an interface between the physical and virtual world, and its emergence sends the important message that no matter how clever the technology, digital solutions can only enhance and not replace physical interactions. This message needs to be taken on board by the classical music industry, where the obsession with virtual content has turned streaming into flooding . Confirmation that the virtual can never replace the physical is also coming from within the music industry: in 2014 9.2 million vinyl records were sold in the US, the best year since the monitoring of vinyl sales by Nielsen restarted in 1991. Received wisdom tells ...

Classical music's pursuit of the dollar into regions controlled by despotic regimes has long been a preoccupation on this blog , with the uneasy marriage of art and politics in the Gulf States receiving particular attention . To date On An Overgrown Path has been a lone voice on this topic, so I was heartened to find my esteemed fellow blogger Norman Lebrecht joining me in taking a critical position on classical music's exploitation of the petro-dollar. In a new post on Slipped Disc * about the purchase of a crystal encrusted Steinway by an oil sheikh, Norman rails against the Qatari regime with these words: The Qatar economy is built on tenured labour from the Indian subcontinent. The slave workers have their passports confiscated on arrival, are kept in camps outside the city and forced to work in temperatures of up to 50 degrees C. (You won’t hear about this on Qatar-based Al-Jazeera; yes, we’ve seen it, in the company of the late Lorin Maazel). That’s how Qatar sheik...

Three months into the role, the new controller of BBC Radio 3 Alan Davey has revealed his vision to rejuvenate the station and make it relevant in an age of multiple media. At the centre of his vision is bringing back the Pied Piper programme last heard in 1976, and winding back the clock on the breakfast programme by dropping the vox pop contributions from listeners. When I explained last year why classical radio must change or die , I incurred the wrath of the Friends of Radio 3 by suggesting they advocated that Radio 3 presenters should once again wear dinner jackets while on air. It now seems that my misunderstood joke will backfire on me, and that Alan Davey will soon be announcing the return of formally attired presenters. At this point let's make one thing clear. I was a huge fan of David Munrow's Pied Piper programme, have probably written more about him over the years than any other music journalist, and my interview with Munrow's mentor, the EMI producer...

Loneliness has been the reason behind the creation of many masterpieces of art and literature, but compared to the general picture of lonely people and their miseries, these are only exceptional cases. We have missed seeing this most important of human conditions as a talent, as an inward concentration to be used for , rather than against, a human's well-being. We teach, from kindergarten through the universities, all sorts of useful lessons to children. Reading writing, arithmetic and hundreds of other subjects are taught in schools, to be used on small occasions in life, but no occasion occurs as often as the occasion for a person to be alone. And yet we haven't developed any teaching for it. If we teach our children what I call the "lone art," then human life, alone or in society, will be quite different at many levels and ages than what it is today. Every day a child should learn how to be comfortably, even happily, alone to better his "lone art" edu...

One day during 1986 Steven Isserlis rang me up. I had never heard of him; he was apparently a cellist. He said, 'I'm a Jew, I'm a Russian Jew. My father is Russian. I love your music. I particularly love the Russian Orthodox qualities that it has. Although I'm a Jew, I'm not a practising Jew. I always go to the service of Easter in the Orthodox Church, because I love the music so much and I love the ceremonies. I just wonder whether you could write a piece for cello and orchestra that has some connection with the Orthodox music that I love so much.' Of course, if another kind of cellist had rung me up and said, 'Would you compose a cello concerto?' I would have said, 'No. Absolutely out of the question.' But the way Steven put this question and the fact that he told me he loved Orthodox music somehow excited me. It seemed a genuine way of asking if I would do it. John Tavener describes the genesis of his icon in sound The Protecting Veil in Th...

There is little point on expending many words on the fiasco in Toronto , other than to say that both pianist Valentina Lisitsa and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra behaved unwisely, with predictable results. What does deserve attention is the bigger picture. Valentina Lisitsa may play fast and loose on Twitter, but she is well connected and an adept exploiter of YouTube and other social media. That header photo of Ms. Lisitsa playing at the 'alternative' Bristol Proms appeared here last year, and many paths lead from it. She is managed by IMG Artists which describes itself as "a global leader of performing arts management", and she has an exclusive recording contract with Decca . That label is, of course, part of the Universal Music empire . As explained here previously , the Bristol Proms are managed and promoted by U-Live, which is also part of Universal Music. Last year Sinfini Music - which is likewise owned and controlled by Universal Music - ran a a video int...

Dean Dixon, who is seen above, has featured in no less than sixteen Overgrown Path posts. By one of those auspicious coincidences that power this blog, just before I uploaded the most recent post - which recounts how he gave the the premiere of Richard Arnell's suite The Land with the NBC Symphony Orchestra in 1942 - news arrived of a forthcoming biography* of the West Indian American conductor. Its author is Dr. Rufus Jones , who has edited The Collected Folk Suites of William Grant Still and is director of orchestral and choral studies at Westglades Middle School in Fort Lauderdale. While studying music education in Austin, Texas, Rufus Jones became aware that discrimination was still endemic in classical music. This disturbing revelation made the young African American realise that, to quote him, "I needed to know more about my history and more about how others in my profession coped with the sobering reality of racial discrimination". So writing a biography of ...

"A forthcoming book by Geoff Baker, lecturer at Royal Holloway, University of London, is puffed in the Guardian today on claims that it unpicks the Venezuelan music system that has been adulated and adopted the world over... None of this is substantiated in Dr Baker’s article in the Guardian, which offers nothing more than general assertions... My own limited contacts with El Sistema graduates have yielded few suspicions of dissent or dissatisfaction on their part." - Norman Lebrecht writes on November 12, 2014 * "Gabriela Montero has spoken out forcefully against the pressures used by the Venezuelan regime to use El Sistema as a tool for its violent, corrupt and incompetent leadership and in support of its anti-US stance... Gabriela, who lives in the US, has nonetheless taken considerable personal risks in speaking out against the regime. It would be unfortunate, to say the least, if El Sistema supporters in the US and Europe were to take against her as a result of ...

'The Boston Symphony Orchestra has signed a five-year recording contract with the German label Deutsche Grammophon... under the terms of the deal, the BSO and its music director Andris Nelsons will record five albums of Dmitri Shostakovich's Symphonies Nos. 5 through 10... the recording contract was announced in conjunction with the orchestra's 2015-16 season... plans include... a strong emphasis on Mahler, Rachmaninoff, Bruckner and other late Romantics' - source WQXR. It seems Andris Nelsons and his Boston colleagues have forgotten that audiences need permission to like unfamiliar music . Khachaturian, Kabalevsky and Myaskovsky have been suggested elsewhere as alternatives to the ubiquitous Shostakovich and Mahler symphonies. But a composer with stronger American connections might go down better, so I suggest Richard Arnell. Born in London in 1917, Arnell followed Benjamin Britten, Peter Pears and Sir Arthur Bliss to the States in the late 1930s, and, like Bliss, f...

Erudition has suffered two severe blows with the recent deaths of Andrew Patner and Andrew Porter . Dilettantes such as this writer can only lament the changing landscape of music journalism while leaving the fulsome tributes to those better qualified . For every benefit there is a cost, as new media commentator Clay Shirky reminds us in the compendium How is the Internet changing the way you think? The shock of inclusion, where professional media give way to participation by 2 billion amateurs (a threshold which was crossed in 2010), means that the average quality of public thought has collapsed; when anyone can say anything anytime, how could it not? If the only consequence of this influx of amateurs is the destruction of existing models for producing high-quality material, we would be at the beginning of another Dark Ages. So it falls to us to make sure that isn't the only consequence. Also on Facebook and Twitter . Any copyrighted material is included as "fair us...

My Passiontide playlist always includes the re-interpretation of Bach's St. Matthew and St John Passions by early music ensemble Sarband and their music director Vladimir Ivanoff, with the Lebanese singer Fadia el-Hage. What a pity this that this remarkable project (samples here ) receives only a fraction of the attention given to the equally remarkable re-interpretation by Peter Sellars of the St. Matthew Passion . Because, as Sellars himself has said, "Bach wrote the music for us to place everything we hope and care about into the vessel of this music, and the music will not only carry it but elevate it". For those wishing to explore beyond current passions and fashions, the setting by the Syrian composer Abed Azrié of St. John's Gospel is recommended. A mindful Easter to all my readers. Also on Facebook and Twitter . Any copyrighted material is included as "fair use" for critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner...

Sidi Ifni, March 2014 Sidi Ifni, March 2015 "... a haunting orchestral work that suggests a relentless tidal surge, evoking thoughts of melting polar ice and rising sea levels" is how John Luther Adams' Become Ocean is described in its Pulitzer Prize citation . The relentless impact of climate change is graphically illustrated in my two photos of the town of Sidi Ifni on the Atlantic coast in the south of Morocco. The first photo was taken by me in March 2014, the second twelve months later. In November 2014 exceptionally heavy rain caused flash floods that killed thirty-two people across southern Morocco. The dry river bed ( oued in Moroccan Arabic) seen in the upper photo was turned into a raging torrent that destroyed bridges and cut off road access to Sidi Ifni for a week. Four months after the floods, the dramatic change in the coastline caused by the torrent scouring the seabed can be seen in my lower photo - the town's beach on which its tourist econ...