(note about video: My inclusion of this is a bit unfair to Lang Lang, as this is not a formal performance. Truth be told, it’s wonderful to see such joy and delight in the act of making music. Nevertheless…)

My good friend Melissa sent along an article that I missed yesterday from the New York Times.

When Histrionics Undermine the Music and the Pianist
By BERNARD HOLLAND
Another reason classical music is not reaching more young people: not because of how it sounds, but because of how it looks.

It’s a great article - but then, I’m sympathetic - and Melissa was curious to hear what I thought about it. I jotted off a quick response and, after sending, realized that it would be perfect for discussion here as well.

Anything to get people to read, right?

In follow-up to the last post entitled Bach, Fugues and Britney Spears, I thought that I would share more of my love for the self-referential/reflexive art (would that be conceptual, perhaps? Nah… Bream has skill.) that has so influenced my own theater work, as can be evidenced in my creation and performance of Sketches, a humorous and reflexive commentary on modern art delivered through the vehicle of satire and, well, mindreading.

The literary and musical influences to which I am in debt are innumerable, but the subject of this post is the legendary classical guitarist Julian Bream. Please let me extend my apologies to Mr. Bream for potentially belittling him in the title of my post, for he has every last ounce of respect that I can possibly give. I can not say enough good things about this man and his work, and the video posted here is testament to his genius. He truly is a giant.

The Summer 2007 issue of Cabinet Magazine features an article by two London-based authors, Sally O’Reilly and Ian Saville, entitled I Can See Your Ideology Moving. From the start it grabs the reader with its droll humour, setting the scene as follows:

The scene: A windy seaside town in England. An arts festival (entitled, perhaps pretentiously, The Windy Seaside Town Biennale) is in full swing. An audience of skeptical locals, theater-seat-radicals and bloodthirsty performance-art lovers, sated after fish and chips and lashings of warm ale, is watching a man speaking to a picture of Karl Marx. More unusually, the picture speaks back to the man, for this is Ian Saville, socialist magician and ventriloquist, demonstrating his revolutionary art.
At the back of the hall, the art critic Sally O’Reilly watches curiously, almost unable to contain the questions that crowd her mind. The audience is laughing …

Following up the recent story on mechanical arms, I bring you the Vanderbilt Arm, the DARPA-funded, Vanderbilt University-developed prosthetic arm that is powered by rocket fuel, steam, valves and springs.

From the Vanderbilt project page:

…[the] power source is about the size of a pencil and contains a special catalyst that causes hydrogen peroxide to burn. When this compound burns, it produces pure steam. The steam is used to open and close a series of valves. The valves are connected to the spring-loaded joints of the prosthesis by belts made of a special monofilament used in appliance handles and aircraft parts.

It’s truly a wondrous development, promising to be the most human-like prosthetic arm ever created, weighing in at about half the weight of a real arm, mimicking 21 of the natural arm’s 26 motions and with the goal of being so thoroughly integrated into the nerve structure of the wearer that it can be controlled by thought alone.

I’m very excited to report that the filming of the new indie short Cupcake has wrapped, editing is complete and the film is off to it’s next destination. Though I am not at liberty to divulge any more at this time, there will be an announcement made here on this site when the time is appropriate.

I was invited to participate in the film by writer and director Cheryl Cambras, and after exploring the script - and being stunned at the uniqueness of the project - thought that this decidedly bizarre film would be a good match.

Cheryl invited me to take part and to play - um - shall we say a pivotal role in my capacity as a sword swallower. We met in Stamford, Connecticut on the 28th of July and work commenced with the fantastic cast and crew.

My good friend Scott spends his days working as a machinist in a large shop (I just recently forced him to watch the Christian Bale flick, too.) - which means that he often has a great deal of idle thinking time and occasionally time to turn those ideas into reality.

This week, he emerged from his day job with a fully completed, loosely Steampunk-styled flower to give to his girlfriend.

Made entirely from industrial refuse that he collected from around the shop - machine inserts, wire bundles and ball bearing doodads - it’s a great little piece of industrial art that measures about a foot in height. Though extremely heavy, due to so many dense metals being used, it’s surprisingly delicate in appearance. I love the added touch of the single thorn, and the portion of the stem from thorn up to flower is designed to sway a bit with vibration or movement, completing the contrast between industrial harshness and organic fragility.

My good friend Courtney over at Twisted Stitches just recently posted a great two part series on how to price your own artwork. She had the pleasure of speaking with Reed A. Prescott III, a Vermont-based artist who has succeeded in making his work very commercial, and she summarizes very well his words of wisdom.

While Mr. Prescott is a painter, his advice is equally applicable to many types of art and even “craft”. Cruise on over to twistedstitches.net to read the two part series.

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Most artist statements are bunk. With a few stellar and authentic exceptions, the art world seems awash with inauthentic pretentiousness, poppycock and piffle when it comes to artists’ statements of their own work.

Though many would argue the point and counterpoint to their grave (and do, and do, and do and do…), I think that it’s hard to disagree with a statement like Matt Linderman’s over on Signal vs. Noise (original post here):

The thriving art scene here in NYC has exposed me to a lot more art shows than I ever experienced before in my life. And I’ve gotta say, the art statements that I read generally make me a bit nauseous. Sure, they can sometimes be helpful. But all too often they have that grad-student-thesis-feel, full of impressive-sounding words and pretentious ideas but somehow there’s no there there.

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photo © 2002, John Freeman used with permission

Being a traveling artist myself, I have the opportunity to see many remarkable - and many more less-than-remarkable - performances in cities throughout the world. New York City, of course, presents a profoundly high incidence of these works of public and private art, being the cultural center that it is.

Street performance is one particularly colorful and active scene in NYC, and though I would be hard pressed to draw a comparison between the juggler on the corner and Andras Schiff at Carnegie Hall (unless that juggler is Michael Moschen), I do delight in some uniquely fun, witty and original shows - and I’m happy to show my support.

I met this gentleman a few years back in Baltimore and was intrigued with his setup - which involved a large, clear hemisphere - and his work with silicone balls. By sheer happenstance I came across a YouTube video of his and that was all it took to push me over the edge to share his work with you here.

Greg Kennedy is a two-time Gold Medal-winning IJA juggler with a particular interest in working with surfaces. From his website:

In an effort to redefine people’s preconceptions about juggling, Greg Kennedy fuses logic and creativity to synthesize new forms of juggling manipulation. In the early 1990’s, Greg spent several years working as a professional engineer, in addition to his juggling career. His fascination with the geometry and physics of object manipulation lead him to ground-breaking work with original apparatus, expanding the realm of juggling. “He is a visionary who can see the possibilities in props and movement that are obscure to the masses,” writes Bill Giduz, Jugglers World magazine.

Since the 60’s, Australian performance artist Stelarc has been publicly exploring the boundaries of the human body and human experience while simultaneously investigating means by which to extend and transform it. His latest exploration involves the implantation of an organic ear on his forearm.

Much has been written in the blogosphere about the ear implantation and the soon-to-be realized modifications of Bluetooth integration and subsequent ‘net broadcasting of heard sounds, with many writers questioning - through posts and comments - the utility of the ear, placement of the ear and choice of technology. As interesting as those particular “innovations” may be, however, they are secondary to the thread of significance that has connected all of Stelarc’s work from the beginning.

In late 2003 and 2004, comedian Bill Bailey toured a show entitled Part Troll, which featured a good deal of his brilliant musical humour. Among the gems of musical mash-up, satire and spoof was one piece in particular – an encore actually – which deserves mention here (they all deserve mention, actually). It is a tribute to the groundbreaking German electronic group Kraftwerk.

Of course, the clip is best if you watch the entirety of Bill’s show and - if you are not familiar with him - get to know him as a person, but it stands on its own quite well too.

I’m not going to give away the punch line, but after you watch the video, visit this site to read about how David Bamber (who passed away this week) of the Telegraph thinks that the original of this tune is a parody of the Catholic Church’s Latin Mass.