(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.

“We’re just in a band. That dude swallows swords!”

listen to the audio clip

I’m a very far cry from what you’d call a country music aficionado – I don’t think that Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsodies count – but for various reasons I can sometimes be found associating with people affiliated with the industry, and as a music-lover in general I can certainly appreciate great musicianship, regardless of genre.

More than that, I appreciate when someone does something nice, and “nice” does not begin to describe the country music band Whiskey Falls and how they gave up a huge portion of their own promotional appearance on the Bill Breakfast Show (Bill Country, 95 FM, a Clear Channel station) to plug me, my work and my website a few weeks back.

“If anyone thought Manson was down for the count, think again.”

The most surprising aspect of Marilyn Manson’s latest album, Eat Me, Drink Me - his sixth studio release – is that it’s decidedly human.

Gone are the fire and brimstone theatrics, heavy production and the Satan-spawn stereotype. Eat Me, Drink Me is an extremely personal, very mellow album and is close to, dare I say it, an album of love songs.

Granted, they are dark, morbid and creepy love songs filled with horror, death and blood stains - but they are love songs, or at least songs about love, nevertheless. Which has led some to call his latest work Emo, but I’ll have none of that label – it’s still Marilyn Manson, which means it’s probably too much for actual modern emo fans to take. In fact, one of the tracks on the album - Mutilation Is The Most Sincere Form Of Flattery - was written with My Chemical Romance in mind, of whom Manson had this to say:

To see the iPod as an agent of isolation rather than a symptom of, or a clever adaptation to, that isolation is to confuse cause and effect.

Kevin J. H. Dettmar
from Earbuds and Mosh Pits

Back in 2004, I wrote a rather rambling, free-form article about the role of the iPod in the promotion of social isolation ( available here: iPod Isolation ). I haphazardly thought out-loud about the power of the iPod to augment reality in an empowering way versus its traditionally conceived role in narrowing one’s reality in a socially awkward way.

Similarly, a new article in The Chronicle of Higher Education by Southern Illinois University at Carbondale professor Kevin J.H. Dettmar, entitled Earbuds and Mosh Pits, questions the role that iPod technology plays in promoting and/or suffocating social interaction and community building.

Students have left school, employees are taking vacation and the cities are filling up with tourists from all over. Now that the warmer months are here I’m republishing my earlier article on Thoth and NYC entertainment - a gentle reminder to get off your arse and see something interesting. Enjoy! ==========================================

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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.

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.

Though the new Nine Inch Nails album Year Zero does not officially drop (in the U.S.) until April 17th, the extremely punk-style* marketing has been in full swing since at least February – and it’s turning out to be an incredibly clever, engaging and effective marketing scheme at that!

Reznor himself reacts strongly against the claim that the Alternate Reality Game surrounding the album – created by 42 Entertainment (Jordan Weisman of Battletech and Shadowrun fame) – is anything but the art itself, the actual album being merely an element therein. Reznor is quoted on the official fan club website The Spiral as saying:

The term ‘marketing’ sure is a frustrating one for me at the moment. What you are now starting to experience IS ‘year zero’. It’s not some kind of gimmick to get you to buy a record - it IS the art form… and we’re just getting started. Hope you enjoy the ride.

Back in January, classical violinist and Avery Fisher Prize recipient Joshua Bell did something decidedly uncharacteristic of a Grammy Award winning musician – he donned jeans, a t-shirt and a baseball cap and took to the streets to play for tip money.

With over a dozen recordings under his belt, countless appearances with the most prestigious orchestras and more awards and accolades than you can shake a stick at, Mr. Bell certainly didn’t have to work the streets busker-style with his 300-year-old Stradivarius (Gibson ex Huberman) violin to earn some extra cash – and a good thing too, for he only managed to pull in $32.17! Instead, he was collaborating with the Washington Post on a brilliant public experiment (the resulting article published this week) to gauge the public response to fine art and beauty outside of its typical context. That is, would the average American (or in this case, Washington professionals – perhaps a little different) know beauty if they weren’t told it was beautiful?

In the grand tradition of Glenn Gould’s So You Want To Write A Fugue comes a wonderfully self-referential “instructional” video on fugue writing by NYU student and chess enthusiast Danny Pi.

Created for James Gardner’s Sight and Sound course (Pi is a Film and Television student at the Tisch School of the Arts), this little video makes us laugh out loud with its use of the theme from Britney Spears’ Oops!… I Did It Again.

Described by Pi as “silly” and “pretentious”, he is absolutely right - and though he claims to not understand why people like it, I think that you’ll agree that it is both fun and delightful. I for one am a big fan. It doesn’t reach the heights of the works that precede it (SYWTWAF and the Solitude Trilogy) but then, it’s not supposed to. It’s simply clever and cute. Enough said.

Though entirely unintentional, the short list of articles found on this blog seem to feature a high incidence of “sex in classical music” entries. I have yet to create an entire entry dedicated solely to the subject, but embedded in other articles the reader will find references to the sexual appeal of such musicians as Lara St. John, a link to a humorous - if disturbing - website called Beauty in Music (which is not surprisingly lacking in said beauty), links to articles that discuss the topic of overt sexuality in the classical music industry and at least one title of an article which should have elicited chuckles from all appreciative and even slightly cynical readers.Why the preoccupation with sexuality in classical music? I’m certain that I don’t know. Hints to the cause may be found throughout the other articles, but when it comes down to it, the secret and sordid life of bohemian musicians as contrasted with the conservative stance of many of their public and the historically prim and proper marketing and image of the industry can not help but be interesting. It is a remarkably fascinating dichotomy that sheds light on several aspects of social and interpersonal psychology and plays to our inherent love of secret and sophisticated perversion. Which brings me to the topic of today�s entry: A new book by former oboist Blair Tindall entitled Mozart in the Jungle: Sex, Drugs, and Classical Music.

It is now the end of April, 2005 and despite my best intentions I have not posted anything since December of ‘04. The reason, for those of you who don’t follow the news that I post over at www.roderickrussell.com, is because I was awarded a grant by the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts which is enabling me to develop a new theater work of unusual dimensions.

The process has, naturally, been consuming virtually all of my time. Be it frantic and inspired creation of new material or frustrated pacing to and fro and long, irritated walks during those time when the creativity is not flowing, I have not been indulging in the act of essay writing for blogging purposes.

No, not a magical incantation to raise the dead (for that, see the link to Alcor), but rather a few words, reflections if you will, on playing classical guitar, written years ago.

Though short, they were recently uncovered and I thought that I might share them here.

The Nature of Classical Guitar: Reflections from a Personal Perspective

Music is magic, independent of any instrument. Music in the mind, music on paper, music as unburdened pure expression is the true music. Be that as it may, we are forced, in an effort to communicate, to express pure music through an instrument.

If I could play all instruments I would. Each instrument is to be highly respected for the individual and unique voice that it confers upon any interpretation of a piece. Available time typically limits us to one instrument or group of instruments, if one desires to truly be able to express some inner voice and move themselves and others. A significant investment of time and energy is necessary to bring ones artistry and proficiency to such a level with only one instrument.

Several weeks ago the local alternative newspaper Seven Days ran two articles in the same issue that, despite their lack of explicit connection, nevertheless seemed to betray an intimate association.

The first article concerned an eccentric local composer named David Gunn. The second was a review of the book Sudden Noises from Inanimate Objects by the now local writer Christopher Miller, though I have since learned that he was not local when he authored the text.

My suspicion was that Miller had actually used Gunn as inspiration for his novel, and quite a wonderful novel it was, I might add.

I wrote up an article, intending to publish it in the Seven Days letters section, but it turned out to be far too long for inclusion. As I was feeling much too lazy to edit it down to a shorter length, I simply sent it to Christopher Miller and called it a day.