Posted in Uncategorized on February 25, 2010 by properdiscord
New Statesman is running a competition to find a new music critic under the age of 30.
If you’ve ever wondered what good music criticism looks like, you might enjoy what the judges have to say about what they’re looking for, including this from Alex Ross:
“Perhaps the greatest challenge is to remain passionately engaged over the long term — not to become jaded, politely accepting, cynical, or, worst of all, nostalgic. To the end, critics must remain open to the possibility of being totally undone by what they hear.”
Will 2010 be the year that classical music dies out? Of course not. The classical record business is in better shape than pop – partly because we’ve avoided many of the excesses that pushed pop consumers away in the late 90s, and partly because our customers are just too slow to adopt the technologies that made buying pop music unnecessary and irrelevant. Still. My crystal ball says that all of these things will happen in 2010. How does it know? Because they’re already happening.
Until recently, I was kind of indifferent to Pat Metheny. He’s not a musician to whom I gave much thought. He called out Kenny G in a quite entertaining way, and I guess his music wasn’t unusually pretentious or self-indulgent compared with that of other white jazz musicians of the 70s, 80s and 90s. I was never into it, but it didn’t make me particularly angry either. But as I say, that was until recently.
Posted in Uncategorized on April 10, 2009 by properdiscord
Several times now, friends have unwittingly followed me to their first classical performance to be confronted by an orchestra of period instruments. Since all our instruments look pretty “period” to them, my explanation of gut strings, no valves and simplified keywork are all a bit lame. Without fail, though, they all point to the phallic mast growing out of a lute and towering over the rest of the rhythm section, and make the perfectly reasonable enquiry “what the hell is that?”
“It’s like a guitar and bass guitar all at once.” I say. “It’s like the Jimmy Page double-neck, but lengthwise.” There were plenty of other ways to make loud bass in the the Renaissance, but none were quite this punchy, and carry-on restrictions were considerably more lenient. Listen to this performance of Jan Grüter playing the beautiful Kapsberger/Piccini “Chiaccona”.
It’s a really cool instrument. It’s capable of great power and tremendous gentleness of tone. It has the biggest range of any instrument in the guitar family and it comes in a box that looks like it should carry a rocket launcher. So before I go on, I want to be really clear: I love this instrument, I admire both the way it is played and the sacrifices made by those who play it. The thing I don’t understand is why performers get these things out at gigs and act like there’s nothing funny going on.
@pemulis I think it's more a happy accident than an intended feature. 3 days ago
@pemulis You have to buy the entire season pass. Once it's in your library, you can click on the little bell to make the ringtone. 3 days ago
Just discovered that the car horn prelude from Ligeti's Grand Macabre is available as an iPhone ringtone on iTunes. This could get old fast. 3 days ago
