What Are You Listening To?

[stlukesguild]

Classical Music has been struggling with its image for some time now. Popular music has always cashed in on sex appeal. The Classical Music world has long been ambivalent about sex appeal. This has been slowly changing. Anna Netrebko...

Danielle de Niese

Yuja Wang

These three women are but a few performers who challenge the image of Classical Music as reserved for stodgy old farts. But as might be expected, there has been a degree of backlash... and a good deal of sexism or misogyny is that.

Male performers such as Dmitri Hvorostovsky...

and Jonas Kaufmann...

... are both major sex symbols among the Classical Music audience... and both are unreservedly respected and acknowledged as being among the finest singers of our time. (Sadly, Dmitri Hvorostovsky died a couple of years ago). On the other hand, Netrebko, de Niese, Wang, etc... have all faced criticism from those who assume that a performer as attractive or sexy as they are cannot be "serious" let alone "great".

The performer I am listening to now, Nicola Benedetti, struggled for years against a similar prejudice due to her good looks.

She is now highly respected as a musician as well as for her charitable efforts... especially involving teaching music to children.

This recording is made up of mostly shorter compositions by composers including Sarasate, Rachmaninoff, Ravel, Massanet, Fauré, Saint-Saëns, and Arvo Pärt. There is little doubt, listening to this recording, of Benedetti's "seriousness"... brilliance... as a violinist.

 

[Dave Woody]

This is a blues in Cminor, Flavio is playing a Bb diatonic harmonica in third position.

I am no pro, but one diatonic 10 hole harmonica can be played in three keys essentially and
not all the notes the harmonica produces, work, from key to key.
A harmonica in A plays first position for songs in A.
An A harmonica plays second position for songs in E ( most common )
An A harmonica plays third position for songs in Gminor

It is all a bit tricky. Then there are bent notes to be had, flutters, tongue blocking, chords,
octaves, dynamics and using your hands cupping the mic tight and releasing that cupping
to get a wah wah effect. Then there are effects and amplifier nuances too.....love this little instrument.

Sorry....I got a bit wrong....an A harmonica plays third position for songs in Bminor

 

[Desforges]

I have been listening to this group from Quebec. This was recorded in 1975. I realize that I still love this.

 

[Iain]

I can imagine you painting to that, J. I can see the rabbits, animated, tumbling amongst the weed. When my daughter was young she thought they were called Raddits. Isn't that an Elmer Fud pronunciation? Anyhow.

This has got into my head. Kinda fits.

 

[musket]

Classical Music has been struggling with its image for some time now. Popular music has always cashed in on sex appeal. The Classical Music world has long been ambivalent about sex appeal. This has been slowly changing. Anna Netrebko...

View attachment 8047

Danielle de Niese

View attachment 8048

Yuja Wang

View attachment 8049

These three women are but a few performers who challenge the image of Classical Music as reserved for stodgy old farts. But as might be expected, there has been a degree of backlash... and a good deal of sexism or misogyny is that.

Male performers such as Dmitri Hvorostovsky...

View attachment 8050

and Jonas Kaufmann...

View attachment 8051

... are both major sex symbols among the Classical Music audience... and both are unreservedly respected and acknowledged as being among the finest singers of our time. (Sadly, Dmitri Hvorostovsky died a couple of years ago). On the other hand, Netrebko, de Niese, Wang, etc... have all faced criticism from those who assume that a performer as attractive or sexy as they are cannot be "serious" let alone "great".

The performer I am listening to now, Nicola Benedetti, struggled for years against a similar prejudice due to her good looks.

View attachment 8052

She is now highly respected as a musician as well as for her charitable efforts... especially involving teaching music to children.

View attachment 8053

This recording is made up of mostly shorter compositions by composers including Sarasate, Rachmaninoff, Ravel, Massanet, Fauré, Saint-Saëns, and Arvo Pärt. There is little doubt, listening to this recording, of Benedetti's "seriousness"... brilliance... as a violinist.

The top of the classical guitar world is now mainly occupied by women. Many look like runway models.

Tatyana Ryzhkova--

Ana Vidovic (one of the greatest classical guitarists in the history of the instrument)--

Isabel Martinez--

But this one... she is special. I was turned on to her by an old friend, client and fine classical and all around guitarist a few days ago, and I am seriously impressed.

She's playing a replica of an early 19th Century guitar by Johann Stauffer. Without getting too technical, these instruments differ in significant ways from the modern classical, as developed by Antonio Torres de Jurado in the mid 19th Century, and not just in the smaller size. They are braced internally more in the manner of a lute, and have less mid range and faster note decay than a modern classical. This is a trade off between clarity and warmth, roughly the sound of a harpsichord as opposed to a piano.

This is unthinkable in the hidebound world of classical guitar. I have never, ever seen anyone play a guitar of this type on a concert stage. But it makes a lot of sense for Bach, as long as you've got her chops, her clarity of line and her tremendous control of separation. I will have more to say about Ms. Jones later. She's a stand out in other ways and I don't mean just the haircut.

 

[musket]

I'm providing a link to this concert instead of an embedded video, so people will know which piece is where.

Stephanie Jones in Concert

Aside from the Tarrega which opens the concert, and to a lesser extent the Brouwer, there's not a single chestnut of the repertoire here.

I'll let her speak for herself... but the second and third movements of The Whisky Tales are truly mind blowing.

 

[stlukesguild]

Yes, she is damn good. I wonder why she doesn't have a recording contract yet. Actually, she did state that she has released a CD... but I find it only exists on Spotify as a playlist... which is blocked. At least I can find nothing else on either Amazon or Spotify. Of course, Spotify is far from the best site for classical music. I do find she has a rather nice YouTube channel... currently with 50+ videos.

I also love how the color of her jacket matches that of her hair. I suppose only an artist would notice that.

 

[musket]

She's living in Germany and still studying. She isn't that well known yet. But she will be. She's once in a generation.

This one shouldn't be embedded.

Stephanie Jones-- Cielo Abierto, by Quique Sinesi

Generally speaking, classical guitarists don't use their instruments for drum solos.

 

[musket]

She's released several CDs. Unfortunately, she notes that wait times may be long outside of Europe.

This is her site--many video clips here, including an arrangement of Blowin' in the Wind played with a capo, reverb and chorus (a capo alone is heresy in the classical guitar world, never mind digital effects), in which she actually Travis picks, as though she were playing a steelstring with a classical right hand.

Stephanie Jones

The classical guitar world could use a good shaking up. Pretty clear that she doesn't give a damn for the norms.

Oops, sorry, the Dylan ain't on there, so...

 

[stlukesguild]

St. Patrick's Day!!! Time for some corned beef and cabbage and Guinness...

And some Irish Music:

Of course, Irish music is not limited to Celtic jigs. John Field invented the Nocturne as a musical form that would serve as a major inspiration for Chopin. Cherish the Ladies is an Irish-American group that performs more traditional Celtic music... often in collaboration with other performers. And then U2... well... they're Irish.

 

[musket]

After all these years, still the gold standard to which all Neo-trad Irish bands aspire.

I regret that I never caught them live. I did catch Triona solo at the Irish American Social Club in Watertown, MA of all places, in the early 80s. The concert wasn't advertised. I was invited by an Irish American friend. I was the only person in the place who had no Irish blood.

During both sets, it was dead silent. Just Triona and her Hohner Clavinet (the only electric instrument in the band; same as Stevie Wonder played on Superstition). She didn't sing a word of English the entire night. Absolutely riveting, one of the greatest performances I've ever attended.

 

[Dave Woody]

True story....In a casual conversation with a colleague, when working as a Security Officer
at Heathrow Terminal 1, as our Aer Lingus passengers were coming through,
I quipped, randomly to her ....'is there lots of cork, in Cork'?

Within the blink of an eye an Irish voice responded..... 'only in the wine bottles'.

 

[stlukesguild]

Two classics of theatrical orchestral music:

While sitting in the car waiting on take out dinner I turned on the radio and caught the beginning of The Planets: Mars, Bringer of War live by the Philadelphia Orchestra. I just had to listen to the entire work after I got home. Strauss is a good follow-up to Holst and som I went with his tone poem/symphony: Eine Alpensinfonie.

Like the Rolling Stones' Let it Bleed both of these discs should have instructions that read : "This disc must be played LOUD!"

 

[stlukesguild]

The "old school" Rilling recordings of Bach's cantatas are quite fine so I thought I'd give these recordings of Haydn's masses a listen. Listening to the Missa Cellenis and the Missa Brevis. These recordings are just as fine as Rilling's Bach.

 

[Dave Woody]

 

[Dave Woody]

and the original version from his album
Studio Tan

 

[musket]

I continue to listen to Stephanie Jones. In a long life of listening to classical guitarists play Bach, I haven't heard anyone like her before.

She seems determined to expand the repertoire to composers nobody's ever heard of--this was the world premier of this piece. Her dynamics are just outstanding.

As great as Tatyana Ryzhkova is, she plays this just like a classical guitarist.

Jones plays it unaffectedly, like the dance it is (sitting a tree no less!).

This woman is once in a generation. Right now she's working on the Bach Lute Suite in E Major, and having heard the Gigue (not available yet to the general public), I'm sure she's going to kill.

 

[Iain]

It is April and it is snowing. Not that this needs April snow.

 

[Dave Woody]

I toured with MICE in 1996 and this is a live BBC Radio 1 session we did.
I am the guitar panned left, Julianne Regan and Marty Wilson Piper all on guitars too.

https://oildale.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/21234030/Mice-In-Session-for-Mark-Radcliffe-June-3-1996-complete.mp3

 

[Iain]

Pony Ltd. | THE LAST SHIPS

THE LAST SHIPS 1975–77 ”While I couldn’t help making the photographs of shipbuilding that I made, it was a personal obsession. At the time I didn’t exhibit or show them to anyone as I didn’t want to be thought of as an industrial photographer.

www.ponybox.co.uk