The Rambler

Just added some new bits of Boulez, Nono, Oliveros and Xenakis today. Take a look.

I’m sorry blog, I’ve been neglecting you. Here, have some links to carry you over the weekend:

So, what about that fight breaking out at a Boston Pops concert? And what part did the imminent appearance of Ben Folds have to do with it?

The news about the detention and deportation from the US of British musicologist Dr Nalini Ghuman is, frankly, appalling. Yo, Bush - we’re still your allies, right? You’d better hope the RMA doesn’t rouse a posse to come over and Schenker your ass. (More serious assessment of the situation is at Dial M.)

And Musical Assumptions picks up on a few of Ned Rorem’s apparent assumptions regarding women composers.

We all remember the saga of the mysterious ‘piano man’ from a couple of years ago (more | conclusion). Well, the Scotsman have tracked him down for a poignant follow-up.

First up, I love you, internet:

(A thousand thanks to WFMU, and commentor emilio for the YouTube upload.)

Elsewhere, in the realm of the rather more likely:

Nico Muhly writes for the Guardian;

This month’s Paris Transatlantic is out;

The Times on classical indie labels;

Site-hearing is a Google map-hack logging places with interesting acoustics all over the world.

The IPKat gives suitably short shrift to the latest attempt to extend copyright royalties for performers.

And Kyle Gann has two posts on alternative histories of new music.

del.icio.us/skills/obituary | About this list
With the recent announcement of Rostropovich’s passing after a long illness, we bid farewell to the following members of the musical community:

:: Mstislav Rostropovich Cellist and composer
:: Bobby Pickett ‘Monster Mash’ singer
:: Herman Riley Jazz saxophonist
:: Carlo Badini Superintendent of La Scala
:: Andrew Hill Jazz pianist and composer
:: Lobby Loyde Rock guitarist
:: Brian Fahey Big band arranger and composer
:: Walter Hendl Conductor and composer

Rest in Peace.

It occurs, reading Jessica Duchen’s London reprise of the Joshua Bell experiment, that there is a further aspect mentioned, but not yet considered, in the Independent’s and Washington Post’s versions of the story. Both lament the fact that so many people walk past, listening to their iPods, and barely even notice the music making that is happening live, before their eyes. Of course, those people ignoring Little and Bell may, just possibly have one or the other - or even Menuhin - in their ears at that moment; the point is, they’re already listening to music - should we expect them to stop, in order to, er, listen to music?

What makes that question not as apparently tautological as it sounds is that it conceals a large number of value judgements about the relative merits of enjoying a public performance of great classical music by a great performer, and enjoying the private experience of music of your own choosing. If we completely level the playing field, clearly watching Tasmin Little, live, playing Bach is better than listening to her on your iPod. Leaving aside issues of recording fidelity, and the crappy 128KBps compression iTunes will have put your music through, live performance is generally a richer experience than recordings.

But we’re not on a level playing field. We’re comparing hearing a snippet of Bach performed in somewhat compromised conditions with complete pieces of music that travel with you as you go home. I would suggest that for at least some of those iPodders, even if they entirely failed to register Ms Little, hearing their music, uninterrupted, is of some value to them. Busking is, essentially, muzak - music is heard as fragments of a stream that is considered to be more or less continuous. It is of an entirely different form to music heard in the concert hall, which has a beginning, a middle and an end. That form is taken to be inherent in the music itself. It’s not a consequence of the concert hall institution, rather, concert halls have evolved into what are considered the best venue for listening to music from beginning to end.

Tied up with this are a set of judgments about the value of great art, a canon of great works, and a series of Dead White masters. A theory of artistic masterpieces only makes sense if you are able to consider them, in isolation, as unified aesthetic objects. All of which, it seems to me, is anathema to busking, which is a transitory, ephemeral, performer-based art. Bach’s great masterpieces have precious little to do with it: they are considered masterpieces because in an ostensible competition between all other musical works, they come out on top. This makes (a sort of sense) in the sanitised conditions of the concert hall; but in the street Bach is not competing with Brahms or Franck, he’s competing with train times, noise, appointments, and people’s different, immediate music choices. The value systems that work for him in the concert hall collapse out here. Is beauty beautiful everywhere? And is beauty all that matters?

Just arrived in my inbox, this is terrible news:

The Spitz has been given six months notice to quit our present site in Old Spitalfields Market by our landlord Ballymore Properties. In a worse case scenario this will mean that The Spitz will cease to exist at the end of September this year.

The campaign to Save The Spitz starts now and we need your support. Please go to www.spitz.co.uk and sign our online petition and/or make a donation to the Save The Spitz appeal.

If you would like to get directly involved in the campaign please email rupert@spitz.co.uk

The another important way to support The Spitz is to use it as much as possible so please don.t forget The Spitz also has a fantastic restaurant and if you bring along a print out of this email we.ll give you 10% off lunch between 12 & 2 pm. Also, all areas of The Spitz are available for hire including the gallery, terrace and restaurant. All ideal spaces for parties, launch nights, talks, etc. We have an excellent programme of live music in the venue including the current Spitz Festival of Blues and the forthcoming Spitz Festival of Country in August and Spitz Festival of Folk in September. The Spitz Gallery also has a very strong programme including the forthcoming Chernobyl exhibition by Magnum photographer Paul Fusco called. Twenty One Years of Fall Out.

Please show your support for The Spitz by voting with your feet.

SAVE THE SPITZ!

Quotes

“I am outraged to hear that The Spitz is in danger of closing. In these days of bland, wholesale corporate homogenisation we need truly independent music venues like The Spitz more than ever. If the Spitz closes it will be an absolute disgrace and a sure sign that London is on the way to becoming a glorified shopping mall with a series of unnecessary restaurants and shops that only recognises the power of the City bonus and not the creative force that gave areas like Spitalfields its identity in the first place.”
Beth Orton, musician, who has played at The Spitz four times.

.MOJO magazine is distraught at the thought of the Spitz closing its doors for good and all. It has served a world of vibrant, genuinely alternative music virtually single-handed. .
Danny Eccleston, Consultant Editor, Mojo Magazine

”London is known around the world for its arts and entertainment, which
is the reason why so many people come here. It has a strong reputation
for a cutting edge and innovative music scene, which is nurtured by
having a range of live venues where music can flourish The Spitz is a unique venue which has enhanced the London music scene since it opened. If a classical music venue were under threat, the establishment would rightly be up in arms.
Ken Livingstone, Mayor of London.

“It is outrageous that The Spitz is under threat of closure and I wholeheartedly give my support to the campaign to Save The Spitz. In the last ten years London’s cultural and creative axis has shifted from the West to the East and The Spitz is at the heart of this change. I have been to many ground breaking shows at The Spitz that I would never see at a more mainstream venue. The Spitz gives Spitalfields and East London it’s creative identity and if it closes this will be lost”
Giles Deacon, UK.s leading fashion designer who is based in East London.

Ignoring Ken’s rather snotty remark, the closure of the Spitz would be seriously bad news: it’s one of a very small number of decent-sized venues for exploratory music in London that has enough clout to pull in some major artists. For me, it’s possibly my favourite London venue, and its absence would leave a very big hole. Sign the petition! And go and see some shows - here’s what’s on over the next month:

25 Apr - Moishe’s Bagel
26 Apr - SFoB ‘07: The Scientists
27 Apr - SFoB ‘07: Robert Belfour *SOLD OUT*
28 Apr - SFoB ‘07: T-Model Ford *SOLD OUT*
29 Apr - Layasutra
30 Apr - Felix Lajko

1 May - Joanna And The Wolf + Cheap Hotel
2 May - Benjy Ferree
3 May - Ada Milea & The Balanescu Quartet
4 May - Thomas Clausen, Lea Freire & Oriole
5 May - Standon Calling Presents
6 May - Sophia
7 May - Jon Hopkins + Jon Redfern
8 May - Malajube
12 May - Showstar + 4,000,000 Telephones
14 May - Help She Can’t Swim
15 May - La Nuit Intime
16 May - La Nuit Intime
17 May - NEW The Israelite Samaritan Music Choir
18 May - Two Gallants (Acoustic) *SOLD OUT*
22 May - Johnossi
23 May - Charlie Parr + Fireworks Night
24 May - Yell Robot Yell Album Launch
25 May - Music Matbakh
26 May - Music Matbakh
28 May - Sky Larkin + Land of Talk
30 May - The Arctic Circle
31 May - Radik Tiuliush + Carole Pegg

Not much to report on this week. Maybe the internet’s having as hectic a time of it at the moment as me? Still, Boring Like a Drill manages to fire off a well-aimed disgruntlement in the direction of “spatialised electroacoustics”.

There’s good contemporary, christian music out there, but it doesn’t describe itself as Contemporary Christian. Now that electroacoustic music is ten-a-penny, spatialisation is the new incursion of ossified academicism: there’s infrastructure and funding needed to support that, with the attendant accumulation of material resources to legitimise cultural authority that the music cannot substantiate on its own.

I love this post on “The Edge of the Beat” by Daniel Wolf: it just reads like exemplary, thoughtful blogging to me - it’s about nothing and everything, compact philosophy to keep the imagination ticking over, and loaded with astute observations.

And apparently crappy national radio is turning more and more listeners to the pirates.

Here’s an odd fish: apparently British indie music labels are preparing a complaint to the EU over recommendations included in the recent Gowers Review of Intellectual Property. According to the Independent newspaper the Association of Independent Music is upset at plans to officially legalise the copying of CDs onto your computer/iPod/whatever. How wrong-headed is this? Do I need to count the ways?

It’s particularly upsetting news because one always hope that the indies can rise above this sort of money-grabbing nonsense. Until, that is, you recall that this is basically a retread of AIM’s call last July to blame ISPs and even computer hardware manufacturers for the travails of a faltering recording industry and to demand some sort of structure for financial recompense. That caused snorts of derision from many quarters back then, and I expect this latest stunt will too.

Next Friday I’m going to be doing my occasional Baroque oboe-playing thing, this time in Bach’s St John Passion, at St George’s, Bloomsbury. This is about the ambitous thing I’ve performed in since graduating: it should be a good show though, and if you fancy a bit of Bach to start your weekend off, come long.