Classical Punk or A Dolls House Rocks

By -

Back in June Amanda Palmer of the Dresden Dolls performed with the Boston Pops at EdgeFest. There is a video of the performance here. The best part of this performance is the crowd. The Dresden Dolls are a local favourite in Boston so many of the people in the crowd were fans of Ms Palmer and probably had never set foot inside Symphony Hall before.

Yea!!! Getting people into a concert hall to see that orchestral music isn't boring or stuffy

The next best thing is the idea of a symphony playing music other than the classics... Ok, this is nothing new for the Boston Pops, whose primary function is to do just that, play music other than the classics. Or perhaps better put, they play classical music of a different sort - pop!

In other news, the BBC is attempting to bring Classical music to a broader audience with a variety of "talent" contests. At first there was Operatunity, a programme which pitted opera singers against each other with the winner shooting to stardom and performing all over the place. Now, they have a programme called Maestro, which is getting a bunch of non-classically trained people and get them to become a conductor. Alex James, the bassist from Blur, is competing and continually commenting on how much he like classical music. Not only the show popular (thereby presenting classical music to a broad audience), but it's getting someone famous in the pop world glowing about classical music.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Role of Music in Opera

By -
There are numerous books on the topic, and every composer, librettist, director, singer and audience member has their opinion as to what role the music should play in an opera. In a play without music, the words ought to support the meaning behind a character's actions. However, in the case of action movies, often times the action is what tells the story and there aren't words, just images to forward the plot. We might hear music to accompany action, build tension, but the action tells the story. Musicals tend to speak until the emotion of the moment just "has" to break out in song - unless it's something like "Mama Mia" where the dialog is the rails we travel on between songs; the songs themselves, written before the concept of the musical, are the focus of the production, while the story is secondary. Operas are a different beast. The music provides emotion to the words spoken, but it also plays the role of ambience when there is only action. In ...
Read more

Episode 210b: Joyeuse le départ

By -
Image
Podcast:  Play in new window  |  Download Subscribe:  Apple Podcasts  |  Android  |  Google Play  |  Stitcher  |  TuneIn  |  RSS Provost Cunningham has Transmigrated, but to where! What is Dr Sage going to do with his body? And how can she bring home her friends, Abigail and Erasmus, without also bring home Cunningham? What are they going to say when they find the “skeleton” she’s hiding in her closet? Cast: Eddie Louise Clark  as Dr Sage Chip Clark  as Professor Savant Justin Bremer  as the Narrator Emily Riley Piatt  as Abigail Entwhistle, Calypso & Dean Stewart Written by  Eddie Louise Theme music by  Unwoman Sound Design by  Chip Michael
Read more

Teaching Composition – What are we trying to achieve

By -
In the process of learning composition I have spent time with a number of instructors who have encouraged me to write twelve-tone, pitch-class, electro-acoustic and other forms of experimental techniques. No matter how much I might understand and appreciate the work of other composers in the genres, these are not forms of music I resonate with. They are simply not forms of music I listen to and I struggle with the idea of writing them. However, in a Master Class by Libby Larsen she made the comment, “Learn them all, because all forms of music have something to offer.” This I very much agree. There are elements of each of the above mentioned forms (and others) that I do resonate with. Berg’s Violin Concerto is a beautiful twelve-tone work, although it is possible to look at numerous sections of the music with a “tonal” analysis. Another composer friend, Gary Bachlund commented that using these techniques can narrow the choices for how to compose a piece of work. If you look at ...
Read more