Classical Punk or A Dolls House Rocks

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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.

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