The New Music Hubs

There are a couple of topics I'd like to air, well, three, come to think of it. The first of these is that I have never been able to come to terms with the description of music as "classical". It's perfectly OK, if you want to go into the historical ins and outs of music's development in the western world, but if someone asks, "What sort of music are you interested in?" and you give the answer, "Classical", then this answer has immediately and often been consigned by the questioner to a genre that lies buried in the past, and is continually dug up and practised by a few boring intellectuals, who guard their precious music with a passion that pushes it into the realms of exclusivity and musical elitism. This is, by the by, nonsense, but there is an unfortunate element of truth here. Without laboriously having to explain every time the question is asked that the word can cover everything from early music to contemporary, taking in Baroque, romanticism, serialism, neo-classicism, minimalism and any number of other -isms on the way, how do you convey width and breadth with the term, "classical", which smacks of a narrow specialism in cobwebs and Ancient Greece?

Barbara Thomson and Vivaldi

I've watched a couple of really inspirational films recently (thanks, Peter), both with a strong message from the world of music and both so completely different.  Barbara Thomson is one of the world's best improvising sax. players. Now in her late 60s, I used to hear her perform at the Bull pub in Barnes during the early 70s. Her husband is Jon Hiseman, a superb drummer still working with his old band, "Colosseum", as well as Barbara's outfit, "Paraphernalia". Barbara has Parkinson's disease and is fighting it hard. Seeing her perform under this terrible stress was spine-chillingly motivating. There is something about the sound she makes that would inspire anyone to listen to more and somehow get involved. I also respond to her crossover into rock and contemporary music - she composes for classical combos and choirs as well as working with Colosseum.

Keeping Time

I recently had an outing to London to see a play.  This was "The Lady Killers", based on an old Ealing comedy film, originally starring Peter Sellers, Herbert Lom and Alec Guinness. The current play is written by Graham Linehan, of Father Ted and Black Books fame. It's a story of five crooks who plan a bank job. They take lodgings with an old lady, Mrs Wilberforce and pretend to be a string quintet. None of them can play a note.  Each criminal character might be seen as representing what was wrong with the morality of post-war Britain, the old lady in contrast suggesting a mythical tradition of English goodness, kindness and upright honesty. The theatre and the play thrust you body and soul into a world gone by; the moral questioning still relevant.

Through the Eyes of ...

Today I have to go to market to buy the items that I will need to get by on for the next week or so. This is a distraction as my time as my master's musician is precious to me. I have the glory of the Lord burning in my soul and the burning seeks expression through music, so I must return to it as quickly as I am able. I approach the town on foot. The year is 1440 and it is a hot summer's day. The first thing that assails me is the stink as I pass across a bridge - over Shitbrook - as I near the great wooden entrance gates. There I espy the severed heads and limbs of traitors on display. Then I am further pressed by the beggar boys who come out of the town to meet visitors, such as myself who travel long distances to buy at the market.