A Steady Diet of Jarrett and Cage

Just ran across an interesting post on Alex Ross' blog. Entitled "Proper Parenting" he writes:

From Mike Rubin's New York Times profile of the electronic musician Nicolas Jaar: "The elder Mr. Jaar and his wife also fed their son a steady diet of Keith Jarrett and John Cage, who is a likely influence on [Jaar's] sound-collage experiments. 'My husband and I, we were always interested in the avant-garde,' said Evelyne Meynard, Mr. Jaar’s mother, a former dancer who trained with Merce Cunningham’s company in the early ‘80s. 'I always encouraged Nicky to understand that not only melody and harmony were interesting, but that atonal music and sounds and all that were also interesting.'"

Hmm, well I grew up on a steady diet of jigs, reels and other fiddle tunes, but I would have appreciated a bit more diversity. Perhaps Mr. Jaar might have benefited from some as well. You know, perhaps a little Stravinsky, some Debussy, maybe a little Shostakovich. Mind you, if he listened to a lot of Keith Jarrett he might have heard the Shostakovich preludes and fugues. But perhaps Mr. Ross' title is ironic? Probably not...

Let's have a listen:

Ok, maybe it was ironic...