Friday Miscellanea

This has been a weird time for musicians. I have been able to get in much more practicing than usual and almost am back to being reasonably in shape, technically. I am actually thinking about doing a solo recording with video. Keep your eye on this space! And I was talking to an old friend of mine who is principal flute in a Canadian orchestra and even though there are no concerts, everything is cancelled until next April, at least, he is practicing three hours a day.

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Ah, to be in Madrid, now that July is here: The Teatro Real is staging an indoor Traviata with audience--well, 50% audience!

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Here is a sad tale that might represent what a lot of orchestras in North America are going through: A CELLIST’S TALE: MY ORCHESTRA JUST CEASED TO EXIST.

So as of today the Nashville Symphony, my employers for the last 36 years, ceases to exist in the form many of you know and love. And it won’t be back, at least not in its former state, for a long time, if ever.

I'm pretty sure that classical music in Europe will recover and do so pretty soon. But in North America? Right now it is odds or evens whether it will recover at all...

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I was searching for something, anything, that was not coronavirus related and came up with this: IT’S THE NAKED PIANIST… LOOK AWAY NOW.

Mixed-race, openly gay, Stockport classical pianist Emmanuel (Manny) Vass, 31, continues to push boundaries and divide traditionalists with the release his third album, The Naked Pianist.

From stripping down to Union Jack boxers on ITV’s Britain’s Got Talent; being spotted by the pool chatting to fellow daters in his orange speedos on Channel 4’s First Dates Hotel, to featuring as a ClassicFM Young Classical Star, Manny continues to take risks shaking up the classical world.

Frankly, I'm neither shaken nor stirred.

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The New York Times confirms what I was saying above: Cultural Life Is Back in Europe. In the U.K., They Talk of Collapse.

In France, Germany, Italy or Belgium, where the arts are heavily subsidized by the state, performing companies and museums can survive with reduced ticket sales. But in Britain, where government funding is much lower and organizations rely on commercial income, most are unprepared for a future in which they can only admit a fraction of their usual audience.

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Got the virus? Why not dance it away with a Neapolitan tarantella from the 17th century:

 

Here is some dance music by Shostakovich:

And a little Indian classical dance:

Here is Rihanna's CGI-assisted dance from the movie Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets:

Of course, Russians can do incredible things without CGI:

And that it for today. Have a happy and dancey weekend!