I guess I can’t skip The Simpsons sometime in late September. Placido Domingo will be in an episode. Woo hoo!
Okay … read the quote below and tell me what you think it’s all about:
“From different studies, they’ve shown — I may be a little wrong on the technical side — that Mozart’s music and brain waves are similar and that it stimulates learning. They play it a lot at schools around the country, very low, underneath. I’m not sure if that’s true or not, but why not give it a shot?”
I’m not sure anyone reads my blog at this time of day (whatever time it is for you!), but I’ll give it an hour or two before I post the link.
And NO CHEATING.
Okay, okay, I guess no one wants to play. Well, here you go: Read this.
Yes. Football.
Mozart just seems wrong to me. If you were to choose a composer, would you put Mozart in the football field?
On whether he would ever consider accepting a music director position with a symphony orchestra: “What I can tell you? It would be very flattering to receive such an offer. My experience in the symphonic repertoire not as broad as it is with opera. I have been fortunate to conduct world-class orchestras such as the Chicago Symphony, Berlin, Vienna, the National Symphony. But if you want to be a music director, it is better to start at a place that is not so big.”
The above is from an article about Placido Domingo.
So what do you think? Maybe he’d come to SSV?
Maybe not.
I have worked with him once. But he wasn’t conducting. He was just … you know … doing that other thing he does sometimes … um … oh yeah, singing.
I received some spam with the subject self-loathing grand piano and I’m puzzling over it a lot.
How can a piano be self-loathing when it’s grand?
So … wanna go to a Lexus concert or would you rather go to one that features instruments? (For those of you who don’t know, Loree is a popular make of oboe. I actually play on Marigaux oboes, but I do enjoy being different!)
What do you play?
Lexus?
Loree?
Or maybe you’re cheap
and play an old Jeep?
So someone wrote to the Chicago Tribune complaining about the lack of “Concert Etiquette” at an outdoor concert.
Hmmm.
I agree that cellphone users shouldn’t be yakking away during a concert, and I even agree that keeping kids from running around like maniacs (which I’ve certainly seen) is nice. But shoot, it’s outdoors and one of the reasons these concerts are given is to pull in new ears and faces and all that jazz. And playing outdoors isn’t exactly going to be quiet no matter what. (I remember one persistent bird that sang through a Mozart work with us one year.)
Outdoor concerts are different. I say bring the kids. Bring a picnic. Relax. Enjoy. Don’t be shouting, please, but if you want to talk, well, I’m not going to pull my knives on you! Promise.
It’s pretty hard to sympathize with someone who enters a profession synonymous with frustration and poverty and then complains about the lousy pay. Yes, with the exception of the very talented and very lucky, being an artist is a terrible, terrible life. That’s because if all writers/painters/musicians were lavishly indulged by benevolent patrons who cared only for the art, dammit, and not the bottom line, everyone would join the creative class and there’d be no one left to feed the chickens.
-Danyl Mclauchlan
