So I blog about Kathleen Battle and then I run across this article and interview. Bizarre!
You know how advertisers like to use music as a simile or metaphor, right? Well, ACB had just blogged about her comfie shoes, so I visited the BeautiFeel® site. What do I find but this (complete with their odd line breaks):
BeautiFeel®
is Harmony
like an orchestra that
blends many instruments to
create a singular piece of
music, BeautiFeel® footwear
consist of many elements
(instruments) that
harmoniously master both
style and function.
(And I really want “consists” instead of “consist”, but what do I know? I don’t like putting punctuation inside my quotes either, so maybe I’m wrong on the consist thing as well.)
Could it be true? Was there a Hungarian custom of burying a bass?
“Every year for the past 100 years, Hungarians in the city of Roma would bury a double bass to signal the end of the wedding season and also would confess their sins that were committed against the instrument. Then they followed up with an all night party. A strange custom to be sure, but a custom nonetheless. Well 2008 saw that custom nixed from Hungary’s event calender. The bureaucrats in Hungary basically forgot to put it on the list of festivals that has been held every year on the first Thursday of every February.”
Oh Jason … what think ye? (Maybe you just know some bass players you’d rather bury?)
Read here.
I just ran across this quote:
Battle’s handful of defenders agree she can be difficult but argue that her artistry makes her worth the trouble, and obliquely criticize the Met for not defusing the situation diplomatically. “Many great artists are difficult in their search for perfection in their craft,” says Peter Gelb, president of Sony Classical Film and Video and Wilford’s former deputy at Columbia Artists. Gelb has made nine TV programs with Battle. “The role of the Met is to support great talents. Nothing a producer does comes close to the challenge and difficulty great artists face when they go onstage.”
So now that Mr. Gelb is with the Met shouldn’t he be bringing Battle back? To show how he believes what he said? Hmmm.
I read the quote here, dated February 21, 1994.
San Jose Symphony did work with Ms. Battle once. My lips are sealed, my fingers still. I know better that to blog publicly about certain things. At least for now. 😉
“I vary my route to work — which I think may be more dangerous. In ’06 I had to leave town and disappear for six months for my safety, but we still kept going — I organized two concerts from afar. . . . At one point, I had to tactfully get a formal religious proclamation from a top cleric that music was not profane. That took care of one group only. Still, these days, it’s certainly better than it was — I’m trying to up the concerts to twice a month, but that includes a lot of chamber performances which I initiated some months ago,” he says.
