The Billboard classical charts may only be interesting to classical watchers & weirdos. Nonetheless, we can glean a few pearls of wisdom doing the numbers from this week’s album sales.
- Easter bounce: the Mormon Tabernacle Choir put together He is Risen for the rollicking April holiday. That’s what’s known as excellent timing — the MTC grabbed that #1 chart spot. Hustle-nomics 101.
- Our Missouri ladies are still holding strong at #3. Lent at Ephesus by the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of the Apostles has been steady for nine weeks and counting. Sensing a strong religious component of top-sellers? This is about where it ends.
- Classical “grab bag” albums are just tremendously popular. Tremendously, nauseatingly popular. To wit: album numbers 2, 4, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 17 and 18 (and arguably 22 and 24) all feature standard classical fare, usually collated by composer name, virtually indistinguishable from the previous batch of best-ofs.
- Iranian composer & musician Hafez Nazeri is charting (#5) with an album original material (whoa) composed as a tribute to the poet Rumi. The Rumi Symphony Project features Deepak Chopra (yes, that one) spitting Rumi verses, along with Hafez Nazeri’s father, Shahrma, a well-known Persian classical and Sufi singer. This one goes.
- Kronos Quartet debuted at the #19 spot with their album A Thousand Thoughts. People who have opinions on such things have basically panned the album (albeit very nicely). Why does that matterITDOESN’TMATTERWHATYOUTHINK.** The Kronos discography is unassailable. Those guys could sequester themselves in a don-size villa in Cabo San Lucas and release an annual In Through The Out Door cover album and their legacy would remain unblemished. Fans don’t give a flying f.
**Apologies to The Rock.
Classical Dark Arts 