A couple friends on Facebook just shared links that got me turned up on 2CELLOS. Ripping rock songs on classical strings is nothing new, but Luca Sulic and Stjepan Hauser found a way to make all this hum with excitement.
Here’s the video they shared Tuesday, AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck.”
This shouldn’t really matter but Sulic and Hauser have that classical pedigree too — top-flight music schools and teachers, competition bona fides — so covering pop music isn’t the only thing they’ve done.
This gets me to thinking that we need more beefy, athletic pieces for classical musicians. How nice is it to dig in and break a few bow hairs? Classical players shouldn’t have to fall back on covers to sound like they’ve listened to music this side of the new millenium. Let’s draw up the crowd-pleasers along with the traditional stuff, right?
In the meantime, here’s 2CELLOS playing us out with a little MJ.
I give to you, Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in d minor ….. on glass harp.
First of all, guy here is on fire. Robert Tiso is clearly the glass harp voice of a generation.
Second, you gotta admire the work he put into this thing. Conservatories don’t offer glass harp degrees, to my knowledge. Robert Tiso majored in ass-kicking in the School of Life, and graduated cum laude.
Third, 3.4 million Youtube viewers can’t be wrong. This thing goes. Let’s hear what the crowd has to say.
Tac Nayn and pinkie pie were reeling, while Jonathan Goodman was appreciative.
[**Note: Huffington Post inexplicably yanked Alexander Spangher’s article about composers killing classical music. Possibly because they were feeling mischievous. I’m keeping this up. Expect updated links if/when the article is recirculated.]
Columbia University student Alexander Spangher has pronounced classical music dead. Finito. Detective Spangher fingered the culprit, too: Colonel Mustard, in the library, with a knife-wrench.
Just kidding. The killer was the composer, with a boring piece, in a drafty orchestra hall:
Ultimately, current classical composers are greatly failing their field. With some notable exceptions, most of current composers seem intent on creating complex and “innovative” music at the expense of aesthetic tolerability. What could be an exciting and revitalizing branch of classical music is ultimately a failure.
Spangher is following a recent spate of death pronouncements from various corners of the web. I won’t link to them, but suffice to say, googling “death AND classical music” will get you where you need to go.
Alexander Spangher, P.I. does have a point, I suppose. The trend arrow heads towards complexity, inscrutability and ponderousness in new classical pieces, at least the ones I’m privy to. We play a music rooted in catchy hooks (“aesthetic tolerability” in Spangher’s parlance), and composers have been running away from them.
But you can’t just lay this one at the feet of the ones writing the music.
They’re responding to a market demand. We just need to start demanding different things. Quit commissioning stupid commemorative works that get archived and quickly forgotten. Quit accepting pieces blindly if they don’t move you (and your audience, by extension). Quit playing boring music.
My solution?
Listen to hip hop, and steal marketing ideas, fast as you can.
Start pushing out mixtapes. Start playing house shows and pop-up shows. Meet your audience where they live, and invite them to come to your orchestra hall performances. When they know you’ve tapped into something exciting they’ll be thrilled to try to get in on it.
Don’t blame composers. (But seriously composers: bring your A-game.) Quit making all these damn death pronouncements. Enough finger-pointing, B.D. Wong. Let’s make something.
Former Minnesota Orchestra conductor Osmo Vanska left his leadership position with the orchestra one year into the embattled group’s lockout. It was a blow to an organization that desperately needed guidance.Now that the lockout is over — musicians are back, and a newly rehabbed hall was re-opened — Vanska is dropping strong hints that he’d like to be back.
If an orchestra is the sum of its parts, some kind of giant musical golem, then the conductor is like Voltron’s head. Having Vanska back would mean a return-to-form of sorts, a readiness for the battles ahead.
But it’s not that simple. Vanska is conditioning his return on another leader within the Minnesota Orchestra stepping down. He told Minnesota Public Radio over the weekend that president Michael Henson must resign in order for him to return.
Audience members hollered “Bring back Osmo!” during the Minnesota Orchestra’s reopening last Friday.
Ball’s in the court of orchestra management. Nerves are still raw from the lockout.
Groupmusers Christopher ‘Kid’ Reid and Christopher ‘Play’ Martin.
Saturday night I attended a classical house show in Brighton, MA. The event was put on by Groupmuse, a service that pairs classical performances with audiences keen to hear good music in a low-pressure situation (e.g. somebody’s house).
Groupmuse organized the event. Hosts volunteer their house or workspace for a performance. Musicians sign up to play, and once a program is agreed upon an event is created.
The enticement.
Groupmuse users (Groupmusers?) can then agree to attend, although nothing is confirmed until you get this guy:
Yahtzee.
Setting aside how we feel about emoticons, this email is sure to send a frisson of excitement up your spine. You’re in the club.
After procuring alcoholic beverages and snacks, we drove to Brighton, parked semi-legally, and were greeted at the door by this sign.
Last chance to turn back.
We navigated a perilously icy driveway, got inside and mingled a bit before the show.
Classical fans in their natural habitat.
The two musicians on the evening were violist Mathilde Geismar and bass player Kevin Garcon.
Geismar and Garcon setting up.
They were unafraid of having their photos taken.
No Fear.
Host Ben Ginsburg offered a few words of introduction, as beers were cracked and phones silenced.
Ben Ginsburg.
Then we were off. The program started with some Bach from his Fifth Cello Suite. It was a deep, brooding c minor situation. Garcon started it off before it morphed into a duo.
Kevin Garcon kicking off with some Bach.
We were also treated to J.M. Sperger’s “Romanze” for viola and doublebass, Sándor Veress’s “Memento,” György Kurtág’s “Signs, Games and Messages” transcribed for bass, and a movement of György Ligeti’s “Sonata for viola” played exclusively on the C string.
The audience dug it.
A cacophony of noise as the hallway erupts in applause.
And the performers seemed pleased themselves.
Sweet victory. Notice roomba lurking nearby.
Groupmuse is a non-threatening dose of classical best enjoyed with a (double-)cup of cheer. Right now, the service is only available in Boston and New York. I have a feeling it will expand rapidly as the many imitators crop up.
Until Thursday, Mamoru Samuragochi was a decorated classical composer and a tunesmith whose pen game and personal triumph placed him among the most celebrated of living Japanese composers.
Samuragochi initially made waves writing the scores to a couple of video games: “Resident Evil: Dual Shock Ver” and “Animusha: Warlords.” With the landmark “Hiroshima,” his first symphony, he gained widespread acclaim. Samuragochi moved 100,000 units out the stores — an impressive number for a classical release.
“Hiroshima” also drew attention to Samuragochi’s family’s tragic past. He hails from the Hiroshima Prefecture, and when the US dropped the atomic bomb there in 1945, his parents, according to Samuragochi, were both irradiated.
Did we mention he was deaf? Media outlets billed Samuragochi as the “Japanese Beethoven.” A deaf composer defying the odds, crafting all this in his head! He was a man for all centuries, maybe the next classical music heavyweight.
Except, he wasn’t. Turns out that Samuragochi may have been … probably was …….. definitely was a fraud, through and through. A complete huckster.
So … who wrote “Hiroshima” then? What about his “Sonatina for violin?” The video game music?
Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce: Takashi Niigaki.
Samuragochi’s story started to unravel when a music critic, Takeo Naguchi, started poking into Samuragochi’s biography. Mr. Niigaki came forward Thursday with the truth after hearing about Naguchi’s inquest. Turns out all that music that had audiences abuzz was written by a part-time professor (with a full range of hearing).
So what part of Mamoru Samuragochi’s biography is true — is he deaf? Has he written even a note of music? Did critical fervor for Samuragochi’s stuff — really, Niigaki’s stuff — drown out logical questions that follow a seemingly unbelievable backstory? In order: we don’t know; we don’t know; and … probably, yes.
But before you grab the pitchforks and torches, take a hit from this L.
We’ve still got a no-name composer out there (now you know his name! All together: “Takashi Niigaki!”) who tapped into pain and poignancy, wrote a heady piece that won over audiences, and did a tidy 100,000 units. People are paying money to hear this thing. Maybe the fraud leads to bigger sales, bigger performances, more accolades. Everybody loves a good redemption story.
If this really bugs us then that’s on us. We need to stop searching for that tearjerker Hollywood-ready backstory and just start listening. It’s an art and a craft, so pay homage to the real ones. Forget the fakes.
Not to worry for Mr. Samuragochi. I’m sure they’ll let him lace up for a celebrity boxing match.
(ABC 7) — Three people have been arrested in connection with the theft of a valuable Stradivarius violin.
It was stolen from the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra concertmaster last month. Police say the nearly 300-year-old violin was on loan to Frank Almond. Investigators say someone used a stun gun on him in a parking lot and took the instrument.
The violin has been appraised at $5 million. It was recovered in Milwaukee, reportedly on the city’s east side, after one of the suspects told investigators where to find it. Charges are pending.
Riccardo Muti recently inked a deal to remain music director of the Chicago Symphony until 2020. Apparently, the occasion brought out Muti’s quotatiousness (to swipe a term coined by Shaq). Here are a few gems from his Monday presser.
Talking about classical marketing schemes:
Today all you see are violinist’s legs and a conductor with hair like a forest. The future seems to be legs and hair.
On Beethoven’s 9th Symphony:
I didn’t conduct this music until I was 46, in Philadelphia. The third movement is maybe written by God. I felt too humble to conduct this metaphysical and spiritual music. I was so nervous, I was shaking. The concertmaster said to me, ‘Coraggio!’
On his home country:
Italy is a country based on culture. If you take away the culture, what do you have? Berlusconi.
On the youthful exuberance required to conduct the mighty CSO:
I will not be 80 yet. My great grandfather remarried at 76.
Classical Dark Arts 