“[Satie] developed a very cynical attitude toward the listener.” Satie was so obsessed with the idea that music could no longer communicate to the audience, he concluded that music in the 20th century was destined to be a vacuous, comfortable apparatus best used as a background for other activities, much like a favorite chair.”
and my favorite:
“…music can have an impact on a wide array of customers’ behaviors, changing their perception of time, conditioning them to associate a song with a brand, or limiting their ability to critically analyze a potential purchase due to musical distraction. “When shoppers are exposed to music in a store, sales resistance decreases,” he says via e-mail. Our brains have a finite bandwidth for taking in and processing information, and clogging that bandwidth with music is sometimes enough to prevent us from making rational purchasing decisions, or worrying about the time.”
I’ll stay away from the obvious political comments here, but a British man recently had his appendix removed after it burst… 30 days after his appendix was removed. Seems the doctors missed it the first time. Sorry chap.
Before the first operation they told me I had to have my appendix removed and when I woke up afterwards they said it had been a complete success.
‘But then I keeled over in agony one month later and when they did some tests at the hospital we could see the appendix was still there on the scans.
‘As far as I was aware they took my appendix out and no one told me any different.
‘I have no idea what they did take out, but I want to find out what went wrong.’
[Said the doctor]:’We are unable to comment on individual cases. However, we would like to apologise if Mr Wattson felt dissatisfied with the care he received at Great Western Hospital.’
When you ask a creative person how they did something, they may feel a
little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It
seemed obvious to them after awhile. That’s because they were able to
connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason
they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or have
thought more about their experiences than other people have.
Just finished listening to this in the company of a really good trumpet player. Awesome musicianship and unparalleled execution. What I love about being a musician of some modest understanding is being able to hear this sort of thing and know enough to realize I don’t know anything.
from the comments:
I imagine many of those interested in the album are brass players and already get it, but non trumpeters should know what an achievement that Tchaikovsky concerto is. The whole album is excellent but that Tchaikovsky is “The main event”. It’s long been one of my favorite pieces of music to listen to. Of course the lore is this was initially declared too difficult to play on *violin* by the best players of Tchaikovsky’s time, never imagined I’d hear someone attempt it on trumpet. But just attempting it wouldn’t be enough, it would only work if it was done really well. If done just “okay” it would be a dent on the prestige of the instrument, not to mention the rep of a player who tried it but fell short. But Malcolm really makes it beautiful – IMO his performance stands up to those of the great violinists who’ve done it over the years. And it seems to me he’s done something important beyond ego gratification of demonstrating he’s a great player – in the tradition of players such as Clarke, Mendez, Severinsen, Vizzutti, Ferguson, Andre, etc., I believe what’s been done here is that the concept of what can be done with the trumpet has been expanded.
