Grand Pause

This will certainly be a slow blogging week since I'm getting two summer classes off the ground and I have a major writing project due early next week. (!!!!) I'll be back in July, and that's not really so far away. In the meantime, you can peruse the always interesting musings of the mysteriously monickered commenter Fusedule Tecil here, here, and here. I'm tempted to jump in more on the soundtrack questions he raises, but alas, the jump will have to wait. Speaking of mysterious monickers, there's a very promising and fairly new blog written by an Osbert Parsely. Worth a look.

And if you want to get a little peek into the kind of insanity that is my family, you could head over to my kid sister's new blog and read in stunning detail about the extraordinary work she did for my daughter's recent "Brady Bunch" birthday party. Here (the intro), here (the cake), and here (the pinata). This sister is perhaps the most creative person I know, and I love that she's not afraid to lavish that creativity on the ephemeral. A Poulenc of the crafting world. Groovy times.

And, since I seem to be in the process of creating my first "link" post (I think bloggers are supposed to do this a lot), let me now point to one of my favorite posts of the year that didn't seem to get as much attention as it deserved: Jeremy Denk's remarkable contribution to Adaptistration's "Take a Friend to Orchestra" month. It captures so much of the complex, paradoxical experience it can be to love music and to love performing music. Everyone should read it - and then go listen to Falstaff.

I'll also point to one of my least favorite articles of the year, this takedown of the "average classical music audience" by Tim Mangan. It's not so much a question of disagreeing with the substance of what he's saying, as feeling that the hostile attitude towards casual listeners is so . . . hostile. I find this a bit with Greg Sandow as well - the sense that audiences who enjoy the "safe" experience of friendly, melodic masterworks are somehow less alive and worth caring about than the hip types who want thrill rides. Even if you believe (as Sandow seems to) that this audience is going to die away, I think anyone who chooses to come to a classical concert (for whatever reason) deserves a little more respect than Mangan shows. But I'm not supposed to be blogging, just linking, so I'll save that for another day.