[Dixielandjazz] Is Music Visual? - The other opinion.

Wed Feb 6 10:44:05 PST 2008

You know Steve that's a mixed bag.  People today seem to demand movement 
from their performers.  TV is a visual, moving medium unlike radio.  Why not 
classical performers?  Well probably because they are really bad at it.  I 
was watching a woman playing Mozart and she was quite good but she looked 
like she was having an orgasm much like Meg Ryan's restaurant scene.  It 
added a whole another dimension to Mozart that day.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.  When I worked at Missouri School for 
the Blind we were told to not allow students to rock back and forth because 
it was considered a "blindism" but when Ray Charles did it people seemed to 
like it as part of the show.

IMO the most successful OKOM bands and performers have some movement in 
their acts.   It could even be as simple as a soloist walking out in front 
to play.  People like it and I suppose these performers were trying to key 
in on that.  Some people like their classical performers to act and be very 
dignified and high toned but if we look back over history it just wasn't 
that way.

Andre Reiu has one of the most successful classical traveling groups with 
tickets running $100 each to packed houses.  He has novelty, lots of color, 
movement - usually himself and of course wonderful musicians.  This guy uses 
all the tricks to work the crowd and they love it.

Personally I am trying to work those things into my act and that could be 
the reason why I worked three gigs yesterday and could have worked a fourth. 
It's show biz - lights camera action ---  Why should classical performers be 
exempt.  As I recall Victor Borgia was very visual in his performances and 
funny too.
Larry
St.L
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Stephen G Barbone" <barbonestreet at earthlink.net>
To: "Larry Walton" <larrys.bands at charter.net>
Cc: "Dixieland Jazz Mailing List" <dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com>
Sent: Wednesday, February 06, 2008 10:59 AM
Subject: [Dixielandjazz] Is Music Visual? - The other opinion.

While not OKOM, this article talks about the visual cues in music
performances. Interestingly enough, the writer opines about how the
visual activity of some performers, specifically pianists, might be
turning off newcomers to classical music. That seems to be
diametrically opposed to the visual antics of the current pop/rock
stars and their resultant mesmerization of new and young audiences.
Any thoughts?
Cheers,
Steve Barbone

February 6, 2008 - NY TIMES - By BERNARD HOLAND
When Histrionics Undermine the Music and the Pianist

Wandering from one television channel to the next the other day, I
came across young people playing the piano. One man, bearded and a
little hefty, rippled through a Beethoven sonata, sharing with the
camera complicit smiles, exultant grimaces, gazes to the right and
left, and a gentle swaying from side to side.

The next, a young woman, sat down to Schumann, bending her back,
lifting her head and gazing straight up. Maybe God was sitting in the
rafters just above her, and she was using the opportunity to say
hello. Both pianists were perfectly fluent. They kept time, played the
right notes and sounded expressive when they were supposed to.

I had to turn away. I could listen, but I couldn’t watch. Two
performers, four glazed eyes and four waving arms were too much for my
stomach. And if someone with a lifelong love for the piano repertory
has this kind of reaction, what about those coming to classical music
from the outside? Think of the smart young people ready to believe,
filled with curiosity and good thoughts, and imagine with what
astonishment and amusement they must come away from such scenes.

It’s another reason classical music is not reaching more young people:
not because of how it sounds, but because of how it looks. Even worse,
lugubrious gymnastics like these advertise the feelings of performers,
not of Beethoven or Schumann. Music is asked to stand in line and wait
its turn.

Our two pianists might simply have been talking themselves into
playing well and sharing the conversation with us. Maybe they didn’t
trust their own ability to make music without a little theater to
juice up the proceedings. Elaborate arm waving and heaven-bound gazes,
at any rate, seem to have become part of the conservatory curriculum,
like accurate scales and counterpoint.

Some, I am sure, watch the wrong people and engage in monkey see,
monkey do. More often, I suspect, performers just want everyone to
know how wonderful they are, right down to their virtuoso fingertips.
There are bad examples out there. Liszt evidently jumped around when
he was a young touring virtuoso, but he is said to have sat at the
piano like a stone later in life. Glenn Gould, who acted out his
musical eccentricities with remarkable finesse, looked like the music
he was making.

Serious theater in the wrong hands turns unintentionally into physical
comedy. I have always wanted to make athletically inclined students
sit in a chair away from the piano, writhe to their heart’s content
and then ask themselves what they just heard. Some music does bear
watching, like the slow ballet of Steve Reich’s “Music for 18
Musicians.” Most of it doesn’t. Vision, the dominant of our five
senses, gets in the way.

Responsible teachers ought to be beating these kinds of histrionics
out of their students but are too often perpetrators themselves. One
answer might be for conservatories to hire time-and-motion experts,
professionals who could point out that the flailing arm, the bulging
eye and the balletic upper torso are extraneous work in a business
best devoted to doing the most with the least.

Technique is not about muscle building but about optimal allocation of
resources. More happens faster and more clearly with the minimum of
gesture. Weight and relaxation, not force, make big sound. So much
energy is squandered on these melodramas for the eye — and so much
attention diverted — that it is a wonder our pianistic thespians can
hear themselves at all.

If the teacher won’t do the job, what about tying offenders to a post
and running films of Arthur Rubinstein at work? They should note the
dignity, the rectitude, the stillness of the upper body and, above
all, the quality of the music that results. My colleague Alex Ross
once described a filmed Beethoven sonata performance as Wilhelm Kempff
watching Wilhelm Kempff play the piano.

And a note to the larger ego: playing the discreet middleman does not
sacrifice the spotlight. It is neither meekness nor submission nor
self-effacement. At the end of the day, whom do we take more
seriously, Rubinstein or Lang Lang?

The television program I happened to come across was produced by or
for (probably both) a major American piano competition, and the young
people I saw on it were part of that process. The program also offered
commentary by an eminent conductor talking about the differences
between Apollonian and Dionysian approaches to art. The Apollonian
refers (and I paraphrase) to symmetry, invention and elegance; the
Dionysian, to art more from the gut, more spontaneous.

More personal too. Dionysus had the stage when I was watching: two
ambitious young people were taking part in a system that asks them to
use Beethoven and Schumann as ways to sell themselves. Maybe our
eminent conductor could have added another distinction to his two-
sided debate: that Dionysian pianists care about Dionysian pianists,
whereas Apollonian pianists care about music.

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