About Me

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I grew up in one of the most beautiful places in the world: Dunedin, New Zealand. Surrounded by music in a family that loved and supported the arts, I began violin lessons at the age of 5 and soon knew that music would be my passion in life. After completing a Bachelor of Music at the University of Otago, I spent a wonderful year playing with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra before completing a Master of Music at the University of Oregon. Soon after a return to New Zealand, I formed with three friends the Tasman String Quartet, with which I had the great fortune of travelling to the University of Colorado to study with one of the all-time greats; the Takács Quartet. For many years I had been drawn towards what I consider to be the extraordinary beauty of historically informed performance. Following my string quartet studies, I began a second Master's degree in Early Music at Indiana University. I am now living in Bloomington, enjoying the chance to play early music with wonderful groups in the area. Photo: © Steve Riskind

Sunday, November 29, 2009

Combing lions' manes and brushing crocodiles' teeth

So, my latest enjoyable pastime is to go on youtube, find what I consider to be really bad musical performances and make some kind of sarcastic comment about it, to see what people's reactions are (I know, I'm a jackass. Sue me). For example, the infamous Florence Foster Jenkins singing, or rather failing to sing, Mozart's virtuosic aria from the Magic Flute "Der Hölle Rache", which goes up to high D. She not only fails to get the high D, but fails to get every other note as well. Other people wrote comments like "total carnage", "I feel nauseous", "haha, it sounds like a little dog yelping" and "oh my god is this a joke?". So I wrote "Why is everyone complaining about this? It's beautiful! I've never heard a singer hit the right notes so often. Stop dissing her, and show some respect." I got a thumbs up from someone and a reply from someone called lucy()loves()music saying "rofl@ andrewesjames comment!" So that was a positive response. 

Next, I found a recording of Janine Jansen playing Bach's Chaconne, arguably the greatest piece of music for solo violin, or any medium, ever; her playing is extremely beautiful, even though not very baroque, but some guy had made a comment referring to the piece as a "song". This particular word gets my gander up when it comes to classical instrumental music, so I wrote back saying "The song? I wasn't aware the Chaconne had words." To which the original guy replied "Wow, you are impertinent." Sweet.

My personal favourite, though, has to be the following: last night I found a recording of Bach's beautiful aria from the St. Matthew Passion, "Erbarme dich", which has a stunning violin obbligato line throughout. It's about as beautiful an aria as you can get. This recording (Richter, with Julia Hamari singing) is not what I call beautiful though, unless lying naked and being covered with two truckloads of sonic maple syrup is what you're into. All the notes are there, it's all in tune, but it's still awful. All the notes are equally important, super-vibrated, and there's no sense of it being based on the siciliano dance form. The person who posted the video wrote "It goes deep into your soul. No words. Just watch, listen and get out of this world." So I wrote "You're right. This does take me to another world. A world filled with boredom." Because in the words of Nigel North, my esteemed Baroque Performance Practice professor, "all performers do actually express an affect successfully, even if it's mostly boredom". 

The epic reply I got to this comment is also out of this world. Here it is word for word:

"So I recommend you to comb a lion mane or brush a crocodile teeth. You can be sure that you will not be bored at all if you do that. It is a wrong place to you here."

1 comment:

  1. I hate you!!! You are such a douche!! Go back to Douchebagistan where they play everything equally and everyone plays like the total douche-dimwit you are!!
    JK!!! LOLOLOLOL!!! I hope you are having fun NZ. We should totally play 1064 there! That would be sweet as!!!

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