Sometimes just the sky
hello,
September! The best month. I hope it’s going well so far.
Sorry, theoretically, I should have sent this last week but theory only works in theory.
Karen Cheng’s videos are extraordinary. Creativity is bursting out of TikTok and YouTube. And she’s also wise and savvy and clearly good at running a creative business. Watch.
TikTok brought me this genius interview with Australian race walker Jemima Montag. “Wanting that medal but not needing it”. Also wise. (And because lots of you don’t like TikTok, here’s YouTube.
“Life is really difficult...you’re gonna suffer heartbreak, sometimes you’ll be sick, sometimes you’ll have really bad toothache...but on the other end, you’ll have the most beautiful experiences. Sometimes just the sky” Interview with Patti Smith.
A little while ago I went to see Maya Dunietz play the music of Emahoy Tsegue-Maryam Guebrou. It was fantastic. And she was interviewed brilliantly by Kate Molleson (who’s had her own encounters with Guebrou). I was so struck by the force of them both that I bought Molleson’s book about “Radical Twentieth Century Composers” Not my usual baliwick but I’ve loved it. This was a favourite little moment:
“If classical music is serious about wanting change, it needs to reclaim its innate and vital sense of adventure. I mean adventurous listening as well as adventurous creating. The kind of listening that makes us vulnerable, that reawakens us, that ‘unmakes us, but steadies us again’, in the words of the modernist writer Nan Shepherd, who roamed the Cairngorms her whole life in search of surprise.”
That’s a good mission; roaming the Cairngorms in search of surprise.And yesterday I went to Peckham to see The Philharmonia Orchestra play Oliver Leith’s “Pearly, goldy, woody, bloody, or Abundance for Orchestra”. On the front of the programme there was this excellent quote from Leith:
“I love the orchestra so much. I think of it as luxury - a huge ornamental building. There is this very particular decadent sound, dozens of people playing a chord in unison. A little timpani hit, strings, winds in octaves...it is a visceral thing like fireworks, guns, being happily sad, huffing something, saturated fat, slugs of strong booze”
I like a good list. That’s a good list.
PROMOTIONAL NEWS
Still some tickets left for Interesting Do
You can make me run a surprisingly long way
You can sign up for a printed out version of this, posted to you in the post. Except not this. And not if you’re not in the US, UK or Canada. Sorry. Do it soon and you’ll be one of the first 10.
I’m going to do an online talk thing. Come. It’s free.
And that’s it. Quite a pretentious one this month I thought.
I’ll give you back your day.
russell
(There are still 1,000 of you. Let’s keep it there. Please don’t forward this to anyone. And don’t leave! The 1000th most common password is: ‘freepass’)