Speaking of busking

Apparently Nigel Kennedy was heard discussing Tasmin's little excursion with Sean Rafferty on Radio 3's 'In Tune' yesterday and quite fancies the idea of having a go himself, though he used to do it for real as a student in New York. Meanwhile rumour has it that at least two other national newspapers are (or were?) planning to carry out similar stunts.

On a slightly more serious note (no pun intended), the violinist David Juritz, leader of the London Mozart Players, is going to busk his way around the world for four-and-a-half months. He's calling his project 'Round the World and Bach'. He starts in June and plans to play solo Bach through Europe, Asia, Australasia and the Americas, with a stint in his native South Africa. The project will raise money for a new charity, Musequality, which aims to finance community music projects in deprived areas and is administered by the Musicians' Benevolent Fund. Follow his progress, and sponsor him, at roundtheworldandbach.com.

When Tasmin went busking...

I spent part of Tuesday afternoon standing under the Waterloo railway bridge watching Tasmin Little playing Vivaldi and shouting "Give us a copper!" to the passing builders - and (above) performing 'Happy Birthday' for a celebrating child. Yes, the boss asked us to do a London edition of the Washington Post/Josh Bell experience - and it was fascinating to see where the results were similar and where they differed. Although the actual statistics were in the same general ball park, we found the experience anything but relentlessly depressing.

Londoners like music, their children really love it and many people knew they were hearing something special. I think they just didn't want to have to pay for it.

Read all about it in today's Independent, here.

BTW, the coverline is FIDDLER ON THE HOOF. But guess which musical, opening in May, is advertised on the back?!? I'm assured that this is complete coincidence.

What a surprise!

An announcement came today that the new director of the Proms will be Roger Wright, controller of Radio 3. Nicholas Kenyon, who's leaving to head the Barbican, was controller of Radio 3 before he took over the Proms. John Drummond, Proms supermo for years before that, was also controller of Radio 3 first. So we're really, really surprised. I wonder if they'd ever considered anybody else?

Still, gut reaction is that Wright's a good bet. His innovations at Radio 3 have been a willingness to embrace technology, the offering of groundbreaking downloads - they proved too popular for their own good - and occasional saturation bombing with whole weeks devoted to one composer. He has a feel for the big gesture, the grand style and the pushing out of technological boats, all of which go down like hot muffins at the Proms if they're carried off well. Perhaps he'll bring a breath of comparatively fresh air in to the arena.

That is, if he has the time - he's staying on at R3 as well.

John Tusa speaks out

John Tusa, the chief of the Barbican Centre and one of the biggest, most intelligent, heavyweight, tell-it-like-it-is visionaries in British arts administration, has an important article in The Times today about how sick he is of mealy-mouthed government arts policy, the 'meddling bureaucrats' who make the rules, and the idiotic justifications that are constantly demanded for continued support - usually at pathetically low levels - of our world-class cultural institutions.

Here's an extract:

"...I’m sick to death, too, with justifying the arts as if there was something specially problematical about doing so, as if funding the arts is irrational or even unnatural. Thinking about the arts, judging their value, explaining particular trends in the arts — this is an essential part of a human activity that takes itself seriously. What is a waste of time is being required to justify the arts as if millennia of arts activity required justifying anew, as if a failure to justify them could — or should — lead to the end of the activity altogether..."

Read the whole thing here.

Meanwhile, The Guardian the other day ran an article about how 35 per cent of opera chorus singers suffer from 'wet burping'.

Commodities market

In other words, the London International Book Fair. I was going to write a long, philosophical post about how one grows up studying literature at school and revering the great authors past and present, then goes into the seething mass of languages and deals that make up the event in (this year) Earl's Court only to find that a book isn't seen as a work of art but as a commodity and how, as a writer, one suddenly understands that one is a commodity too, and how one does technically know this already but actually experiencing it is different..... But it's quite fun being a commodity, and I had some excellent meetings. So, fine.

Meanwhile, a big 'Indy-panic' the last couple of days, which has been even more fun than being a commodity! Watch this #.