Meet Music Of Our Time - Sounds of War, Instruments of Peace

OK, there's self-interest here - next week, on Friday 9 May, they are doing my Messiaen play. I'm more than thrilled that the founder of MOOT, Brighton-based musician Norman Jacobs [pictured below with literary companion], wanted to include the play and the Messiaen Quartet for the End of Time in his varied, exciting and intriguing festival on the Brighton Fringe. Do please come to St Nicholas's Church, Brighton, on 9 May to see A Walk Through the End of Time performed by Dame Harriet Walter and Guy Paul and the Messiaen played by the Ether Quartet. Book for all MOOT events here.

JD: Norman, please tell us about MOOT. How did you start the series and what are your aims with the programming in general?

NJ: The idea came to me one New Year’s Eve after thinking that although so many good musicians live in Brighton there was no one facilitating innovative contemporary music events on a regular basis.

Several musician friends I spoke to said that they had had enough of ‘background’ gigs and only wanted to play foreground music. After a few months of just playing records (starting with Berio’s ‘Sinfonia’!) and having a reasonable sized number of attendees our very first concert took place: Travels with my Theremin with Sarah Angliss We managed to get and audience AND pay the musicians. MOOT – music of our time had come of age.

JD: For this year’s series, themed around war, you've got a wonderful variety of events - how did you arrive at this? Point us towards a few highlights?
 

NJ: Music’s role during times of war is multifarious: a tool to lift morale at home and in the field, as a form of protest, witness, remembrance or documentary.

I hope that the series will provide audience with a view of music at the start of the First World War, specifically on the music and lives of soldier-composers, pacifists and women – three very important parts of British society of that time which continue to have resonance in our lives and thinking today.

For me the highlights are A Walk Through the End of Time (Messiaen and a play with the brilliant Harriet Walter and Guy Paul!) [thank you!! JD] , the Heath Quartet and Nigel Cliffe in A Letter from Private Joe with music by Roxanna Panufnik, and the Post War Orchestra (weapons transformed into musical instruments). I am also looking forward to hearing music across ten concerts by our featured composer Frank Bridge, the Brighton-born composer and pacifist.

JD: Is Brighton a good spot for a series like this? How does it work in terms of support, funding, interfacing with the festival, etc?
 

NJ: I seem to spend a third of my year completing funding forms. Thankfully, the effort was not wasted as we have been successful in receiving funding from Arts Council England, Heritage Lottery Fund, Sussex Community Foundation, Brighton & Hove City Council and half a dozen other organisations. If only it were easier so I could spend more time on the creative side of concert planning, which is what I enjoy most in what I do.

JD: What are your plans and hopes for MOOT in the future? 
 

NJ: In September, the legendary American pianist Ursula Oppens is visiting the UK and she has agreed to play inBrighton a programme of Ravel and American modern masterpieces. Definitely one not to miss!

Next year marks Pierre Boulez’s 90^th birthday. As one of our patrons we will definitely include his music. I also want to include more music by women composers in next year’s series. Watch this space.
 

20 Great Pianists - a personal choice...

Sinfini Music recently unleashed me on a 20 Great Pianists feature. I had to choose from all alive and all dead-but-recorded, so it was kind of tough... The result is a very personal selection. So, bearing in mind that I have a bit of a thing for historical recordings, please don't take it personally if your favourites (or you yourself) are not included! Even a Top 40 wouldn't have been enough. It's online here, complete with extracts of recommended recordings.

Incidentally, the order in which the pianists appear is NOT a 1-to-20 ranking. It's done purely according to date of birth. The oldest is first and he just happens to be Rachmaninov.

I am now going into hiding.

How TO get coverage...or at least try to...

As I pointed out to the lady who tweeted yesterday asking for a follow-up blogpost on how TO get coverage for your concert, there ain't no guarantee of nothin' in this crazy world. All your valiant efforts may amount to no more than a hill of beans. But you can try. Here are ten ways to increase your chances.

1. Be Jonas Kaufmann.

2. Be 8.

3. Be 90.

4. Be deported.

5. Say something horrid about women conductors.

6. Squeeze into minimal dress. Apply hair peroxide and crimson lipstick. Book expensive photographer with good airbrush. Book very expensive publicist. (NB this is intended as a strategy for women, but may arguably be more effective still if you're a bloke.)

7. Perform with a pop star.

8. Convince everyone you've achieved 300m Youtube hits all by yourself.

9. Lose your £50m Stradivarius. Issue SOS. Give free concert for kind people who rescue it.

10. Die. (Not recommended.)

[Author's note: this post is presented in a different font. This is to indicate IRONY.]

Ten more ways NOT to get coverage

Every now and then I realise if I had back the hours I've spent answering messages from publicists that should never have been sent to me, I could probably have written a whole new book instead. At this point, I usually produce a blogpost about how NOT to get coverage for your concert. Here is another one.










1. Person Gives Concert! What an exciting topic!

2. You promise a really good story to one newspaper. Then another wants it. You take it away from the first and give it to the second instead. Then they let you down. You try the first one again.

3. You fail to read anything published in your target's newspaper about music, fail to notice that interviews don't happen unless they are with megastars or someone who has one hell of an amazing history, then write in demanding an interview for your lovely unknown artist who lives a peaceful life in a Surrey village.

4. You don't get a response from your first message. You write again. Now you get a terse "no" or an annoyed few sentences, and you're really upset and you write saying you "understand completely". Next time, you do the whole thing all over again.

5. You write to a UK journalist over the age of 22 saying you're "reaching out" to them.

6. You e-greet for the first time a UK journalist over the age of 22 with the word "Hey".

7. You declare that your artist is "one of the xxxxxest of his/her generation". Then you wonder why no one finds this interesting.

8. You write in with a brilliant story. The event in question takes place in two days' time.

9. You write to a professional journalist asking them to do an interview for their blog, which is unsupported by pay or pension: i.e., you ask them to spend their free time giving you free publicity, even when there is already a note in the sidebar of their blog pointing out that this is what you are doing.

10. You send the same message on Twitter to lots of different people, each one beginning with the addressee's tweet name - e.g. "@jessicaduchen cover Person giving Concert in Place" - and expect this somehow to be effective.

To Be Continued.............

The secret world of Federico Colli

You know exactly why budding great pianists in their early to mid twenties are like London buses, don't you? That's right - you wait for a decade or so and then along comes a whole bunch at the same time. So please welcome yet another: to add to the roster of Trifonov, Grosvenor, Levit and Avdeeva, please welcome, from Brescia...

...Federico Colli, winner of the latest Leeds International Piano Competition, who made his London debut last night at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in a stunning recital of Mozart, Beethoven and Schumann. Pictured, right, with a very happy Dame Fanny Waterman, founder of the Leeds, who can be rightly proud of her laureate.

Colli - playing a Fazioli, also the choice of Trifonov last week - began his concert with the Mozart Sonata in F major K283: a vivid, spirited account that established several strengths at once, notably the sense of "flow" that characterised the whole programme, an ongoing thread of musical connection that feels as if he is entirely one with the music, creating it from the inside out. He used a light, strong touch with singing tone, beautifully balanced voicing, extremely well-judged pedalling - an ideal blend of colour and clarity. I wondered briefly about a few exaggerated gestures - hand movements for each repeated note of the slow movement's melody, for instance - but by half way through the Beethoven 'Appassionata', any such concerns went out of the window as a tingle of recognition spread that we were listening to a potential true great.

Something magical began to happen with the first variation of the Beethoven's second movement: a pattern of figuration that in other hands can be nothing more than that, but that for Colli became a shifting lattice of subtle voices, light and shade - as if he could hear and imagine things that the rest of us can't. And while everything seemed thought out and judicious, there was no sense of playing it safe: let off the leash in the finale's coda, Colli tackled Beethoven's fall of Lucifer like a lightning bolt.

Schumann's Sonata No.1 is one of the composer's weirdest works, more fantastical than the Fantasy, less "sane" by far than all those supposedly difficult "late"compositions. Pulling it off is a very tall order, yet throughout its magnificent long span Colli made it entirely his own. He gave the fantasy its head, working in the dimension of silence together with that of sound in masterful fashion: the transitions, of which there are a great many, were not only handled with ideal pacing but became virtually the raison d'être of the piece.

By now one could forget technical concerns and take for granted the full yet never heavy-handed sound quality, the singing nature of the phrasing, the richness of colour, and move instead into another world. He made sense of the work by recognising that making sense is not the point; that this is visionary, groundbreaking music far ahead of its time. He had the hall breathing and concentrating as one with him and the piano and the sonata. This was his secret world, unfolding in front of us. He gave us all of Schumann and all of himself.

For an encore he offered the Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy, in what I think must have been Pletnev's arrangement.

It was a short programme, but one of uncompromising and unforgettable intensity.

Meanwhile, my interview with him is the cover feature for the current issue of Pianist magazine. Enjoy.