Klarinet Archive - Posting 000723.txt from 2004/01

From: ormondtoby@-----.net (Ormondtoby Montoya)
Subj: [kl] Greek music tonight
Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 04:31:38 -0500

I heard a Greek group tonight. After a 2-hr formal concert with
explanations of different styles of Greek music, they played another 2
hours in the lobby while we danced and someone served us Greek food.

(Just to keep on topic, the clarinet was an Albert in G with a #1 reed
and an open but very short mouthpiece).

....but what I couldn't get out of my mind (when I wasn't absorbed in
the music) was how *impoverished' the musical scene is for audiences
who, either by choice or because their opportunities are limited,
experience only one genre of music. Not that I'm knocking any single
genre. I have no objection to meters and intervals that can be
described with small integers. But I pity those who confine themselves
(or who are confined) to such. The effect on me was so strong tonight
that I wanted to yell when I heard my daughter listening to the same
'pop' pablum this evening as she had been when I went out four hours
earlier. I restrained myself, but it's a battle that I've tried
without success to win for many years. Oh well, she still has 60 years
or so to grow......

(the performance tonight was even more impressive because one fellow
played several guitar-like instruments in virtuoso style, and another
fellow played several single and double reed instruments in virtuoso
style (including enormous changes of timber on the same instrument), and
after an hour or so, the two of them traded places, and the 'guitarist'
played wind instruments while the wind player plucked strings and the
music was as fluent and rhythmic and melodic and complex and as fine as
ever.... and the dulcimer player put her hammers down and picked up an
accordion instead.....

I suppose I'll come back down to earth eventually

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