Musicon / Saint Saens / Jean-Yves Thibaudet: Saint-Saens is great fun!
“I actually regard playing a concerto almost like it’s chamber music. That’s why I enjoy it so much,” pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet says. As a concerto soloist, “I don’t feel I’m playing and not listening to the orchestra while they follow me. Music is ::More
Musicon / Musical education / Classical improvisation
The art of embellishment—improvising cadenzas, adding ornaments, taking other opportunities for creativity in performance—is a hot topic in classical music these days. For generations, conservatories preached absolute fidelity to the score: do what the composer wrote and nothing more. The ::More
Musicon / Musical education / Jazz was important once..
Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue attacked harmony; instead of following the convention of improvising on chord changes (that is, the underlying harmony in a tune), Davis gave his players specifically composed scales to solo on, a strategy that made the playing both freer and more melodic. Take ::More
Musicon / Musical education / Cadenzas
Compositions belonging to the category of chamber music, and concertos for solo instruments with orchestral accompaniment, all have individual characteristics conditioned on the expressive capacity of the apparatus. The modern piano is capable of asserting itself against a full orchestra, and ::More
Musicon / Experimental / Nitin Sawhney, Philtre
“Frozen air surrounds your eyes As you speak fountains collide” “You’ve blown me away, I can hardly speak Stolen my silence, scattered my peace” “In the shadow of your light I live my days like they were nights” Philtre means a drink credited with ::More
