A Picture Paints Some Words…

Having taken the step to join the Morgensterns Diary Management Service, for various reasons, and having spent some time creating my professional biography and cv for them, I’m left with the problem of photographs.

I like photography. I like taking photos. I like the process of creating them, setting the various levels and imagining how others will see them. Sitting for them, I’m less good at. The other problem is that I know what a picture can and can’t say about you. A simple passport-style ‘mugshot’ says nothing, and therefore isn’t selling you. The style of the picture (portrait/action/studio) creates one impression, the foreground, expression, setting, lighting, clothing etc can all be used to present you in various ways. It’s this choice that’s the problem. At the moment I’m inspired by this photo of a cellist in America, but I’m still waivering.

Magdalena Cello Suites?

A Professor from the Charles Darwin University School of Music has used forensic science to examine the scores of the six Bach Cello Suites. His findings suggest that far from working as a copyist, the works in Anna magdalena’s handwriting (Bach’s wife) have mistakes in them more akin to composition than copying.

Why is this interesting to me (afterall, they’re still cool, and I don’t hold much stature in who a piece is written by)? The Professor is originally from Wales!

Images of Aldeburgh

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

#Little Darling…

Whilst I was studying at university I took a course module on Ethnomusicology, although picturing Messiaen et al collecting birdsong and folksong on cylindrical discs I was initially wary of the subject. I can’t deny that that’s a part of it, but I became hooked on the study of buskers. I produced an ethnography of a book on the subway musicians of New York. It detailed various musicians drawing their influences from around the world, playing almost every combination of instruments conceivable, but it also illustrated busking’s business side. I was surprised to find subway buskers in New York were subjected to yearly auditions, licensed, and had to be strategically placed so that a subway traveller would not encounter similar musicians in proximity to one another.

Today my interest was rekindled. I read Howard Mandel’s article ‘Busker Bastion’ in the New York Press which featured a professional busker during the daytime(playwright by night) who earns $200 a day, wearing his Gucci shoes. He talks about being happy without that invisible barrier between himself and the audience which I mention so much on here. It’s certainly a breath of fresh air from the guitar wielding ‘artistes’ you meet on the tube singing ‘Little Darling’ over and over…

Just for a bit of nostalgic viewing, I’ve also been looking at Wired New York.

Pictures from Snape

As you can probably guess from my previous post, it’s been a long day. However, quickly flicking through the picturestaken in Aldeburgh and Snape, I couldn’t resist posting these two which immediately caught my eye, and needed no enhancement.