PAYING FOR REVIEWS?

posted by James Reel

    The blogosphere is beginning to rumble over allegations that Fanfare, to which I contribute, gives preferential treatment to the recordings of advertisers. Not that it sells positive reviews, but a disc is more likely to get reviewed if the label buys an ad. It’s not my place to comment—I’ll leave that to the editor and publisher, Joel Flegler, if anybody asks him—but I do marvel at the innocence of the American reading public. If you want to restrict your subscriptions to magazines whose editorial content is wholly untouched by advertising, paid junkets and other “special considerations,” I hope you’ll get much pleasure from Consumer Reports, which will be the only item left in your rack.
    That’s not the case for newspapers and alternative weeklies, much as people distrust them. As an editor at the Arizona Daily Star and the Tucson Weekly, I loved it when someone would call me to complain about some article and declare, “I’m going to stop advertising.” My response: “I really don’t care.” The sales directors were probably happy to see me go.

MAHLERIA

posted by James Reel

    Kyle Gann has figured out why Mahler appeals to some of us much more than Shostakovich does:

I spent all day writing program notes for the Shostakovich Eleventh Symphony, and I finally pinpointed why I can't love his music as much as I do Mahler's. It often demonstrates the same contrapuntal saturation, timbral variety, and rhythmic drive as Mahler, but it lacks meaningful background harmonic movement.

    If the explanation that follows in Gann’s post is too technical for your taste, allow me to direct you to Benjamin Zander’s Mahler cycle on Telarc. Not only are Zander’s performances among the most compelling and insightful in the catalog (and I’m not forgetting Leonard Bernstein’s), but each release comes with a bonus disc in which Zander spends an hour and a quarter discussing the technical aspects of the symphony in great detail, without ever speaking over the heads of average music lovers. He employs generous musical excerpts to illuminate his remarks, and he never makes the common music-appreciation mistake of assuming his listeners aren't as intelligent and curious as he is. Go forth and listen.

HOW TO BE INTERVIEWED

posted by James Reel

    Timothy Mangan of the Orange County Register offers some tips to interviewees that I wish would be heeded by the people I interview.

LIBERAL COMEDIAN SUES BLOGGER

posted by James Reel

    This is old news, but only now have I caught up with it via another blogger. The sainted Garrison Keillor isn’t above using bully tactics to protect his lucrative Prairie Home empire from harmless parody. Read all about it here.

INTERVENTION

posted by James Reel

    Pianist Jeremy Denk has had enough of people remarking that performers presenting a score should just “leave it alone”:

To "leave a piece alone" by contemporary standards means perhaps: to do what modern conservatory education tells us to do: play in time, observe markings, play expressively but do not add any extras: present the score, as if there were a perfect "acoustical correlative." This faith in an acoustical correlative is one of the strange cults of our modern classical musical religion, and it too I would like to debunk, but perhaps not today. What I'd suggest is that to "leave a piece alone," by modern standards, may have seemed to Romantic or Classical standards also a definite action, something tangibly "done to the piece;" an immobilization; perhaps something akin to taking a butterfly and sticking a pin through it and preserving it in a perfect display case. Harsh metaphor! But I think we have all heard such performances, preserved mimicries which seem to be right, which have wings on display, but do not fly.

    You’ll find Denk’s full musing on the value of interpretation—although he never quite admits that’s what he’s talking about—here.

PAIN IN THE NECK

posted by James Reel

    In the latest Tucson Weekly, I offer a preview of a comedy-magic benefit for a foundation supporting those who suffer chronic pain. It all started with a local high school girl:

    In 1998, 16-year-old Amy Potter was a dedicated jock. She played varsity basketball and golf at Sabino High School, and worked out regularly to stay in shape through every athletic season. One day, in the presence of a trainer, she was doing a free parallel squat with 300 to 400 pounds on a barbell across her neck. Suddenly, she felt what her father, Tom, describes as "a hot dagger plunging into her neck."
    The pain never went away, although it eventually seemed to concentrate in her hands somewhat more than her neck and shoulders. Over the next few years, Amy went from one physician to another, getting five different diagnoses, but rarely any true relief.
    "There are so many doctors who don't understand chronic pain," says Amy. "A lot of them will just tell you that you need mental help. I heard I was a whiny girl."

    Learn more here.