After leaving
Stockhausen & his symphony for four helicopters, my musical journey took a dual road, & one that ended with the latest eye candy from
Deutschegrammophon. Odd that Stockhausen never did a Christmas album. Shame really.
Jazz & Classical music have always been strange bedfellows, unless your sirname is Gershwin, or you harbour deep aspirations to one day join
The Swingle Singers, like i do. I started off working my way through some of my Keith Jarrett albums, & ended up playing one of his Bach albums. If there is one thing Classical purists hate, it's
improvisation. & to go from Jazz to Classical is always seen as a bit dodgy, because no one wants to end up as the next
Wynton Marsalis, with cries of "Jazz was just too
unstructured for me man, so i had to go for Baroque, you know".
Bach, perhapse inevitably led me to the fine cannon of Bach interpretations by
Jacque Loussier, a man who has been blue noting Bach for decades. So if you can play jazz, why would you want to play classical jazz, or is it jazz classical? Only
Jacque knows. It does make audiences want to explore classical music though, which opens up a whole marketing department designed to entice &
delight your Bach-ward senses. Lend me a tenor, & i'll give you a Diva, (no, it's not
Florence Foster Jenkins silly).
So suddenly there
she was. The Diva of my dreams, staring doe eyed, singing like an angel, making me neglect my extensive Sara Brightman album collection, (oh no,
poor Sarah, would she ever forgive me?). How could a voice like that come out of such a slight frame? Cest fantastique. No no monsieur, est
marqueting. Yes, but oh what a voice. The new Callas, critics say (what was wrong with the old one??).
She did have some
com-
petition . & let's face it, if you want to be bludgeoned over the senses with classical music marketing, a stradivarius wielding wench is more likely to catch your eye than a lute weilding
rock star, quaint though it may be (a-nonny, nonny). Sting says that he's always loved the lute, & the critics can please themselves (with-a-hey-nonny-nonny).
But just what were the
other lot up to? Good money for
old rope, nothing for Sara to worry about really. & why the fuss over opera all of a sudden? As one teenage aspiring heavy metal guitarist was heard to say, "that famous opera dude Pavalotti has just died. He was like old & that". Was it Linguini Pavalotti? I enquired. "Yeah, that's the dude. He was like so
random". So, may the great tenor rest in peace. The man who's rendition of Nessun Dorma could reduce grown men to tears with it's yearning & aching beauty. Rest in peace, the man known to some as Pav-alotti, & to others simply, "The Pav". Il dio benedice voi ed il resto nella pace.
Just don't tell Sarah!