How many here listens contemporary classical music

Hi,

Born in Portugal and with a lot in my mind, the Spanish Guitar and its use and ability was one of the first things that appears to have appeared in Spain the the era that became known as "progressive", but for my ears it was more about folks adding electric materials to the incredible amount of folk music that Spain already had! 

At that time, I got a handle on ECM, and immediately loved to hear Egberto Gismonti, whose guitar work in those early days is, fantastic, to say the list, and like the exploratory musician he was (and is!), he used it in all combinations, but his work with Jan Garbarek, Charlie Haden, Nene Vasconcellos and a handful of others when he was at the guitar ... was astounding and so beautiful, and it ended up me calling it "Brazilian Guitar" after the Spanish style. Egberto was a bit of an "ambient" player in his early days and the stuff in "Solo", and the releases around that time are incredible ... a sort of welcome to my living room and here we go kinda thing, and it will go for quite sometime. 

And he wasn't the only "guitar" person in ECM ... Terje Rypdal was doing the same "sound spheres" with an electric guitar including the one album with David Darling (EOS) that was the best classical music chamber music with an electric guitar (skip the first cut!!!) ... and it was truly exceptional. John Abercrombie also comes to mind. (spelling!)

Jaketejas wrote: ... Kitaro!  Now that is a name I haven't heard in quite a long time.  Do you think of Kitaro as being more classical or New Age?  ...

I never cared or liked the "new age" thing, as most of its music was formulaic and it was designed to make you think that this and that was the right thing, and for the most part, sometimes I like to refer to it as a "bored housewife" hope for something else ... and something that pretends to be an illusion is always good, and a lot of the music out of it was rendered ridiculous, so a little choir is a bunch of angels, and this and that represents this and that ... and a lot of the music was not exactly composed, but simply based on the sound ... over and out! The music, itself, was no longer important, and calling it "music" like I did in the hip store here in Portland, was insulting the "new music" of the spheres! I merely asked ... but is it music?

Kitaro started out way back when as a regular keyboard artist and had nothing to do whatsoever with the new age stuff ... and I think that he knew his music and work well enough to not need the "new age" folks, but he was at the time one of the best known keyboard artists ... since none of these ladies in this Portland store liked Jean Michel Jarre, had no idea how much classical music and soundtracks Ryuichi had done, or ever heard of Mike Oldfield (too much rock music!!!) ... and so on ... and when I even mentioned Alan Stivell, it was like I mentioned the devil in a store that worshiped the ground that Enya lived on!

it was NOTHING but a control mechanism for their business ... had nothing to do with anything else! And their workshops were an illusion where the "women leaders" got their place in the front and talked about stuff they thought they were interested in but they had a cushy job and husband ... end of story!

Mr. Hedges is very good and deserves all the credit he never really got ... one of the great ones!

Hi,

Agreed, sort of just playing the melody ... but in the case of some rock bands, this clashes with the solo and other parts.

Mortte wrote: ... Anyway I think Purple in their Concerto and the Nice in Five Bridges succeeded quite good. Of course "Atom Heart Mother" is masterpiece, but there isn´t full symphony orchestra.

When that came out, you should have heard the station laugh at DP and how they had "sold out" ... it was sad in many ways, fans not appreciating great music ... The Nice had been doing a lot of stuff that was classical in design, and it carried on some in their follow up REFUGEE ... and things changed a wee bit in ELP, however, they got right back to it with a whole album of Mussorgsky and later their own work.

ATM, for me, is exceptional, and I wish that all the 15 different versions would be released, including the one that Roland Petit used in Paris for the show with ballet and the ATM piece, which I don't know if it is the right one or not, but it sounded like a lullaby all the way through more or less. The sad event, was one that a rock audience trashed senselessly, because they could never appreciate a ballet!

One other album that is excellent is CARAVAN's (The New Synphonia) which has a live orchestra that they had a lot of problems with (time for tea, time for lunch, time for a pee, time to be an as4hole, etc, etc) and in the end they did not want to come out for an encore ... and when Pye apparently said ... fine, we'll do it ourselves ... a minute later the orchestra showed up. The show had some very nice moments and the use of the orchestra was probably one of the best ever done! And the thought that it could have been better ... 

I like ELP's thing, but I'm not sure that comparing it to the original comes out right ... I would rather an orchestra included a synthesizer to augment the strings (for example) and also add some touches that the band would not be able to do ... a sort of the ending 15 minutes of "For Girls That Grow Plump In The Night", which is one of the best and prettiest pieces mixing the two I have ever heard. It's not only composed right, it is mixed right, and the connections work great.

For the most part though, most rock bands are afraid of an orchestra, and vice versa ... many orchestras fear the synthesizer with do away with them sooner or later ... and conversely, with folks doing guitar solos on keyboards (even TD is doing that now sampling EF and BB and JF as well!!!), which is not something that most rock bands like or appreciate.

I think that in the next 50 years, this separation will come together even more ... and hopefully be able to create a lot more music for the annals of time!