Hello all,
My own anecdote isn't quite as interesting as
playing at a rock festival, but it was very
enlightening for me. I used to teach guitar in music
super store that catered to rock star wannabes. As we
instructors left the store, they used to check our
cases to make sure we weren't stealing anything.
One day a number of students had cancelled in
advance, so I decided to bring my lute along with me
to practice on my breaks. As I was leaving at the end
of the day, the folks at the door made me open the
case as usual. (I still wonder why. Did they think I
was hiding a lute-shaped amplifier in there?)
The guy at the exit was blown away by the
instrument. A couple of other workers caught site of
the lute and wandered over. They asked me to play for
them and soon literally every employee and customer in
the place was gathered around for my mini concert. I
don't think I've ever played for a more receptive
audience than these people who were there to buy drum
heads, microphones, and effects pedals.
I think way too often we lutenists still tend to
think of the lute from a 19th century perspective as a
"classical" instrument. We play at universities, for
societies, in concert halls and feature oh-so-cleverly
conceived programs exactly the same way that
performers of the sacrosanct 19th century corpus of
masterworks do. However, since the time I played for
those rock and rollers, I've found that people with no
preconceived ideas about serious music will respond to
lute music in a much better way than they will to,
say, Brahms, or Mozart, or Beethoven... And they'll
often do so with much more enthusiasm than people who
are informed listeners! Perhaps not unrelatedly, I
get the impression that trumpet players, or violinsts,
or (especially) pianists are a little bit bemused as
to why anyone would want to be spending time playing
the _lute_.
There is a great untapped market of folks ready to
listen to us. From a 19th century veiwpoint the music
for the lute is esoteric and exotic, but to the
average work-a-day person on the street, the lute and
its msuic is probably not nearly so far removed
everyday life as we might think.
Chris
--- [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> Hi,
> one of the weirdest gigs I have played with my
> renaissance ensembles was at a
> Vampire Roleplaying Convention in a disco called
> Pulp in Duisburg, Germany.
> There is a picture of our performance at
>
http://www.pulp-duisburg.de/gallery/details.php?image_id=884
> and some others of the convention at
>
http://www.pulp-duisburg.de/gallery/categories.php?cat_id=42&page=1
>
> We were the dance band for a renaissance dance
> course and then gave a 45
> minute concert in the early evening. The venue was
> very fitting as the deco is in
> the style of a medieval castle, but we were playing
> in a room where lots of
> people were walking (and talking) from one room to
> another. It was very
> difficult to be heard above the background noise.
> But the audience watched it very
> attentively and it was a great chance to play for
> people who would probably never
> step foot in a classical concert.
>
> A few weeks later we play a concert in cologne as
> part of an early music
> concert series and there were a few people who were
> also at the Vampire
> convention.
>
> The promoter of one of germany's biggest
> Folk/Medieval-rock festivals heard
> us there and asked us to play on his festival. it
> takes place outside a castle
> near Koblenz and we will be playing 25 minute
> concerts in the castle during
> the breaks between the bands.
>
> I think that many of the attempts of the classic
> world especially the big
> classical records companys to get a non-classical
> audience interested are faulty.
> I think that the best way to win an audience is not
> to be apologetic about
> the music that you play.
> At a lute society meeting a few years ago, before
> playing a few peices by
> Dowland, the performer apologised for playing such
> dark and depressing music!!!!
> There is a massive audience of people out there who
> have no problems with
> titles like "In darkness let me dwell"....
>
> We have a homepage at Pantagruel.de
> Sorry it is just in German at the moment, but there
> are some MP3's that may
> be interesting.
> best wishes
> Mark wheeler
>
> --
>
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