I thought I sent these ramblings last night, but they didn't seem to make it on to the lutenet.
For some reason my first reaction upon hearing the Sting excerpts was to laugh out loud, so it certainly can't be all bad. :-). I just couldn't help imagining what an exasperated teacher would say to him. Maybe someday someone will start an early music version of that "most annoying music show" on NPR and he'll nab that elusive HIP top 10. There have been several other efforts over the years by popular artists crossing over. I like some of Blackmore's Night's stuff. I think the singer is limited and most of the time she does a good job of staying within her limitations and Richie does some fine guitar work. The hardest thing listening to them is to drop my own prejudices when they do a Renaissance song I know in an arrangement very foreign to what an early music artist would do. Then again, there are lutenists whose extreme timing discrepancies have no musical meaning for me and I just can't listen to them. I heard that Michael Bolton made an album of classics after his collaboration with Domingo. I bet that is good for a laugh too. I think we have to try (it may not be possible) to listen to these experiments with an open ear, perhaps in the spirit of traditional folk music. Some of the songs contemporary folk groups do are very old and they simply do them in their own style. It is all grist for the mill. I think (gosh I sure hope) that was what Sting was going for. For him, it must have been a really cool project. Why should he feel any responsibility to our EM crowd? We are not his target audience. If Sting did a job closer to what an early music singer would do, wouldn't it surely be much more horrifying? At least he sounds like Sting. Whatever lessons at Basel he had didn't change his style very much. Hopefully, he'll sell a billion and we'll all ride his coat tales. I'm already preparing a sign for my next gig: "As sung by Sting" ha, ha. cheers, -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
