Indie Classical Music

The problem with indie classical music is that....

most of it sucks.



Like my classical-music-outsider girlfriend said, at the Ecstatic Music marathon:

What's the deal with this guy? He sounds like a bad wedding singer? Is it karaoke night?

I understood how it was a blend of post-minimal, modernist-lieder, pan-diatonic, bang-on-a-can-for-the-2010's. But when she said that, I listened from my pop music side. And yeah, it sucked balls.



See, the idea that music encapsulates the most incredible things that make us human, and tell us about LIFE, that idea get's a little lost in classical music, due to the huge technique buffer. I.E., you have to practice for 20 years like a machine to even "speak" coherently in the language.

So you put a bunch of well-trained, formally groomed rich kids on stage, put the spark in their head that they can draw on pop influences, and what do you get?

A bunch of posturing? Some compelling whining about how their college-prep education was so sub-par?

I'll take the singer songwriters any day.




On a separate note, I'm wondering why the critics are giving all this shit a total pass. They'll pan a performer for the most arbitrary aesthetic nuances in Chopin. But go play some radiohead/aphex/beatles??!/etc and you're fuckin golden.

I think they nervous. Trying to stay relevant. Relevant.... Elephant.... Sycophant.