Glastonbury & Lo, and Painting weds sounds

Glastonbury 2013: For music buffs, I update two tidings, one sad mixed with one really good. Glastonbury 2013 is under way. For those who have not heard about Glastonbury for the first time, I would like to spare the Wikipedia break by simply explaining it:

The Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts is a festival of music, dance, circus, theatre and other arts, being held. Also called Pilton Festival, it is being held in the open space, often relying on the weather forecast.

Glastonbury organiser Michael Eavis said he believes the weather, combined with the line-up, means this year’s festival will be “unusually good”. “The whole thing is fantastic,” the 77-year-old farmer said. “There are 1,000 acres of creativity on a massive scale and to a very, very high standard. You won’t see anything else like this in the whole world.”

The festival takes cue from the Hippie living culture: travelling with not any purpose about where to, pitching tents, and submitting themselves to the life of music and arts. But the flamboyant, nonchalant spirit of the festival has been lost, it the hippie format leaving space for corporate takeover. Paul Weller, Musician and lyricist decried the abandonment of the hippie culture and how ‘it became a perfect cultural barometer for British culture’

So the tents being pitched as part of the festival might be a post-modern exhibitionism of the hippie past, while it remains a space for corporate profit-mongers who decide the terms of contemporary culture.

To read more about the corporate takeover of the festival, visit http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2002/06/33350.html

How can frames be rendered to tones

Richard Egarr is a British keyboard performer, a virtuoso in harpsichord and fortepiano. With a discography of around 30 titles, his range extends from the European classical tradition. Some of his singular performance can be enjoyed at https://myspace.com/richardegarr. He is the director of the Academy of Ancient Music (AAM) which is committed to energizing baroque and classical music, which speaks volumes about his classical orientation (visit http://www.aam.co.uk/#/who-we-are/directors-soloists/richard-egarr.aspx).
Johannes, Jan or Johan Vermeer is a Dutch painter who is noted for sketching the interior of Dutch Middle Class homes. He was born in 1632 and dies in 1675. Among his most celebrated paintings are the ones touching music: Guitar player and Woman seated at a virginal.
What attracted Richard Egarr to Vermeer is the time in which the latter lived. Egarr says: ‘The first half of the 17th century saw the dense, complex contrapuntal works by the 16th century composers such as Palestrina’, which, ‘gave way to an expressive and freer art form, music based on single clear lines with a highly emotional impact.’

Egarr ventures out to render the music depicted in Vermeer’s paintings to life. According to Guardian: ‘Music from instruments such as the harpsichord, viola da gamba and violin will echo around the rooms of the National Gallery’s Sainsbury wing to add atmosphere to a new exhibition exploring the importance of music in 17th-century Dutch art and society.’ Egarr says: ‘Period performance means using instruments as close as possible to the period when the music was written. With them we aim to create a sound as near as we can get to that which the composer would have heard, but what’s more important is the sensibility of the time – the freedom. This music has to be passionate and free, and that is what we hope to convey as we play in the gallery alongside these Vermeers.’

To read more visit: http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2013/jun/25/national-gallery-vermeer-show-music
And http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2013/jun/26/vermeer-academy-ancient-musi…

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