WMV Music Web Log

Weird. All of a sudden the most popular mp3 on our website is: Blair Goins playing Vaclav Nelhybel's Suite for Tuba, 5th part. 331 downloads just this week! I figure someone must be using it on their cellphone, and other people think it's cool. I listened to it again - it IS pretty cool; like a cheerful elephant.

(How can we begin to make a little money on these things?)

http://www.dcmusicaviva.org/recordings/nel_5.mp3

With regard to the Joshua Bell experiment (beautiful!), I have plenty of thoughts. When Ira Chaleff told me about it (we don't get the Post), I said, "Everyone ignored him and he got no money, right?" How did I know that? This thing cuts many different ways. I also predicted to Marilyn that the responders to the Post's online discussion would be very angry both at the writer and at Bell. I forgot to add that they would be angry at classical music.

I meet tomorrow again with Raycurt Johnson, a violinist who was arrested for playing in the Washington metro. After months of hassle, his case was thrown out last week (congratulations, Raycurt!). People will say, but he is not Bell, but I say he is a true musician, and he is famous in Berlin.

A few months ago Mar and I came across a blues harp guy performing at Farragut North. Nobody stopped. He was jaw droppingly good. When he took a break, we asked him who he was, and could we buy a CD. He said you can get my CDs in all the record stores. It was Charlie Sayles.

It seems so long since I blogged that I almost forgot the password. Even now, I should be working on a grant proposal.

Oh well, it is a stunningly beautiful spring day. Yoko Ono was in DC yesterday to present her sapling piece at the Jefferson Memorial. Gabe insisted we go down there to see the cherry blossoms. To our surprise, it was wonderful, well worth the traffic and crowds. It turns out the crowds are a large part of what is so wonderful! Everybody is there, all ages and cultures and costumes, lots of babies and old people, all in awe of the beauty of these flowers over the water, people snapping photographs madly. A real celebration of what is good about life. Yoko's tree piece was very successful, even moving. Some silly person sang Imagine on the sound stage, without the slightest concept of what it means.

A brief hiatus in consulting work, no looming blockbuster concert, Gabe is in town, the weather is gorgeous - happy Passover! The only dark note is the illness of my friend John, who is undergoing chemotherapy.