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                                                               NIGEL AND I IN JANUARY

If you were asked to fill in the blank in the sentence “Nigel Kennedy is a …………” what word would you choose ?

 

Yes, yes, all right, you guys ! V-E-R-Y very funny ! You may take a couple of minutes to giggle, okay ?

 

NOW………… let’s be serious about this….and I do mean serious ! It really isn’t as easy as it may seem to come up with one word to describe what Nigel is. The first word that sprang to mind was ‘violinist’……………well, it would be, wouldn’t it ? But somehow it doesn’t seem to be enough……..it doesn’t encompass all that he is. For one thing, he’s also a composer and for another, he’s a music director…………how about ‘musician,’ would that do the trick ? The trouble is that if I consider the statement ‘Nigel Kennedy is a musician,’ I feel that somehow I’ve lost the essence of Nigel. Let’s try ‘virtuoso’……………well, that’s no help at all, it doesn’t cut it any more than the other words did. The fact of the matter is, of course, that there IS no one word to describe anybody, let alone Nigel, of all people. Everyone is unique, and therefore enormously complicated.

 

John Clark, in his book The Money is the Gravy, discusses this very topic…………what constitutes our individuality, what he calls our Core Self, and how we get in touch with it. It has a bearing on what I’ve just been discussing because he takes Nigel as one of his examples of someone who has succeeded in getting in touch with his Core Self. Once you understand that, you begin to understand a whole lot of other things about Nigel, things which people in general and critics in particular tend to get spectacularly wrong. Here’s some of what Mr. Clark says in his book:

 

‘Here is how the violinist Nigel Kennedy reclaimed his individuality. Early on in his career, well before he had achieved fame and fortune as a concert violinist, a chance came his way that any talented young violinist would kill for: to play Elgar’s Violin Concerto at London’s Festival Hall, under the baton of Yehudi Menuhin.

 

‘ He dedicated himself to pleasing the maestro, who held strong views on how the piece should be played. He wanted his audience to think “This young man plays just like Menuhin”………….what higher praise could there be ? And he succeeded. The critics said Kennedy’s performance was very similar to Menuhin’s. But puzzlingly, they didn’t seem to regard this as a virtue.’

 

Fortunately for us all, Nigel thought hard about this and, as Mr. Clark says, ‘the penny dropped.’ It dawned upon him that it wasn’t good enough simply to imitate Menuhin, great as Menuhin was. What he had to do was reveal his own true self to his audience. Mr. Clark quotes Nigel, as follows:

 

‘It was time to tear down all those indoctrinated values………..I had to face a really massive reclamation process to re-establish my own individuality………..I now had to start asserting myself.’

 

In other words, Nigel had to get closer with his own Core Self again………..he had lost touch with it while he was learning from great teachers such as Menuhin. As Nigel himself says, he had to ‘journey back toward individuality.’



Hear where his journey back to individuality has lead him.......
(Courtesy welt.de)


So what, you may well ask, has brought all this on ? Well, I’ve been reading an article ……………..you already had that figured out, hadn’t you ?............... written by Axel Brüggerman in The German Times Online. Herr Brüggerman, who has clearly not read Mr. Clark’s book, gets Nigel spectacularly wrong. He is quite happy to pin a label on Nigel and doesn’t hesitate to label Nigel as ‘a punk.’  He then goes on to say that Nigel sometimes seems ‘like an old hippie teacher who refuses to wear a tie and still believes in those bygone ideals.’ Where to start ? Well, maybe by pointing out to Herr Brüggerman that he really cannot have it both ways ! One cannot be both a punk and an old hippie teacher at one and the same time, mate………….even Nigel, versatile as he is, can’t manage that.

 

It’s true that both punks and hippies were anti-establishment in their philosophies, but they are definitely not the same thing. Both were non-conformist, but whereas common punk views included not ‘selling out,’ and a kind of nihilism, summed up by the title of the Sex Pistols’ song “No Future,” and often expressed by the use of hard, self-destructive, consciousness-obliterating substances like heroin and by the mutilation of the body with razor blades, hippies on the other hand opposed political and social orthodoxy and chose a gentle ideology that favoured peace, love and personal freedom, summed up by the Beatles’ song “All You Need is Love,” while psychedelic drugs were used to expand, not obliterate, one’s consciousness. ( I might note here that if you write a blog, All You Need is Wikipedia ! )

 

So no, Herr Brüggerman, you can’t have it both ways. I do grant you that Nigel’s haircut and his ………….shall we say casual ?.........style of clothing might make you think that he is a punk, but look beyond appearances and you’ll come to think differently. I believe that ‘peace, love and personal freedom’ might figure amongst Nigel’s ideals, but that in itself doesn’t make him ‘an old hippie teacher’ and, incidentally, I’m rather dismayed that you find these ideals to be ‘bygone.’ I would like to think that rather a lot of us still cherish them !

 

There’s a great deal more I could say about Herr Brüggerman’s misreading of Nigel, but I’ll confine myself to one thing. According to him, Nigel has boxed himself in with his image, to the point where people no longer want to play with him. (How Herr Brüggerman knows this is, to say the least, not very clear ) The Berlin Philharmonic, for instance, prefer to invite musicians like Lang Lang, who, says Herr Brüggerman, is not as great a musician as Nigel is, but who is ‘the classical world’s flavour of the month.’ Well, if that really is the case, then the Berlin Philharmonic don’t deserve to have Nigel play with them………. ‘flavour of the month,’ for Heaven’s sake ! Nigel, he goes on, ‘gives at least the outward impression of being content with himself.’  This is despite the fact that ‘any self-respecting punk’ would secretly like to bring his projects into the mainstream. It doesn’t seem to occur to Herr Brüggerman that the fact that Nigel IS happy the way he is……………he quotes him as saying, ‘I am the way I am and if the others don’t like it, then fuck ‘em!’…………….is all the proof one should need that Nigel is simply NOT a punk, self-respecting or otherwise. Nigel does not want to be part of what he calls ‘the spick and span world of classical music,’ where glamour now counts for more than musicianship.

 

Enough already ! Have a happy New Year, Herr Brüggerman. Ich wünsche Ihnen Frieden, Liebe und persönliche Freiheit !



If you think he looks like a punk, you're not really looking.....
(Courtesy daylife.com)


Meanwhile, Geoffrey Norris, writing for The Daily Telegraph, has had a much happier time selecting his ‘top ten most inspiring classical performances of the past twelve months.’  He numbers them from 1 to 10, but I’m not totally sure whether that is a critical judgment or for the sake of convenience. Any way, Nigel comes in at No. 10 with Mr. Norris’s comment that ‘the alternative dresser showed that his intense feel for Elgar’s Violin Concerto had not dimmed.’ Nigel performed the Elgar twice last year, once in the Festival Hall and then again at the Proms, having no doubt twisted the arms or something (?) of Leonard Slatkin and the Royal Philharmonic and Paul Daniel and the BBC Concert Orchestra in order to get them to play with him !  Both performances were greeted with rapturous applause and knocked most of the critics off their feet so that they landed with a thud on their respective asses. Claudine Nightingale, in Musical Criticism.com, wrote that ‘Highlights from 2008 would have to include the rare appearance of Nigel Kennedy at the Proms.’ She goes on to tell us that ‘as if his lightning-speed interpretation of Elgar’s Violin Concerto wasn’t enough to stun the audience, his extravagant outfit and chummy repartee certainly made for a unique Proms experience.’ (I love ‘chummy,’ don’t you ?) The next time alternatively- dressed Nigel plays the Elgar, perhaps Mr. Norris or Ms. Nightingale should invite Herr Brüggerman to come along and listen. I don’t think Nigel will play punk-Elgar, just to spite him, do you ?

 

NOW we can return to fun and games and play ‘Let’s-pin-a-label-on-Nigel’………..we could have a party and drink white wine and fill the blank in ‘Nigel Kennedy is a……………’ and read them out and giggle and drink more white wine and…………well, we could, couldn’t we ? My contribution is ‘Nigel Kennedy is a phenom,’ and if you don’t know what that is, it's because I'm living in the wrong country !

 

Be grateful that you recognize Nigel’s core self when you see it !

 

Happy New Year to everyone !

Check back here in February.

 

ELSIE







                                                               NIGEL AND I IN DECEMBER

Run your eye over these quotations and tell me who they’re talking about !



‘He believes with a passion that classical music is music for the world, not just for stuffy diehard critics.'

‘He brings a revival of great music to the masses in a bright,passionate and infinitely enjoyable way.'

 

‘He is getting people who otherwise might have only listened to 3 minute pop songs to listen to all kinds of classical music…….he is also inspiring a lot of kids to learn violin and be exposed to art music. Can’t Hurt.’

 

All these quotations are from ABC in Australia………..they have a web page entitled ‘ARTICULATE,’ where people can post their  opinions on what they have seen and/or heard on ABC television and radio. In case you’re beginning to mutter that they must have been written a long time ago, let me hasten to reassure you that the date upon which they were posted was November 18th, 2008 !  And no…………..they’re not referring to Nigel at all, although they sound suspiciously like the stuff we read about Nigel all the time, don’t they ? But these are about André Rieux, whom I must confess I have never heard play ! Intrigued, however, I read some of the comments that people posted……………it all boiled down to three propositions in the end:

 

1: André Rieux is a third-rate violinist who knows how to put together some first-rate entertainment. [Beware the third-rate violinist……….his power can be lethal !]

 

2. People should just enjoy the shows and stop trying to pretend that he’s a great violinist.[But wouldn’t that take all the fun out of it ? ]

 

3. Only people who can play better than he does have any right to criticize his playing. [This raises an intricate metaphysical question which none of us cares to discuss right now ! Right ?]

 

And that would have been that except that the name ‘ Kennedy’ leapt off the page and caught my attention. Someone named Tricia Johnson posted this:

 

‘He is a third-rate violinist not to be compared to Kennedy.’

 

I’d been wondering where Nigel was going to fit into all this and finally I found him…………guess where ? Right up there with the great violinists of our time, rubbing shoulders with Joshua Bell, Maxim Vengerov, Gil Shaham…………..Nigel, you’ve come a long way, baby, haven’t you ?  But you’re where you belong. Or are you?





There's only one Nigel Kennedy.......
(Courtesy menuhingstaad.com)

Without in any way diminishing the accomplishments of Bell, Vengerov, Shaham and others, I think it’s pretty plain to see that Nigel is not just one of several great violinists…………..he’s one of a kind, unique. He has done and continues to do everything that poor old André Rieu is credited with doing to bring classical music ‘to the masses’ (yes, well, I don’t like that phrase any more than you do, but it’s the one that was used in the quotation !) while at the same time preserving the integrity of the music so that those of us who think we know exactly how classical music should be played are startled out of our complacency and fall about, clutching our hearts and pleading for MORE !  There is only one Nigel Kennedy !

 

Maybe that’s just as well. I for one don’t think I’ve got either the emotional or the physical stamina to cope with more than one !

 

It’s been interesting this past while to read Nigel’s tributes to other musicians who have recently left us. One of these was Vernon Handley, who conducted the London Philharmonic in Nigel’s first recording of the Elgar Violin Concerto back in 1984. Here’s Nigel in 2008, quoted in The Worcester News:

 

‘There is no other conductor from these times who has contributed so much to British music and the British orchestral scene. As a young violinist, Tod (Mr. Handley’s nickname) made an enormous impression on me with his great intuition and understanding. He was the first conductor to empathise with what I was searching for in Elgar’s music and was the first musician to encourage me to play Elgar in my own way instead of copying masters of the past………….Tod’s relationship with his fellow musicians was never egocentric and he was always absolutely at the service and devotion of the composer. This is a sad time for the music world.’

 

What makes this particularly poignant is that Vernon Handley was supposed to conduct Nigel’s performance of the Elgar at the Proms but had to withdraw because of illness, an illness that ultimately led to his death.

 

Time to get out the CD again and listen to it somewhere quiet and peaceful and give thanks for both the young Nigel Kennedy and Vernon Handley.


          
Vernon Handley and Esbjorn Svensson.............in memoriam
(Courtesy gettyimages.com and aftonbladet.se)


Then there was Esbjorn Svensson. At the concerts with the Nigel Kennedy Quintet in England last September Nigel prefaced their playing of ‘The Hills of Saturn’ by explaining that in composing this piece he was influenced by the untimely death of…………….well, I never did catch the name, just a set of initials……….E.S.T and something about an accident. Well, ‘The Hills of Saturn’ remains one of my favourite Kennedy compositions, so when I got home, more than a little the worse for wear (!), I found time to look this all up. Here’s the story then.

 

Esbjorn Svensson was a Swedish jazz pianist who formed the Esbjorn Svensson Trio (E.S.T.) along with Magnus Ostrom and Dan Berglund.  Ian Patterson, writing in All About Jazz, recalls the first time he ever heard them play. It was in a municipal theatre in Valencia in 2001. They were supposed to be the support act, but, as Mr.Patterson puts it, ‘it was one of those rare occasions when it dawns on you rather quickly that the support is something special, relegating the main act to a role of welcome, though anti-climactic bonus.’

 

He goes on:

 

‘The music that [the trio] conjured that evening raised goose-pimples. The unmistakable Nordic roots (elegiac, melancholic and folkloric) underlying a jazz syncopation twisted round a rock aesthetic, made for a unique and powerful cocktail. At the epicentre was Esbjorn Svensson. Technically muscular, his energized, cascading runs were as spectacular as a Cresta sled run, and his contemplative playing somehow grand and blue as a glacier.’

 

Then this:

 

‘The shocking news of the death of Swedish pianist Esbjorn Svensson in a diving accident off Stockholm on Saturday, 14th June, will surely deeply sadden music lovers everywhere.’

 

He was just forty four years old.

 

In this way, then, I understood, although in retrospect, Nigel’s tribute to him and to his trio and now every time I listen to ‘The Hills of Saturn’ both the music and Nigel’s vocal contribution make me think of Esbjorn.

 

Two great musicians, one at the beginning of his career and one nearing the end of his…………………….how right it seems that it should be Nigel who pays homage to them both.


 

Peace and joy at Christmas, everybody.

Talk to you again in the New Year.

 

ELSIE


 

                                                                                          

                                                        NIGEL AND I IN NOVEMBER

Do you know a two-year-old boy or girl, your own or somebody else’s with whom you’re in close contact ?

 

If you do, you might want to try what Jennifer Waits does with her little girl, who, she says, is ‘a DJ in training.’ She calls her DJ B, and takes her to record stores where she lets her pick out CDs which they then listen to at home so that DJ B can ‘review’ them…………..or, in other words, tell her mother what she thinks of them. And yes, this does have something to do with Nigel, because on a recent excursion DJ B picked out Nigel’s Greatest Hits album. (I wonder why !) In her blog, DJ B’s Library Tour, Jennifer reports as follows :

 

‘As we turned the music on, she was very interested in the CD booklet and kept pointing at pictures, asking “Is that him? Is that him with paint on?”……………..When I asked her what the music sounded like, she said “Cinderella………..like a princess.” I probed further, asking her what the music was good for and she said “Cinderella.” I asked if it was dancing music and she replied, “Yes. It’s Cinderella dancing music.” When I asked if it was sleeping music, she also said “Yes. With Cinderella. Night night time.” From that point on she kept referring to this album as “Cinderella music,” and she told me that she liked it.’

 

Well, it makes a change from somewhat older music critics complaining about cadenzas, doesn’t it ? If you do try this at home, we’d all be fascinated to hear what results you get……………and it doesn’t have to be the Greatest Hits album. It might be thought-provoking to know what a two-year-old thinks of A Very Nice Album ! Just don’t let them listen to ‘Boo Booz Blooze,’ though …………..for obvious reasons !

 

Emrys Baird is not a two-year-old …………..at least, I don’t think he is……….he was at the concert at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire in London, and I think I would have spotted a two-year-old if there had been one there. I know I was pretty much out of it, but not, I think, to that extent ! He has written a review of the concert for Blues and Soul Music Magazine and I wrote to them asking them for permission to reprint his review on this website. Unfortunately, I haven’t had any reply to my e-mail, I’m not sure why. Maybe they would quite like me to reprint it, but the person designated to write and tell me that is presently enjoying the sun and the sands in some heavenly resort somewhere and in the flurry of packing and generally getting ready to go completely forgot about me and my request ? Or they want to let me know that it would be over their dead body and they’re currently engaged in trying to find a polite way of expressing the two words they’d really like to say to me ? Or maybe they never check their e-mail ? Well, who knows ?

 

ANYHOW…………what it means is that we’ll have to do what we can with quotations.

Here’s how Mr. Baird starts off:

 

‘It takes a big personality to make the Shepherd’s Bush Empire feel like a warm and intimate gig. This special magic (we’re back to Cinderella again, aren’t we ?) is only achieved by a rare gift and this man bears many gifts of the musical kind.’

 


           
.............a big personality............and a rare gift............
(Courtesy bluesandsoul.com)

Mr. Baird goes on to comment on the various pieces that were played, as follows:

 

Where All Paths Meet: ‘Drawing us straight in with its long pensive slow-burning intro…………Nigel could hardly be contained. Like Usain Bolt (!) sprung from the traps he was off and running. With its lyrical head swiftly dispatched, there followed darting, stabbing runs and a soaring intensity that filled the air and set the benchmark for the remainder of the evening.’

 

Donovan: ‘Donovan (who was the first to mix folk with rock) saw NK ramp it up (after some cute Celtic plucking) to another level. Out came the wailing Hammond organ and in came the Nigel Kennedy experience, full on wah wah and pedals at the plenty. N.K. rocks with the best of them, Jeff Beck included.’

 

The Hills of Saturn: ‘[This piece] showcased the wondrous bass clarinet, with each languid tone puncturing the near silence of the brooding Hammond organ, relentlessly circling the two fat chords of the A section. The NKQ lulled the audience into a false sense of security and then wallop ! Captain Kennedy was back in, seducing us with a spacy harmonic entrance building once more into a full-on pyrotechnic circus that wouldn’t be out of place at a Metallica gig.’

 

What I particularly liked about this review is that it gives full credit to the contributions of the other four members of the Nigel Kennedy Quintet. Mr. Baird calls them ‘a fine band’ and comments, for example, on ‘the rich warm timbre of the tenor sax [that’s Tomasz Grzegorski, of course]’ and ‘the beautiful and virtuoso counter solos of pianist Piotr Wylezol,’ which Mr. Baird says are ‘like pearls fallen from a broken necklace.’ He mentions ‘the ever propulsive Pawel Dobrowolski on drums’ and ‘Pawel’s trusty bass sidekick, the deft Adam Kowalewski.’  And while we’re on the subject of ‘the other four,’ we can bring in a comment from Polish Culture Online:

 

‘The band …………is made up of some of Europe’s finest exponents of jazz, from the ever-inventive rhythm section of drummer Pawel Dobrowolski and bassist Adam Kowalewski to the fluent soloing of pianist Piotr Wylezol and the muscular tenor sax of Tomasz Grzegorski.’

 

Some more magic…………I can actually spell the names of ‘the other four’ now ! I don’t have to look them up any longer. Proper ! The next step is to learn how to pronounce them correctly…………….but, you know, when I walked (uninvited) into their dressing room in Brighton to thank them for their part in the evening, I said that they had played ‘fantastika muzyka’ and asked them if that was Polish. They all smiled and told me that it was ‘near enough!’ I got a hug and kisses from all of them, I might add, so they must have known that my heart was in the right place, mustn’t they ? And no, I didn’t have sex with all or any of them, so if I caught my cold-turned-bronchitis from them, it must have been from the hugs and kisses !



Most of the quintet...........Pawel was there too, of course !
(Courtesy jazzlog.com)


When I wasn’t gazing down at the lights of the city from Nigel’s suite at the Hyatt in Birmingham, I was at one point talking to a lady called Pam. When I told her that I’m from Nova Scotia, she invited me to meet a fellow Nova Scotian………….her husband Dave. Dave, it turns out, is David Bruce Johnson, owner of Moseley Violins, which is located in Birmingham. Dave makes Nigel’s custom-made Violectras, along with other stringed instruments and offers repairs and restorations, valuations and bow re-hairing as well. He gave me a brochure and I noted the endorsement from Nigel prominently displayed:

 

‘Yeah, I mean, I’ve got these amazing violins (Violectra) made in Birmingham by David Bruce Johnson………….great electric violins……….first ones that don’t sound too plastic and trebly.’

 

Dave told me that, in fact, his electric violins are made of wood, and as far as the sound is concerned…………well, we can all testify to the fact that the sound is amazing, can’t we ? One might almost say magical ? In fact, one might coin a phrase and start talking about ‘the Cinderella effect’ when one is discussing Nigel’s music !

 

And oh, yes……………the Nova Scotia connection. It seems that Dave attended the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax, N.S., before he decided that he would rather make electric violins for Nigel Kennedy. Amongst other things !



.....the skill of David Bruce Johnson and the magic of Nigel Kennedy.....
(Courtesy bbc.co.uk)

One final note. You may have noticed that the Concerts page is, to say the least, relatively unpopulated. The reason for that is that I don’t publish concert dates until they have been confirmed by Nigel’s concert agent so as to avoid possible disappointment, not to say discontent, on all of your parts. So far, the three concerts listed are the only confirmed dates I have. HOWEVER…………I see on Piotr Wylezol’s My Space page that he has listed three concerts in Poland for the NK quintet. I’m going to give you the website addresses here so that

you can check them out for yourselves……………….on the 16th and 17th of November the quintet will be playing at Muzyczna Owczarnia (click HERE) and on the 7th December they’ll be at the Stodola in Warsaw (click HERE.)  Piotr clearly thinks that’s what’s going to happen, but you’re on your own with them……………I take no responsibility whatsoever !

 

On which helpful note, I’ll leave you for now !

 

Cherish the Cinderella effect !

I’ll be back in December.

 

ELSIE


 




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