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Soundtrack Saturday
43 minutes ago
Saturday, 14 May 2011
Scots mausoleum with longest echo hosts Kronos Quartet
A US classical quartet are to stage a concert in a Scottish mausoleum which has one of longest lasting echoes of any man-made structure in the world.The Kronos Quartet will perform to a handful of fans at Hamilton Mausoleum in South Lanarkshire.
The show will also be broadcast to a larger audience at Glasgow's Royal Concert and streamed online.
It is part of a wider music festival being curated by the world-renowned string group.
The Kronos Quartet, who has worked with Tom Waits and David Bowie, has been performing a unique mixture of rock and classical music for almost 40 years.
The San Francisco-based musicians were drawn to the Hamilton mausoleum venue, the last resting place for the Dukes of Hamilton, when they heard about its famous long lasting echo.
Violinist David Harrington said: "When you have 15 seconds of overlaying sounds it is much different from any other concert hall you would ever play in."
"We have never played in a mausoleum before and we have certainly never played in an acoustical environment like this."
Longer reverberation
Hamilton mausoleum has hosted concerts and musicians before. Jazz musician Tommy Smith recorded an album there.
The Kronos Quartet show is just one part of the wider music festival taking place over the weekend which will showcase a range of musicians and musical styles.
Sven Brown, director of music for Glasgow Life which runs the city's musical venues said: "The thing about the Hamilton event is that it was never meant to happen and is purely down to the fact that David got off the plane in Glasgow and immediately asked about the mausoleum.
"People had talked about it. It is mind-blowing to think there is not another room on the planet that has a longer reverberation time than this one."
He added: "You really want to hear either the plucked string of the voice float in the air and when you started translating that to floating in the air for 12 seconds you suddenly realise that there is an opportunity for them, the Kronos Quartet, to do something extraordinary."
Earlier this month the Kronos Quartet was awarded the 2011 Polar Music Prize, Sweden's highest music honour.
@'BBC'
Kesang Marstrand’s version of Tunisian anthem
Kesang was present among those who demonstrated on January 14th, in Tunis, Tunisia. In admiration of Tunisia's popular revolution and in solidarity with its cause she has recorded her own interpretation of the country's national anthem.
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Bob Dylan: To my fans and followers
Allow me to clarify a couple of things about this so-called China controversy which has been going on for over a year. First of all, we were never denied permission to play in China. This was all drummed up by a Chinese promoter who was trying to get me to come there after playing Japan and Korea. My guess is that the guy printed up tickets and made promises to certain groups without any agreements being made. We had no intention of playing China at that time, and when it didn't happen most likely the promoter had to save face by issuing statements that the Chinese Ministry had refused permission for me to play there to get himself off the hook. If anybody had bothered to check with the Chinese authorities, it would have been clear that the Chinese authorities were unaware of the whole thing.We did go there this year under a different promoter. According to Mojo magazine the concerts were attended mostly by ex-pats and there were a lot of empty seats. Not true. If anybody wants to check with any of the concert-goers they will see that it was mostly Chinese young people that came. Very few ex-pats if any. The ex-pats were mostly in Hong Kong not Beijing. Out of 13,000 seats we sold about 12,000 of them, and the rest of the tickets were given away to orphanages. The Chinese press did tout me as a sixties icon, however, and posted my picture all over the place with Joan Baez, Che Guevara, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. The concert attendees probably wouldn't have known about any of those people. Regardless, they responded enthusiastically to the songs on my last 4 or 5 records. Ask anyone who was there. They were young and my feeling was that they wouldn't have known my early songs anyway.
As far as censorship goes, the Chinese government had asked for the names of the songs that I would be playing. There's no logical answer to that, so we sent them the set lists from the previous 3 months. If there were any songs, verses or lines censored, nobody ever told me about it and we played all the songs that we intended to play.
Everybody knows by now that there's a gazillion books on me either out or coming out in the near future. So I'm encouraging anybody who's ever met me, heard me or even seen me, to get in on the action and scribble their own book. You never know, somebody might have a great book in them.
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Hey Preacher! Leave those kids alone
In Australia we have an ostensibly secular and progressive government, which also claims to be fiscally prudent. It’s just blown $220 million on a program which is offensive to the principle of state independence from religious influence.
The reason: having avowed her atheism, Julia Gillard is now desperate to appease the Christian lobby. As such, one of the biggest new spending measures in what was unconvincingly billed as a tough-minded post-disaster budget will see chaplains running about in 3500 public schools, filling kids’ heads with what many people regard as fantastic nonsense.
The measure is outlined on page 33 of Tuesday’s Budget Overview document under the headline “Making Every School a Great School.” Speaking from personal experience, the headline jars with the reality of what these school chaplains provide.
My daughter finished up last year at a fantastic K2 (kindergarten to grade two) public school in Sydney, where she and other students were taught what was called scripture once a week. Being a fairly ambivalent type of atheist, and one who is uncomfortable with the derisive atheism of writers such as Richard Dawkins, I didn’t think scripture classes would necessarily be a bad thing, provided they served as a generalised kind of religious education which also provided some familiarity with the Bible.
My presumption was wrong. Most of what was taught in these classes was absurd, framed around the conceited dogma that it is impossible to become a good person unless you believe in God, and choose the right God to believe in. None of this was the fault of the school, which like so many others has no involvement with the “services” external chaplains provide.
Their evangelical mindset was best evidenced by the exercise books the kids were given, which on one page asked students to put a tick (for good) or a cross (for bad) next to drawings of children who behaved in certain ways.
There was a girl who always packed her toys away. Tick. There was a boy who used bad words. Cross. There was a boy who prayed every day. Tick, apparently, because as we all know, any kid who doesn’t pray to God daily is destined to burn in eternal hellfire, and it’s important that children know this from the age of seven.
It is probably more important that from the age of seven every student reads well and has a good grasp of numbers. At a time when many students can do neither, the $222 million would be better spent on specialised teacher positions, added features for the MySchool website, more Smart Boards, books, sports equipment – or not spent on anything at all.
What is also important is that the Federal Government respects the rights of parents who have selected a secular education for their children. Religion should be a private choice. The chaplaincy program places it in a public setting. It means that parents who are troubled by the idea of some unknown vicar waffling on to their kids about the almighty and the afterlife must decide whether they want their children to take part or not. They have to choose between the rigmarole of explaining to their kids why they’re being excluded from a class most other students are attending – or just shrugging their shoulders and letting their kids go anyway, even if they think it’s a meaningless waste of time.
Another flaw with the system is that the chaplains are laughably instructed to avoid sermonising but to talk in general terms about concepts such as kindness and charity and issues such as bereavement. This approach is in direct opposition to the training they have received. The entire basis of their work is theological. It’s like asking someone with dental training to work as a general practitioner.
One of the strongest critics of the chaplaincy program is former NSW Premier Bob Carr who has attacked the scheme on his excellent blog, Thoughtlines. I spoke to Carr yesterday who was disappointed and angry that the Gillard Government had chosen to extend the scheme.
“I think it is indefensible that all taxpayers are required to support a program that is gradually becoming church evangelism,” he said.
“There is enough feedback now to show that quite understandably chaplains cannot confine their activism. Evangelical work is their lifeblood and it’s naïve to expect them not to pursue it around young people. They can’t because of their training. They can’t approach these matters from any other perspective.
“As a result we have got breaches of what should be a very thick wall between church and state.”
Carr is dead right. Conservatives who deride state schools as being valueless, and regard the chaplaincy program as an attempt to introduce some values into the state system, are besmirching public schools and denying the rights of parents and children. State schools already teach values – kindness, tolerance, sharing, working for charity, helping the less fortunate. They should continue to do so in a manner devoid of religion.
It’s a private choice for parents who send their kids to those schools as to whether they want to bring their children up in a religious framework outside of school, or not expose them to religion at all. The Government shouldn’t be making that decision for us, especially at a time when it’s talking about fiscal restraint. As the French revolutionaries would say this is one program which should be put to the guillotine.
David Penberthy @'The Punch'
The reason: having avowed her atheism, Julia Gillard is now desperate to appease the Christian lobby. As such, one of the biggest new spending measures in what was unconvincingly billed as a tough-minded post-disaster budget will see chaplains running about in 3500 public schools, filling kids’ heads with what many people regard as fantastic nonsense.
The measure is outlined on page 33 of Tuesday’s Budget Overview document under the headline “Making Every School a Great School.” Speaking from personal experience, the headline jars with the reality of what these school chaplains provide.
My daughter finished up last year at a fantastic K2 (kindergarten to grade two) public school in Sydney, where she and other students were taught what was called scripture once a week. Being a fairly ambivalent type of atheist, and one who is uncomfortable with the derisive atheism of writers such as Richard Dawkins, I didn’t think scripture classes would necessarily be a bad thing, provided they served as a generalised kind of religious education which also provided some familiarity with the Bible.
My presumption was wrong. Most of what was taught in these classes was absurd, framed around the conceited dogma that it is impossible to become a good person unless you believe in God, and choose the right God to believe in. None of this was the fault of the school, which like so many others has no involvement with the “services” external chaplains provide.
Their evangelical mindset was best evidenced by the exercise books the kids were given, which on one page asked students to put a tick (for good) or a cross (for bad) next to drawings of children who behaved in certain ways.
There was a girl who always packed her toys away. Tick. There was a boy who used bad words. Cross. There was a boy who prayed every day. Tick, apparently, because as we all know, any kid who doesn’t pray to God daily is destined to burn in eternal hellfire, and it’s important that children know this from the age of seven.
It is probably more important that from the age of seven every student reads well and has a good grasp of numbers. At a time when many students can do neither, the $222 million would be better spent on specialised teacher positions, added features for the MySchool website, more Smart Boards, books, sports equipment – or not spent on anything at all.
What is also important is that the Federal Government respects the rights of parents who have selected a secular education for their children. Religion should be a private choice. The chaplaincy program places it in a public setting. It means that parents who are troubled by the idea of some unknown vicar waffling on to their kids about the almighty and the afterlife must decide whether they want their children to take part or not. They have to choose between the rigmarole of explaining to their kids why they’re being excluded from a class most other students are attending – or just shrugging their shoulders and letting their kids go anyway, even if they think it’s a meaningless waste of time.
Another flaw with the system is that the chaplains are laughably instructed to avoid sermonising but to talk in general terms about concepts such as kindness and charity and issues such as bereavement. This approach is in direct opposition to the training they have received. The entire basis of their work is theological. It’s like asking someone with dental training to work as a general practitioner.
One of the strongest critics of the chaplaincy program is former NSW Premier Bob Carr who has attacked the scheme on his excellent blog, Thoughtlines. I spoke to Carr yesterday who was disappointed and angry that the Gillard Government had chosen to extend the scheme.
“I think it is indefensible that all taxpayers are required to support a program that is gradually becoming church evangelism,” he said.
“There is enough feedback now to show that quite understandably chaplains cannot confine their activism. Evangelical work is their lifeblood and it’s naïve to expect them not to pursue it around young people. They can’t because of their training. They can’t approach these matters from any other perspective.
“As a result we have got breaches of what should be a very thick wall between church and state.”
Carr is dead right. Conservatives who deride state schools as being valueless, and regard the chaplaincy program as an attempt to introduce some values into the state system, are besmirching public schools and denying the rights of parents and children. State schools already teach values – kindness, tolerance, sharing, working for charity, helping the less fortunate. They should continue to do so in a manner devoid of religion.
It’s a private choice for parents who send their kids to those schools as to whether they want to bring their children up in a religious framework outside of school, or not expose them to religion at all. The Government shouldn’t be making that decision for us, especially at a time when it’s talking about fiscal restraint. As the French revolutionaries would say this is one program which should be put to the guillotine.
David Penberthy @'The Punch'
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