Following on from my blog post about future of music education , I have thought more about who the current and future champions of classical music culture might be in the UK, and indeed globally. The obvious place to look is of course the popular star talent which attracts big following in classical music, for example the pianist Lang Lang or the singer Bryn Terfel who are guaranteed to fill concert halls and sell “records” (whether via shop/online CD sales on mp3/iTunes purchased downloads). However over the last 2 or 3 years, there has been high profile emergence of commissions and collaborations between the stars of popular music world and classical orchestra or Opera worlds which have pushed the boundaries of music composition and blurring the lines between styles and bringing contemporary music to a wider appeal of the combined respective fan bases.
Examples that come to mind are Elbow and Hallé Orchestra at Manchester International Festival (MIF) in 2009, Daman Albarn writing the “Monkey: journey to the West” Opera (MIF 2007), William Orbit and BBC Philharmonic (MIF 2007), Rufus Wainright’s Opera “Prima Donna” (MIF and other locations) and on their latest album, Elbow collaborating with the Hallé Youth Choir. There are other initiatives emerging and collaborations emerging, some for the MIF this year and I am sure around the world too.
This means that we are getting and hopefully sustaining new Champions of music who are crossing the boundaries and creating a new more inclusive creation and performance of music which introduces by the nature of its “components” (eg indy/rock band with classical orchestra) performers and audiences to each other and to their respective style of music.
We should encourage and support this “movement”, if we can refer to it as that, and I have to also say that Manchester is now at the forefront of this type of creativity, mainly through its prolific musical talent but also through the MIF which has a purpose of commissioning new work and premiering them here as a launchpad to global exposure.
Long may it continue
