Musical America Blogs

by Keith Clarke

Music critics don’t always have the fondest place in musicians’ affections but you have to admire their stamina. OK, our stamina, since I’m a paid-up member of the motley crew, so beware a little self-regard, but I’m thinking about the brave souls who work for the daily papers and have to do the arts editor’s bidding, for good or ill.

Last week I cast an eye over my colleagues doing three hours of Britten in London on Thursday, the same colleagues doing three hours of Mozart in Cardiff on Friday, knowing that they would be on duty at Glyndebourne on Saturday for a performance of Meistersinger that started at 2.55pm and ended at 9.40pm. OK, you get a long interval at Glyndebourne, so that everyone can get through their foie gras and Dom Perignon without fear of indigestion, but you get my drift.

I excused myself from the Wagner, for reasons best kept between me and my urologist. But as I raised a leisurely glass or two on Saturday evening, I felt honor bound to toast those who toiled.

Of course, musicians have every right to stamp in here and say “What about us?” They are the ones putting in the real effort, night after night, while we sit on our fat butts then file a bit of pontification. But we know the blood, sweat and tears that go into performance, whereas journalists are generally looked on as lazy sons and daughters of bitches who spend their whole lives standing around quaffing other people’s liquor. Like the man said, “Journalism? It’s better than working.” Sometimes it just doesn’t feel that way.

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On the subject of being excused from Wagner, we asked one of our Classical Music magazine scribes to come up with Top Ten accessories for musicians for our June 4 edition and he rather controversially included a Shewee, a device enabling ladies to discreetly answer the call of nature. He reports: “An acquaintance recently told me of her dread of playing Götterdämmerung at the Royal Opera House, not because of any difficulties in Wagner’s score but because of the prologue and first act’s two-hour running time.”

Apparently the Shewee was pressed into service with great success. Whether the conductor was aware of fumblings beneath long skirts as the music soared goes unreported.

by Keith Clarke

Attendances down 10 per cent, box office revenue down 6 per cent. That’s the stark news from the Society of London Theatre, comparing the first quarter of this year with the same period in 2010. It is hardly surprising. Everyone has been talking about the financial storm coming our way, but so far it has been a bit of a phony war. Now it is getting a bit real. With gasoline prices at an all-time high, the cost of food essentials soaring, there is little doubt that people are feeling the pinch, and thinking twice before booking tickets for a show.

But show business has always thrived on the principle of unreasonable optimism. And when financial doldrums descend, people need entertaining all the more. One thing that changes in a recession is that people tend to make more last-minute bookings rather than planning ahead, which can be nerve racking for arts managers. But the never-say-die approach has seen us through dark days before, so let’s hope it works its magic this time round.

The West End certainly cannot be accused of not trying hard enough. Among its efforts to woo audiences is a live event in Trafalgar Square over two days next month. As the fountains splash and Lord Nelson looks down from his plinth, cast members from more than 20 shows will perform live, free of charge, to an expected crowd of half a million.

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A new report on copyright law has stopped short of recommending that the UK should follow the US model  of “fair use,” allowing limited use of copyright material without the need for permission from the copyright holders. But any step in the right direction is to be welcomed. At present it is illegal to copy a CD to an iPod, even if the owner has bought the CD. That means that many millions of us walking the streets with iPods are technically criminals. But police numbers are being cut at the moment, so it seems unlikely that there will be a sudden rush of bobbies to round us all up.

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It is brave of English National Opera to stage John Adams’s opera, The Death of Klinghoffer, even two decades after it was written. The murder of a disabled Jewish-American tourist by Palestinian terrorists was never going to offer the easiest subject matter, and certainly those 20 years have seen no lessening of Middle East tensions.

The piece was supposed to have first seen the light of day at the 1991 Glyndebourne Festival, the house having co-commissioned the work, along with five other institutions, including Brooklyn Academy of Music, but the leafy country opera house decided to drop it following complaints. It was left to La Monnaie in Brussels to mount the world premiere, with the Brooklyn Academy giving the first US performance.

It was understandable that Glyndebourne did not want its manicured lawns threatened by protest, but a little more controversy might do wonders for the company’s image. These days, the most heat being generated is over the house’s plans to build a wind turbine in the rolling English countryside.

by Cathy Barbash

Once acceptances and responses were issued and received by applicants and conservatories nation-wide, I decided to take an informal look at trend in numbers of Chinese musicians who auditioned at, who were accepted to, and who chose to enroll in American institutions. My hunches proved correct: applications, acceptances and enrollments of Chinese are increasing, but my research hinted at another story. I chose to contact a handful of institutions with which I had enough contacts that I expected responses. What I ultimately found more interesting than the musician statistics was that the willingness or lack thereof to share this information seemed like an indicator of the conservatory’s self-confidence and comfort with this issue.

Curtis Institute was happy to oblige with any information I requested. They had 97 PRC citizenship applicants this year, 7 of whom were accepted. That’s up from last year’s 82. Successful candidates this year included 2 clarinetists, 2 pianists, a violinist, a violist, and a singer. All accepted chose to attend. Curtis even shared the successful applicants’ teachers: mazel tov to Keith Lipson, a Curtis grad himself, who taught both clarinetists!

New England Conservatory of Music’s representative said: “The growth has been really striking and is, consequently, something we’re tracking closely. The number of applications (roughly 15-20), admission offers (roughly 8-12), and enrolled students (roughly 1-5) from China held fairly steady from 2002-2006.

Starting in 2007, application numbers began to increase noticeably and have continued to do so each year. For our most current application cycle (class entering fall 2011), we received 224 applications. This represents about 11 times the number of applications from China than we received in each of the years from 2002-2006.

This increase in the number of applications led to a higher number of admission offers and, ultimately, enrolled students. Last year (with the fall 2010 entering class), China became the country of origin of the second-highest number of entering students at NEC, only behind South Korea. Compared to 1-5 enrolled students in each of the years 2002-2006, we have commitments from 26 Chinese students to enroll in fall 2011.

In terms of the percentages:

– From 2002-2006, applicants from China generally represented just under 1% of our total applicant pool. This year, they represented 7.5% of our total applicant pool.

– Number of Chinese applications is up from 18 applicants in 2002 to 224 applicants in 2011, an increase of 1144%.

– As application numbers from China have increased, our acceptance rate has gone down. This is to be expected—a 58% acceptance rate among 18 applicants is not terribly surprising, but a 58% acceptance rate among 224 applicants would be very surprising! So while the acceptance rate in 2002 was 58%, this year it was 26%.

– The acceptance rate for Chinese applicants over the past five years has mirrored closely our overall acceptance rate for the total NEC applicant pool.

– Enrollment yields (the number of admitted students who choose to come): From 2002-2006, an average of 34% of accepted Chinese students chose to enroll, but the percent from year to year varied greatly because the number of students was so small that the decisions of one or two people would affect the percent dramatically. From 2007-2011, when we’ve had a larger pool of applicants so that the percentages are not dramatically affected by one or two students, our enrollment yield for Chinese applicants has averaged 40%. For the coming year, about 45% of admitted Chinese students have indicated that they will be enrolling at NEC in fall 2011. Note that numbers are for the fall 2011 application cycle but those numbers are not 100% final as they may see changes over the summer.”

Eastman told me that anecdotally they have seen a gradual increase in both applicants and enrolled students from China in recent years. They attribute this increase to ongoing recruitment efforts in the Far East (including regional auditions held in Asia) as well as alums who return to their home country and speak favorably about Eastman to the next generation of students. They apologized that unfortunately they were not authorized to provide specific numbers or percentages to outside parties.

At the other end of the spectrum, two institutions would not share data (I’ll leave my readers to guess who.) One of them replied: “ ________’s application, screening, and audition processes are modeled to encourage applicants from all nationalities. In view of this, we hesitate to break out numbers specifically for the People’s Republic of China; we do not want the publication of any apparent trends in Chinese applications — or those of any country — to be taken out of context or misinterpreted.”

Sounds like I hit a sore spot…

Of all the classical music awards ceremonies, the Royal Philharmonic Awards are easily the most valuable. They are also the glitziest, with a slap-up, black-tie dinner in London’s Dorchester Hotel where the entire British music establishment gathers to quaff champagne and roar approval. So why wasn’t I there on Tuesday night? Having quaffed and roared my way through the event for many a year, this time round I went to a piano recital instead.

What kind of piano recital could take precedence over the most prestigious awards event in the classical music calendar? A pretty unusual one, with 34 pianists going through their paces. One of the 34 was young Benedict Clarke, my 14-year-old son, fresh from gaining a distinction at his Grade 3 exam, and taking his place at the school piano alongside some of the other young musicians currently putting work into scales and arpeggios and two-minute pieces.

It is encouraging that at a time when we are led to believe that teenagers are mainly hooded thugs, snorting drugs and knocking little old ladies over the head, so many are still keen to discover the sheer joy of learning an instrument and making music.

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While the RPS Awards continue to get my medal for the Most Grown-Up Awards, at the other end of the scale the Classical Brits organizers have an important message for us: they are dropping the classical. As from this year, the event is to be known as the Classic Brit Awards. The show takes place tonight at the Royal Albert Hall, and for those who can take the sugar rush, it is broadcast on May 29.

Dropping classical is hardly surprising, since the organizers seemed embarrassed by the adjective right from the start. While the list of winners is usually a reasonable reflection of classical work in the recording world, the show itself has been a ghastly piece of lowest-common-denominator tat, everything heavily amplified, with the usual crowd pleasing combination of flashing lights, dry ice and saccharine presentation.

Over the years it has served its purpose – to get the cash registers ringing in record stores – but classical it is not.

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Back at the piano recital, one thing those youngsters may not realise is that by engaging in that miraculous combination of brain and fingers, they are upping their chances of remaining crisp in later years. A recent report from Chicago’s Northwestern University claims that learning a musical instrument boosts memory and helps keep hearing intact. It’s great news for those of us who have been plugging away at instruments all our lives – if only we can believe it. Do these findings mean that had I not started hitting the family piano aged five, my current senior moments would be even worse?

But I am encouraged by some fellow sufferers who have recognized that we veterans are increasingly getting our heads round texting and tweeting, and have helpfully devised a Senior Texting Code:

ATD – At The Doctor’s
BFF – Best Friend Fell
BTW – Bring The Wheelchair
BYOT – Bring Your Own Teeth
CBM – Covered By Medicare
CUATSC – See You At The Senior Center
FWB – Friend With Beta Blockers
FWIW – Forgot Where I Was
FYI – Found Your Insulin
GGPBL – Gotta Go, Pacemaker Battery Low!
GHA – Got Heartburn Again
HGBM – Had Good Bowel Movement
IMHO – Is My Hearing-Aid On?
LMDO – Laughing My Dentures Out
ROFL…CGU – Rolling On The Floor Laughing… And Can’t Get Up
TTYL – Talk To You Louder
WAITT – Who Am I Talking To?
LMGA – Lost My Glasses Again
GLKI – Gotta Go, Laxative Kicking In

By Cathy Barbash

Despite the continuing international outcry over the fate of the fat man and others, the Chinese government is plowing ahead with its efforts to promote and export what they it defines as Chinese culture. I’ve been invited to speak at the upcoming “International Conference on Promotion of Chinese Cultural Products,” a tag-team effort organized by the Ministry of Culture and its operating subsidiary, the China Arts and Entertainment Group. The week-long caravan will begin May 13 at the 7^th China International Cultural Industries Fair in Shenzhen, then heads north via Luoyang to Beijing. They have asked me to speak about marketing Chinese performing arts through international trade fairs (what we would call booking conferences). It is a speech I’ve given many times before, and I’d initially felt skeptical about its likely impact.

With today’s news of Lincoln Center’s signing a Memorandum of Understanding with the Tianjin Innovative Finance Investment Company (TIFI) to provide a broad range of consulting services in connection with building a performing arts complex in Tianjin, I am somewhat more hopeful. The deal came about through classic China-side guanxi choreography (Lincoln Center’s chairman Katherine Farley, is a senior managing director of Tishman Speyer, which has an office in Tianjin), but has real promise. Though an MOU, as Ken Smith accurately describes in his article, may have a number of possible outcomes or non-outcomes, it appears that the Chinese beneficiaries of this engagement are more and more able to act on what they have learned.

Lincoln Center joins a list of other American cultural producer and venue-owner operators who have been active in China. The Kennedy Center has been teaching and hosting Chinese cultural officials since its 2005 Festival of China, and Michael Kaiser has spoken in China on several occasions. However, recent attempts on the part of Chinese cultural officials to create MOUs with the Kennedy Center appear to be sidetracked. (Though there will be a new smaller Festival of China presented there this coming fall.) More specialized American producing and consulting organizations have had greater success. Nederlander Worldwide has been consulting to Chinese developers and city governments for some years about developing Broadway-style theaters and content. AMS Planning and Research did a feasibility study for the Hong Kong-based Shui On Group for a new arts center in their Xintiandi development in Shanghai.

In recent years though, Lincoln Center has been building more China momentum, as they have become active in the training of Chinese culture workers on their home campuses. Last fall, the Ministry of Culture hosted Lincoln Center President Reynold Levy for a week of “getting to know you” activities and a major speech to Chinese cultural officials. (I heard it, it was terrific.) Thus this announcement feels like a logical next step. It is also a lesson in Chinese realpolitik. How many people remember the Lincoln Center Festival’s high profile battle with Chinese authorities over the Peony Pavilion production in 1998? All appears forgiven. What remains to be seen is how the MOU plays out, how the work evolves, and how really able or willing the Tianjin Innovative Finance Investment Company and local officials are to consider and implement Lincoln Center’s advice. I’m hoping for the best.

By Keith Clarke

There is a fair likelihood that the rest of the world is little interested in Princess Diana’s son William getting hitched to an English lass whose extended family includes a cousin who runs a fish and chip shop. On the other hand, the airport arrivals halls seem to be pretty busy and people have been camping outside Westminster Abbey ready for tomorrow’s nuptials. Suddenly, London is the place to be, so I’m getting out of it. Had I got my act together and let out my apartment before heading out of town tonight it would probably have kept me in turkey dinners for the rest of the year.

While the music business toyed with the great unknown of which stirring tunes would make it on to the order of service, one thing we did know was that the happy couple had shunned the notion of getting a few notes out of the Master of the Queen’s Music. Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, for it is he, told today’s Times: “I was put on standby, but it seems that Prince William and Kate don’t want me. I’ve had no part in the music at all. But that’s all right. I’m Master of the Queen’s Music, not theirs.”

Max throws a graceful huff (fairly often), and is quite a magnet for publicity. But the timing of this flap of the wrists was interesting, for no sooner had we digested the Times piece than the royals sent us all a press release detailing the music for the wedding. And guess what? It contains a lovely piece by the Master: Veni Creator Spiritus.

For many, that might be enough information already. But for those who still harbour memories of the UK as a cosy crumpets-for-tea nation with Big Ben, Tower Bridge, red buses and smiling policemen in silly helmets, here is the full announcement of music for the match of the year:

Music for the Wedding Service

Prince William and Miss Catherine Middleton are pleased to announce the music for their Wedding Service.  The music has a largely British theme. The Couple have put considerable thought into selecting the music, and their choices blend traditional music with some newly commissioned pieces.

Before the Service

The music before the Service will begin with a selection of organ pieces: Fantasia in G (Pièce d’orgue à 5) by Johann Sebastian Bach, followed by Veni Creator Spiritus by the Master of The Queen’s Music, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies; Prelude on St. Columba Op. 28 by Sir Charles Villiers Stanford and Sonata for Organ Op. 28 (Allegro maestoso and Allegretto) by Edward Elgar.

Following this will be seven orchestral pieces:

Serenade for Strings in E minor Op. 20 (Allegro piacevole, Larghetto and Allegretto) by Edward Elgar

Courtly Dance V: Galliard from Gloriana (Symphonic Suite) Op. 53a no. 7 by Benjamin Britten

Fantasia on Greensleeves by Ralph Vaughan Williams

Farewell to Stromness by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies

On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring by Frederick Delius

Touch Her Soft Lips and Part from Henry V Suite by William Walton

Romance for String Orchestra Op. 11 by Gerald Finzi

Three of these pieces – Farewell to Stromness, Touch Her Soft Lips and Part and Romance for String Orchestra Op. 11 – were played at the Service of Prayer and Dedication for The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall in 2005.  The Couple specifically chose these pieces for that reason.  The final piece of music before the Service begins continues the broadly British theme: Canzona from Organ Sonata in C minor by Percy Whitlock.

Processional Music

The Service will begin with a Fanfare by The State Trumpeters of the Household Cavalry to mark the arrival of The Queen and The Duke of Edinburgh.  The Fanfare will be followed by three Processionals.  For the Procession of The Queen, Prince William and Miss Middleton have chosen March from The Birds by Sir Charles Hubert Hastings Parry.  Prelude on Rhosymedre by Ralph Vaughan Williams will accompany the Procession of the Clergy, and was chosen for its Welsh echoes.  The Couple have selected ‘I was Glad’, also by Parry, for the Procession of the Bride.

Hymns

Prince William and Miss Middleton have chosen three hymns for the Service: ‘Guide Me, O Thou Great Redeemer’, words by William Williams, translated by Peter Williams and others, and music by John Hughes.  The second will be ‘Love Divine All Love Excelling’, words by Charles Wesley and music by William Penfro Rowlands.  The third will be ‘Jerusalem’, by Sir Charles Hubert Hastings Parry, words by William Blake.  All three hymns have been chosen because they are favourites of the Couple.

The Anthem and Motet

The Anthem, ‘This is the day which the Lord hath made’, has been composed specially for the occasion by John Rutter.  It was commissioned by Westminster Abbey as a wedding present for Prince William and Miss Middleton and will be performed by both the Choir of Westminster Abbey and the Chapel Royal Choir.  Mr. Rutter is a British composer, conductor, editor and arranger who specialises in choral music.

The Anthem will be followed by the Motet ‘Ubi caritas’ by Paul Mealor, a Welsh composer, who is currently Reader in Composition at The University of Aberdeen.

Mr. Mealor’s composing studio is on the Isle of Anglesey, where Prince William and Miss Middleton live. This version of ‘Ubi caritas’ was written on Anglesey and premiered at the University of St. Andrews in November 2010.

The National Anthem will be sung immediately before the Signing of the Registers.

The Signing of the Registers and the Recessional

During the Signing of the Registers, the choirs will sing ‘Blest pair of Sirens’, words by John Milton from At a Solemn Musick, music by Sir Charles Hubert Hastings Parry.

Following the Signing, there will be a Fanfare by the Fanfare Team from the Central Band of the Royal Air Force.  The Fanfare, called Valiant and Brave, after the motto of No. 22 Squadron (Search and Rescue Force) was specially composed for this Service by Wing Commander Duncan Stubbs, Principal Director of Music in the Royal Air Force.

The Recessional, for the Procession of the Bride and Bridegroom, will be Crown Imperial by William Walton.  Toccata from Symphonie V by Charles-Marie Widor and Pomp and Circumstance March no. 5 by Edward Elgar will follow the Service.

by Keith Clarke

“It might be a disaster,” Terry Gilliam tells the Daily Telegraph cheerfully, contemplating his version of Berlioz’ The Damnation of Faust, currently in rehearsal at the London Coliseum. It might well, given English National Opera’s track record in handing out operas willy nilly to people who have never seen the inside of an opera house in their lives.

It’s a bit of a slap in the face to the serried ranks of opera professionals who would give their eye teeth for a chance to tackle a mainstage production. But then we might not have heard of them, whereas Gilliam is the wacky brain behind the cartoons in Monty Python’s Flying Circus and director of Brazil, a film that put the wind up studio executives to such an extent that Gilliam took a page in Variety asking them when they were going to release it.

Gilliam is the next in a line of directors to benefit, if that’s the word, from ENO’s mania for having productions directed by just about anyone other than opera directors. Given some of the self-indulgent tosh that the pros come up with, that might not seem such a bad idea, but it is not a policy that has covered itself in glory thus far. The most recent ingénue was film maker Mike Figgis, who got so bound up in making miniature movies to go with his Lucrezia Borgia that he forgot to direct the opera at all.

Maybe Gilliam will surprise us all, making something of a strange work that was never supposed to be staged anyway. Hope springs eternal, and all that.

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An unlikely alliance of the Almighty, the royal family and the workers is giving the UK eight out of 11 days off work starting tomorrow, if you include weekends. The beano starts with a late Easter and finishes with a May Day holiday. In between comes a royal wedding, which is currently getting the press into a predictable lather of excitement.

The musical aspects of the event have not been immune from forensic examination, of course, with much speculation over what’s on the order of service, who’s going to take part, and second-rate songwriters offering their services.

We’ve seen the boys of the Choir of the Chapel Royal rehearsing; we’ve had a tv interview with conductor Christopher Warren-Green, veteran of many royal occasions; we’ve learnt how Wing Commander Duncan Stubbs has written a fanfare for the trumpeters of the Central Band of the Royal Air Force to herald the moment Prince William and Kate Middleton sign the register. The excitement is intense, as they say. At least it’s another day off.

by Cathy Barbash

The new maturity of the relationship between the U.S. and China was evident earlier this week as the 2011 U.S.-China High-Level Consultation on People-to-People Exchange (CPE) meetings went forward despite both the U.S. Embassy in Beijing’s calling for the release of superstar artist Ai Weiwei and planning difficulties resulting from the possible U.S. government shut-down.

The two-day event included an opening plenary co-led by CPE Coordinators Under Secretary of State for Education and Cultural Affairs Judith McHale and Vice Minister of Education Hao Ping, followed by break-out working group sessions in culture, education, science and technology and sports. McHale’s opening remarks indeed alluded to the situation, stating; “…But when human rights activists and intellectuals and artists fear arbitrary arrest or forced detention, or when education and cultural programs are abruptly canceled as a sign of displeasure, that good faith is undermined, and all the positive momentum our nations have built is slowed.”

Once the official remarks were over however, both sides got down to work in day-long very people-to-people, face to face meetings. The Culture Working Group divided their efforts into three sessions, including an overview of U.S. and Chinese government supported programs, U.S. and Chinese Development Programs for Museum and Library Professionals, and U.S. Private Sector Initiatives with China. In addition to U.S. governmental cultural institutions (Smithsonian, NEA, NEH, IMLS, ECA’s Dance Motion, etc.), presenters included The Philadelphia Orchestra, The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Asia Society, the American Association of Museums and, most unexpectedly, Rodeo China. The findings were reported to Hillary Rodham Clinton and Chinese State Councilor Liu Yandong the next day in a formal public meeting at the State Department. I will follow the development of the proposed projects in future posts.

By Keith Clarke

It sounds like something from Alice in Wonderland. You build an opera house. Being a dream, it only takes a month. You put on 21 performances. Then you knock it all down again.

That is the realty for Garsington Opera in its new home. It was always a bit mad. Founder Leonard Ingrams set the thing up in his back garden while his wife was looking the other way. She forgave him, but having failed to do a charm offensive with the neighbors, he ran into all kinds of trouble, culminating in a grand evening of protest when the opera was interrupted by a synchronized hedge trimming event, an extra pizzazz being added by a local nutcase strafing the opera in a Tiger Moth plane.

When Ingrams died, tragically, at the wheel of his car on a journey back from Glyndebourne, his widow bravely continued to host the opera for a while, but made it clear that in time she would like her garden back.

One of the strange things about England is that while extreme poverty is not hard to find in the inner cities, out in the countryside there are so many opulent estates big enough to host an opera festival that Garsington spent quite some time whittling down a shortlist. When the roulette wheel stopped turning, the ball landed on Wormsley, a 2,500-acre traditional English country estate owned by the Getty family.

I went for a look round on Monday, and it is one of those perfect stretches of countryside where your eye stretches so far across the estate that it seems there can’t be much more of England beyond the horizon.

The estate generally only opens its gates to the public for cricket matches, but the current Getty – Mark – is keen to make it a bit more arty, so an opera company is a good fit. But the Gettys did not get where they are without driving a hard bargain so Garsington will be paying a healthy rent for use of the grounds. Then there is the cost of the purpose-built Opera Pavilion, which will take 12-15 workers about four weeks to construct and deconstruct.

With just 600 seats to sell, it doesn’t take too long with a calculator to see why Garsington is so pleased to welcome aboard global investment firm Jefferies as its first ever season sponsor.

The season runs June 2 – July 5, with The Magic Flute, Rossini’s Il Turco in Italia, and Vivaldi’s La verità in cimento.

www.garsingtonopera.org/

By Keith Clarke

It has been encouraging to see British students finding their voice again in the face of government plans to leave them with horrendously huge debts if they venture into higher education. After a generation of Quiet Satisfieds, the way the new set has taken to the streets with their placards and megaphones has been quite refreshing to those of us brought up in more volatile times. Of course, every legitimate student protest is joined by a bunch of hooligans who just want to smash plate glass, but that’s an irksome by-product of virtually any gathering these days.

What has this to do with music, you ask. Not a lot. But the thoughts were stirred by the fact that at a time when everyone is relearning the art of shouting and making a fuss, one of the biggest shifts in UK arts funding has left an eerie quiet. More than 200 organizations have lost their funding altogether; many more have been dealt cuts; yet there is a singular lack of public breast beating. Perhaps these guys have just had the spirit knocked out of them.

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It’s a funny old business. Welsh singer Wynne Evans came to attention playing the part of a caricature opera singer in a series of tv ads for an insurance price comparison website. Kitted up in a tux and sporting a twirly moustache, he intoned “Go Compare” to the melody of the American military song, Over There, his performance creating such an effect that the ad was voted the most irritating on British television. That didn’t stop Evans heading for stardom, releasing an album featuring Mario Lanza show classics which hit the number one spot, appearing on a tv documentary, giving concerts.

Behind the moustache and the Go Compare persona, Evans is a working singer whose less publicized work included a part in the Royal opera’s Anna Nicole. But such was the clamor for his tv personality (Gio Compario) that he was forced into hiding, reported the Daily Star. Now comes news that all the interviews have taken their toll – he has lost his voice.

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We have to hope Wynne Evans’ sound was still emerging when he joined the Welsh Guards to record a special album for the royal wedding which currently has the popular press in paroxysms of excitement. What music will actually be played for the event is a state secret, but there might be a clue in the selection on the CD, which Semper Fidelis; Men of Harlech; Pomp and Circumstance; and Love Divine, All Loves Excelling. Evans’ contribution is a “Royal Crown” medley of Welsh national songs.