Blog posting written by Jairo Geronymo, pianist, Nurnberg, Germany

I recently learned that Sao Luis do Maranhao, a large, beautiful city in the northern coast of Brazil, founded by the French, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sao_Luis,_Maranhao) has become a mecca for child prostitution. 

Brazil’s image as a paradise of bossa nova, samba and small swimsuits propels the growing international market of sexual tourism to take advantage of Brazil’s extremely poor population.  Corrupt authorities silently support the system in order to pocket  some dollars and euros.  The children remain in misery, robbed of their childhood and dignity

I admire intelligent marketing. The tobacco industry impresses me with their ad campaigns.  Hip, comic book advertising indoctrinates teens, while sexy, healthy and smart smoking people emulate the ideals of an adult market.  I imagine that the most questionable companies offer the highest salaries to the geniuses of marketing. These marketers hire the top musicians for their commercials.  We all need to earn our daily bread—as many loaves as possible.

Old LP covers--now cult items—show images of a bygone era.  I  love those sultry women with their powerful contralto voices, supposedly victimized in their voluptuous poses, showing that most powerful part of their bodies: their curves.  Women in cigarette commercials do not have curves anymore.

Sex-based marketing has also infiltrated classical music. Lately, ‘classical’ CD covers also portray pictures of sultry performers to equate musical performance with the erotic.  A sexy violinist in a flimsy dresses holds her Stradivarius against the evening wind.  A muscular conductor drinks milk from gallon-sized chalices.
 
Horowitz’ nose and Rubinstein’s baggy eyes would have no chance in today’s classical music marketing schemes.    Gone is the time when Montserrat Caballe opened her mouth onstage, in all her rotund glory, and everybody sighed.  I love Montserrat, Eva Marton, Jessye Norman and the many other sturdy women who seduced us with their voices. 

So what are all these people selling? What are the real consequences?

Corrupt officials shielding child prostitution traffickers from persecution in Brazil are selling their values to earn more money.  Musicians working in tobacco advertisements are selling their integrity  to earn more money.  Established and aspiring divas are now connecting their curves to their virtuosity to sell more CDs.  Nearly all classical CDs now on the market have been touched up with some element of sexuality for sale.

While I was a  college student, I was the organist for the First Christ Scientist Church in Sao Paulo, Brazil.  It was one of the best-paid church jobs in Sao Paulo.  I did not believe in the ideas of that religion.  I often I played services for less than ten people.  The money helped underwrite my college costs.  I was a musical prostitute because I sold my music to an institution and a religious practice I did not believe in. Does it matter that I sold my musical skills in order to learn more music?

At one time or another, I would guess that we have all sold something that we do to some entity or institution that perhaps is not in total alignment with our own values and ideals.  These actions edge us all closer us into prostitution.  Of course, people should have the right to do whatever they want as long as nobody is hurt. Ethics is, in the end, all about consequences. 

Child prostitution damages innocent children for the rest of their lives.  Encouraging teenagers to smoke will shorten their lives. 

So I urge you to think about the consequences of our daily choices.  If you buy a CD because the singer is sexy, that’s OK; there will always be musicophiles who will buy Jessye Norman’s CDs.  Nobody is hurt. 

However, if your choices hurt other people, physically or emotionally, I hope that your punishment will be much worse than listening to the Spice Girls for the rest of your life.
 

Blog posting written by Jairo Geronymo, pianist, Nurnberg, Germany
 
On November 8th,  I will play  a program entitled Three Trios, Three Players, Three Lands  with two of my colleagues.  

The program at the Rathaus Schoneberg, the City Hall of West Berlin and now a cultural center, will include  Johaness Brahms’ Trio opus 8 (Germany), Paul Schoenfield’s Café Music (USA) and Astor  Piazzolla’s Four Seasons of Buenos Aires (Argentina).  I have played the four-hands version of the same piece by Piazzolla with  Diane Birr as part of a  previous FLEFF production .  Sexy music plus tango plus historical footage spells great project!

Piazzolla had a colorful life, living in Argentina, US and Europe . His main instrument, the bandoneon, is the perfect medium for expressive music with a nationalistic character.  Folk music of countries as France, Germany and the USA also utilized the accordion in its many forms and shapes.

Today, in my first trio rehearsal, we breezed through Brahms, without any stylistic controversy. And then…  the old question about Piazzolla’s music as it is played outside Argentina poked through.  The music is so passionate that the performers become afraid: they don’t want the textures, dynamics and timbres to sound like a  Latin American caricature.  So I ask: How much is too passionate?

We want to transmit the passion in the music.  But a hard question lurks:  where is the line between passionate and caricature?  We certainly do not want to sound like a Mexican soap opera!

There is a market for Mexican soap opera--and that’s why they do well.  So what’s wrong with them?  Is passionate expression of what others might hear as mundane condemnable?  People in different cultures express themselves quite differently in the world of emotions.  Are these cultural differences playing a role in covert racism?  Is cool and reserved the model to be followed?  Should we all get musical Botox injections and perform in a wrinkle-free, expressionless style?  Is there a place in the musical world for both the reserved and the extravagant? 

Performance practice today is a minefield.  Many performers do not play Bach in concert anymore. They fear being labeled purists or extreme romantics-- sometimes in the same concert.  Recordings have created an educated and opinionated audience.  We musicians silently agree on standards of performance practice. Then we criticize someone who strays from these standards.  These attitudes do not help to expand diversity in the field of classical music.

Are only German performers entitled to play Brahms?Are only  Argentine performers entitled to play Piazzolla?  Are only American performers entitled to play Schoenfield?  No.  I suggest that we expand our horizons:  we should not accept any dogmas in the art world. 

Let music and our performance of it be free!

I leave you with Piazzolla playing ‘Adios Nonino’ with a German orchestra:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTPec8z5vdY&feature=related
 

Blog posting written by Jairo Geronymo, pianist, Nurnberg, Germany
 
I do not drink alcohol but I am a member of the Martini Mafia.

The president of the Martini Mafia, Charles*, a retired piano professor and the owner of the largest collection of portraits of Queen Elizabeth II outside England, has introduced me to Sarah.  Sarah studied piano with Charles and recently gave me her first book, filled with watercolor portraits.  People, pianos, blues, greens, browns.
Charles, Sarah and Jeremy, a piano professor always happy to talk about his promising piano students met regularly to go to concerts, talk about music and  discuss our dear piano students. 

Sarah is a founding  member of the Martini Mafia, even though she also does not drink alcohol! Charles introduced me to Robert, an active New York singer and actor that shares his time between NYC and his second home in Montgomery, NY where he tends his garden, hosts parties for friends and rents his house for film productions.  Charles and Robert met in the 1960’s in San Francisco, in a New Age Monastery before that sort of retreat became fashionable. 

Once I moved to Ithaca, Robert introduced me to Sherman, a soldier at the Second World War, a former executive who had worked all over the world, with long stints in the Middle East in the forties.

I met Sherman shortly before his eightieth birthday. I attended three of his birthdays at his mountaintop home in Lockwood, NY, thirty miles south of Ithaca.  His birthdays were celebrated with wonderful food and much singing.  I sight-read songs on the piano while many of the guests sang joyfully.  They were always amazed that I didn’t know the different songs.  I was a baby when these guys were already performing those songs onstage!  Sherman lost a singing competition to the teenager Barbra Streisand.  I will save that story for later.

I just received Sherman’s second CD in the mail. He recorded both his CDs after he turned eighty.  The inside cover portrays him through four images from different periods of his life: as a teenager, as a soldier in the Second World War, atop a camel in the desert,  and today.  In this CD, “Songs from The Greatest Generation” he sings hits from Sinatra, Fitzgerald, Bennett and others.  I will reserve my compliments for  when I talk to Sherman on the phone.  His singing inspires me.

So why did I tell you about all these colorful characters? What do they all have in common? 

They all have come together as friends through music.  It is interesting that something as ethereal and volatile as music can keep friends united for decades.  I baptized the group known as the ‘Martini Mafia’.  They are actually music makers, one way or another.  They met to go to concerts, talk about music, piano students.  Life. 

So I raise my Martini glass filled with orange juice to all these women and men that have loved and made music throughout their lives.  Their music has enriched the lives of so many others--and that’s what this is all about.
 
*All the characters portrayed in this blog are not fictional.  All names were changed.  Sherman’s CD is not available commercially.  I never had an ‘alcohol problem’.  No animals were harmed during the writing of this blog. 
 

Blog written by Jairo Geronymo, pianist, Nurnberg, Germany　

The Berlin wall fell on November 9, 1989. In the 20 years since, Berlin has reinvented itself as a single city. Borderless.

The infrastructure of East Berlin needed extensive modernization. The subway system--oddly cut into two-- became one again. New traffic patterns mirror a new organization of the city. Berlin needed a new main train station: the largest crossing station in Europe was erected, or rather emerged from the sand (www.hbf-berlin.de) a pas de deux of glass and curves. This gargantuan transparent double centipede, a stone throw from the Branderburg Gate, dwarfs the fast speed trains supported by single pillars and crisscrossing subway lines. All open, all see-through.

Twice a week, I rush through this space on my commute to Berlin, marveling at the station’s scale and lightness. This week, I eyed a temporary round black structure, fifteen feet in diameter, eight feet tall with two large openings. It was plopped into a busy path in the middle floor. Inside this edifice were microphones, drums, guitars, keyboards and 37 miles of cables (www.firmenpresse.de/pressinfo/).

Then, on September 16th, something happened. I heard ‘piano sounds’ as I devoured my vegetables in red curry. Spicy sounds.

Inside the black structure, I saw a gleaming nine foot Bechstein grand piano, a pianist, microphones, a composer with an equalizer, and what seemed like two miles of cables.

Sublime music filled the space as the pianist played glissandi directly on the strings. The infernal music was threatening: the pianist banged ‘demolished’ seventh chords on the lower keys. The composer often induced microfony that reverberated like a toxic storm through the cavernous space. The ethereal remixed sounds seduced some listeners; the thundering microphony scared others. This piano, large for any concert hall but tiny in this cavernous space, roared in this transparent cave. Everybody paid attention. Many people sat on the floor in and around the black structure, listening, riveted.

Experienced musicians know how to match the right repertoire with the right audience. Much of the exuberant piano repertoire frequently performed in recital and concerts would, I suspect, disappear in that space. What would you program for that space?

Were many people shocked by such contemporary music? Yes.

Were many people shocked by such contemporary architecture? No.

The logic of the new suggests that strong contemporary architecture would pair seamlessly with strong contemporary music. New kids in the block, in this model, like to hang out together.

So why do audiences seem to digest contemporary architecture so easily while contemporary music generates so much controversy? Is all contemporary architecture good and all contemporary music bad? So what makes for bad contemporary architecture or bad contemporary music? Who can judge it?

Yes, we can!

So....leave a comment if you ever loved something old or something new…

Blog entry by Jairo Geronymo, pianist, Nurnberg and Berlin,  Germany

Two weeks ago,  I saw a show in Berlin by a group called ‘Chamäleon’  The show itself was called ‘Soap’. One of my concert companions was a ten year-old boy. This show seemed the perfect choice for a mind immersed in Nintendo and Disney.

The show mixed acrobatics, special effects, comedy, skin, and hardcore arias by Mozart, Schubert, Schumann and Wolf. Unusual.

The scenery consisted of bathtubs used as a base for acrobatics. The highest bathtub functioned as the throne of a very good soprano wearing a bathing suit.  The pairings were a delightful surprise: Wolf  with contortions, Schubert with fabric swaths holding muscular bodies, Mozart with soap bubbles.

At the moment, the streets of Berlin are plastered with advertisements for the "Blue Man Group". In Las Vegas, it is difficult to score tickets for ‘Cirque du Soleil’  or ‘Le Reve’. All these spectacles mix dance, acrobatics, elaborate set design, and music.

Yet these elements  also evoke the main ingredients of French Grand Opera. Classical ballets have merged with circus acrobatics. Operas in the 18th century used flowing blue fabric to make ocean waves; now , we have laser shows. Everything is different. Everything is the same.

So how has the music changed?

Is this change just a question of Gregorian Chant with digital sounds, African drums with extra reverberation and musical pyrotechnics? No.

Experiences appealing to many senses remain a successful recipe for audience engagement.  Disney knows this. Bollywood knows this. Can we then anticipate a resurgence of French grand opera for the masses? Questionable--but opera will always attract an audience.

I prefer to think that in our multi-cultural global society, there is space for the New York Phillarmonic playing music from Star Wars and Mozart paired with soap bubbles.