Posted by Tracy H. on July 02, 2001 at 21:51:31:
In Reply to: Pops... posted by Charles D. Ortega on July 01, 2001 at 02:53:18:
Ok, this might be way off, but it's my opinion about something
"....and if they want 'Turkey in the straw' we'll play 'Turkey in the straw'".
JP Sousa, The King of Pop in his day.
I agree completely with this. Play what they want to hear. If they don't want to hear it, they won't. You can't force music onto someone, you can't force someone to listen to how melodic a piece is, you can't force someone into thinking a piece is the best piece ever written. What happens is (obviously, but just stating) people want to listen, they listen, they determine if they like it, they go with the result. Isn't the whole reason of performing to communicate with people, to get them to hear how beautiful music can be and to open them up to the world we know of? Basically, I (personally) want to make people happy with my music. I want to be happy with my music. How do I combine it? Play what they can appreciate the best I can possible do, squeeze all I can out of that piece to reach them as much as possible, this way I'm happy of the performance and the result and they're happy with the performance and result.
I know not many of the great pieces are known, I don't know many myself, but I got interested in music from people playing what I did know so well that I wanted to play it too. I came to love and respect music those people who played "pop" music. This is not something to look down upon, I hope.
I didn't listen to Mahler and enjoy it before I heard pop pieces. No, It was the other way around. Think about using every advantage possible to communicate to your audience. You don't have to play Vaughan Williams to make a little kids eyes sparkle, or a dad hum along with their all-time favorite movie theme, or even a musician appreciate the beautiful chords of a TV piece. Just play it as well as you can and there's no reason to look down upon pop music. It's our link to non-musicians.
that's my two cents anyway.....