FB post dated November 22 - "Classical music is not irrelevant"

"Holy cow, we are not irrelevant! We are revolutionary!" - Joyce DiDonato (watch this clip!)

For those who think singing or playing classical music has no future or is irrelevant in this day and age, please listen to this interview with a great American musician and singer, Miss DiDonato. Her story makes me want to spend more time thinking about how the distance between everyday people and classical and opera music was created (intentionally or unintentionally I don't know) and `systematically' maintained through time.

If we continuously only feed the public what's deemed the most hip and popular musical products (for a lack of better word), am afraid we are driving our beloved public, which include our children, our families and friends - to a future where their taste for art and music (among other important decisions in their lives) is no more than what the electronics are feeding to them, what the rest of the YouTubers are watching, what other people are `viraling' over Facebook.

Occasionally here in town, although in too small the amount, we are served with classical music. But rarely, or hardly ever, the General Public are given any chance of being exposed to an art so naked, and visceral and honest (no sound system, no super dancers hanging from the ceiling, no distracting costumes, no sets). What we don't try, we don't know.

I am for one, guilty of wanting to be safe, and disallow myself the chance of bridging the gap between the public to figures like Rossini, Strauss..and more. Maybe people like me and my other colleagues need to think deeper into this - how can we bring more real, naked, honest (not packaged) classical to the general public, and let them decide if it is worth their time and heart?

I applaud those producers (thank you EST folks for staging Carmen this year), artistes, theatre companies and art platforms who stay true in their beliefs of naked and real art form, who staged and produced musicals and plays chosen not because everybody in town knows the work but because the work is worth knowing.

Thanks to Miss DiDonato, always an inspiration for being stubbornly humble and sincere, and serious about her work. Thank you Tan Sin Sim for sharing this clip that provoked my ponder this morning.

Let's hope this could spur some thinking into some of us, how can we contribute in our own little way (or big if you are capable) in bringing classical music closer to young people, and the general public? -- Scott X Woo, can you bring back those wonderful LRT-station impromptu singing?

Watch this clip, and am sure there are thousands of other similar stories around the world to prove that classical music is not irrelevant in this electronic world. It is revolutionary. #janetleemusic #janetreads #janetreflects #opera #classicalmusic