Re: Barrios Competition 2007 - Final Results

On Nov 28, 3:23 pm, "Alain Reiher" <rei...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:


This is also the conservatory system ... a student can spend 6,7,8 years
studying at a conservatory to find himself finishing at the concourse level
with a "mention", a second prize or a first prize sometimes given
unanimously and sometimes ... not. The student does not have necessarily to
compete with other players ... he has to prove to the jury, in order to
obtain his first prize, that he has what it takes to develop as a concert
player. De toute façon, (Anyway) it does not mean that even if allowed a
first prize unanimously that the student will develop into a famous concert
player and will have a successful career.
As for the GFA ... how many of the winner turn out to have a real career?
After the winning tour prize? What happened to Marguerita Escarpa? The best
player of the 1994 GFA? Pearl of a an endless necklace...next!
There so much competition now a day that if you want to be (ne serait-ce
que) the shadow of an artist ... you better hide into a shack, work your day
job, and enjoy the music (joy and sorrow) for what it is. Music is something
that do and do not have its place into our society!

Alain<

Alain, as someone coming to their end of this journey with very few
regrets you might consider:

We elected to do what we do. Do you remember any guarantees? There
are no guarantees in life. In my case I was driven not to become an
artist but to play as well as I could manage. That work kept me so
busy I didn't have time to ponder why. If I was an artist, a term I
don't care for, it was because I was driven to play. I have no regrets
concerning how I spent my time on the planet. As I've said here
before, few people have fallen to this dirty brown globe and had as
much fun, all things considered, as I've had with the guitar. I
didn't have great expectations of my becoming a famous player. In
fact, I avoided all that bs. I didn't follow the rules, I followed
my own lights, because I had to. I would have made a bad slave. Some
slowly die trapped in a relationship that sucks the life out of them.
Some have a job they hate which so drains their energy there's no time
to maintain their music. Other's want a stable home and family they
hate to travel, they all die a little bit every day.... I see this
more clearly now than ever before, those who didn't follow their dream
live small circumscribed lives with little joy or whole-hearted
devotion to any ideal, cause, study or pursuit.....other than their
grandchildren.

All things considered, you could still be in the poorest country in
the Western Hemisphere, imprisoned or dead in Jean-Bertrand
Aristide's time. You're doing what you set out to do, are you not?
It may not be to the degree you'd hoped for but all things considered
not a bad life....considering. I'd hoped I'd grow old many
transcriptions and arrangements and maybe taking a few promising
students. I was always so healthly and strong I never thought I might
contract a severe disease...not me! Life changed an I adjusted
quickly. I really regret only two things: One, I found the 11 string
arch-guitar late in life, I was 50 when I got my first one. Two: I
didn't stay and work at a school for the blind where I spent one
summer.

In the beginning I mentioned I didn't care for the term artist. I'm a
little disgusted reading "artist" or those playing the artist when I
could blow them out the doors. I do realize now, I was an artist and
maybe a little better than I thought myself. Maybe you should take a
close look at an arch-guitar. You can arrange damn near anything on
one and they transfer like butter to you hands.


The Withered Art

Came we once upon a tree,
Boys of ten were we, maybe thirteen,
But marked we this tree, some specialty that
Came about it.
It was disfigured and mangled and tangled but still
Tried to take away our breath
As young as we were we knew what will was found
It was beautiful and horrible but not one of us removed our eyes
Till one asked, "Is it art?"
Millenniums did I spend to capture or lend
Some fashion to it, where once I saw art but never since.
All the boys had gone on living without me
Displaced in their own time and placed in their desk jobs
Without the hope of seeing the tree ever again.
But I, through two wives and near starvation did look for salvation
In that crooked spinney old cotter of a tree.
Would find again essence in wood
And ask it, "Are you art?"
I searched my childhood to find those back woods where it did lie
Undiscovered and covered under the guise of normality
Once I found the ground where it grew
I'd share it with the world
And put to rest my artless mind.
So trudged did I through water to the thigh
And pinching pricking pieces of pincery
I would shout to it and listen for it to call
Ne'er an utterance did I hear but my own ears
Throbbing the pulse of listening,
Listening for it to yell back, "I am art."
But I could scarce believe when I came upon that tree
How it kept it's form, remained torn, and been forlorn
And lonely
I heard it know asking to be removed
Captured
Breathed in to
And personified
Screaming for the critiques to answer its question, "Am I not Art?"
I took out paint and brush
Canvas and easel
Pencil and paper
Camera and film
Dictionary and thesaurus
But nothing came out
I could not capture it
Nothing I could do would take it from its place
I doomed it to remain
And forever to complain of my lack of work
I walked away sobbing but not as loud as the tree
Who's fate I cannot grasp being left at last
To just be and not seen.
And whimpering left I those woods never to return
But later to burn
So it could not live with
What I'd done
And as it burned my ear did turn
To hear it call
"I was art!"

- Andrew L. Gilbert, The Flow Magazine





.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Barrios Competition 2007 - Final Results
    ... The student does not have necessarily ... slowly die trapped in a relationship that sucks the life out of them. ... The Withered Art ... Came we once upon a tree, ...
    (rec.music.classical.guitar)
  • Re: Sun Gazeing
    ... But I continue to think that artists ... The Withered Art ... Came we once upon a tree, ... Listening for it to yell back, ...
    (rec.music.classical.guitar)
  • Re: Sun Gazeing
    ... But I continue to think that artists ... The Withered Art ... Came we once upon a tree, ... Listening for it to yell back, ...
    (rec.music.classical.guitar)
  • Re: Old teacher, old students, old friends
    ... One now teaches art at the same university where he was my guitar ... student really is here? ... He also still plays ...
    (rec.music.classical.guitar)
  • Re: Help me come up with a few and simple programming challenges
    ... language, I'd probably pass around a pointer to the list's head pointer, build it backwards, and then wrap the whole thing with a function that handled the extra argument and reversed the result, rather than defining lisp-ish append and cons functions. ... But that's not something I'd expect a CS student to come up with a polished implementation of on an exam; I'd've probably had trouble getting the 'i's dotted and the 't's crossed when I was a CS student, and I was complaining about low standards among CS students even back then. ... You can do it without mutation and without using append (creating ... (define (sublist tree lo hi) ...
    (comp.lang.scheme)