Amy Adams likes to dog my posts. She seems to think I make good fodder…
In a thread on the Slipped Disc blog, I replied:
Amy chooses to take my comment out of context. However, in doing so she has opened the door to another question…just what does happen to a band that locks out Mozart? :-0
– See more at: http://slippedisc.com/2015/12/minnesota-musicians-give-250000-to-their-orchestra/#sthash.ph84Xbd8.dpuf
Monostatos’ Orchestra seems to be attempting to go through a sort of rebirth. After the contentious and bitter lockout, which may well, in fact, have been in response to their, in effect, locking Mozart out some time ago, in terms of the great gift that I call die zauberflote, they seem to want to put the dismal recent past events behind by making a foray into new performing territory (not a bad idea) and conducting a media blitz intended to showcase them as ‘new’. Frankly, virtually nothing about this organization is ‘new’. In fact, what we may well be seeing is more of the ‘same-old, same-old’. Not that the ‘same-old’ is ‘bad’, just that it is predictably the same — a veneer of ‘grace’ and ‘loveliness’ masking the fact that its ‘voice’ (if you can even call it that) is empty and dead…
Why, you might ask, am I not tempted into mushy sentimentality about the supposed newness of the recent ‘historic’ runout or accompanying schmoozy current ad strategy? Frankly, any group who can put up with the character I call “Monostatos” is not deserving of being taken seriously. It has, in fact, settled its fate in my mind once and for all. Ironically, it appears that one of the previous administrators of this group attempted to oust this person, but in a turn of irony, they were the one to go. So I hold to no illusions about this situation. (I am, in fact, speaking from personal experience. I learned the hard way, and am not about to be fooled again.)
So, what is actually going on here? This is my impression. If this group was, in fact, put under judgment by the Lrd for their treatment, not only of an extraordinary gift of music, but of a gift of the Holy Spirit, they had the opportunity to, for example, come to repentance over the initial lockout during their own prolonged 18-month lockout and make appropriate apologies and amends. They were aware of the facts involving the initial lockout. But they chose to ignore that information and, in effect, ‘rebuild’. Not even simply rebuild, but attempt to claim they have re-invented themselves. I doubt that will work. I sincerely hope that believers will look very critically at having any involvement with this group, especially anything involving their children (yes, they manage to insinuate themselves in many schools). I consider the effect of their music unhealthy.
If I am correct, this glossy sheen of new-found respectability will in time wear thin and the public will once again have no choice but to deal with the grisly reality at the core of this group. As long as Monostatos is being protected there, this is an organization that can only be called Anti-Mozart. And, as we are, artistically speaking, currently in the middle of what I call “Minnegeddon” (this being ‘PartDeux’ as post-MO lockout) — that is the time when all Anti-Mozart is revealed. And so it will be. I could be wrong. But I don’t think so…
*Mozart for Believers…
Just posted this to my new blog, The Other Mozart:
It is ironic and amazing to me how Gd can take a set of circumstances that seem almost hopeless and turn them into something wonderful. So it was long ago when I made a decision that, unfortunately, resulted in my children and I being sold into a kind of bondage. I had not been treated honestly, but by the time I understood what had happened, great harm had been done. I agonized over how to right the situation, and how to protect my children from any further negative effects related to this situation. I did my best. It wasn’t great.
But then, not long ago, something unusual happened. A 200M arts organization was brought to a grinding halt, it seemed to me, so that the damage done to me and my family could be corrected. And now that has happened. All this angst seems to be turning into a wonderful miracle of healing and light. And all of this battle, it seems to me, has been waged over the sound of a flute, a sound of light over darkness, of goodness over evil.
Minnesota is not even my chosen home — that would be the exquisite San Francisco Bay Area. But Minnesota is where the battleground is, and this is where I have stayed, gritting my teeth for six months of the year, facing a winter that always seems impossibly hostile.
But now my children are grown and love Minnesota, and I have a horse. The quality of my day is grounded more in whether or not he is comfortable and blanketed properly for it than for my own concern.
And so life has come full circle from that ominous day long ago. And there is so much goodness all around. Just another living testament to the fact that all works together for good…:-)
As I watch the headlines this week, with the hostage siege in Sydney, a massacre in Philadelphia, and now a terrible event at a school in Pakistan, I find there are additional challenges for me as I prepare for our Die Zauberflote Holiday concert, which will be this Sunday, December 21, 2014, at 8 p.m. in the Mall of America Rotunda. The last time we did a holiday concert was on the same date in 2012. That happened to be just days after the terrible Newtown disaster. I felt I had to change the theme, from a ‘Slightly Wigged Out Last Day on Earth” concert to performing the carols as though I were playing my children to sleep at night. This year the theme is Baroque — Handel’s amazing Messiah, performed with lavish ornamantation on my antique (silver Louis Lot) French flute. This time there is not much to change, as Baroque improvisation is relatively limited in scope, and the theme is, of course, eternal. But still, I have to wonder what additional turbulence might take place prior to Sunday, and pray and play for peace and healing for everyone…
Le Chant du Rossignol...(song of the nightingale) 