In a post last month on his popular blog about classical music, Alex Ross wrote that the music he loves ``exists off the radar screen of the major media’’ these days. But ``it’s actually kind of exciting,’’ he added. ``If I were in the business of marketing classical music to younger audiences, I’d make a virtue of this. Classical music is the new underground.’‘
Champions of music claim new cyber-turf
By Richard Scheinin [San Jose Mercury News, 20 Feb 05]
In a post last month on his popular blog about classical music, Alex Ross wrote that the music he loves ``exists off the radar screen of the major media'' these days. But ``it's actually kind of exciting,'' he added. ``If I were in the business of marketing classical music to younger audiences, I'd make a virtue of this. Classical music is the new underground.''
Classical music as the new underground: That compelling image hasn't really surfaced in mainstream media writing on the arts. But Ross, the New Yorker magazine's classical music critic, plows fertile ground all the time on his own blog, titled ``The Rest Is Noise,'' a daily read for a couple of thousand classical music fanatics.
On any given day, Ross may fire off an essay on his favorite Finnish conductors (the Finns are in); or he may send shock waves through the blogo- sphere by challenging the idea that dead silence in the concert hall -- no clapping allowed between the movements of a concerto, for instance -- is a good thing. He can be a learned cheerleader for the music, likely to declare that an opera singer or chamber ensemble rocks or is severe -- though, on a slow day, he simply may post photos of his cats.