"Although I have decided to at least temporarily continue to make my music available, I am entirely finished with the music establishment. No mainstream American music institution will be permitted to perform my work (Not that there's much chance of it anyway). Why? Because it's a rigged game and because it's run by the elite; the same people who profit from dead Iraqi women and children. Some of the same people who stage terror attacks. Am I saying that, for instance, Esa-Pekka Solonen is a terrorist? No, but I am saying he works for terrorists, among others. I don't want that job."
Sunday, March 18, 2007
More radical than me
Composer William Houston has this message on his website:
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3 comments:
I can respect that, but I'd hope William's being finished with the "elite" doesn't mean he'll stop offering up his work through his own channel. There's far too much wonderful music of his that shouldn't just end up back in the box. There's a direct line to a whole world of us out here, and I hope he continues to use it.
Who?
Isn't that something like giving up Peking Duck for Lent?
Besides, Sorabji beat him to it, by 70 years. Now he has to become a legend in his own time, and then live long enough to change his mind.
Artists, whether part of the establishment, like some, or marginalized, like others, have the responsibility to SPEAK OUT, when the actions of their government become intolerable. There comes a point when metaphor and irony are no longer adequate, and silence and complicity no longer acceptable. It seems clear to me that if you're an art institution that takes money from the military industrial complex or their pals, at this point in history, you're seriously compromised.
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