Tag Archives: breaking the mould

‘The New Four Seasons’ – complete with birdsong, electric guitar and didgeridoo – is all about the total reinvention of a piece of music that we thought we knew by heart…and it is also about very much more than that. When I heard it, I was much more deeply moved than I was prepared for and, in it, I have found an echo of something that is happening on a far broader scale; in our arts, in our world. Is it alright, or even possible, to play with an established composition – one as intricately complex as this – in a new way, to make it your own, to alter it? I find I want to say, the music itself is not sacrosanct; it is our creative urge and the need to allow that free rein that is. Kennedy has dared to show that music is certainly not sacrosanct and all the better for it; its as though the strictly demarcated ‘four seasons’ of our world (even the most intricately complex parts, most learned-by-heart aspects of it) have suddenly found room for something more, their edges blurred and expanded to fit more in, our very experience of them – of everything – softened, leaving us with far more than the sum of their parts. Continue reading →