YouTube Archives - Page 20 of 21 - Los Cuadernos de Julia

Luciano Pavarotti

As I was going to work in the morning, there was a small article in Metro about the Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti being in serious condition. A few hours later at work I read on MSN that one of the world’s greatest opera artists died.

There is very little to say, amidst the tributes and obituaries. U2’s Bono said Pavarotti epitomised opera. Undoubtedly, he also epitomised Italy, exuberant and passionate as he was. It is, I guess, because of his immensity – be it physique, talent or life – that millions of people around the world have taken his exit so close to heart. He entered the memory of many as an ever-smiling opera genius, and nothing can fill the void.

Many an opera aficionado will already have passed on their condolensces to the tenor’s family. It is strange to think that, like there would never be any Beatles “comeback” after George Harrison died, so now there are no longer Three Tenors, certainly not in the way we have come to think of them.

The MSN article renders precisely the significance of today’s date for the classical music scene:

In the annals of that rare and coddled breed, the operatic tenor, it may well be said the 20th century began with Caruso and ended with Pavarotti. Other tenors — Domingo included — may have drawn more praise from critics for their artistic range and insights. But none could equal the combination of natural talent and personal charm that so endeared Pavarotti to audiences.

Luciano Pavarotti has embraced his fame after performing Nessun Dorma in 1990 at the opening of the World Cup in Italy. He sang it again in 2006 at the opening of the Torino Olympic Games, which turned out to be his last major performance. This aria from Puccini’s Turandot has always been one of my favourite opera arias. Earlier this year somebody practically anonymous, my compatriot, has sent me in an email a recording of Nessun Dorma as a Christmas present, which I enjoyed a lot. In the video below Pavarotti performs Nessun Dorma in Torino in 2006 (many thanks to supinder for posting this). I cannot describe in words how much or why I love this part, every time I hear it my eyes fill with tears…

MBA and Tenori-On Launch

MBA is what I have just realised the abbreviation of the Manchester Blog Awards 2007. The first event of this kind was held last year, and as those who were present there a year ago testify, this is a wonderful night to attend and to remember. The idea belongs to Kate Feld, and this year’s event is expected to be held on October 10, at Mojo Live in Northern Quarter. The nominations are: best political blog, best arts and culture blog, best personal blog, best new blog (started since September 1st 2006), and best creative writing on a blog. The deadline for nominations is September 7th.

More information: BBC Manchester Blog and The Manchizzle.

And one more date for your diary, whether you live in London or in Manchester. September 4th and September 5th will see the world-wide launch on Tenori-On hosted in London and in Manchester, respectively. Tenori-On is the latest invention from a Japanese artist Toshio Iwai, who I had had the honour of watching performing on this instrument exclusively at the last year’s Futuresonic launch. As far as I remember him talking about his interest in music and visual arts, he’d always been fascinated with motion picture, and had been drawing animated films in small notebooks. It looks like many a great thing starts with a notebook.

To quote from Futuresonic’s website where you can find all information about the events, “the TENORI-ON is a unique 16 x 16 LED button matrix performance controller with a stunning visual display. For musicians, visual artists & DJs it is a unique performance tool that enables them to create spectacular live & DJ audio-visual performances. The worldwide exclusive events will feature TENORI-ON performances from some of the finest talents in electronic music plus an introduction and discussion with the TENORI-ON’s inventor, Toshio Iwai.”

And here are the line-ups in London and in Manchester – as you’ll see, admission is free but an early arrival is recommended to avoid disappointment.
LONDON,
TUESDAY 4 SEPTEMBER Featuring:
Robert Lippok (Domino/To Rococo Rot)
Toshio Iwai (Media Artist)
Secondo (Dreck Records)
Capracara (Soul Jazz)

Phonica Records / Vinyl Factory, London
6pm-11pm
Admission Free
MANCHESTER,
WEDNESDAY 5 SEPTEMBER
Featuring:
Robert Lippok (Domino/To Rococo Rot)
Toshio Iwai (Media Artist)
Secondo (Dreck Records)
Graham Massey (808 State/Toolshed)

Mint Lounge, Oldham Street, Manchester
8pm-Midnight
Admission Free

Toshio Iwai’s performance at the launch of Futuresonic 2006 at the Warehouse 1832 at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester was indeed a stunning performance, a visionary and visually impressive piece of music. And to put you in the Tenori-On mood, and possibly to lure you to either a Manchester or a London venue, here is a short demo from YouTube.

More information: Futuresonic and Last.fm.

Elton John: “Remember No Two Ovens Are the Same”

I’ve only been a fan of Sir Elton John since the 1990s (due to my age, of course), and, like with many other great artists, I have missed a lot of really impressive performances. Some of these are still being shown on TV, like his duet with George Michael in Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me. But some, like the one below, are only remembered by those who’d seen them or been told about them.

“An Audience with Elton John” was aired on ITV in 1997, and the audience was packed with celebrities, including Boris Becker, Claudia Schiffer, David Copperfield, Ozzy Osbourne, and others. The documented scene originated from two rumours: that Elton John can write songs very quickly, and that he can write music to absolutely any text. Both rumours are said to have had a precedent in the 1970s, when he wrote a song to the text from a phonebook. He repeated the trick a few times afterwards, composing music on the spot to various texts.

This time Richard E. Grant handed him a leaflet to one of the kitchen appliances. The mastery of the composer is so stupendous that it does feel unbelievable, which registered in certain comments on YouTube. The problem, of course, is not in a simple fact of us living in the age of staged-up TV shows. The problem is in the sheer absense of anything similar. Now and again we hear about musical artists locking themselves up in a studio to conceive of a new album, which usually takes anything from six months to several years. Obviously, the time needed to conceive of an idea and to find the way to present it varies greatly from artist to artist, and there is no minimum timescale to be used as a limit.

And yet, in this video Elton John demonstrates something more than just his talents of a song-writer and performer. In a matter of seconds he chooses the style of music which makes the entire song a perfect parody on consumerist advertising. As I’m listening to it, I can vividly picture a TV advert, with mannerist ladies in purple skirt suits, with perms and fucsia lipstick, singing in the kitchen: “get to know all there is to know about your new oven before you begin preparing your own mouthwatering meals”.

Over to you now! And if you’ve seen this programme and have other fond memories to share, leave us a comment.

Women and Beauty in Art

There can hardly be too much praise for a YouTubist EggMan913 who created a stunning short video history of a female portraiture in Western art. Not only is this video a praise to the image of a Woman, it is also a deftly organised observation of the angles, postures and expressions throughout 500 years of Western painting. In the first 10 seconds you see a Russian icon melting into three consecutive portraits by Leonardo (A Head of a Young Woman (read about this famous sketch at Thais – Leonardo Pittore, both in English and Italian), Madonna with the Carnation, and Mona Lisa (La Gioconda)), changed by Raphael’s Portrait of a Lady with a Unicorn, which in turn melts into Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus.

Unfortunately, although the video is clearly subtitled ‘500 Years of Western Art’, some viewers still missed the point and expressed concerns that only portraits of white women were used. Let me stress once again that in this video we should look beyond a mere portrayal of a female beauty. We need to pay attention to how the faces of women from different epochs and countries, painted by many an outstanding artist, melt, transfuse into one another. Not attempting to minimise EggMan’s success, I would point out that this success was possible primarily because, as this video amply demonstrates, Western art throughout its entire history looked at a woman from more or less the same angles.

To illustrate the point, look at the first few images. On all of them a painter sits to the left of his model and looks up at her. All models have their heads turned, under a different angle, to their right. This striking similarity is enhanced if we bear in mind that these depictions come from the 12th, 15th and early 16th cc.

(The images, from left to right, clockwise: Archangel (Angel the Golden Locks) (Novgorod School, Russia, 2nd half of the 12th c.), Head of a Young Woman (Leonardo, 1506-1508 (?)), Madonna with the Carnation (Leonardo, c. 1475), and The Birth of Venus (Botticelli, c. 1485)).

Even only based on the portraits of European and predominantly white women, this video shows 500 years of a continuous evolution not only of the image of female beauty, but of the concept of Beauty, as well. With this video EggMan, consciously or not, plays a check on what we conceive of as beautiful. Although the majority of comments to this video are positive, some of them decry modern art for its deviation from what is perceived as a “classical” model of Beauty, evoked in the works of art prior to the 20th c. However, I dare say that the Russian icon that opens the video and Picasso’s Portrait of Françoise at the end are a very deft choice. For their schematism builds a barrier between the image and its model, thus inviting a viewer to look beyond the model’s physique. ‘Beautiful’ hence is not an external, but an inner quality of the model, and if there is anything that we should be indebted for to the 20th c. art is that it has gone every extra mile to make us see beautiful in something which doesn’t look such at the first glance.

Finally, even if this video doesn’t provoke you to any high-flown discourse on the subject of Beauty with your friends and colleagues, it can be treated as a short exam on your knowledge of the history of Western art. And, unless EggMann is already in the process of doing this, may we kindly ask him to make a film about men in Western art. This subject is no less beautiful, and the controversy that often surrounds it will only expand our perception of Beauty.

Links:

EggMan913 channel
University of Dayton (Madonna with the Carnation)
Thais – Arte & Natura (Leonardo’s sketch) – in English and Italian
Христианство в искусстве/Christianity in Art (Archangel) – in Russian, English, and German
John W MacDonald’s Blog (The Birth of Venus)

How Short Is “Shortly”?

How long does it normally take to get a reply from somebody? I noticed that companies and institutions usually stipulate the time when they are likely to respond to your letter. They sometimes go even further. For instance, when you’re applying for a job, your application guidelines occasionally state that if you don’t receive a positive reply by a certain date, your application has been unsuccessful.

Obviously, even when an exact period of time is stipulated, it doesn’t mean it will be observed. The situation can get more frustrating if you’re trying to get hold of somebody by phone or email, and the person is taking time, as if on purpose. I mean strictly formal communication in this case, and I had my fair share of chasing contacts. I’m not complaining, though: have I not done this, I would never learn, how persevering I could be. At any event, “short” could in fact be quite long.

I must admit, though, that today my understanding of “shortness” has really expanded. On Sunday I found a video of Oh Early on Ivan’s Day, which I subsequently wrote about. But – and this is a piece of news – I have created a YouTube account. I haven’t uploaded any original videos yet, but have added a lot to ‘My Favourites’ section, just to have them all in one place. So, I decided to post this video by Pesnyary. A little form has opened, I wrote a short blog post, clicked on the button, and YouTube said:

‘Your post will be published shortly’.

I went into my blog’s interface because I wanted to add tags to the post. In fifteen minutes or so there was no post. I thought I did something wrong, so I returned to the video and posted it once again, this time without text. In the next half an hour there were no posts. Somewhat disheartened, I decided to upload an audiofile, which led me to creating an Odeo account. I was slightly concerned that those two posts could still appear on the blog, but Sunday saw none of them.

Neither did Monday.

And not even Tuesday.

Following some strange feeling today in the morning, I decided to check my email before I went to work. And there they were, two email updates from my blog. Predictably, on the blog there were not one, but three posts about Pesnyary‘s song. I deleted those that were no longer relevant.

So, let’s see: it took YouTube nearly three days to publish a post. Given the fact that they didn’t stipulate the time, in which they were going to do it, three days is nothing, really. But it questions the notion of “online real-time publishing” that the web offers to those who use it.

From Doing Radio to Loving Soul (‘Yester-Me, Yester-You, Yester-Day’ by Stevie Wonder)

I know this will probably sound totally surreal – but I wasn’t interested in soul music until I went on a placement at the BBC GMR back in February 2005. Yes, I heard names like Aretha Franklin, Al Green, Stevie Wonder etc, and I even heard their songs. Yet for whatever reason it was, I was never interested in this musical style.

Then I went on this placement, which was the first time I had anything to do with the radio. I was a broadcast assistant on The Phil Wood Show, and two of my regular duties prior to the on-air time included doing questions for ‘The Dice Is Right’ and doing a one-minute musical intro to the programme. The first routine I loathed because too many questions would be crossed out by my producer as “too hard”, and then I would be twisting my brain thinking of other, easier, questions.

The second routine I loved. In fact, it wasn’t the routine – it was a joy. Our SBJ would tick four songs from the playlist, from which I would need to pick four fragments up to 20-25 secs each, and mix them. Before then I’d never done sound editing, but this is one of the things I will forever enjoy about the time on this placement. Although I was a total novice in the radio, I wasn’t treated like one. The attitude at the BBC reminded me of the Dean of my faculty at the Moscow State University who’s been calling us ‘colleagues’ from day one, despite the fact that each of us would need to work like horse to live up to his address, for Prof Sergei P. Karpov is a world-known and outstanding scholar.

But it wasn’t just the feeling of responsibility that I enjoyed. It was music. Tracks varied from Neil Diamond (whose name told me nothing at that stage, to be honest) to 10 CC, a Manchester band, whose CD I bought ages ago in Moscow and loved it, loved it, loved it!

And I think I understand it well when people tell me that my enthusiasm for the things I like shines throughout this blog. I only hope it is as contagious to my readers, as Mike Shaft’s enthusiasm for Al Green was to me. I think on that day he’d just received Green’s new album, and he played the track All the Time. I was doing the back-up recording on the computer at home, and thankfully, I am still able to listen both to Green’s song and to Mike Shaft’s waxing lyrical about it.

When I went off the placement, I continued listening to soul music. There’s still a plenty to learn, and of course I’ll never know about it as much, as Mike does, but… thanks a lot for opening up my horizons, Mike!

So, one of the songs I’d taken away with me from that first month at the BBC Manchester and my first month on the radio was Stevie Wonder’s Yester-Me, Yester-You, Yester-Day. I’ve just found this live performance on YouTube, which is different from the studio version the BBC Radio Manchester has got on its playlist. But it is perhaps in this version that Stevie Wonder’s wonderful, genuine talent as a singer and performer shines in full splendour.

Enjoy! And thanks to a YouTubist!

YouTube Tag

As I am still new to the world of creating and sharing the media online, I am very puzzled at one thing about YouTube. I know some videos are disabled for embedding, with which I have got no issue. There were many more videos that have got no restrictions re their use, some of which appeared on this blog. By the time I found them, the majority of clips have already been on YouTube for several months, which means to me that whoever of the artists were against the use of their work could take action. Thanks to the pervasive quality of interactive media, word travels so quickly these days that even if the artist is a recluse, they would’ve known that their clips are being uploaded and watched online. Instead it’s only now (in the last few weeks) that those clips have begun to disappear – often together with the users who uploaded them.

I cannot fathom the situation, especially because the copies of those clips still exist on YouTube, in different accounts, of a much poorer quality, and are even aggregated on Google Videos. If you google “lion hug” on Google Videos, you’ll come into about 5 pages of results, yet the video on my blog can no longer be watched.

Needless to say, this not only jeopardises the work of people like me who try to find interesting content, bring it to other people, and get them interested in it. This also puts to question the opportunities and the true beauty of sharing the media online. For, even if you haven’t breached anyone’s copyright, another party may have done so, and when they’re *framed*, you’re facing the unpleasant task of discovering the fact that the videos, which you waxed lyrical about and really hoped that people would be glad to see, are now extinct. I am especially concerned because most of the videos that “are no longer available”, to quote YouTube, belong to the era, from which we could all draw a lot of inspiration. I mentioned somewhere that one of my poems was inspired by Polnareff’s Kama Sutra, which, notwithstanding a provoking title, is a very philosophical song. I didn’t blog it anywhere, although I copied a link to the song on the Russian site where the poem is published. Yesterday I found out that the video under that link ceased to exist.

I know on Flickr you can deny visitors to copy your photos, or even to view them in a bigger size. If necessary, this can surely be done on YouTube, to avoid some enthusiastic bloggers uploading the content to their blogs to talk about the great artists of the past. Like I said, I’ve got no issue with not being able to embed a video, although I am sure this facilitates the process of consumption of information. But it’s been truly strange to see so many of my favourite videos to have vanished, together with those who brought them – and I only blogged about a few, there were many, many more! Suspiciously, this also happened around the time when YouTube and Google have merged, whereby the question rises, as to whether the merge and the disappearance of some accounts are connected in any way.

All in all, for me and my readers it means that some (quite a lot, to be fair) videos, tagged under ‘YouTube’, “are no longer available”. So, I wanted to apologise for this, those who saw them working obviously know that once upon a time those videos were streaming indeed. I sincerely hope that those clips that still stream will continue to do so. But if (when) one of them becomes extinct, we will all know the reason.

I searched YouTube today, oh boy…

This is the Beatles’ Shakespearean skit made in 1964 for the British television. I have had no idea about it until today when I found this video on YouTube, and I am now ever so thankful to debsue, who’d posted it. In two words, it’s incredible and unbelievably talented – as anything that the Fab Four had done. Oh, and – it’s hilarious! Ironically, though, knowing what had become of them by the 1970s, one has to utter:

…never was a story of more woe

Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.

Trains and Lions

First of all, my story of (mis)using trains continues this year. Yesterday I was going to Warrington from Manchester Piccadilly. I was going to take 12.07 train to Liverpool. I was on the platform 14 at 12.02. A train was getting ready to depart. The board listed stops for the train.

In all five minutes, from 12.02 to 12.07, it never occurred to me that I was standing right by my train. Only when the train has disappeared and I heard the announcement of the train to Blackpool and saw a change on the timeboard, only then did I realise that I have just missed my train to Liverpool.

I’ll be going to London again at the end of this month. I won’t be surprised if I end up in Glasgow.

In fact, when yesterday I was checking train times on Nationalrail.co.uk, the system didn’t reply to my query straight away, claiming a mistake. There could be several reasons for a mistake, including this one:

…you may be looking for an unexisting destination, e.g. London to Birmingham via Glasgow…

Anyway, my heart warmed when I saw this ITN video of a hugging lion. I think it’s a good proof of the animals being able to 1) think, 2) be human (almost). If anybody puts this video up on YouTube, please let me know. We all need that lion hug. 🙂

As a matter of fact – this is just a piece of professional knowledge, nothing else – Gerald of Wales, a 12th c. chronicler, in The History and Topography of Ireland mentions a story of a lion falling in (and reportedly making) love with a lady. He claims to have seen that in Paris. Unfortunately, Gerald has got a very prudish take on this story, maintaining the impossibility of such behaviour. Well, as we see from the video, this ‘beastly love’ was probably nothing more, but an affectionate hug.

Update. Thanks to Craig who has heard my plea to find the ‘lion hug’ video on YouTube… and here it is! Thank you, Craig! And thank you to the rescuer, we all commend you!

Mood: *purr*

In the Mood for a New Year

One of the biggest differences between England and Russia is the length of Xmas-New Year break. In England, the break has finished today. In Russia, people are relaxing (to a different extent) from December 30 until January 8.

So I thought I’d put up this video that I came across a couple of months ago, and hopefully it’ll put you in the mood for work. Thanks to kroneage, although, as he tells us, it’s not his dog, nor his video. Well, sorry, Kyle, but you’re my source on this occasion, so I’m linking to you. I don’t think you’d mind. ;-))