Word: balliett
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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DIED. Whitney Balliett, 80, dean of jazz criticism, mostly for the New Yorker, whose vivid, sensual and impressionistic writing on the exploding medium mirrored the exuberance and cadence of the music itself; in New York City. His prose made palpable the styles and physicality of performers like drummer "Big Sid" Catlett (whose "huge hands ... reduced the drumsticks to pencils") and trumpeter "Doc" Cheatham (whose solos were "a succession of lines, steps, curves, parabolas, angles and elevations"). Defining his role as appreciative witness as opposed to stern judge, he and writer Nat Hentoff in 1957 put together TV's The Sound...
...Classical music concerts now are basically like museums,” Balliett says. Since most people listening already have some idea of what Beethoven’s 5th Symphony “should” sound like, the performance becomes about the interpretation, not the piece itself...
People who aren’t familiar with the technical aspects of classical music can’t quite engage on that level, Balliett says, because all competent orchestras playing a given piece will sound roughly the same to the untrained...
Almost a third of every graduating class has been in some way involved in a classical music group in high school, Yannatos says, and it’s the other two thirds don’t know anything. Those are the ones that Balliett and his cohorts are trying so hard to win over...
...That’s the unique thing about a college orchestra,” Balliett says. “At a conservatory, it’s just part of your life, and you get kind of blasé about...