Sunday, January 13, 2008

Susan Bradshaw

Susan Bradshaw isn't a musician with whom I've ever been familiar, so when I checked her name on the Net, I found that she had only died a couple of years ago, and like Richard Rodney Bennett, had been a student of Boulez. Like Bennett, she was no worshipper at the altar of modern music (such as that of Boulez), and she apparently had a good idea of what was true and what was false in the modern music scene. So it's with some delight that I quote this paragraph from her obituary:

She already possessed a critical attitude and a fine ability to distinguish the genuine from the false. An interminably repetitive piece by LaMonte Young was being hammered out at an avant-garde concert, when Susan's slender figure suddenly left the audience, climbed on the stage and, to general approval, dragged the performer off his piano stool.

From the Guardian obituary by Hugh Wood.

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