thirteen ways

As a kid I was obsessed with awards ceremonies. I would stay up until after midnight in Brisbane, Australia, watching delayed broadcasts of the Golden Globes, the Oscars and the Emmys. I bought VHS tapes of edited highlights from old awards nights, and on the day following each ceremony would buy every newspaper to read the coverage.

Did I admire the filmmakers, actors and editors? Did I enjoy watching talented artists justly rewarded for their work? 

No.

I loved watching the stars. Stars on the red carpet; stars badly delivering poorly written jokes; stars trying out their poker faces upon not winning an Oscar.

Later, I became obsessed with classical music. And I discovered that star-loving doesn’t belong just to popular music and movies. First there were the wacky modern music guys: Boulez, Ligeti, Stockhausen, Ferneyhough. I pored over their hulking, unintelligible, stunningly beautiful scores; I never left the house without a copy of Boulez’s tonality-hating, opera-house-blowing-up “Orientations”; I burned effigies of Shostakovich.

Next came the conductors: Gardiner, Abbado, Fuertwangler, Klemperer, Horenstein. I obsessed over the minutiae of their lives; I bought five different recordings of Fuertwangler conducting Beethoven’s fifth symphony; I trawled back-issues of Gramophone magazines, gawking at photos of “Otto on the beach” or “Claudio hanging with his peeps” as if I were flipping through a copy of National Enquirer while waiting in line at the grocery store.

In 2006, while working for the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, I came upon an already hugely popular blog by Alex Ross, the classical music critic at the New Yorker. I found his writing clear, concise but also poetic; the way that he heard music felt very familiar to me; he expressed complex thoughts and feelings such that they communicated to a very broad audience. His style quickly became my touchstone for quality music writing, and his example has greatly influenced the way that I think, write and speak about this weird and confusing thing that 8bb does.

In short: he is a “star”.

And tomorrow I get to meet him.