Simon Hewitt Jones - The Violin Blog

Apr

19

Back, But Not Gone

Filed Under Education, Travelblog | 

I thought I’d come home, post some videos of the Bethlehem concert, then maybe post a kind of ‘conclusion’ post about the process of cultural ‘engagement’. But things don’t really work out like that. You can’t just move on. Besides, I can’t upload the videos for another week or so because of a YouTube problem.

I have a feeling that once you engage with a place like Palestine, the relationship doesn’t really end. So expect more posts on music in the middle east in the future.

In the meantime I came back home and went straight to Birmingham for a recital with Daniel. It was preceded by some morning workshops at a referral unit in Birmingham, where we’d been before, and met with some success, despite an audience more challenging than I’ve ever known.

These are the Vicky Pollards of the UK, and they’re a tough crowd, because they’re starved of attention, and the way they demand it is through constant rudeness, interruptive behaviour, and disruption. Of course, what a performer needs to succeed is the audience’s attention. We succeeded with two out of three groups, and managed to engage productively with a third before it lapsed into “yeah but, no but” mode… you can give and enable as much as possible but music is rarely something that can be absorbed passively like a television programme. If someone’s not even open to the possibility of engaging, it’s difficult to interact.

We had a very tight schedule to get from the workshop to the recital, and unfortunately we hit a roadblock shortly before reaching the venue; a 5 minute journey turned into a 25 minute journey. Wracking our brains for excuses, I eventually decided to see what the most extravagant excuse I could get away with was, and settled on claiming we’d run into a dragon on the A406. Strangely, the promoter didn’t bat an eyelid. The show goes on.

dragon on road

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