{"id":2564,"date":"2011-09-29T14:38:08","date_gmt":"2011-09-29T18:38:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/?p=2564"},"modified":"2011-10-20T23:28:22","modified_gmt":"2011-10-21T03:28:22","slug":"play-it-again-nige","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/?p=2564","title":{"rendered":"Play it again, Nige"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>by Keith Clarke <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Having ditched EMI after 15 years, demon fiddler Nigel Kennedy is making a splash with his new label, Sony Classical, his first disc re-exploring Vivaldi\u2019s Four Seasons, complete with improvisation, progressive rock, female vocals. Oh, and drums. As he gracefully explained to The Scotsman: &#8220;With Vivaldi I always think I f***ing own this music, but when I realised I was going to be touring it again, I had to do something new with it. I couldn&#8217;t do the same shit as when I done the last album.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The something new includes an encore, &#8220;It&#8217;s Plucking Elemental,&#8221;  sung by Kennedy, who introduces it with a belch.<\/p>\n<p>It will all probably fan the flames of fundamentalist ire, although even die-hard traditionalists should have become inured to Nige\u2019s wilder excesses by now.<\/p>\n<p>Those of us who are long enough in the tooth to remember the clean-cut young middle-class boy who first appeared as Nigel Kennedy, with a neat short-back-and-sides and impeccable vowels, may have smiled at the in-yer-face wild boy that subsequently emerged. Ten years ago, he was upsetting then Proms chief Sir John Drummond with his plans to play the Berg Violin Concerto wearing a black cloak and Dracula make-up.<\/p>\n<p>Whatever the silliness, and however much his manufactured street-kid accent grates, the one thing that Kennedy has to do to shut up all the tut-tutters is pick up the violin. He would be easy to dismiss as a style-before-substance also-ran if it were not for the fact that he still plays the violin as if his life depended on it. He could charm the pants off a dowager with a gypsy dance, bring tears to the eyes of a statue with a Bach partita. So forgive me if I don\u2019t join in the chorus of disapproval.<\/p>\n<div id=\"wp_fb_like_button\" style=\"margin:5px 0;float:none;height:34px;\"><script src=\"http:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/all.js#xfbml=1\"><\/script><fb:like href=\"https:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/?p=2564\" send=\"false\" layout=\"standard\" width=\"450\" show_faces=\"false\" font=\"arial\" action=\"like\" colorscheme=\"light\"><\/fb:like><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Keith Clarke Having ditched EMI after 15 years, demon fiddler Nigel Kennedy is making a splash with his new label, Sony Classical, his first disc re-exploring Vivaldi\u2019s Four Seasons, complete with improvisation, progressive rock, female vocals. Oh, and drums. As he gracefully explained to The Scotsman: &#8220;With Vivaldi I always think I f***ing own [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2564"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2564"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2564\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3039,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2564\/revisions\/3039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}