How the Musicians Union plays a violin
NewsYou couldn’t make it up…. can no-one in that office play an instrument?
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From a brilliant FT column by mathematician Tim…
It is probably a stock photo, and the mistake is fairly easily missed. But it does look bad.
It’s the marketeer’s curse, stock images that tick all the boxes you want in terms of diversity and theme but has been posed in stupid ways by the photographer.
BBC Young Musician famously used one with a young black girl blowing into a saxophone that didn’t have a mouthpiece, and Classic FM just a few weeks ago put out a grade 1 theory quiz featuring incorrect notation. Just search on iStock for ‘musician’ to see the plethora of crap that they’re having to wade through.
I pity the poor marketing people at these sector orgs who don’t have the resources to commission their own photography and live in fear of this kind of situation, but it is always good practice to check in with someone who plays the instrument before publishing!
Well, Charlie Chaplin played a left-handed fiddle, didn’t he?
And so did Reinhard Goebel for a significant part of his career.
So is professor Terje Moe Hansen,who is a Lefthanded violinist, who teaches Violin in a Music college in Norway.
On top of being awkwardly posed, the picture is flipped. The flute is held with the left hand closer to the head joint, not the right. There are left-handed guitars and occasionally left-handed violins, but they’re really not common.
“On top of being awkwardly posed, the picture is flipped.”
It isn’t a flipped picture otherwise the map of Africa would be the wrong way round. They’re just holding the instruments badly.
Flute is being held wrongly as well!
At least no sign or (mercifully) the sound of the dreaded recorder!
Please don’t disrespect the recorder, there are quite a few players around who regularly get capacity audiences at major venues!
Not surprising, really. The MU has very little to do with music, and is far more concerned with perpetuating itself as an organization. I left it years ago, as did hundreds of others.
On the plus side, the guitarist seems to know what he’s doing, and he’s confident enough to be able to share a joke with the flautist at the same time. However, he’s just about to get a violin bow in his ear. 😮
I wondered whether the photo had been flipped, but the world map behind them looks right.
No the picture hasn’t been flip,the violin is being played, ie with the bow held with the Left hand,instead of the right hand as most violinist do,if it had been flip ,the guitar, the flute would have appeared visa versus.
It must be an extremely hushed passage; why else would the violinist be bowing three inches above the end of the fingerboard?
He’s not even playing the guitar with his teeth. Outrageous