Nigel Kennedy goes for a US reboot
NewsThe British bad-boy violinist, 68 next week, has appointed ex-CAMI agent Doug Sheldon to revive his US career.
Sheldon writes:
Sheldon Artists is pleased to announce the addition of violinst Nigel Kennedy to its roster, for exclusive representation in North America.
Nigel Kennedy has long been acknowledged as one of the world’s leading violin virtuosos and he is probably the most important violinist Britain has ever produced.
He is a rare artist, capable of popularizing all types of sophisticated music without ever compromising its quality or artistic integrity. While he approaches music with great seriousness, for Kennedy, serious in music does not have to equal solemn.
No, thank you. Not back then, and certainly not now.
The sentence “he is probably the most important violinist Britain has ever produced” hit hard… How sad for Britain
It’s also nonsense, unless you measure importance by album sales alone.
As an artist is he really more important than Rachel Podger, Tasmin Little or Nicola Benedetti?
“…probably the most important violinist Britain has ever produced.” Hmmmm. I think Nige is fab. His playing is superb. His Sibelius and Elgar recordings are terrific, and benchmarks for me and many others. I don’t care about the image and Villa strip etc – fun eccentricities. But – this statement above is a little hyperbolic and might be contested? Offers? Fun to discuss, perhaps….?
This is great news for US music lovers. I urge you to look beyond the “bad boy” image and avail yourselves of every opportunity to hear an exceptional and inspirational musician.
As for Sheldon’s announcement, I would not use the term “virtuoso”: Kennedy’s insights are deeper than that term suggests. But I fully endorse Sheldon’s third paragraph.
Never grown up.
Can’t say that I subscribe to all that PR puffing, but there you go. Working with him was very definitely not the easiest or most rewarding
He looked and acted like a tit 40 years ago, and 40 years on he still looks and acts like a tit.
He comes from a serious background, and that faux-punk shtick just looks silly. Time he grew up.
What’s more depressing, that he’s looking for a reboot at the age of 68 or that he’s the most important product of Britain regarding violin playing….
Wossis new nime gonna be in vis “reboot”?
At 68, you are no longer a bad boy, you’re a senior citizen. He’s been out of sight, out of mind for so long, does he mean anything to the classical concert going public in the US anymore? I guess we shall see.
Who cares any more about a superannuated attention-seeking geriatric quasi-punk who can play the violon? His career foundered decades ago. There are dozens of exciting new stellar violinists who have appeared in that time – and quite a few old ones who are still doing well without having needed to resort to redesigning themselves as he did.
If this agency can bring him back to life, it will be the greatest miracle since Lazarus.
Lazarus had a better agent.
Quite a confusion of values. The idea that serious concert music is popularized by punk dressing and hip hairdo’s, is stooping down to the lowest level of thinking and very patronizing to youngsters, telling them: I disguise myself as belonging to your street gang and that makes my Beethoven palatable to your kind.
Also the implied thought is, that the usual concert performing dress code: modest, dignified, dark, is throwing-up an intimidating obstacle, as if ignorant youngsters think: ah, classical, I will have to see dark stiff clothes, that will be an extremely difficult experience to swallow.
The current trend in society of levelling-down everything everywhere to reach the greatest number of people, is populist capitalism in its purest form, and destructive for the art form, because at the end of the trajectory dawns the conclusion: ‘better to get rid of it altogether, like science, literature, whatever knowledge, and go back to the apes’.
I remember watching a TV interview with him when he was still a pupil at the Menuhin School. His accent was borderline cut-glass. The estuary-speak, cheeky Cockney image is completely artificial. Shame, as he didn’t need to do it.
Teenage rebellion is normally short lived for very good reasons – it’s not new, it quickly becomes boring and influences nobody.
We protest against adulthood untill we become it ourselves.