English translaion of the MoPo review

Original post is HERE A Fascinating, Troubling Violinist BERLINER MORGENPOST 02 MAY.2015 CLASSICAL REVIEW The Canadian Lara St. John performs at the Kammermusiksaal By Felix Stephan Lara St. John plays Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 in an arrangement created especially for her. One can hardly turn eye nor ear away from her. The Canadian is…

Mozart in the Cannibal Jungle

Some folks might remember that a while ago, Zachary Woolfe of The New York Times went to a young violinist’s concert at Le Poisson Rouge, panned it; loads of my colleagues on social media went around reposting the review, usually humblebragging (“Oooh, thank god this didn’t happen to me when I got a Times review!”);…

Rejoinder to the Washington Post reviews of Mozart in the Jungle

Comments on Occasional Factual Errors of the Washington Post’s two Reviews of the Amazon Series Mozart In the Jungle. Here are the complete WP articles: Critique # 1 and Critique # 2. Washington Post: “So it is remarkable to me that no one bothered to run the script by anybody who could point out its significant divergences from fact or,…

The making of Holiday Card 2013

From the 1700 (or so) folks who receive my Holiday Card in their non-virtual actual real physical mailbox each year, I generally get two reactions: “How cute!!” (meaning, of course, my baby dragon in his various get-ups) and: “Nice photoshop!” Someone who is so old-fashioned as to make a card, write in it, put it in an…

Rage Against the Machine

To all those who took the time to comment on my little Game of Thrones essays this spring, I thank you.  I regret to have had to stop making them public after the first few dozen, since some commenters who disagreed with me also seemed to have a serious problem with the fact that I…

If They Care, Shouldn’t We Listen?

 NOTE FROM LARA – This is an excellent essay on music, musicians and attitude by composer Kenji Bunch from a few months ago. Kenji does not (yet) have a blog and he posted this on Facebook – he was recently gracious enough to send me his “rant” in its entirety, and permission to post it here. Well worth…

Addendum to Game of Thrones

It’s been a fascinating week. Thanks everyone! The scale of the reaction to my recent post was unexpected and very interesting.  Prior to expounding on that, however, I must take a moment to admit that I made a mistake. In my Disgruntled Iggy video, I used the wrong soundtrack – I set it to one…

Lara Takes On HBO and Game of Thrones in an Open Letter

(NOTE to all the hardcore gamers out there: please read this before commenting: http://wp.me/pBqA1-4q) Dear HBO: I am a violinist and the owner of the Ancalagon record label. I excitedly looked forward to your Game of Thrones series in 2011 as I was awaiting the fifth book. I could hardly wait for either. As the season went on, I…

Variations on “Is That a Violin???”

Variations on “Is That a Violin????”  by Lara St John I have noticed, whilst travelling a few million miles hauling a violin, that carrying an oddly shaped case gives random folks a queer impetus to talk to you about what might be inside it. Some people love to talk about what they do. I, however,…