How does one get from a Korean jazz singer resident in France to a Korean artist resident in the UK via Britain’s best-selling quality daily newspaper?
There are many celebrity twitterers, but there is only one remotely famous person that I happen to “follow”: pianist Stephen Hough (@houghhough). I came across his Daily Telegraph blog and hence his twitter account via another Telegraph blogger, Sebastian Scotney of the London Jazz Blog who I mat at Nah Youn Sun’s gig at the Vortex last year. Hough is a brilliant concert pianist, whose career I’ve been following in real life since his Gramophone award-winning recording of Hummel’s piano concertos in 1987, and some of his written turns of phrase are as witty and elegant as his musical ones.
Why am I mentioning him now? Well, life seems to be full of tiny little happy coincidences. He recently tweeted about a blog post he wrote in the Telegraph: an elegy on the paintings of Korean ceramics by London-based Korean artist Anna Paik. I spotted some of Paik’s work at the London Art Fair last year and was impressed by its stillness.
Hough’s blog post spurred an interesting discussion about the appropriate music to listen to while contemplating Paik’s work, from Bach through to Morton Feldman. Well worth a read.
Links:
(HT: Colin Bartlett).