Auguste Flaubert wrote a rapt description of a striptease performed for him by a dancer whose musicians were blindfolded.
People were going, 'My God! It's a pregnant child!'" Fast-forward 29 years, and Björk is an international star – and Iceland has been transformed from an isolated community whose musicians were ignored by the rest of the world into an internationally renowned, ultra-hip musical powerhouse, its output far above that expected of a country with a population (328,000) the size of Leicester's.
One of the candidates being considered for the post is Erin Keefe, the concertmaster of the Minnesota Orchestra, whose musicians have been locked out for more than a year in a bitter labor dispute that cost them their music director, Osmo Vanska, who resigned from his post there last month.
How dare a white band hit the jackpot by imitating a community whose own musicians were still largely stuck in apartheid-created slums?
Onesheet also happens to be founded by Brendan Mulligan, the same guy who built ArtistData, whose dashboard for musicians was acquired by Sonicbids in 2010.
And members of Heartbeat, a Jerusalem band whose musicians, ages 17 to 21, are Israelis and Palestinians, talk about their conviction that music can lead to understanding and peace.
And it served its purpose: he told me she was a rich, Waspy American, whose husband, a musician, was in prison in Thailand on a drug charge.
I derive most of my inspiration from musicians whose ideas are not fully formed, dialogues I feel I can follow up on.
Lawton's police procedural featuring Inspector Frederick Troy of Scotland Yard moves seamlessly from Vienna and Auschwitz to the deserts of New Mexico, and presents a harrowing account of two musicians whose lives are shattered by the Anschluss.
Yet there were also musicians whose aspirations are decidedly more underground, like the young psychedelic die-hards Outer Minds, a Chicago band merging Jefferson Airplane harmonies with garage-rock organ, and Föllakzoid, a Chilean band that played pulsing, eruptive, drone-centered jams.
