My good friend Ryan Whitney aka ‘Professor Teafruitbat’ (tea fruit bat) displays his great talent on classical piano for us.
Ryan has been one of my longest-lasting friends, having met in Seattle when I lived there. He is a true European classicist. His library is filled with first editions of European classic philosophy and history and general literatures. His musical instruments are one-of-a-kind collections that make the interpretations of the music he plays that much more beautiful.
Ryan’s interest in classical music, however, are not the typical mainstream ways of classicism. Even as most European and US American cultures have been in the process of forgetting western classical music, within the preservation of the classical genre, there is a tendency to pay attention to the ‘more popular and well-known’ such as Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin and others. Ryan plays Chopin beautifully, as Chopin is one of my favorite classical composers. So I find Chopin pieces and who I think are the best interpretors of Chopin. I love my friend Ryan’s interpretations usually. Ryan plays some pieces of the main composers such as Bach and Chopin and others. But his focus is on the lesser know. Alexander Scriabin and Sergei Liapunov are amongst his favorites to interpret with his playing.
I feel that it is important that all of us do not just pay attention to the most popular. The most popular of anything is also a field in which control factors come into play. Our minds become less diverse and accepting in the course of paying attention to only the popular. Resistance within resistance. Resisting popular classical music with listening to the lesser known, does not make the more popular classical composers evil or bad or blah. Include. Feel, enjoy.
His YouTube link is here: http://www.youtube.com/user/teafruitbat or click on ‘teafruitbat’ in the Music links list to the right.
Here Ryan plays for us Alexander Scriabin: Poème Op. 69 No. 1
AI NO KO 