Cool

Marc Geelhoed, music critic for Time Out Chicago magazine and the proprietor of the blog Deceptively Simple, posts about how an art critic at the Chicago Tribune had objected to Mr. Geelhoed's use of the word "cool" in a review of a piano concerto by Marc-Andre Dalbavie:

the article[. . .]closed with the sentence, "Oh, yeah—and the concerto sounds cool, too." This was after a fairly detailed description of how Dalbavie alters the patterns that comprise the work and how he ties his style to [medieval composers] Leonin and Perotin.

This seems perfectly resonable to me. It's important for concert music to expand its audience (given the pay for play world we inhabit) and using language that is understood by the public-at-large is a perfectly legitimate way to communicate. I don't see how it cheapens our art in the least.

I'm working on a review of two recent Elliott Carter discs for Sequenza 21, and I'm happy to say that, while my personal jury is still out on a couple of the pieces/performances, the Boston Concerto is actually very cool, and Dialogues (piano and orchestra) is bitchin'.