As classical musicians, how often do we find ourselves limiting our music listening to classical music? Yes, many of us listen predominately to “classical music” pieces that we are currently studying or teaching to perhaps to find comparisons between interpretations or just, heaven forbid, enjoy listening to! And that’s all great- but I, for one, have found that listening to jazz or rock or blues or country or bluegrass or world music and fusions of all the above can be incredibly rewarding- not just simply for enjoyment but to help us feel classical music even more deeply and perhaps in a more natural or fundamental way.
We spend so much time as classical music students analyzing and breaking down rhythms mathematically, understanding phraseology, analyzing harmonic structure and understanding music theory, etc.- not to mention spending our time working to become highly skilled instrumentalists and singers. While all that training is certainly extremely critical in becoming a highly skilled, well respected and knowledgable musician, I think experiencing other genres of music can meaningfully affect the way we naturally feel a pulse, or hear bass lines, or sing/play phrases in works of Bach or Brahms all the way to any composers writing today.
This is certainly not to say that all non-classical musicians only play by feel-quite the contrary! The great jazz (and jazz fusion) artists are very often extremely well trained as classical artists- but the natural essence of their genre informs their more “natural” approach to “feeling it”. We, as classical musicians can definitely also get that “feel” by enjoying and expanding our genre play lists.
Happy listening! 🙂
