Allow me to set the scene. Last Thursday, violinist Anne Akiko Meyers paid the world-record price of $3,600,000 for a 1697 Stradivarius violin known as “The Molitor”. The instrument was sold online by Tarisio Auctions. Please note that the last thing yours truly bought on the interwebz was a $50 David Byrne print from the wonderful site 20×200. “The Molitor” is believed to have been owned by, wait for it, Napoleon. Yeah, that Napoleon. Bonaparte (comma) Napoleon.
In Bizarre News of Today, a friend forwarded me an e mail saying that Meyers would be performing on…you didn’t guess it…MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann at 8 ET/5 PT tonight. What the what???, perhaps you’re thinking? I asked her publicist Rebecca Davis what the Strad was going on, and she responded, “It all started with this news from last week. Keith got wind of it and was intrigued so tweeted it. We then had Anne tweet back telling him she’d be happy to play for him anytime and he took her up on it! No, they do not have musicians on the show often if ever, but they are jumping on the news of the record-setting sale and he wants to show the audience just what a 3.6 M violin sounds like.”
Here is the Twitter exchange, from Meyers’ feed:
…and from Olbermann’s Twitter feed:
To give you an idea of what Countdown with Keith Olbermann is usually about, here’s a screenshot of the video on the homepage:
Hmm. Perhaps Keith Olbermann was also responsible for the Mostly Mozart programming and the New York Philharmonic season highlights of 2009?
At 8pm tonight, I will be at a Sound of Music sing-a-long embarrassing myself and trying not to catch bedbugs, but if you watch or it ends up on YouTube tomorrow, report back! We here at Life’s a Pitch always support classical music on the TV, even when the circumstances originally confuse us.
Thanks Amanda! Anne and Keith had a terrific time tonight and he thanked her for classing up the show. Here it is:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/
It always strikes me that on the rare occasions a classical artist appears on television, the producers, hosts and crew are absolutely honored and delighted that the musician would take the time to appear. So, how do we somehow translate that into seeing these musicians as part of the regular mix of TV musical guests of all genres?
So a huge TV audience gets to see that a classical violinist paid three and a half million dollars for a violin. And that combats the “elitist” stereotype of classical music how, exactly?
What’s impressive to me is the personal wealth she apparently has in order to afford this instrument, assuming there isn’t any external financing involved. I guess I shouldn’t be so surprised at the earning power of classical superstars.