Here’s something I found in the July issue of Food and Wine magazine, a quote from chef Graham Elliot Bowles:
I’m inspired by artists who use a
limited palette, like painter Piet Mondrian and The White Stripes, two musicians who create an
incredible sound.
And the moral of this story? Maybe it’s
not so obvious. Or at least it’s not obvious in the classical music world. We
tend to think that classical music is serious musical art, and that because of
that, it has a very special status. Meanwhile, out in real life, people find
musical art all over the place, in pop music as well as classical. (Not to
mention jazz.) This is more than a casual observation–it’s an official fact,
certified by sociologists, who’ve shown that people in the arts audience are
now omnivores, interested in popular culture, too. (That’s even true of older
people in the arts audience, or so research has shown.)
So here’s a famous chef, making a casual remark about art he
likes–Mondrian and The White Stripes. How are we
classical music types going to talk to him, if we don’t have some ideas about The
White Stripes, too?