Mmmm, Without digging my Focus CD's out...Elspeth of Nottingham is a track on which the lute appears and Jan Akkerman ( The ex-Focus guitarist of that period ) released two solo albums that are in the main lute music, these are Tabernacle & Arunjuez, around 1972, 73 I think both excellent albums.
As for Stings album....errr how's about pretentious! I saw Sting on British TV launching it, Sting played a baroque lute, the other guy played a renaissance lute, sting said that he was the student and the other guy the master, if so why did sting have a baroque lute? I've had an 8 course for 5 weeks now and the transition from guitar to this is very challenging. I reckon sting was just posing, lets hope it didn't get " Tantric" whilst he was recording it :-) Sting is a poser though. Neil -----Original Message----- From: EUGENE BRAIG IV [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: 23 November 2006 22:32 To: lutelist Subject: [LUTE] Re: Sting! ----- Original Message ----- From: Bruno Fournier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Thursday, November 23, 2006 3:54 pm Subject: [LUTE] Re: Sting! > So on top of that, Sting cannot even ENUNCIATE in his own > language..... > as for the awakening the sleeping interest we can all gain for, I am > confident the lute community, which includes me, does not need Sting > to awake the sleeping interest.....I personally woke up in 1978, long > before any pop artist even had heard of the lute..... and frankly I > now have nightmares when I think of Sting singing Dowland... Man, I really don't understand this persistent vitriol. If you don't like it, don't buy it. I won't, but I'm still overjoyed Sting felt enough love for this music to record it. I'm certain a Police reunion album (or even another _Dream_of_the_Blue_Turtles_!) would have been much more profitable for him. Personally, I'm not fond of the way Rooley did many things, so I'm a cautious buyer of his recorded output too. Whether admitted or not, the lute is getting much more attention than it has in a while. Frankly, Sting has greater capacity to bring the attention of many more individuals to the lute than does Yasunori Imamura, Federico Marincola, or Paul Beier, e.g. What do I care? The lute gets lots more attention and there is still plenty out there to satiate my personal tastes for lute playing. The claim that any living lutenist discovered lute long before any "pop star" seems a little bold considering that the popular artists of ca. 1600 largely were playing lutes. Of today's pop stars, even Jethro Tull and Focus were using lutes on their commercial releases by 1972 and 1973 respectively. No, you didn't need Sting to discover the lute for you, but you still came to it through somebody else. I'm sincerely glad you came to it, and I don't necessarily care if I like the artist who introduced you to the sound or not. The bigger the pool of potential lutenists, the more likely it is to produce players I consider to be of quality. Whoever served as their introduction to the instrument isn't necessarily relevant. Please, let's hear about something you actually like. Best, Eugene To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
