The Fredösphere

Michael Blowhard may be the most important composer working today.  This bold, uncompromising visionary refuses to traffic in notes of any kind; instead, he writes music...without music.  It's a daring answer to the challenge implicitly given by Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words:  Michael Blowhard's Words Without Songs.

I hesitate to single out any one paragraph by this emerging master, since they are all brilliant, but this passage I found unusually moving:

I've been an artsfreak since the late '60s and have been reading criticism since that time. Some bloggers strike me as being as articulate and slick as the pros -- Alan Sullivan, Jon Hastings, and Architecture and Morality's Corbusier, for example. Some other bloggers strike me as people who could be pros if they wanted to. If Fred Himebaugh (of the Fredosphere) were doing music criticism, he'd be my favorite music critic. John Massengale routinely gets off descriptions of places, buildings, and architectural controversies that are clearer, more vigorous, and more engaging than anything you'll find in the slick architecture magazines.

I've been pounding the music criticism beat for many years, and I thought I had seen it all.  Thank you, Michael, for bringing a tear of joy to this jaded critic's eye once again.

Labels: Composer, Culture