“The Royal Scottish National Orchestra launched two days of workshops yesterday, with a ‘noise team’ aiming to work out ways of playing orchestral music safely. While deafening music is usually associated with the thundering basslines and power chords of rock, the classical world has been stirred into action by European regulations limiting the noise to which musicians can be exposed. There has been rising concern in the UK over the potential damage to musicians’ health from sound and stress in the workplace.”
Tag: 04.30.04
Shouting In Four-Part Harmony
The chief cultural export of the Finnish town of Oulu is “the Shouting Men’s Choir, which is exactly what it sounds like: 30 men of Oulu in black suits, shouting in harmony. You don’t get that sort of thing down in Geelong, or in Helsinki, for that matter. It is a product of long nights in a town with little to do, a northern sense of humor that revels in the absurd, a high city count in eccentrics, and a lot of vodka.”