With contemporary music, you automatically get connected. It connects you to the emotion of the characters.
What people don't understand is that my dad isn't up on the contemporary music scene. He's been a legend for decades and he doesn't know what's going on right now, and he doesn't need to.
I've not been an admirer of contemporary music since punk rock went off the boil in 1977, but once a year I'll listen to 'Spiral Scratch' by the Buzzcocks, or 'Hippy Hippy Shake' by the Swinging Blue Jeans. Otherwise, I can put up with Chopin or shakuhachi flute in the background.
You know, I listen to contemporary music all the time.
There is a kind of adventure- and risk-seeking audience in classical contemporary music that is really empowering and part of what draws me to it. The people that come to these concerts are open-minded and curious.
My mother was a classical pianist and my stepfather was an industrialist who was passionate about composing contemporary music.
I feel that contemporary music, with very few exceptions, is missing the voice. You see an award show, you see a hundred extras on set dancing and special effects, and you don't see that solo voice that was the trademark of Adele. It's no accident that it was her album that ended up selling 27 million copies worldwide.
Musical composition, about which I know little, is a complicated art, and some contemporary music may be the equivalent of a complex abstract painting.
These wealthy people were very interested in contemporary music. They wanted to help diffuse it and get it to be known to other people.
Then, when the Depression came, all of this changed completely. Since that time, the entire public is of a very different sort and there was not so much support for contemporary music in a direct way.
