Nigel Kennedy, the biggest-selling violinist of all-time and one of the greats of modern classical music, has pulled out of a concert at London’s Royal Albert Hall with just days to go.
Why?
Because he isn’t being allowed to play music by Jimi Hendrix. The concert, Classic FM Live, takes place tomorrow and is to be hosted by Classic FM presenters Alexander Armstrong (he of Pointless fame) and Margherita Taylor. Kennedy had been scheduled to play Hendrix’s Little Wing, taken from the American rock icon’s 1967 album Axis: Bold As Love, and was to be joined in the performance by the Chineke! Orchestra, founded in 2015 to provide opportunities for black and ethnically diverse musicians. Unfortunately Hendrix, who died of a barbiturate overdose in 1970, has been deemed inappropriate for the Classic FM audience. They prefer Vivaldi to Voodoo Chile, apparently.
Vivaldi? Like the potatoes?
No, like the composer - Antonio Lucio Vivaldi, born in Venice in 1678 and the creator of that masterpiece of the Baroque era, The Four Seasons. Kennedy had a gargantuan hit with a 1989 recording of it (two million copies sold and counting). It was that piece he was asked to perform in place of Little Wings – and with a conductor too, which imposition he says even the world famous Berlin Philharmonic did not foist on him. He was also concerned that he wasn’t being given adequate rehearsal time. Even a musical prodigy has to put in the hours. Just ask Ed Sheeran.
What else is he saying?
He has taken to referring to Classic FM as ‘Jurassic FM’, so outdated does he view their attitude to music. In an interview with a London newspaper he has also accused the station of being “culturally prejudiced” for telling him Hendrix is “not suitable”, and essentially practising what he calls “musical segregation”. He continued: “If it was applied to people, it would be illegal. If that type of mentality is rampant in the arts, then we still haven’t fixed the problem of prejudice. This is much more serious than my feathers being a bit ruffled. Prejudice in music is completely dreadful. They’re effectively saying that Hendrix is all right in the Marquee Club, but not in the Albert Hall.”
Are his feathers ruffled?
They are, in part because he’s almost as big a fan of Jimi Hendrix as he is of Aston Villa FC, in whose claret and blue strip he once dressed himself and his orchestra for a performance at a Polish rock festival (complete with terrace chants). In 1993 he joined Eric Clapton, Pat Metheny and others to contribute to Stone Free: A Tribute To Jimi Hendrix, and in 1999 he released his own album of classical interpretations of Hendrix songs titled The Kennedy Experience. It includes Little Wing and Purple Haze, one of Hendrix’s best-known songs. And if you have ever experienced his improvised cadenza to Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in D Major, you may have detected a strongly Hendrixian flavour.
What do Classic FM say?
They haven’t commented on the brouhaha, though The Four Seasons is on the programme for tomorrow night's concert and will now be performed by Franco-Swiss sisters Camille and Julie Berthollet.
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