Art and music

Subject: Art and music
From: Roger the Skiffler
Date: 17 Jan 16 - 04:24 AM

These days, at least in the UK, aspiring popular musicians go to Brit school and music colleges. In the 50s and 60s many of them went to art colleges where they formed bands and although some returned to art as a pastime later, music became their career. I wonder if the reverse is true. Are there any famous artists who went to music school/college? The art school background certainly helped acts where presentation and costumes were important (to detract attention from lack of musical content the cynics might say).
Just sayin...

RtS

Subject: RE: Art and music
From: Will Fly
Date: 17 Jan 16 - 04:56 AM

I knew (and still know) one or two of the art college musos from the Bonzos and the Whoopee Band - all excellent musicians underneath the fun and frolic. One of them - saxophonist Jim Chambers - lives near me and plays jazz regularly.

I can't think of any artists who had a college music education - but I'm sure someone will be able to!

Subject: RE: Art and music
From: keberoxu
Date: 17 Jan 16 - 05:22 PM

This example is from Chile, not the UK, but may be pertinent.

The group Inti-Illimani was founded largely by engineering students at university, in the city of Santiago. One of these students, Horacio Duran, was dating a girl who had a little brother, Horacio Salinas. Through Duran, Horacio Salinas met the other engineering students, like Ecuador native Max Berru, who were interested in music and songwriting. Salinas was an avid music student and it was time for him to pursue post-graduate education. As Salinas tells in his book, La Cancion en el Sombrero, he enrolled and attempted to major in engineering because his friends were in it. But one day he showed up at the classroom and this one professor hollered at him (this is all in Spanish), "What the heck are you doing here!" When Salinas recovered a little, the professor went on to say that Salinas belonged in music school and not in engineering school, and he ought to get the heck out of there and go study music where he belonged!

Horacio Salinas took the professor's directions and majored in music instead. Thus he became the only early-era Inti-Illimani member with formal academic credentials in music. Of course he continued to be friends with the engineering students, and although Salinas put up some resistance, Duran persisted in getting Salinas to join him, Berru, Jorge Coulon, and some lesser-known names -- Altamirano, Yanez, Perez d'Arce, and others -- in their Nueva Cancion - performing group.

In 2007, Inti-Illimani will have been going -- together, or split into disputing groups -- for fifty years. Salinas, during that time, has brought in other members who had academic credentials in music, such as the Venezuelan luthier Jorge Ball who studied instrument-making in Cremona during the years of exile in Italy. But for Nueva Cancion in Chile, it seems that the engineering student body was for them what art schools were for the U.K.

Subject: RE: Art and music
From: GUEST
Date: 17 Jan 16 - 06:35 PM

Chris Wood, studied classical at university.
Rachel McShane (Bellowhead) Dan Walsh and one of the Nothanks... all graduates of the folk degree at Newcastle university

Subject: RE: Art and music
From: GUEST,Not Hanks?
Date: 18 Jan 16 - 08:33 AM

Sorry to diverge, but I am curous about Nothanks. What was that? Not the card game, not the anti-Obama group, I hope!

Subject: RE: Art and music
From: Jack Campin
Date: 18 Jan 16 - 05:22 PM

Bob Dylan is pretty good as a painter. In the same league as Hitler. Think how much better a place the world would have been if both of them had got enough recognition to stick to the day job.