When it comes to encores, most musi­cians like to slate in a guar­an­teed crowd­pleas­er to send the audi­ence out on a high. Con­ven­tion­al wis­dom holds that an encore should be short, and change the mood cre­at­ed by the piece pre­ced­ing it.

Clas­si­cal gui­tarist Ana Vidović takes a dif­fer­ent approach.

For the last few years, she has con­clud­ed most con­certs by tak­ing audi­ence sug­ges­tions for the piece that will take it on home, view­ing it as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to make an extra con­nec­tion with fans:

It’s like a gift to me, also… some­times I get ner­vous because I don’t know what they will ask me to play and I may not have prac­ticed that par­tic­u­lar piece, but you know, what­ev­er! I think it’s just more of a ges­ture of appre­ci­a­tion. Of course there’s a con­nec­tion through music, but obvi­ous­ly we don’t speak to each oth­er.

The live audi­ence for her March 2021 appear­ance at San Francisco’s St. Mark’s Luther­an Church, above, was unusu­al­ly small due to COVID-19 pro­to­cols — just a few staffers from the Omni Foun­da­tion for the Per­form­ing Arts, an orga­ni­za­tion that brings the world’s finest acoustic gui­tarists to the San Fran­cis­co Bay Area.

Their applause was enthu­si­as­tic, helped by St. Mark’s excel­lent acoustics, but it feels thin in con­trast to the wall of sound that would greet a musi­cian of Vidović’s cal­iber when she per­forms to a packed house.

Despite the extreme­ly inti­mate set­ting, after her final piece, Noc­turno by fel­low Croa­t­ian Slavko Fumic, Vidović observed her own tra­di­tion, open­ing the floor to requests with a bit of a gig­gle:

If you have any encores, please feel free to ask. No, seri­ous­ly, requests! Hope­ful­ly I prac­ticed it … Richard?

One of her lis­ten­ers prompt­ly sug­gests 19th-cen­tu­ry Span­ish com­pos­er Isaac Albéniz’s Asturias, orig­i­nal­ly writ­ten for piano and now con­sid­ered one of the most essen­tial works in the clas­si­cal gui­tar reper­toire.

Although she has been known to polite­ly decline if she’s feel­ing too rusty, on this occa­sion, Vidović oblig­ed, and beau­ti­ful­ly so.

The com­plete pro­gram, which includes her cus­tom­ary healthy dose of her child­hood favorite Bach, is below.

Flute Par­ti­ta in A minor, BWV 1013

by Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach

(Tran­scribed by Val­ter Despalj)

-Alle­mande (3:06)

-Cor­rente (8:40)

Vio­lin Sonata No. 1, BWV 1001

by Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach

(arr. by Manuel Bar­rue­co)

-Ada­gio (12:44)

-Fuga (16:38)

-Sicil­iana (21:19)

-Presto (24:25)

Un Dia de Noviem­bre (27:36)

by Leo Brouw­er

Gran Sonata Eroica, Op. 150 (32:17)

by Mau­ro Giu­liani

Sonata in E major, K. 380, L. 23 (41:39)

Sonata in D minor K.1, L. 366 (46:28)

by Domeni­co Scar­lat­ti

Noc­turno (48:55)

by Slavko Fumic

Encore -

Asturias (53:49)

by Isaac Alb­eniz

San Fran­cis­co has now resumed live con­certs (includ­ing Vidović’s sched­uled return to St. Mark’s in April 2022), but the pan­dem­ic led Omni to expand its mis­sion, with vir­tu­al con­certs by top gui­tarists in var­i­ous loca­tions around the world, includ­ing Xue­fei Yang play­ing in Beijing’s 15th-Cen­tu­ry Zhizhu Tem­ple, Marko Topchii play­ing in Ukraine’s St. Andrew’s Cathe­dral, and David Rus­sell in the monastery of Celano­va, Spain. Watch a playlist of Omni On Loca­tion vir­tu­al events, includ­ing Q&As with per­form­ers here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Andrés Segovia, Father of Clas­si­cal Gui­tar, at the Alham­bra

Hear Musi­cians Play the Only Playable Stradi­var­ius Gui­tar in the World: The “Sabionari”

Watch Clas­si­cal Music Come to Life in Art­ful­ly Ani­mat­ed Scores: Stravin­sky, Debussy, Bach, Beethoven, Mozart & More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

To the seri­ous Bowie fan, the unre­leased self-cov­ers album Toy is not a secret. This col­lec­tion of reworked pre-“Space Odd­i­ty” songs record­ed with his tour­ing band from his 2000 Glas­ton­bury appear­ance was boot­legged a year after it was shelved in 2001. And it has been re-pressed ille­gal­ly near­ly every year since, some­times as Toy and some­times as The Lost Album. Some of the four­teen cuts popped up as b‑sides over the years, but the whole album? Maybe, fans thought…one day.

Well, that one day is here, as the first sin­gle “You’ve Got a Habit of Leav­ing” dropped yes­ter­day along with an announce­ment for a larg­er 90’s‑encompassing box set release com­ing soon after.
Accord­ing to Chris O’Leary’s Push­ing Ahead of the Dame web­page—which you real­ly should book­mark if you haven’t yet—the orig­i­nal ver­sion of “You’ve Got a Habit of Leav­ing” was writ­ten when he was only 18, and earned him a rep­ri­mand from none oth­er than The Who’s Pete Town­shend. ”You’re try­ing to write like me!” said Pete.

You can total­ly hear the Who influ­ence in the cho­rus of the ver­sion released by Davy Jones and the Low­er Third, which apes the fuzz-gui­tar freak-outs from “My Gen­er­a­tion.”

Three and a half decades and mul­ti­ple Bowie-incar­na­tions lat­er, and the for­mer Davy Jones decid­ed to look back at those hun­gry ear­ly years and redo some of his songs.

The plan in 2000 was to gath­er his band and record an album old-school, live, in stu­dio, with all the ener­gy and some­times slop­pi­ness that used to hap­pen in the 1960s, when most bands got at most two days to record their first albums. The first Bea­t­les album was record­ed this way, and look where that got them.

But this also afford­ed Bowie a chance to fix the weak­ness­es of those orig­i­nal songs in struc­ture and arrange­ment. Says O’Leary: “The new ver­sion is longer, far more elab­o­rate­ly pro­duced, far more pro­fes­sion­al­ly played and it still sounds like a Who knock-off, only a knock-off of The Who ca. 1999. That said, Bowie sings it well and it does final­ly rock out at the end.”

Bowie’s plan was to quick­ly fin­ish Toy and drop it unan­nounced as a sur­prise to his fans. This is com­mon­place now—Beyonce and Radio­head have done sim­i­lar secret releases—but EMI freaked out, balked, and their reac­tion ulti­mate­ly led Bowie to leave the label.

Oth­er songs reimag­ined on Toy include “Liza Jane,” Bowie’s debut sin­gle from 1964; “Sil­ly Boy Blue” from his first self-titled 1967 LP; and “The Lon­don Boys” a 1966 B‑side. The album also includes songs that didn’t make it on the bootlegs: “Kar­ma Man,” the orig­i­nal of which turned up on Bowie at the Beeb from a 1968 ses­sion, and “Can’t Help Think­ing About Me,” orig­i­nal­ly released in 1966.

The release will be part of Bril­liant Adven­ture (1992–2001) an 11-CD or 18-LP box set that will focus on Bowie’s third decade. Toy will be released sep­a­rate­ly as a 3‑CD release called Toy:Box, con­tain­ing “alter­nate mix­es and out­takes.” Bet­ter save your pen­nies!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

When David Bowie Launched His Own Inter­net Ser­vice Provider: The Rise and Fall of BowieNet (1998)

In 1999, David Bowie Pre­dicts the Good and Bad of the Inter­net: “We’re on the Cusp of Some­thing Exhil­a­rat­ing and Ter­ri­fy­ing”

How David Bowie Used William S. Bur­roughs’ Cut-Up Method to Write His Unfor­get­table Lyrics

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

In the sum­mer of 1981, the British band Queen was record­ing tracks for their tenth stu­dio album, Hot Space, at Moun­tain Stu­dios in Mon­treux, Switzer­land. As it hap­pened, David Bowie had sched­uled time at the same stu­dio to record the title song for the movie Cat Peo­ple. Before long, Bowie stopped by the Queen ses­sions and joined in. The orig­i­nal idea was that he would add back­up vocals on the song “Cool Cat.” “David came in one night and we were play­ing oth­er peo­ple’s songs for fun, just jam­ming,” says Queen drum­mer Roger Tay­lor in Mark Blake’s book Is This the Real Life?: The Untold Sto­ry of Fred­die Mer­cury and Queen. “In the end, David said, ‘This is stu­pid, why don’t we just write one?’ ”

And so began a marathon ses­sion of near­ly 24-hours–fueled, accord­ing to Blake, by wine and cocaine. Built around John Dea­con’s dis­tinc­tive bass line, the song was most­ly writ­ten by Mer­cury and Bowie. Blake describes the scene, begin­ning with the rec­ol­lec­tions of Queen’s gui­tarist:

‘We felt our way through a back­ing track all togeth­er as an ensem­ble,’ recalled Bri­an May. ‘When the back­ing track was done, David said, “Okay, let’s each of us go in the vocal booth and sing how we think the melody should go–just off the top of our heads–and we’ll com­pile a vocal out of that.” And that’s what we did.’ Some of these impro­vi­sa­tions, includ­ing Mer­cury’s mem­o­rable intro­duc­to­ry scat­ting vocal, would endure on the fin­ished track. Bowie also insist­ed that he and Mer­cury should­n’t hear what the oth­er had sung, swap­ping vers­es blind, which helped give the song its cut-and-paste feel.

“It was very hard,” said May in 2008, “because you already had four pre­co­cious boys and David, who was pre­co­cious enough for all of us. Pas­sions ran very high. I found it very hard because I got so lit­tle of my own way. But David had a real vision and he took over the song lyri­cal­ly.” The song was orig­i­nal­ly titled “Peo­ple on Streets,” but Bowie want­ed it changed to “Under Pres­sure.” When the time came to mix the song at Pow­er Sta­tion stu­dios in New York, Bowie insist­ed on being there. “It did­n’t go too well,” Blake quotes Queen’s engi­neer Rein­hold Mack as say­ing. “We spent all day and Bowie was like, ‘Do this, do that.’ In the end, I called Fred­die and said, ‘I need help here,’ so Fred came in as a medi­a­tor.” Mer­cury and Bowie argued fierce­ly over the final mix.

At one point Bowie threat­ened to block the release of the song, but it was issued to the pub­lic on Octo­ber 26, 1981 and even­tu­al­ly rose to num­ber one on the British charts. It was lat­er named the num­ber 31 song on VH1’s list of the 100 great­est songs of the 1980s. “ ‘Under Pres­sure’ is a sig­nif­i­cant song for us,” May said in 2008, “and that is because of David and its lyri­cal con­tent. I would have found that hard to admit in the old days, but I can admit it now.… But one day, I would love to sit down qui­et­ly on my own and re-mix it.”

After lis­ten­ing to the iso­lat­ed vocal track above, you can hear the offi­cial­ly released 1981 mix below:

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this clas­sic post appeared on our site in 2013.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Queen’s Stun­ning Live Aid Per­for­mance: 20 Min­utes Guar­an­teed to Give You Goose Bumps (July 13, 1985)

Watch David Bowie & Annie Lennox in Rehearsal, Singing “Under Pres­sure,” with Queen (1992)

Watch Queen’s “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody” Act­ed Out Lit­er­al­ly as a Short Crime Film

Vio­lin­ists don’t often make the news these days, but when one does, you can be rea­son­ably assured either that a musi­cal con­tro­ver­sy is afoot, or that the vio­lin­ist in ques­tion is Nigel Kennedy. This time, both of those are the case: Kennedy, as The Guardian’s Dalya Alberge reports, “has pulled out of a con­cert at the Roy­al Albert Hall with only days to go after accus­ing the radio sta­tion Clas­sic FM of pre­vent­ing him from per­form­ing a Jimi Hen­drix trib­ute.” At issue is his intent to per­form a ver­sion of Hen­drix’s “Lit­tle Wing,” but even with its “Celtic-sound­ing melody,” that com­po­si­tion was ulti­mate­ly deemed “not suit­able” for the audi­ence.

It seems that Clas­sic FM’s man­age­ment would have pre­ferred Vivaldi’s Four Sea­sons, of which Kennedy record­ed the world’s best-sell­ing ver­sion in 1989. That a clas­si­cal radio sta­tion famous for con­cen­trat­ing its pro­gram­ming on the “hits” and a clas­si­cal per­former famous for delib­er­ate­ly unortho­dox musi­cal turns would fail to see eye-to-eye should not, per­haps, come as a sur­prise.

But then, Kennedy has long dis­played a keen instinct for pub­lic­i­ty and a ten­den­cy to — well, one would say épa­ter les bour­geois, were Hen­drix not now regard­ed as so thor­ough­ly respectable in his own right. As Kennedy sees it, he was “one of the fore­most com­posers of the 20^th cen­tu­ry, along with Stravin­sky and Duke Elling­ton.”

The gui­tarist’s exalt­ed sta­tus rests, Kennedy argues, on his hav­ing “brought all types of music togeth­er.” Even in a song like “Pur­ple Haze” — which you can see Kennedy rein­ter­pret with the Pol­ish Cham­ber Orches­tra in 2005, and again at the 2015 Thanks Jim Fes­ti­val in Wro­claw — musi­col­o­gists hear traces of both the Amer­i­can blues and the Mixoly­di­an mode, along with such uncon­ven­tion­al-for-1967 touch­es as the dimin­ished-fifth melod­ic inter­val, long known as the “dia­bo­lus in musi­ca” and the E7♯9 chord, now known as the “Hen­drix chord.” Much of the song only uses two oth­er chords, mak­ing “Pur­ple Haze” the rare three-chord, under-three-minute rock hit that con­tains more than enough sub­stance to inspire an uncon­ven­tion­al­ly mind­ed clas­si­cal musi­cian. But then, try telling that to a pro­gram direc­tor.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Lost Record­ing of Pink Floyd Play­ing with Jazz Vio­lin­ist Stéphane Grap­pel­li on “Wish You Were Here”

Japan­ese Vio­lin­ist Cov­ers Eddie Van Halen’s “Erup­tion”: Met­al Meets Clas­si­cal Again

Watch Jimi Hendrix’s “Voodoo Chile” Per­formed on a Gayageum, a Tra­di­tion­al Kore­an Instru­ment

Jimi Hendrix’s “Voodoo Child” Shred­ded on the Ukulele

How Sci­ence Fic­tion Formed Jimi Hen­drix

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.