🎹 sharon su

@doodlyroses.com

4223 Followers 159 Following

Classical pianist, recording artist, writer | she/her Website: sharonsu.com Biweekly newsletter: https://buttondown.com/doodlyroses One of the “Three Musketeers of classical Bluesky” — @violanorth.bsky.social

Screenshot with text reading "Meet ZoomMate, Your AI teammate that searches, orchestrates, and completes work on your behalf"
Photo of a miniature white bust of composer Fanny Hensel
Screenshot of a comment in radio station Classical California's live chat, in which a user named RevSteve says "As a person with little musical ability and training, I do not pay attention to key. I will let the musicians deal with it."
Image showing the armed services edition of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith, where text along the bottom says “this is the complete book—not a digest”
Closeup of the “e” on the cover, in which the horizontal bar of the e lies right on the border between purple and white.
Photo of my hand holding sheet music for Grazyna Bacewicz’ Sonata No. 2 for piano. The cover is full bleed purple with a wide white margin at the top, the name “bacewicz” in lower case is typeset in a gorgeous rounded serif typeface across the purple-white border, and text with the name of the piece in multiple languages is set in a clean sans-serif whose rounded ends echo the serif composer name, separated by clean repeated lines.
A sidewalk chalkboard for a restaurant that originally said “Knicks in four baby!” where, after the loss on Monday (thanks to a high profile guest who ruined the vibe), the word “four” is crossed out and “five” is written in smaller text.
Pretty soon it seemed Vanilla Ice was the only one left. He said in an interview with The New York Times this week it was a shame everyone couldn't stop, collaborate and listen.
Chan said she has often faced resistance from orchestral musicians when they first meet her. She stands just over 5-foot-1, by her own account, and looks younger than her age, so musicians have a tendency not to take her completely seriously on first encounter. "But then I say, 'OK, let's go, and the whispers stop," she said, with a smile. "They start to say, 'Oh, my God, she's serious." [Photo of Elim Chan in action, in which, I’m not gonna lie, she totally looks like a high schooler] Conductor Elim Chan, 39, has been named the new music director of the San Francisco Symphony, replacing Esa-Pekka Salonen after a two-year search.
Jean Valjean's father, Hugo explains, was also named Jean Valjean, and the "Valjean" likely came from people saying "Voila Jean!" ("There's Jean!") when they saw him, which got shortened over time into "Valjean," meaning that Valjean's dad's name was basically French "John There's John."
So to recap, this is the Valjean family: Dad: Jean Valjean Mom: Jeanne Valjean Daughter: Jeanne Valjean Son: Jean Valjean How is this considered a serious book.
Headline that says “Study Reveals Musicians Don’t Experience Pain Like the Rest of Us”
What happened there is disputed. Quasha told me the orchestra's players committee, an administrative body representing the musicians, invited her to work with them. The orchestra denies this, saying she asked if she could observe rehearsals. "It is a common practice that, upon request, conducting students are permitted to observe the orchestra's rehearsals from time to time," a representative for the Berlin Philharmonic said. Quasha appeared to be under the impression that she was being groomed for the Berlin Philharmonic music directorship-a post that has eluded some of the world's best conductors. "I presume that they want to find someone to replace their chief conductor when he leaves in about ten years and wanted to shape the person themselves versus having to find someone," she told me. "And they wanted someone that had a business background, not a music background
Screenshot of an email from the Steinway Society in which the standard copy touting an artist’s credentials has been replaced with a list of bullet points headed with emoji in the exact style and format that ChatGPT typically uses. What sets her apart: 3 An internationally celebrated career • First Prize winner at the Concours Géza Anda • Performances at major venues including Berlin Philharmonie, Carnegie Hall, and Suntory Hall Ip. A fearless and imaginative programmer • Known for pairing beloved masterworks with rarely heard gems, creating recitals that feel both familiar and newly discovered • Brings elegance, insight, and vivid storytelling to repertoire spanning Mozart to Gershwin Virtuosity with depth and connection • Praised for her expressive sensitivity, tonal color, and dynamic stage presence • Connects deeply with audiences, whether in intimate recitals or on the world's largest stages
Photo showing bars 63 and 64 of Brahms 118 2, in which, because a C# is being claimed by both hands, the right hand fingering suggests that the pianist play with finger number zero
Post by mrtoads.bsky.social I'm a "normie". ' I mean, I live with being like all other Whiteys and Males and whatever label lazy thinkers want to use to create an Other category to hate, but "Normie"? Really? You can do better than that.
Post by mrtoads.bsky.social I'm a "normie". ' I mean, I live with being like all other Whiteys and Males and whatever label lazy thinkers want to use to create an Other category to hate, but "Normie"? Really? You can do better than that.
Why is it that women have been composing music for centuries and yet we hear practically none of it in the ordinary rounds of modern-day concert life? People, by which I mean men, offer up various different answers to this question, and nearly all of them are bad-faith bullshit. One that I find especially galling is the argument that the music can't be all that good, because if it were it would already be in the canon. This is not only empirically false (the wisdom of canon formation is instantly disproven by Gounod's continued presence in our concert halls and opera houses) but a classic example of begging the question.
For part of her summer travels, Clara Schumann had not had a piano at her disposal; on 23 August she was finally able to inform her friend Brahms: "Now you can send more things again!!!",
Photo from the NYT article linked in post showing a big gray warehouse with a few sad Barbie props (flat pink house, patch of Astroturf, empty pink picnic blanket plopped on ground) as a photo backdrop
Screenshot of a photo taken from the article, showing a bunch of sad cheap plastic shelves and tables with various Barbie merch, labeled with signs printed on 8.5x11 printer paper, all in a gray concrete warehouse
A super zoomed in screenshot showing a gorgeous uppercase Q in a serif typeface where the tail of the Q is so long that it’s lined up with the base of the cup of the o in the word “Quote”
Of the seventeen piano concertos Mozart composed in Vienna during his last decade, most were written for public performance, rather than publica-tion, though five would also appear in print during his lifetime. In 1783 Mozart set out to sell three piano concertos-K. 413, 414, and 415-directly to subscribers in handwritten copies but had only limited success. A few months later, he offered them to the music publisher Sieber in Paris, who apparently declined. The three concertos were finally published in Vienna by Artaria in March 1785. Artaria reprinted them periodically over the next several years.
Photo I took of a fragment of Mozart’s original manuscript for his piano concerto no. 21. All the half notes above the middle line have stems on the right side instead of the left.
Photo I took of Mozart’s clavichord
Colonel Louis Bros, Colonel of the 4th Lancers who led a famous charge at Waterloo Portrait of a pretty dashing guy with an extremely rocking mustache
After the Battle of Vitoria, Beethoven's friend Johann Nepomuk Maelzel talked him into writing a composition commemorating this battle that he could notate on his 'mechanical orchestra', the panharmonicon, a contraption that was able to play many of the military band instruments of the day.
Fantine, though her breathing is labored and poor, is serene in sleep, possessed of a fragile beauty indicating that she's on the brink of death. Madeleine is praying by her bed. It is the exact same scene that opened Book 6 two months ago, except Fantine's hair is now gray and Madeleine's hair is now white. Omg, are Books 6-8 basically Sonata-Allegro form?? We're at the recapitulation, baby! (It is important to me that you all know that I seriously considered making a "Books 6-8 of Les Misérables Part I are the three parts of classical sonata form and here's why" analysis and pulled myself back. There's something there, I swear. Javert is the secondary theme. The Champmathieu Affair is the wandering development. Fantine is the tonic. I'll stop now.)
At this point everyone is so overcome by what they're seeing that they straight up forget their roles: judge, prosecutor, all of them reduced to shocked bystanders in this drama. Every person there "saw a great light shining"—ah, yet another callback to the divine light of the bishop! I'm learning that Hugo LOVES to thematically bathe his morally heroic characters in light. Despite the confusion and shock of everything going on, it is instantaneously clear to all present (well, save one) what is happening: that the real Jean Valjean is sacrificing himself so that another man does not have to suffer. Good lord, could the Christ allegory not get more obvious? This is the one "immense luminous fact" that has everyone "dazzled" because once Hugo is on a whole light-imagery-metaphor thing he just won't stop.
Hugo really understands a horrible paradox about human nature, which is that the people who are most marginalized or beaten down by society are often their own worst defenders—their rawness, messiness, and appearance of disorder (in short, the authenticity of their suffering) come across as too chaotic, distasteful, or incoherent for "cultured" people to parse.
The lawyer does not disprove that Champmathieu is Jean Valjean, and more or less admits that it's totally possible, and his weak-ass argument is that Champmathieu's stubborn denial—against his own lawyer's advice, he won't admit to being Valjean—is proof that prison has affected his intelligence, and that the jury has to take that into account. So to get this straight, this man's argument is more or less that Champmathieu's insistence that he is not Jean Valjean is really proof that he is Jean Valjean and has just become too stupid to say he is Jean Valjean. I don't know where these public defenders come from, but they're not sending their best.
So as it happens, the judge is a big fan. When the judge is told Madeleine is there and wants to attend the hearing, the starstruck dude writes a note presenting his respects and has it given to Madeleine. This is kind of an amazing setup for the eventual reveal and presents such a stark contrast between how beloved Madeleine is and how reviled Jean Valjean is. The usher leads Madeleine into an empty chamber off of the court with a door that leads to the seats of honor, and leaves him in there. Madeleine proceeds to equivocate worse than Chidi choosing between two hats.
Madeleine, for reasons a therapist could probably tease out but I don't want to, wanders the town refusing to ask for directions. I love the implication that he's just walking around looking for a sign saying LAW COURTS THIS WAY. Of course he gets lost, so he finds a friendly rando who happens to be going in the right direction and walks with him. On the way, the guy drops the detail that the building the law courts are in used to be a bishop's palace. First of all, I love that we keep getting these quiet contrasts between how bishops usually are and how our bishop was, reminding us that Myriel was really one of a kind. Second of all, an enormous, grand bishop's palace? This is why you guys had a revolution.
Madeleine shows up each day at 3 PM on the dot, but is a no-show today. Fantine waits expectantly—just like a little cat—in vain. At 5 PM, with no sign of the mayor, Sister Simplice hears Fantine say quietly, "But it's wrong of him not to come today, since I'll be gone tomorrow." 😭😭😭
All of this-the impossibility of the task, every option blocked-is clearly a sign from above that he was simply never meant to go, and it's not for lack of trying: "He had made every possible effort to continue his journey." There's nothing he could have done; God just doesn't want him to be at the trial. Having made an effort in good faith to do the right thing, and been stopped through no fault of his own, Madeleine thinks, he can just go home having done his duty. It is exactly the same vibe as Frodo telling Sam they can go home now that they've brought the One Ring to Rivendell in Fellowship. Just as we, the audience, are fully aware that Frodo has two and a half movies more to go, we the reader can see that there is SO MUCH BOOK left and, unfortunately for Madeleine, this is not where the story ends.
When he wakes up, he looks out the window and sees a tilbury and small white horse pulling up outside, and he wonders who the heck is out so early. His caretaker knocks on his door and announces that the tilbury the mayor ordered has arrived, and he's like, what tilbury? This is hilarious and so relatable. As someone who has gone "what the heck is going on" when my alarm has gone off at 5 AM so I can catch a flight, I wholly sympathize.
Anyway. The last time we "gazed into the depths of that conscience," it was the last chapter of Book 2 and Madeleine was Jean Valjean. "The moment has come to take another lo0k." Oh goody! I love this thing we're doing where we keep checking in on this poor guy in the moments of his greatest turmoil.
(I also want to mention the fantastic dad joke Hugo gets in, where Madeleine asks how much the horse is worth "on top of the tilbury" and Scaufflaire goes, "In front of the tilbury, monsieur le maire," which is GREAT. I did not realize there was Dad Humor in this novel.)
Screenshot of comments on Lebrecht’s latest Instagram post ethanh_composer_ We stand with classical musicians who aren't misogynistic, thank you very much. chloeddare hitting send on that email was crazy i hope you step on lego spookyviolin How unfortunate that you haven't touched the hearts of the general public the same way yuja has...but no need to be so dramatic
Screenshot of what my phone screen looked like when the X (formerly Twitter) app opened for the first time in who knows how long. It’s an ugly black menu aggressively upselling me on a premium subscription for which I will get a verified check mark and “Enhanced Grok access” aka a direct hookup to the CSAM generating machine
Screenshot of one of my old tweets where it says “Once Mozart had to write for a singer he disliked who moved her head up and down with the notes when she sang so he gave her an aria with a bunch of quickly alternating high and low notes so that she would bob her head like a chicken and that my friends is pettiness as art”
The stark difference between how Hugo writes about Perpétue and then goes into raptures about Simplice reminds me of all the great memes about how Denethor feels about his sons. Screenshot of the meme that goes “The breakfast Denethor prepared to his sons.” The first image, labeled “Boromir,” shows an exquisitely cut teddy bear head made of toast, arranged in a bowl with an assortment of fresh fruit. The second image, labeled “Faramir,” shows the remainder piece of bread after the teddy bear has been cut out, lying unadorned on a plate.
When Madeleine finally deigns to talk to him, Javert asks to be fired for the "unpardonable offense" of the disrespect a police officer (him) showed a magistrate (Madeleine). He doesn't deserve to remain in his post, he says, but refuses to resign. "Resigning is honourable," he says. "I've done wrong. I should be punished. I must be sacked." I'm not sure how I feel about Javert's "punish me, Daddy" energy-this is taking Les Mis in a direction I'm sliiiightly uncomfortable with.
Luke Dennerline, a 36-year-old talent agent, lives in Malibu but often spends time in Culver City with his family. He sat beneath an umbrella on a patch of faux grass. "I mean, everyone is smiling and happy," Mr. Dennerline said, surveying the scene. He was nearly done with his crushed iced coffee from Erewhon. "We doctored it up a little bit, too," he said. The doctoring wasn't from any booze. There was a carton of pistachio milk on the table. "It just makes it so creamy," he explained. It was that kind of day, on the mean streets of Culver City.
Madeleine also writes a letter that night (boy, the postman was probably like "why is everyone writing letters all of a sudden") to the Thnardiers, giving them 300 francs to pay off Fantine's 120-franc (and totally fake) debt and then some, and asking them to bring Cosette to Montreuil-sur-mer immediately. If these were any other people, they'd be happy at getting easy money and left it there. But these are the Thénardiers, who have an unfortunately admirable level of savvy for grifting that probably means they'd be doing super well in the federal administration in 2026. They clock, correctly, that they can get SO MUCH MORE MONEY if they hang onto Cosette and bleed whoever this new sucker is, so they respond with a fake medical bill for Cosette's fake illness. Madeleine, who if he lived today would be paying off random strangers' GoFundMes, sends them 300 more francs and asks them once again to bring Cosette. Mr. Thénardier (does the guy have a first name?) refuses to give up the child, who he now sees as a cash cow.
As it so happens, a little while ago, a man had quietly slipped into the room and listened to Fantine's story. We are not told who this man is, but come on. It's so funny and borderline exasperating how Hugo keeps doing this thing where he's like "a man I shall not name arrived!" and we're like, ok buddy, we all know it's Jean Valjean, you really don't have to keep doing this. The “they don’t know” party meme where the guy standing alone in the corner goes “they don’t know this guy is Jean Valjean” and all the dancing couples are going “we all know, dude,” “yeah just cut it out already”
Asshole alert!!! We open with a pretty savage takedown, courtesy of Hugo, of a certain kind of guy. "These are creatures of the great neuter species," he writes, "boors in a salon and think themselves gentlemen in the tavern. [...] Who boo actresses at the theatre to prove they are men of taste ... take fashion to extremes, [...] despise women," etc. "Neuter species"!!!!! Basically he's describing the kind of guy who worships toxic masculine influencers and who attacks the Menswear Guy on Twitter only to get absolutely obliterated.
The story of Fantine, Hugo says, is the story of "society buying a slave." It's a terrible bargain, "a soul for a morsel of bread"-the Fantine/Valjean parallels continue-and is a reminder that it's the people trapped in wretchedness who end up performing all of society's hidden distasteful labor. Hugo is unapologetically critical of the society in which Christ's law "governs" but does not "pervade"-this is very familiar to anyone in the modern day fed up with a certain type of political hypocrisy! (The title of this chapter, "Christus Nos Liberavit," means "Christ hath made us free," and it is yet another example of a scathingly snarky chapter title.)
At this point I wanted to smack Fantine a bit. I know stress and poverty affect your ability to problem-solve, but GIRL. You live in a town with a free pharmacy!!! If you get a letter saying "your kid will die if you don't give us 40 francs for medicine," go get the medicine for free and send it to your kid! This is like when old people fall for scams and believe that the IRS really does take payment in the form of Target gift cards or whatever.
comic showing a drowning person's flailing hand, another hand coming into ostensibly to save the drowning person but giving them a high five instead
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Anderson said he had weapons in his bag, and inside the bag was a barbecue fork and a pizza cutter, according to the criminal complaint.
Fantine becomes best buds with an elderly spinster neighbor named Marguerite, who teaches Fantine the art of living in poverty. This sounds like the most depressing buddy sitcom ever. Fantine gets used to freezing in winter and having no candle for light in the evenings, and has a cough that gets progressively worse. This is very ominous because it's never a good sign in a fictional story when a character starts coughing.
One of the coworkers is so invested in Fantine's secret that she spends 35 francs of her own money and takes the time to make a 262-mile round trip to visit the Thénardiers and see Cosette. This is an insane level of effort to put into finding out your coworker's business!!! Madame Victurnien, you need to get a damn hobby! When people do unnecessarily stupid things I like to say, "Doing nothing is free," and in this case doing nothing would literally have been free. I just cannot with this woman.
Shortly after the cart incident, Madeleine is appointed mayor, and Javert is very disturbed. It's kind of hilarious how Javert's instinctive suspicion of Madeleine is at war with his unconditional worship of of authority. You could not create more cognitive dissonance in this man if you tried. [touches earpiece, which is playing Act II of Les Misérables the musical] Ah, I'm being told that you can, in fact, create more cognitive dissonance in this man. Well, we haven't gotten there yet.
Part I, Book 5, Chapter 6 Père Fauchelevent Fauchelevent is a pretty good cat name. It’s also the name of a guy in town who hates Madeleine, so if Javert’s taking sign-ups for his Mayor Madeleine Hater’s Club, Fauchey’s lining right up. Fauchey hates the mayor because Madeleine arrived in town as a common laborer and ended up becoming Mr. Manager while Fauchey’s own business failed and he went bankrupt, so there’s a lot of resentment there. Should have come up with some ideas involving shellac, Fauchey! After going bankrupt, Fauchey uses what’s left of his business—a horse and a cart—to make a living as a carter. I feel so bad for the horse, who did not agree to this situation.
Javert is here!!!!! I don't know why I'm so excited about this. Javert sucks. And yet I'm so stoked. [meme of Anthony Adams standing behind a tree rubbing his hands in anticipation]