The Cereal List / Just add milk!

Dear readers,

The Cereal List apologizes for our temporary hiatus. As you may have heard, we have been accused of libel and threatened with a lawsuit.  Our lawyers advise us to temporarily suspend our operations until the matter has been resolved. We expect to be up and running again sometime next week. Thank you for your patience.

Sincerely,

Milton Blabber and The Cereal List staff

According to the biography on his website,

Violinist Ray Chen captured the First Prize of the 2009 Queen Elisabeth International Violin Competition in Brussels, Belgium…

Indeed “captured” may be the most accurate word to describe how Chen has acquired his multitudinous awards.  After failing multiple background checks due to “pre-existing conditions,” Chen recently discovered a loophole through which he can acquire an automatic weapon:

He now plans to “capture” even more first prizes. Someone should alert Young Concert Artists, Inc. Or do they already know?

The Japanese government is not happy with the physical appearance of their recent female musical exports and has taken bold steps to control and limit who is able to become a professional musician. During a press conference today, officials bemoaned the recent drop in attractiveness of many of their female musicians, saying that they have not been doing enough to uphold the standards of kawaii cultivated methodically by generations of giggling Japanese girls in sailor suits. Stopping just short of nipping the buds and shooting the kids, government officials announced the appointment of Midori to the newly created post of Minister of Cuteness. All aspiring female musicians are now required to submit a portfolio of six photos, three of which must be candid, displaying the range of cuteness they are capable of conjuring. Applicants will be evaluated on both “classic” cuteness as well as their potential to develop new forms. Those who fail the audition process are given the choice of becoming a housewife, an OL, or the indigenous cultural oddity known as Ganguro. Musical ability will not be considered under any circumstances.

Editor’s Note: The Cereal List is pleased to welcome Benjamins Britten to the aggregate as our Economics Analyst.

In case you’ve missed the news, our economy hasn’t been doing so well. And you know how like in High School the first thing to get cut from the budget were music programs? Well, that same kind of thing is happening on the macro level throughout the country as many orchestras continue to either struggle or bite the dust. And lest we think that this is simply an affliction for the small-fry 2nd, 3rd, and 4th tier outfits, how about the news last week that the Philadelphia Orchestra, needs an extra $15 million just to make ends meet?

As you might expect, opinions vary widely throughout the orchestra world on how to confront such colossal budget shortfalls. The American Symphony Orchestra is now offering $25 tickets for any seat in the house, while the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra likes to raid its own cookie jar.

Interesting ideas, to say the least, however after conducting some vigorous market research, The Cereal List believes it has identified a Der Freischütz-ian magic bullet of a solution to save the nation’s orchestras: stop naming chairs and start selling them on eBay.

“Selling seats from the concert hall can have a doubly positive effect,” said TCL Consultant Reginald Harvey. “Profits from seat sales will generate extra revenue which orchestras can use to pay their musicians the balance they owe them on their contracts, while having less seats in the hall will increase the number of sell-out concerts they’ll have throughout the year. It’s really a win-win for everyone.”

Nobody is immune from the recession, but some are more creative than others.  Take, for example, Innova Recordings: The St. Paul-based record label was struggling to pay its rent or utilities.  After a stimulus request to Governer Pawlenty was turned down, the label was on the verge of being forced to operate out of a shed in the Home Depot parking lot.  That’s when an Innova intern had the idea of expanding the label’s operations beyond contemporary music.

“In these trying economic times, we felt it just wasn’t smart business to focus our energies on a single niche market,” said a representative from the label. “That’s why we’ve decided to branch out into gourmet cat food.”

A majority of contemporary-music economists predicted the label’s cat foods would have considerable trouble getting off the ground.  But they were wrong.  Innova’s clever decision to create bilingual English/French packaging — and their slogan, “We put the et in gourmet“ — was extremely well received by the genteel connoisseur.  And thanks to three feline-loving composers who each committed to purchasing a lifetime supply, Innova’s new venture is thriving beyond expectations.

Following their recent (separate) trips to North Korea, the New York Philharmonic and Former President Bill Clinton have joined forces and are seeking opportunities to rescue hostages in foreign countries using what they are calling “the universal language of music, through which all people can come together and celebrate beauty.”

This news comes on the heels of the Philharmonic’s season opening concert with its new CEO/conductor Alan Gilbert, the young hipster whose mother seems to have got him the job, and who is determined to shake things up at the doddery institution.

For their hostage-rescuing concerts, Mr. Clinton and the Philharmonic will perform emotional renditions of democracy-spreading works for narrator and orchestra, including Aaron Copland’s Lincoln Portrait, Joseph Schwanter’s New Morning for the World, and a new work composed by John Williams entitled Diplomatic Sonorities.

The Cereal List awaits word of who will be the embedded reporter for these escapades (Smith? Midgette? Wakin?).

Euphonium players, your stress-related acne will soon clear up. Bassoonists, now’s the time to straighten those curls. Tuba players, you no longer need be ashamed of your rashes! You can all breathe a collective sigh of relief because the contra-alto clarinet took top honors at last weekend’s “Least Sexy Instrument” competition.

“It was a tough choice,” said Gary Beavers, a world renowned ophicleidist who served on the jury. “Some argued that kissing a brass player, with lips that taste like coins, was far more disgusting than kissing a reed player, but we have to judge based on the instruments, not the instrumentalists.”

“The bassoon and euphonium have many undesirable qualities,” said another jury member known as Rusty Trombone, “but in the end we felt the contra-alto clarinet was the most maladroit and awkward of the finalists.  As far as I’m concerned, it’s only sexy if it’s versatile.”

As a “prize” for winning, players of the contra-alto clarinet can claim a gift certificate for Amazon.com (good for one month) which will allow them to turn in their instruments and learn to play the cello.

The cover of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s 2009-2010 season brochure suggests that the orchestra, whose musicians recently agreed to a whopping 12.5 percent pay cut, will try just about anything to fill the empty seats that litter Meyerhoff Symphony Hall.

While at first appearing to be merely an unfortunate PR photo, The Cereal List has learned that Maestra Alsop and the BSO plan to replace pre-concert talks and between-piece banter with acts of ritual sacrifice and sadomasochism. This bold move is aimed at attracting Baltimore’s vibrant goth and S&M communities to classical music concerts. In fact, each concert will be followed by a special after-party at Baltimore’s infamous Club Orpheus. Use the password “Monteverdi” for V.I.P. access. If things get too rough, the safe word is “Offenbach.”

Rumor has it that the orchestra plans to announce a new subscription series featuring Benjamin Britten’s A Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, among other works. The Cereal List expects an official announcement once the orchestra decides whether Marv Albert, Eliot Spitzer, or Bill O’Reilly will narrate the work.

According to a forthcoming report from Claudette Hodges of the Sigmund Freud Foundation, the only musical instrument that facilitates all of the stages of Freud’s Psychosexual Development is the Holton TR395 Superbone, which functions as both a valve- and a slide-trombone.

Here are some highlights from the forthcoming report:

The Oral Stage:
Some trombonists enjoy secretly emptying their spit-valves directly into their own mouths.

The Anal Stage:
This one seems like a stretch to us (ahem), but according to Claudette, some trombonists deliberately allow rust to form on their mouthpieces and enjoy the sensation of the rust on their lips.  She connects this to the fascination with one’s own waste and with the exploratory notion of ingesting one’s own fecal matter

The Phallic Stage:
This involves the trombonist fully exploring his or her slide, stretching to achieve the longest distance possible, and experimenting with fast and slow hand movements to achieve maximum satisfaction.

The Genital Stage is what makes the Superbone the ideal instrument for psychosexual development.  Superbonists derive special pleasure from the dualism of their instruments’ mechanical parts, and this flexibility results in a healthy openness to a wide variety of sexual experiences.  Freud would have argued that this leads to healthy heterosexual behavior, but Claudette prefers the 21st-century notions of pansexuality and hermaphroditism.  Operating both the valves and a slide, the instrumentalist uses a variety of fingering techniques and “positions” to achieve his or her full potential.

An anonymous reader familiar with the recent developments for the next installment of the Harry Potter movie series, tells us that Antonio Pappano, the music director of the Royal Opera House in London, has been tipped to replace Alan Rickman as the complex villain Severus Snape.