Mozart; Jacques Loussier; Mikhail Simkin

Mozart, who is 250 years old today, earned the equivalent of 300,000 euros in his good years, close enough to AU$500,000, and in his lean years during the Turkish Wars, made a third of that, according to an extraordinarily dull documentary on SBS this evening. He spent profligately, and historians suppose he lost most of his money at billiards. He never went to school. Particularly good are the bit where Don Giovani falls into Hell with an operatic scream of great dimension, having refused to recant his philandering ways when given the chance by the stone statue of a Commandatore he'd earlier murdered, the Mass in C Minor, and a blinged up version of Rondo Alla Turca played by some pianist whose name I forget.

Jacques Loussier is a French jazz pianist famous for playing jazzed up Bach. I think he was more famous in the 60s than today but at Discurio in the City today I walked past a disc of Jacques Loussier treating Mozart piano concertos. The new trio got adventurous and started jazzing up Vivaldi, Debussy, Beethoven.

I looked up Wikipedia and found out that the original trio, Play Bach, went around from 1959 to 1978, but has been relaunched with a new basist and drummer in 1985 when Jack was 51. It was also intresting to be reminded of Jack's suit against Eminem for ripping off one of his tunes, and to learn of the rumour that The Wall was filmed in his studio. Loussier's website is here.

I got onto Simkin through his "Mozart or Salieri?" quizz, surprisingly easy I think for anyone who knows a bit of Mozart. His other quizzes are fun and he is running the world's worst painting awards, though I think he has a long way to go in finding the worst.

The photo is from Selva, over at Flickr.