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In the Forum: Audio Discussions
In the Thread: The Classical Music Café syndrome...
Post Subject: Different times, different placesPosted by yoshi on: 8/27/2007
When I wrote that article about 4 years ago, I received responses from a couple of different countries asking about the feasibility of opening and maintaining such establishments today. I had to give them a very negative answers unless they have enough money not to worry about writing all expenditures off as a minor business loss.
They (Jass/Classical Cafe) depended mostly on regular clients and the majorlity of them were younger generations of late teens to early thirties who had enough spare time to spend hours at the Cafe. In other words, students. Japanese college system is very different from that of the US and the students can have enough free time if they wanted to. Also, there were only a couple of Live Houses where Japanese players did a gig. If you could listen to Mingus or Monk or Coltrane live at a club a couple of blocks down from your apartment, you wouldn't have to go to Jazz Cafe to listen to their recordings. When they came to Japan, they performed at a larger, concert hall kind of venue. Same for classical performers. Their visit to Japan was far more scarce than what we have today.
And how relevant those music to the younger generation of the US today ? (I'm imagining of my kids!)
Yoshi
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