{"id":67228,"date":"2020-02-28T15:39:52","date_gmt":"2020-02-28T20:39:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/?p=67228"},"modified":"2020-03-02T08:38:42","modified_gmt":"2020-03-02T13:38:42","slug":"interview-james-rhodes-survivor-not-victim","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/2020\/02\/28\/interview-james-rhodes-survivor-not-victim\/","title":{"rendered":"PROFILE | James Rhodes Is A Survivor Not A Victim"},"content":{"rendered":"

A canary in a coal mine for the current state of classical music and overcoming sexual abuse: A deep dive into the classical music phenomenon of James Rhodes.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\"James
Pianist James Rhodes (Photo courtesy of the artist)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

O<\/span>ne of television\u2019s most fabulously contrarian moments comes with the \u201cBubble Boy\u201d episode in the seventh show in the fourth season of Seinfeld<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Originally aired Oct.7, 1992, it has Jerry and the gang getting out-of-town to the peace of a lakeside cabin. Things go awry \u2014 stratospherically awry \u2014 when George and Susan, his girlfriend, as a good will gesture meet Donald the \u201cbubble-boy\u201d. Poor Donald. He\u2019s condemned forever to live in an entirely sterile, insular, plastic-wrapped environment. (Wait.\u00a0Don\u2019t<\/em> get out the handkerchiefs yet.) He soon proves to be a dork, an arrogant and socially inept jerk with a vile temper who becomes enraged during an innocent game of\u00a0Trivial Pursuit<\/em> and strangles George for daring to contradict an answer. You can almost hear a studio-audience cheer when Donald\u2019s bubble deflates after being punctured by Susan, standing by her George.<\/p>\n

An unsympathetic bubble boy? What\u2019s next? Well, we have the answer. James Rhodes, a crusty, cussing concert pianist, Glenn Gould fanatic and world-class politically incorrect maverick who\u2019s bent on saving abused children and classical music. His virtuoso-level swearing may be muted, one assumes, when he appears at Koerner Hall with an all-Beethoven sonatas program for his March 5 Canadian debut<\/a><\/span>. (He\u2019s talking on March 4<\/a><\/span> at the Isabel Bader Theatre.)<\/p>\n

\"Pianist
Pianist James Rhodes (Photo courtesy of the artist)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Hold on. I just did it. I said, \u201cone assumes.\u201d I should have known better. Assuming anything<\/em> about Rhodes doesn\u2019t work except in assuming he\u2019s going to get your attention one way or another. Just don\u2019t assume how. Rhodes, now 44-years-old, is a force of raw nature. \u201cClassical music makes me hard,\u201d he insists. There you are. Any more questions?<\/p>\n

However unapologetically incorrect Seinfeld<\/em> seems in these apologetically correct times, the show\u2019s over-the-top capabilities are minor league compared to how Rhodes reveals himself in interviews, as on CNN<\/a><\/span>, or in print<\/a><\/span>. James Rhodes: Instrumental: a Memoir of Madness, Medication and Music<\/em><\/a><\/span> is his 2014 best-selling account of how, between the ages of six and 10, he was raped by his gym teacher. The revelations are equally horrific and breathtaking. \u201cI left school at 18 feeling like 68,\u201d he says, adding how he realized, \u201cthat the rest of my life could safely be spent destroying myself.\u201d Elsewhere, he drops the bomb: \u201cI have an urge to eviscerate myself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Disassociation is impossible because it\u2019s \u201cthe most serious, and long-lasting of all the symptoms of abuse,\u201d he writes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Disassociation is impossible because it\u2019s \u201cthe most serious, and long-lasting of all the symptoms of abuse,\u201d he writes. \u201cIt\u2019s really quite brilliant.\u201d Here\u2019s the blunt truth behind what started in that gym so long ago. It\u2019s something a little kid would know for what it was and would never forget:<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s inside me and it hurts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Such language, style and facts so shocked Rhodes\u2019 first wife that she tried to block the book\u2019s publication, arguing that their son might forever be \u201cpsychologically harmed\u201d by his father\u2019s graphic revelations. The injunction against publication in England was eventually lifted by the Supreme Court in a decision cheered by abuse survivors.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s brilliant. It hurts. Die. Survive. Words in stark opposition to each other, ideas that clash, entire chapters which zoom off in different directions. Taken together they blow away any sense of comfort you want Rhodes to bring to his story. He never wants to let the anger go. His concert journal, Fire On All Sides<\/a><\/span><\/em> \u2014 the title derives from stage directions in Mozart\u2019s Don Giovanni<\/em> \u2014 outlines the depression endured while living his touring concert pianist\u2019s life. Music was a form of \u201cspiritual salvation\u201d, as he describes it to me.<\/p>\n

Rhodes\u2019 own efforts to demystify classical music led to a short-lived contract with Warner Brothers as the label\u2019s first classical artist. (He left Warner, claiming the label took too long between releases). No matter, he intends to humanize \u2014 if that\u2019s the word \u2014 the gods in the classical music Elysium. Bach, he\u2019ll point out, had Mick Jagger\u2019s appetite for women and \u201cboned groupies\u201d between fingering fugues. Rhodes even has his own line of T-shirts sporting composers\u2019 names. Yet, he remains awestruck by the pianism of great players these days, and rhapsodizes about Evgeny Kissin and Barcelona soccer star Lionel Messi in the same sentence; (it comes down to their micro-movements.)<\/p>\n

“But where else can we go and close our eyes without Twitter and Facebook than in a concert hall?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He despairs about what\u2019s evolving in the concert world. \u201cThere\u2019s been such an emphasis on technique,\u201d he tells me. \u201cIt seems to have polarized classical music so that it has to apologize for itself. These days going to a concert feels like going to a church. It shouldn\u2019t. You shouldn\u2019t need any knowledge at all. But where else can we go and close our eyes without Twitter and Facebook than in a concert hall? They have WiFi in planes now.<\/p>\n

\u201cI see a generation of kids leaving school who have no fucking idea of who Bach is or what a cello is. On the other side, you see other kids coming from a conservatory who, from the ages of six or seven, practice eight hours a day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Catching up to his back-and-forth mood swings can take him from being \u201cincandescent with rage,\u201d one moment to tear-drawing openness the next, as when he says, \u201cMusic is so enormous, it goes so much deeper than just that one word.\u201d One moment, you want to hug him to drive away his devils. (He\u2019s scruffy, skinny, and utterly needy-looking like a puppy brought in from the rain.) Another moment you feel so rattled by this emotional ping-pong game he\u2019s playing, you long for doing something, anything<\/em> more structured, like taking up martial arts.<\/p>\n

He understands his effect. He\u2019s not over-the-top about being over-the-top. \u201cVictim is a trick word,\u201d he tells me. \u201cIt has to me a very negative connotation. \u2018Survivor\u2019 may be a better word. One of the very serious problems of child abuse is that it happens when the brain is a sort of plastic and can be formed. (Abuse) can literally change the wiring of the brain in a way. It\u2019s always going to be there. I am always going to have the capacity to wallow in self-pity.\u201d<\/p>\n

And \u2014 bloody hell \u2014 it works, this capacity to intellectually and emotionally light up the sky. Critical word may still be out on his playing of Beethoven. But Rhodes\u2019 depth-charge like revelations have helped pave the way for the #metoo<\/em> movement, and revelations about the transgressions of superstar musicians from conductor Charles Dutoit to James Levine to Placido Domingo. Rhodes\u2019 revelations of abuse became part of the conversation around the conviction in 2013 of the ex-Director of Music of the Chetham music school in Manchester.<\/p>\n

\"Pianist
Pianist James Rhodes (Photo courtesy of the artist)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Rhodes\u2019 anti-abuse campaign is taking root in Spain, since 2017 his adopted country \u2014 \u201cWhy? Brexit,\u201d he sighs \u2014 where the left-leaning Socialist Party plans to enact as one of its first reforms as the so-called \u201cRhodes law.\u201d (The thought of children having to defend themselves in front of their accusers told Rhodes how out-of-date was Spanish law.)<\/p>\n

The truth is, I didn\u2019t really get James Rhodes, and thought that maybe his super-aggressive, blow-it-all-up thinking was too over the top, no?<\/p>\n

\u201cNo,\u201d said Canadian violinist, Lara St. John, across the bistro table from me in the Boucherie on 7th Ave. in New York.<\/p>\n

St. John\u2019s own revelations<\/a><\/span> about her abuse as a teenager at the hands of her violin professor, Jascha Brodsky, during her years as a student at Philadelphia\u2019s Curtis Institute, were published late last year in the Philadelphia Inquirer<\/em><\/a><\/span>.<\/p>\n

St. John looked at me as if I was addled. \u201cPut it this way,\u201d she said over the din around us, \u201cwhat he says is something I very definitely want to say. He just said it in a better way.\u201d<\/p>\n

She paused.<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you have his email address?\u201d she asked. \u201cWe have to talk.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014<\/p>\n

James Rhodes makes his Canadian debut with an all-Beethoven program \u201cThe Beethoven Revolution<\/strong>\u201d at Koerner Hall in Toronto, on March 5<\/a><\/span>. He will also be giving a talk, \u201cAn Evening In Conversation with James Rhodes<\/strong>\u201d, at Isabel Bader Theatre, on March 4<\/a><\/span>.<\/p>\n

#LUDWIGVAN<\/em><\/h3>\n

Want more updates on classical music and opera news and reviews? Follow us\u00a0on <\/em>Facebook<\/b><\/a><\/em><\/span>, <\/em>Instagram<\/b><\/a><\/em><\/span> <\/b>or <\/em>Twitter<\/b><\/a><\/em><\/span> for all the latest.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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