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That is so awesome, congratulations!!! Twelve actually happens to be my favorite number. Congratulations! Yay, congratulations on hitting the Billboard chart! Our local public radio station was actually giving away a copy of this CD last week and I signed up for the drawing. I didn't win it, but I heard so many beautiful tracks from it, I may just have to buy it now. :) Congratulations on the first time on the charts! Kegger!

Laurie, look at #1 and #4 on the classical chart. It's Sting! Music of John Dowland, or something. I wonder what that's about.

Congratulations! Jim, Sting made a very beautiful recording of songs by John Dowland. He plays megalute or doublelute or something very complex which was built just for him, and he sings. It's a fantastic CD. I especially like his intricate playing of his lute. That's very intere-sting. I'll try to hear some of it. Other fascinating info there is soprano Anna Netrebko who peaked at #3 was a janitor. Very cool, Rachel! A hearty congrats.

And I do dig Sting. I did the cursory I-Tunes check on this Dowland business (Rachel, sorry to go on about Sting on your blog, but, well, we tend to go on tangents here on V.com...), and wow, it's really different. Even a bit disconcerting. I'm downloading it immediately. :)

I listened to all of the amazon clips on one of the Sting cds and I hate it!! I'm willing to accept a different kind of sound than usual, and even hope to, but I can't get past how amateurish the voice sounds compared to the usual Dowland. It voice doesn't have the resonance and clarity steadyness and everything else-ness I'm used to hearing in this. But, it might be more authentic. But maybe inauthentic is better :) I think maybe it could have been great with some training, and awareness of the history of it. It seemed like that was missing, along with what he was going to be compared to. It's #1 only because Police fans want it. Thanks for the congrats everyone. Regarding Sting, we can optimistically hope that new listeners will discover Dowland and then check out someone like Paul O'Dette. Interestingly, I was at the Boston Early Music Festival a few weeks ago, and they told me that they had invited Sting to perform (the PR for them would have been great, needless to say). But they said his fee was astronomically out of the normal range. It's too bad - you'd think he would think it was cool to perform at the most prestigious early music festival in the U.S. and reduce his rock star sized fee just that once. I wonder, does he actually go around performing Dowland stuff, or did he just record it and that's it? I wonder how lute players feel - there's probably some discussion group somewhere. Remember Michael Bolton's opera arias? What if some random pop artist decided to record the Beethoven Violin Sonatas? Would we all be happy that this repertoire had gained visibility, or would we all be groaning? I don't know how popular Dowland needs to be, but hopefully it's got some imformative liner notes. Not appearing at the festival for free, not just reducing his fee, says something. Not sure what.

The most interesting thing in this is what Dowland apparently requires performance-wise, and I wonder why that is. Sting sounds fine on pop songs. I think we're so conditioned to hearing this done a particular way that anything else sounds wrong. The reverse is just as true. We don't want to hear a classical tenor singing Police unless he makes adjustments of his own.

I can see how it could have sounded right, but still like Sting, with just a little more attention. Re: the lute, there's another lutenist on the album too, wasn't sure who was who.

I mean I wouldn't have thought there was such a difference in requirements for Dowland and pop songs. Maybe other pop singers would be more suited without changing anything. One reviewer called it "tight-jawed and heavy-chested" which is how it sounded to me. Also I sensed sometimes he didn't know what to do, or didn't trust himself to do what came naturally. Strange stuff :) I really appreciate your blogging here, and teaching us about Maud Powell. I listened to your podcast and put the CD on my Amazon wish list (which is basically like ordering it). I always thought twelve was a lucky number too.