Posted 1:08 PM by Gene

Whatever happened to barbers? As I had my hair cut by a fellow with tattoos I had to wonder. Barbers used to be guys named Geno or Rocco, who knew how to pat you on the back with a voice. "Hiya Charlie!" There was something reassuring in these beefy middle-aged guys calling everyone Charlie. They could talk sports without the current manner of being pretentious about it. They were sentimental guys too, in a good way. The place I frequent has relics of the former owner: opera posters and playbills, pictures of famous composers; he played the music all the time. Now it's what people must call "'XPN," commercial radio without commercials, but with an occasional quirky tune so that you'd never guess it had evil playlists. The faces have changed, too: now it's women and gays, and they're "unisex" too. How are we better without the camaraderie of a barbershop?

On the way home I passed (as I often do) the Curtis, its name a relic of a long defunct publishing empire, and it's no doubt a healthier-than-ever institution that's seen better days. No one struggles graduating from the Curtis. But no one changes the world either. That wasn't always so. Leonard Bernstein, after all, graduated from here (as did Samuel Barber and Gian Carlo Menotti, and a number of Bernstein contemporaries known mainly to the professional classical music buffs, like Vincent Persichetti and Lukas Foss). It had great teachers too, like Fritz Reiner, a bruising martinet -- and a brilliant conductor. Now it's the workmen of the trade, the cellists and trombonists who make their comfy union wages playing Brahms symphonies over and over ten hours a week, or the supporting singers at the Met, or maybe the star of a regional opera company. But has anyone from Curtis lit a spark in ages? And what does it say about our culture when an institution like this can be healthy and irrelevant at once?