Classical Figures

The marketers of classical music have increasingly embraced the ‘sex-sells’ notion that the rest of the music industry bowed to long ago. These days, it’s not just a few crossover artists using their looks to sell their non-visual product, but an industry-wide trend which is dividing musicians and fans down the middle. “It feels increasingly desperate,” says one talent booker, but a publicist points out that “this is one of those issues that seems only to trouble people in classical music… You have to play by the rules of pop culture, to go with the visual orientation of the culture right now.”