"Everyone Loves Classical Music--They Just Haven't Found Out About It Yet"

Maestro Benjamin Zander at TED

If tween heart-throb Joe Jonas (of pop music group Jonas Brothers) has any influence on the peer pressure of today's teens and twenty-somethings, there should be a resurgence of interest in classical music in the younger set.  In a recent interview he insisted that he really loves classical music, saying “I think I’ve always liked it, ever since somebody told me that if you listen to it while you're sleeping it’ll make you smarter when you wake up in the morning. I don’t know if that’s true, but I’m trying that out.”  And while the so-called Mozart Effect is still highly debated, there's one thing Jonas and Boston Philharmonic Conductor Benjamin Zander agree on--classical music really is for everyone.  It's just that not everyone may know it yet.

In a short presentation at the annual TED Conference, "Ideas Worth Sharing," Zander demonstrated how everyone innately knows and grasps the concepts that classical music is built on and can develop a love and appreciation for it.  In his inimitable style, he gets an audience of classical music newbies to understand a Chopin piece (and even to predict it's ending), tells how classical music captivated an audience of hundreds of elementary school children and brought together a group of Catholic and Protestant teens in war-torn Ireland.  Watch this fascinating 20-minute video--well worth the time.  And let us know what YOU think by posting your comments here on our blog!