Re: GG -- Another Possible Syndrome or Two (not Asparagus)

[JOHN DEGOOD <jdegood@sarnoff.com>]

> Can people with a severe Tourette focus their attention
> on something as playing a whole partita? They would
> definitely have to twitch somewhere in the middle :))

I saw a composer/pianist with Tourette's, Stephen DiJoseph

  http://www.stephendijoseph.com/

perform at a concert in Princeton, NJ in February 2001

  http://phobos.serve.com/pipermail/philly_ambient/2001-January/000865.html

At the post-concert reception DiJoseph commented that he
"collaborates" with TS such that he performs music "with"
the syndrome rather than in spite of it.  Each of his original
"piano poetry" compositions, which contained elements of new
age and jazz, were performed in conjunction with rather extreme
excursions of his torso and extremities.  DiJoseph's bio reports
that he played and studied Debussy, Bach, and Chopin, but I
have a difficult time imagining how the performance technique
I witnessed could translate to those works.

The Glenn Gould videos reveal an almost superhuman degree of
physical control that seems incompatible with the manifestations
of Tourette's.

John