The Image of a Solo Instrument Player as a Media Celebrity in the 21st Century

Abstract

In the article entitled The Image of a Solo Instrument Player as a Media Celebrity in the 21st Century, the author analyses the profiles of three musicians promoted by the contemporary media. These artists are: Lola Astanova, Stjepan Hauser and David Garrett. All of them, apart from the fact they are technically skilful performers, are also media personalities. They combine classical playing style with pop-culture image and visual setting of their performances. The author attempts to uncover the sources of their popularity and explain the mechanisms how the demand for the artistic activity of instrumentalists creating art (both music interpretation and the widely understood setting of a performance) synthetising tradition and innovativeness is generated. The described phenomena include the topics related to: the specificity of the images of celebrity instrument players and their function in the society, the homogenous culture of the 21st century, the widely-understood media coverage, consumerism, etc. The article has two parts. The first part is theoretical and it is based on the analysis and description of academic literature connected with the chosen subject matter referring to sociological topics and modern tendencies connected with culture. Another point in this section of the article is the presentation of the profiles of the selected artists. The second part is the report from the academic study conducted by the author of the article. It is a description of interviews with responders who wanted to share their opinions about the recordings of Astanova, Hauser and Garrett which were presented to them. The interviews were conducted by means of the social media and phone. The studies showed how different the impressions related to the same recordings might be even in a small group of respondents. These conclusions might serve as an inspiration for the development of research studying the influence of transformations taking place in modern culture on the tastes of audiences and the actual demand for artists who are well-adjusted to the requirements of modern audiences in terms of their image.