Nigel Kennedy

I concur with Nigel Kennedy’s desire to change the costumes worn by today’s performing musicians (“Not Just Fiddlin’ Around,” May 12). As a part-time performer and avid concert-goer, I have questioned the relevance of formal dress.

Considering the styles, fabrics and colors available today, the black tuxedo and formal black dress are dull anachronisms. The Victorian ideal of trying to stifle the unbridled emotion of music in monochromatic attire does not make sense to audiences raised on the explicit exhibition of emotion.

Kennedy’s large record sales would further the notion that declining concert attendance may not be the result of the music and lack of a public to hear it, but of how concerts are presented.

If there is to be a continuation of a concert-going public, then the ways of the old must, at some time, give way to the new. Orchestras in contemporary dress may be one way to keep concerts and their social benefits alive.

Otherwise, classical music is destined to be trapped in the electric signals of recorded music and lose its live performance soul.

MATTHEW HETZ

Los Angeles