MUSICAL LOOKALIKES - POSITIVELY THE LAST

Just to end the year on a lighter note, here are my positively the last (that's what I said the last time) group of lookalikes from the music world...

Singaporean avant-garde composer Joyce Koh
should file a suit to the creators of cartoon character
Dora for copyright infringement.

A number of articles have described
Joyce Koh to have "cat-like" eyes.
This is probably what they meant!

Canadian pianist Anton Kuerti could write to Disney
for the images rights of The Lion King's father Mufasa.

Still on pianists, did Maurizio Pollini make an
appearance in Godfather Part III as the
mafioso Don Lucchesi?

Malaysian pianist Dennis Lee and
Chinese Premier Xi Jinping.
But can Xi play the 32 Beethoven sonatas? 

Singapore-born Pianist Melvyn Tan 
and composer Tan Dun.
Maybe they have the same grandfather?

Scottish pianist Murray McLachlan has a special set
of skills too, as does Taken actor Liam Neeson.

Pianist Yefim Bronfman has a doppelganger
in the form of former Argentina
football coach Marcelo Bielsa.

Music and football again.
Swedish conductor Herbert Blomstedt
and Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger.

MORE RIDICULOUS LOOKALIKES (The Pianists and Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Edition)

The Formula One season, thankfully just concluded, spells a hiatus of classical concert activity in Singapore. With time on my hands two years ago, I came up with a list of crazy classical musician lookalikes. Here's more, updated to present headline news, starting with a couple of familiar faces. 

This one is an old chestnut. Who thought that one of the world's
greatest pianist Radu Lupu could look like the world's
greatest terrorist Osama bin Laden?

When French pianist Frank Braley goes to church,
people think it's the second coming of Jesus Christ.

 

Benjamin Grosvenor is now the hottest pianist in UK,
just like the Hobbits (Pippin) in Middle Earth.

Italian pianist Alessandro Taverna has an eye for notes like
recent Arsenal signing Mesut Özil has an eye for the ball.

Another one for the pianist-terrorist connection:
Did anyone think that Yevgeny Sudbin (left) and
Amir Tebinikhin (right) resembled convicted
Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev?

In classical music, it does pay for Russian pianist-pedagogue
Mikhail Voskresensky to look like Beethoven.

Prize-winning American pianist Lindsay Garritson
looks like the young and prettier sister of MILF
Jennifer Coolidge (of American Pie and Legally Blonde) 

Russian pianist Vadim Sakharov (who killed Beethoven's
Emperor Concerto here years ago) and
Liam Neeson of Taken who kills terrorists.

What is it with pianists and actors?
Korean-American pianist Tong-Il Han and
Hawaiian actor Clyde Kusatsu.

Young American pianist Steven Lin 
and Singaporean conductor Joshua Tan.

AND NOW FOR THE YONG SIEW TOH 

CONSERVATORY EDITION:

Did you know why they named the Alpine
rescue-dog a St Bernard? Now you know.
Bernard Lanskey is also a great Beethoven interpreter.

After that Brahms Second Piano Concerto, one could be forgiven
for thinking that WWE's Kane (with his patented chokeslam)
stood in for piano supremo Thomas Hecht.

The pianist and terrorist connection continues.
Which are the Bali bombers and which is Albert Tiu?

Both come from Russia. Pianist Kerim Vergazov
and General Orlov (Steven Berkoff) from Octopussy.
One dominates the keyboard and the other hoped
to dominate Western Europe

 NO PIANISTS FROM NOW ON:

Greek violinist Leonidas Kavakos (centre) did look
a lot like Groucho Marx several  years ago.

Which is cellist Matthew Barley and
which is porn producer Seymore Butts?
The guy married to Viktoria Mullova is one the right.

The ever-young Finnish conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen
does look a bit like US actor Mark Harmon (NCIS) 

If you don't believe it, here are their younger photos.

EVER MORE CRAZY MUSICAL LOOKALIKES

This is what happens when you go a few nights without attending a concert. You get bored and a little crazy, and then you start surfing the web for amusement, and you find some classical musicians who remind of someone else. So here goes for another whacky instalment of musical lookalikes...

Someone referred to Sir Georg Solti as the "screaming skull" when he rehearses orchestras, so that is quite appropriate that Captain America's nemesis The Red Skull takes his place alongside one of music's greats.

Classical music's first couple, Gramophone Award winning Sir Simon Rattle and his mate Magdelena Kozena, as played by The Duchess of Alba and Oscar winning Meryl Streep.

Conductor Helmuth Rilling and Formula One supremo
Bernie Ecclestone.

Founder of modern Vietnam Ho Chi Minh and founder conductor of the Bach Collegium Japan Masaaki Suzuki. The VC and the BC in perfect harmony.

Give or take 20 years, the British organist, music lecturer and Gramophone critic Marc Rochester (and my colleague with The Straits Times) bears a certain resemblance to the late great East German conductor Kurt Sanderling.

It is said that Romanians originally came from India, so it isn't too far fetched to suggest that conductors Sergiu Celibidache and Singapore's pioneering maestro Paul Abisheganaden are somehow related.

Pretty Women: Julia Roberts and Helene Grimaud. One loves Richard Gere and the other loves wolves.

A young Ronald Stevenson, great Scottish composer-pianist, looking like the great cartoon magician Mandrake.

I've always thought that George the loser from Seinfeld (played by Jason Alexander) was a splitting image of the love-forlorn composer of Lieder Franz Schubert. Both were particularly bad with women.

For those familiar with the Singapore and Taiwan musical scene, I thought that the teenage pianistic prodigy Tsai Min Hao could be the kid brother of the conductor Wang Ya-Hui.

YET MORE CRAZY MUSICAL LOOKALIKES

This is getting quite addictive, so I've come up with more crazy and totally ridiculous lookalikes of classical musicans who we love and adore...

Did anyone notice the similarity between Gustavo Dudamel, Musical Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Malcolm Gladwell, bestselling author of The Tipping Point, Outliers and What the Dude Saw?

This after seeing James Bond's Casino Royale - Russian conductor-pianist Mikhail Pletnev bears a strange resemblance to Scandinavian actor Mads Mikkelsen who played Le Chiffre.

Women power from Southeast Asia: Filipino pianist Cecile Licad and beleaguered new Thai prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra.

The bee-hive of Dame Fanny Waterman, founder and Director of the Leeds International Piano Competition, and a popular cartoon character from the comics of Malaysian cartoonist Lat.

Just do it! Nigerian-British pianist Glen Inanga is also an athelete, as is American basketball great Michael Jordan.

Also from Southest Asia, rising Singaporean conductor Adrian Tan and Thai artist-architect Chalermchai Kositpipat, creator of the surrealistic Wat Rong Khun (White Temple) of Chiang Rai.

Singaporean pianist Lim Yan looks like one of those young Shaolin Temple monks if he can be persuaded to don saffron robes.

This is a naughty one. Singaporean cellist Loke Hoe Kit shares a similar fashion sense with Sascha Baron Cohen's Brüno. (This is all the more curious as his teacher Nathaniel Rosen was a splitting image of Sascha Baron Cohen's Borat!)

MORE MUSICAL LOOKALIKES

To be honest, this post has less to do with the paucity of concerts in Singapore over the past few weeks (in previous years this period was occupied by the now dead in the water Singapore Sun Festival) but rather having watched the DVD of X-Men First Class. So here's to more goofy and hopefully hilarious musical lookalikes!

The first thing that struck me about Michael Fassbender's Magneto (aka Erik Lehnsherr) was that he looked like a younger version of the Hallé Orchestra's Sir Mark Elder. Here's what they look like in their X-Men outfits.

Still on X-Men or Star Trek: The Next Generation, Charles Xavier aka Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) could pass for the German conductor-pianist Christoph Eschenbach. Maybe they have the same hair-stylist.

Still on conductors, the Israeli maestro Eliahu Inbal, who conducts the Singapore Symphony Orchestra in Beijing next week in the Beijing Festival, does look a bit like the World Wrestling Entertainment's Hall of Famer Chief Jay Strongbow. Wonder how he executes the Tomahawk chop.

The actor George Burns (Nathan Birnbaum) and the composer Hans Gal. Enough said.

The recent Bhutan royal wedding, with King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck and Queen Jetsun Pema, as played by Chinese composer Tan Dun and heroine Mulan. No guesses as to who will write the film music should it be made into a movie.

This is an obscure one, just for piano competition buffs. With a lot of imagination, Dr Gustav Alink 20 years years ago would have been a dead ringer for the actor Aaron Eckhart, who played the spin doctor Ned Naylor in the movie Thank You for Smoking.

Still on the subject of pianists, the hirsute Italian keyboard virtuosos Alessandro Deljavan and Davide Cabassi have a violent alter-ego in Popeye's rival for Olive Oyle's hand, the brutish Bluto.

Positively the last on pianists, Serbia's Ana Jovanovic and France's Helene Tysman can definitely play Chopin.