Music theory books like to say that in classical music, chords rarely regress from the dominant to the subdominant, but that is what this entire song is about harmonically. Here is an outtake from the Concert for Bangla Desh, with George Harrison and Bob Dylan singing Dylan’s 1970 song “If Not For You.”
IF NOT FOR [...]
Here is a fun piece for piano trio (violin, cello, piano) commissioned by Mark Carlson’s Pacific Serenades. I gravitate toward the sewing machine momentum of Baroque music, but I can’t embrace it’s harmony. So instead, I infuse my own sense of Stravinsky-an Americana into the mix and here’s what I came up with.
[Audio clip: view [...]
It was organ week for me. This past weekend I had to good fortune to meet the warm and brilliant, Manuel Rosales, the man who, with Frank Gehry, co-designed the Walt Disney Concert Hall Organ and built it. I also ran into quite a few other organ enthusiasts, builders and players at Shinji Isozaki’s exhibit [...]
This just in from Angus. A heart warming video and story about friendship in the wild. (Click on this picture to watch the video.)
[Photo © Norbert Rosing.]
When I first moved to Boston in 1976 to attend the New England Conservatory of Music, I was happy to meet a lot of composers––professional aas well as students. My teachers included William Thomas McKinley, Donald Martino, Malcom Peyton, Robert Cogan and Gunther Schuller. By our 2nd year, a group of us congealed into a [...]
Yesterday our home turned into a Hollywood Cordon Bleu. Josie, Daniel’s mom, trained as a professional chef, held a cooking class, Jenny, Makiko, Julia, Lisa, Jane and Connie all came over for a class. All the husbands came later and joined me in the smoking room, wearing smoking jackets, smoking cigars and drinking brandy. Well, [...]
This was a big song in my life pre-Beatles life. My parents bought all of their early albums in the 60s. The New Christy Minstrels were a major force in the early 60s folk scene and are still going today. The lead singer in this old video is Barry McGuire, later became known for that [...]
Composer, professor, and good friend David Conte has unveiled his new website. Lots of interesting stuff there: music, pics, articles, links and such. If you don’t know him, spend some time there and get to know one of America’s great composers. Here is his bio.
David Conte (b. 1955) is currently Professor of Composition and Conductor [...]
My byline “Roger Bourland writes about music and life” gives me a good deal of latitude on this blog. I find that in summer, I lapse into talking about “life” a bit more.
One of the words I’m setting in my new musical with Mel Shapiro is “décolletage” which refers to a woman’s choice to reveal [...]
Sheryl Crow’s first big hit that came out in summer and captured that warm 1990s Los Angeles morning I knew so well. I loved her toughness, her sexiness, and especially the way she emphasizes santamoiniCA boulevard. Her great sense of mix of folk and rock has always been attractive to me.
All I Wanna Do
Hit it!
This [...]
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