Last night Peter, Juliana, Scott and I went to hear Max Raabe and the Palast Orchestra. In this tour, the ensemble devoted the evening to the crooner cabaret music of the mid 1920s through the 1930s. Post Al Jolson. Kurt Weill, Irving Berlin, and others. I didn’t find Max’s voice remarkable, but appropriate to the […]
It’s the beginning of 4th week here at UCLA. It’s been a fun challenge learning to figure out my new schedule as a Chairman of a music department, a composer whose commissions keep coming, and a plain ol’ guy who likes to sit around and do nothing from time to time. My daily blogging has […]
You won’t need your coffee today after listening to this one. Simon Rattle commented in a BBC.co article that Venezuelan youth orchestras were doing the most important work in classical music anywhere in the world. After watching this, you’ll agree. Wow!
[Thanks to Frank Heuser]
Here is a video made by Graham Streeter of the recording session of POEM for piano and orchestra that was used in his film called CAGES (2006). Here, the UCLA Philharmonia is conducted by Jon Robertson, then Chair and conductor, and Walter Ponce plays the piano solo.
Warning for my older sexually active brothers who wish to preserve their hearing.
WASHINGTON (AFP) — The US Food and Drug Administration has decided to put more prominent warnings of potential hearing loss on impotence drugs Viagra, Cialis and Levitra.
An FDA statement said the goal was “to display more prominently the potential risk of sudden hearing […]
Here is kd early on in her career when she was known as kd lang the Reclines. I love the dramatic pause in towards the end. A great talent.
As a bird owner, many friends have sent me this cute video of a cockatoo dancing IN TIME to music. It’s really quite remarkable. Jacques Dalcroze would have loved the bird’s sense of kinetic flow.
The opening screech is the reason I have African Greys instead of cockatoos.
What a cool find! Joop, of Rufus Wainwright Message Board fame, found a copy of Rufus’s first collection of songs: a cassette that his father aggressively passed out to people to help out his son. Here is the playlist:
Side A
01) Foolish Love
02) Heart Like A Highway (previously known as That Night)
03) Money Song (previously known […]
Hoagie Carmichael
Paul McCartney said that he and John Lennon always tried to make their songs “a little different” implying that they prefer to not repeat themselves.
One of the most popular chord progressions of the time (1950 - 1963) before the Beatles came on the scene was the I vi IV V […]
Marc Shaiman won both a Tony and a Grammy Award for the score to the smash hit Broadway Musical HAIRSPRAY.
He has been nominated for The Academy Award five times, for the films Sleepless In Seattle, The American President, The First Wives Club, Patch Adams, and South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut. He has lost each […]
Hats off to Clint Eastwood’s brave production, STRAIGHT NO CHASER(1988), about jazz musician Thelonius Monk. After watching this, I realize that Thelonius is as important as Schoenberg or Webern in terms of modernist composers.
It’s just he always has a rhythm section going so classical snobs can never truly accept him as an equal to […]
Just released on Atomfilms.com, Possum Death Spree, Episode 2!
4:48
Directors: Michael Horowitz, Gareth Smith
Music: Roger Bourland
Atomfilms.com
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Flight into Egypt (2006)
A Chamber Opera
Workshop performance, UCLA, Schoenberg Auditorium (Feb.22, 2007)
Music by Roger Bourland
Text by Thornton Wilder
Juliana Gondek, mezzo soprano (Hepzibah, the donkey)
Angel Blue, soprano (Mary)
Michael Dean, bass (Joseph)
Lorenz Gamma, violin
Maggie Hummel, cello
Judith Palanca Hansen, piano
Daniel Cummings, conductor
Commissioned by Tappan Wilder
While attending the premiere of my FLIGHT INTO EGYPT at the Union Theological Seminary, I couldn’t help but see the enormous canvasses surrounding me. They were commissioned under the theme of the black madonna. I didn’t copy down the names or painters but had to share my cellphone snapshots.
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