This week on “Sweetness and Light,” with summer winding down, we’re off to the circus.
Are there any circuses anymore? Beyond Cirque du Soleil, I mean? Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus gave their farewell tour back in 2017. We’re too enlightened now to tolerate closely caged or potentially abused exotic animals, and quite rightly so.
Still, for those of us of a certain age, there remains a certain nostalgia for the circus, with its parade, and its Big Top, and the noise and color and smells and scary clowns.
I’ll be presenting for your wonderment and enjoyment an electrifying musical menagerie. There will be circus marches galore, a waltz long associated with the trapeze, a suite of character pieces for piano, a selection from an Academy Award winning film, not one, but TWO ballets (one conceived for baby elephants), and a delightful song by Charles Ives. You’ll practically smell the popcorn and cotton candy and hay and elephant droppings!
I can’t say it will be the greatest show on earth, but it’s bound to stir some memories for a bygone era of American tent circus.
Ladies and gentlemen! Boys and girls! Children of all ages! Join me for me in the center ring for “Sweetness and Light.” I’ll be donning the telltale top hat and tailcoat, this Saturday morning at 11:00 EDT/8:00 PDT, exclusively on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!
Stream it, wherever you are, at the link:
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