This week on “Picture Perfect,” we’ll settle in for a little armchair traveling as, musically, we follow the English abroad.
We’ll hear selections from “Enchanted April” (Richard Rodney Bennett), “A Passage to India” (Maurice Jarre), “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” (Thomas Newman), and “Around the World in 80 Days” (Victor Young).
Bennett, quite the accomplished concert composer (and occasional torch song singer), supplies a sensitive score for the 1991 Merchant/Ivory adaptation of Elizabeth von Arnim’s novel about four English ladies who spend an idyllic month at an Italian villa.
Jarre received his third Academy Award for his music to David Lean’s final film, a 1984 adaptation of E.M. Forster’s novel of repression and racial tension in colonial India.
Newman incorporates traditional Indian elements into his score for “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel,” the 2012 surprise hit about English pensioners reinventing themselves in retirement in Jaipur.
And Young won his only Oscar (alas, posthumously bestowed) for “Around the World in 80 Days,” the star-studded, light-as-a-feather, though admittedly charming mega-victor at the 1956 Academy Awards. It takes longer to watch the movie than it does to read Jules Verne’s novel – though it does provide a rare opportunity to see Ronald Colman in color.
No need to haul that steamer trunk. It will be an hour of transporting selections on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!
Clip and save the start times for all three of my recorded shows:
PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday at 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – Saturday at 11:00 AM EDT/8:00 AM PDT
THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday at 7:00 PM EDT/4:00 PM PDT
Stream them, wherever you are, at the link!
PHOTO: There’s no balloon in Verne’s original, but as long as there’s champagne, who cares?
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