Classic Ross Amico

Category: Daily Dispatch

Remembering John Duffy American Composer

His was an optimistic and gentle soul. This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we remember John Duffy, who died on December 22, at the age of 89.

Duffy was founder and president of Meet the Composer, an organization dedicated to the creation, performance and recording of music by American composers. In that capacity, from 1974 to 1995, he initiated countless programs to advance American music.

We’ll hear Duffy’s Symphony No. 1, commissioned by the Utah Chapter of the Sierra Club, “A Time for Remembrance,” a cantata written to mark the 50th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, and a selection from his Emmy Award winning music for the PBS television series, “Heritage: Civilization and the Jews.”

I hope you’ll join me for “Meet the Composer,” as we remember John Duffy on “The Lost Chord,” tonight at 10 ET, with a repeat Wednesday evening at 6; or that you’ll listen to it later as a webcast at wwfm.org.

John Duffy on his war experiences and his decision to become a composer:

On naming Meet the Composer:

On tolerance and growth:

January 17, 2016
Invincible Deadly Mantis Fist

I’ve been wasting a good amount of time today reliving my Saturday afternoons of the early 1980s. I think I missed my calling as a kung fu dubbing artist. Or a kung fu make-up artist. Or a kung fu script translator. Or a kung fu cinematographer. Or a kung fu editor. (There is a lot of art in kung fu.)

Watch this clip, and then choose from the following words to create your own kung fu title:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0YhUl0kdHo

SHAOLIN
JADE
DRAGON
MASTER
FIST
DEADLY
INVINCIBLE
MANTIS

You never know what you’re going to find in these Shaw Brothers classics. I was unsuccessful locating a movie I remember that used music from Leo Delibes’ ballet “Sylvia.” I did, however, find this one that shamelessly violates John Williams’ copyright on “Star Wars.” (I believe the subtitles are in Danish!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYcrZzkCVZQ

More about the Shaw Brothers here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaw_Brothers_Studio

Everything you wanted to know about “Fist of the White Lotus” (but were afraid to ask):

http://fightland.vice.com/blog/pai-mei-the-cruel-the-almost-invincible-fist-of-the-white-lotus-clan

How I miss those halcyon Saturdays, watching “Kung Fu Theater” with my best pal.

January 16, 2016
NJSO Shakespeare Festival Lacombe’s Finale

Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer, not by the son of York, but by the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra and its enterprising music director, Jacques Lacombe. For the second year in a row, Lacombe and the NJSO will present “Sounds of Shakespeare,” the sixth of the organization’s Winter Festivals to take place under his supervision.

Next weekend will bring a Berlioz double-bill, with the “Symphonie fantastique,” followed by its seldom-heard sequel, “Lélio.”

The program is “sort of ‘sideways inspired by Shakespeare,’” Lacombe says. “When Berlioz wrote ‘Symphonie fantastique,’ he was fascinated by a Shakespearean actress. At the end of the symphony, it’s sort of like his life is a total mess. The subtitle of ‘Lelio’ is ‘The Return to Life.’ The artist finds redemption in the creation of a fantasy on ‘The Tempest.’’”

The weekend after that, the NJSO will join with the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey to present “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” with Mendelssohn’s complete incidental music.

The performances will mark the final area appearances (in Princeton and New Brunswick) to feature Lacombe as NJSO music director. The orchestra will return under an assortment of guest conductors throughout the spring, but the remainder of Lacombe’s concerts this season will take place in the northern part of the state. He will be succeeded in the fall by Xian Zhang as the organization’s 14th music director.

Find out more, including much on Berlioz’s over-the-top romantic escapades, in my article in today’s Trenton Times.

http://www.nj.com/times-entertainment/index.ssf/2016/01/classical_music_njso_announces.html

January 15, 2016
Morricone’s Western Sound Golden Globes & Oscars

Ennio Morricone was honored earlier this week with a Golden Globe Award for his music to Quentin Tarantino’s ultra-violent mystery-western “The Hateful Eight.” The nominations for this year’s Academy Awards were announced yesterday, and again Morricone is on the ballot.

Though he received an honorary award in 2007 “for his magnificent and multifaceted contributions to the art of film music,” Morricone has never won a competitive Oscar. That could change this year, as I have yet to hear anything that can stand up to Morricone’s persistently sinister, insistently memorable passacaglia of doom.

Hear it for yourself this week on “Picture Perfect,” as I salute Morricone with an hour of his western scores, including his immortal music for “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” (1966) and “Once Upon a Time in the West” (1968), both written for Sergio Leone, and his whacked out main title for Sergio Corbucci’s “Navajo Joe” (1966).

Tarantino is a magpie filmmaker who draws his inspiration from a variety of B-movie genres, tossing their elements into a blender and then slathering them all over his screenplays, in much the same manner as he pours on the blood and guts during his films’ gratuitous showdowns. He has made no secret of his love for the spaghetti western, and there are moments in “The Hateful Eight” when the ghost of Lee Van Cleef seems to hover over this gathering of bounty hunters, Civil War veterans and outlaws as their patron saint.

Morricone singlehandedly invented the spaghetti western sound over a half century ago, when budgetary constraints caused him to bypass the big orchestral flavor of Hollywood oaters in favor of a psychedelic palette of twangy surfer guitars, whistles, harmonicas, whips, gunshots, jew’s harps, preening trumpets, shrieks and barking male choruses.

Morricone wrote three dozen such scores during a career which encompasses over 500 film and television projects.

Don’t get me wrong, I am happy that John Williams received his 50th Academy Award nomination, for his music to “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.” He is the most nominated artist alive, and the winner of five competitive Oscars. But at 87 years-old, the Force has been with Morricone for a long time.

I hope you’ll join me as we head out west with Ennio Morricone, on “Picture Perfect” – music for the movies – tonight at 6 ET, with a repeat tomorrow morning at 6; or that you’ll listen to it later as a webcast at wwfm.org.

January 15, 2016
MLK Day: Celebrating Black Composers on WPRB

“You don’t have to see the whole staircase. Just take the first step.”

So said Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. On this, the eve of King’s birthday anniversary, we present a full morning of music by composers of African descent, much of it underrepresented at any time of the year. You’ll hear fine and shamefully neglected works by David Baker, Marion Bauer, Henry T. Burleigh, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Roque Cordero, William Levi Dawson, Duke Ellington, Adolphus Hailstork, Ulysses Kay, Tania León, the Chevalier J.J.O. de Meude-Monpas, Florence Price, William Grant Still, and George Walker, or as many of these as we can get to.

Clipper Erickson, piano of Westminster Conservatory of Music will drop by at around 10:00 to talk a bit about R. Nathaniel Dett, the grandson of fugitive slaves, who went on to become an important voice in American music. Erickson’s album of Dett’s complete piano works, “My Cup Runneth Over,” has recently been issued on the Navona Records label.

We’ll be there before sunrise to honor MLK’s vision of a daybreak of freedom and justice and equality, from 6 to 11 ET, on WPRB 103.3 FM and at wprb.com. We rise up with greater readiness, on Classic Ross Amico.

January 14, 2016

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