Classic Ross Amico

Category: Daily Dispatch

  • Morricone’s Western Sound Golden Globes & Oscars

    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.

  • MLK Day: Celebrating Black Composers on WPRB

    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.

  • MLK Day Eve Music by Black Composers

    MLK Day Eve Music by Black Composers

    Coming up in the 9:00 hour, we’ll hear Adolphus Hailstork’s cantata, “Done Made My Vow,” on texts steeped in African American history and the writings and speeches of figures such as Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King, Jr.

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

    On the eve of MLK’s birthday, it’s all music by composers of African descent until 11 ET, on WPRB 103.3 FM and at wprb.com.

    PHOTOS: All hail Hailstork (left), with a debt to Dett

  • Music Color & Expectations

    Music Color & Expectations

    Does the color of one’s skin have any bearing on the kind of music one writes? Should a black composer be expected to incorporate jazz or spiritual inflections into his or her music?

    Tune in tomorrow morning to have lazy expectations confounded. We’ll have representatives of the jazzy and spiritual schools, of course, but we’ll also hear works by a Pulitzer Prize winner who makes his home in New Jersey, an Afro-Cuban master of the guitar, a musketeer in the service of Louis XVI, and an Englishman infatuated with the works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

    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.

    In addition, we’ll hear recordings of the late conductor Paul Freeman, some spirituals sung by Marian Anderson, and the cantata “Done Made My Vow” by Adolphus Hailstork, in a recording made by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.

    In advance of MLK Day, it’s an exploration of content, character and color, with music by composers of African descent, tomorrow morning from 6 to 11 ET, on WPRB 103.3 FM or at wprb.com. Music is King, on Classic Ross Amico.

  • Conan the Barbarian Organ: A Holy Film Score

    Conan the Barbarian Organ: A Holy Film Score

    If what’s been keeping you out of church is that there’s simply not enough music from “Conan the Barbarian” being played on the organ, Naxos Records has done your soul an enormous service.

    Organist Philipp Pelster has transcribed and recorded Basil Poledouris’ film score magnum opus for the King of Instruments. What’s that, you say, something GOOD actually came out of “Conan?” Well, yes, actually, as a matter of fact. Having seen the movie, I was skeptical, myself. But Poledouris’ film score is one of the best of the era. And that’s saying something.

    To bless the venture and keep it holy, here’s Arnold Schwarzenegger’s prayer to Crom:

    If you just can’t deal with the silliness, here’s the music without the visuals:

    Feel free to needle-drop. There’s great stuff all the way through it.

    Unfortunately, there are no clips of the organ transcription posted on YouTube. I guess I’ll just have to shell out the $12 and hope for the best. CROM! HEAR ME, CROMMM!!!!

Tag Cloud

Aaron Copland (94) Beethoven (95) Composer (114) Film Music (153) Film Score (143) Film Scores (255) Halloween (107) John Williams (198) KWAX (233) Leonard Bernstein (105) Marlboro Music Festival (125) Movie Music (168) Mozart (92) Opera (222) Philadelphia Orchestra (91) Picture Perfect (174) Princeton Symphony Orchestra (110) Radio (90) Ross Amico (244) Roy's Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner (290) The Classical Network (101) The Lost Chord (269) Vaughan Williams (107) WPRB (397) WWFM (881)

DON’T MISS A BEAT

Receive a weekly digest every Sunday at noon by signing up here

RECENT POSTS