Classic Ross Amico

Category: Daily Dispatch

Orchestra Turns Flight Delay into Concert

When life gives you lemons…

Confronted with a flight delay, musicians of the Seattle Symphony perform an impromptu concert:

Video: Orch musicians start playing on delayed US flight

Here’s a quartet, which calls itself Port City Sound:

Perhaps best of all, the Philadelphia Orchestra held up in Beijing:

PHOTO: Philly musicians, with barely enough room to swing a cat(gut).

BTW, did you know that violin strings were never actually made out of cat? Learn the truth, with this pleasant bit of lunchtime reading:

Violin Strings Were Never Made Out of Actual Cat Guts

“Is it not strange that sheep’s guts could hail souls out of men’s bodies?”

― William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing

February 11, 2015
Remembering Jerry Goldsmith: A Film Music Legend

Oh, Jerry, I can’t tell you how much I miss you. What a joy it was to go to the movies when you were still alive. Of course, the movies got precipitously worse in your last decade, but you lent a degree of enjoyment even to the transparently crappy ones – even if it was combined with a lingering wistfulness for the glory days of the 1970s.

I will always cherish your music for “The Flim Flam Man,” “Patton,” “Chinatown,” “Papillon,” “The Great Train Robbery,” “Star Trek: The Motion Picture,” and especially “The Wind and the Lion.”

You often wound up playing second banana to John Williams (Williams got “Superman;” you got “Supergirl”), and a great many of the films you scored were unworthy of your talents, but you were always a professional (if at times a bit grouchy). I can recall many a moviegoing experience when your music wound up being the only redeeming quality.

But that’s the price of being fast and good. You were often brought on, on very short notice, especially late in your career, to write replacement scores for bad movies. Still, every once in a while you were tossed a bone, as with “L.A. Confidential.”

Criminally, you were honored with but a single Academy Award, for your work on “The Omen.” It was bad luck that “The Wind and the Lion” was released the same year as “Jaws.”

How many people know you also worked in television, providing music for shows like “Gunsmoke” and “The Twilight Zone,” or that you wrote the theme music for “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” and “The Waltons?”

I confess I don’t share your enthusiasm for electronics, but I understand you felt it was something you needed to work through. At least you didn’t require an intervention like Maurice Jarre.

What I would give to go see a quasi-intelligent, mainstream American movie again and see the credit, “Music by Jerry Goldsmith.” Those days will never come again, on any level.

Happy birthday, Jerry. I hope they’re still making good movies where you are.

“The Wind and the Lion”

“Patton”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdEy4GneZfw

“Star Trek: The Motion Picture”

PHOTO: Jerry Goldsmith (1929-2004)

February 10, 2015
Grammy’s Classical Music Surprise John Williams Wins

Classical music is so marginalized at the Grammy Awards, I don’t even bother watching. In fact, most years I don’t even pay attention to the nominees, except maybe, if I think of it, in the film score category.

Imagine my surprise when I scrolled through the list of winners this morning to find John Williams collected another statuette for his mantle (on his birthday, no less), for “Best Instrumental Composition,” for his score to “The Book Thief.” I can never quite grasp the timeline for the Grammys. “The Book Thief” was released in 2013.

Williams beat out Stanley Clarke (“Last Train to Sanity”), Gordon Goodwin (“Life in the Bubble”), Rufus Reid (“Recognition”) and Edgar Meyer and Chris Thile (“Tarnatian”).

Here are the other film and classical music winners:

Best Compilation Soundtrack for Visual Media
Frozen

Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media
The Grand Budapest Hotel

Best Song Written for Visual Media
“Let It Go”

Best Engineered Album, Classical
Vaughan Williams: Dona Nobis Pacem; Symphony No. 4; The Lark Ascending

Classical Producer of the Year
Judith Sherman

Best Orchestral Performance
“Adams, John: City Noir,” David Robertson, conductor (St. Louis Symphony)

Best Opera Recording
“Charpentier: La Descente D’Orphée Aux Enfers,” Paul O’Dette & Stephen Stubbs, conductors; Aaron Sheehan; Renate Wolter-Seevers, producer (Boston Early Music Festival Chamber Ensemble; Boston Early Music Festival Vocal Ensemble)

Best Choral Performance
“The Sacred Spirit Of Russia,” Craig Hella Johnson, conductor (Conspirare)

Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance
“In 27 Pieces — The Hilary Hahn Encores,” Hilary Hahn & Cory Smythe

Best Classical Instrumental Solo
“Play,” Jason Vieaux

Best Classical Solo Vocal Album
Douce France

Best Classical Compendium
Partch: Plectra & Percussion Dances

Best Contemporary Classical Composition
“Adams, John Luther: Become Ocean,” John Luther Adams

John Williams’ music for “The Book Thief”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hufmaYJNKY

February 9, 2015
John Williams Iconic Movie Opening

Still one of the most bravura openings of any movie:

Happy birthday, John Williams (born 1932).

February 8, 2015
Cupid & Psyche Love’s Timeless Valentine Story

This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” with Valentine’s Day fast approaching, we examine two treatments of the classical myth of Cupid and Psyche, as recounted in Apuleius’ “The Golden Ass.”

Frequently interpreted as an allegory of the elevation of the soul through love, the union of Cupid and Psyche is a beautiful story which has much in common with the fairy tale of Beauty and the Beast. There is the prohibition against a maid looking upon her “captor,” her catty stepsisters who conspire to trip her up, and the revelation of the “beast” as a kind of prince – in this case, the god of love himself.

In the end, the protagonists pass through travails to triumph, as love conquers all – a nice change of pace, I think you’ll agree, from the usual classical story arc of being transformed into a stag and devoured by hounds, flying too close to the sun and being struck down by Zeus’ thunderbolt, or accidentally eating one’s own children in a meat pie.

We’ll hear music from César Franck’s “Psyche and Eros,” full of romance and ardor, and a completely different approach, which sounds more suited to a ballroom or even an amusement park, “Cupid and Psyche,” by Lord Berners.

Get Psyched for Valentine’s Day this week, with “Slings and Eros,” this Sunday night at 10 ET, with a repeat Wednesday evening at 6; or listen to it later as a webcast at http://www.wwfm.org.

February 7, 2015

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