Classic Ross Amico

Category: Daily Dispatch

Princeton Festival’s Porgy & Bess Review

If you’re interested, here’s my review of The Princeton Festival’s fine “Porgy and Bess” in today’s Trenton Times. Remaining performances take place at McCarter Theatre Center tonight at 8 and Sunday afternoon at 3.

http://www.nj.com/times-entertainment/index.ssf/2014/06/review_princeton_festivals_por.html

Also, Westminster Choir College’s CoOPERAtive Program is offering three weeks worth of recitals and master classes involving emerging artists at Bristol Chapel and the Princeton Regional Schools Performing Arts Center. All events are free and open to the public. You can find out more about it by following the link. (As is so often the case, those peculiar, online paragraph breaks are not mine!)

http://www.nj.com/times-entertainment/index.ssf/2014/06/westminster_choir_colleges_coo.html

PHOTO: Kenneth Overton, as Jake, sings “A Woman is a Sometime Thing”

June 27, 2014
Live Radio Shift Pledges Needed Now

LIVE AIR SHIFT ALERT! I’ve been given my first live shift since being removed from the weekend mornings at the end of March. I’ll be on tomorrow from 1 to 4 p.m., asking for your pledges of support. It may be my last live shift for quite some time. My understanding is that I will still be selecting all my own music.

Because of the pledge drive, “Picture Perfect” will be heard this week on Saturday, at 4 p.m ET. In keeping with the drive’s Americana theme, the focus will be on the film scores of Elmer Bernstein (including “The Magnificent Seven” and “To Kill a Mockingbird”). “The Lost Chord” will air, as usual, Sunday night at 10, and will feature an hour of vintage Gershwin recordings.

Remember, the station really needs the dough. Even if you’re not happy with some of the changes, it’s still 24 hours of classical music. Also, WWFM remains the distributor of specialty shows like “Picture Perfect” and “The Lost Chord.”

Feel free to express your likes and dislikes, but remember a generous pledge will get your opinions taken more seriously. Do not hold out hopes that I will be restored to weekend mornings. Unless a big time patron steps forward by the end of the month to subsidize my chair, it ain’t going to happen.

Your pledges, especially between 1 and 4 tomorrow, but anytime, with perhaps a kind word for your humble host, are greatly appreciated.

Listen and donate here: http://www.wwfm.org.

Thank you for supporting The Classical Network.

June 26, 2014
Eli Wallach Tuco dies at 98

So long, Tuco.

Eli Wallach (1915-2014).

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/25/movies/eli-wallach-multifaceted-actor-dies-at-98.html?_r=0

“When you have to shoot, shoot.”

Searching for gold to Morricone’s magnificent music:

June 25, 2014
Eli Wallach Tribute on TCM Monday

Turner Classic Movies: TCM has announced an 11-hour Eli Wallach tribute, to run on Monday, beginning at 9 a.m.

Featured films will include:

9:00 AM Kisses for My President
11:00 AM Act One
1:00 PM How the West Was Won
3:45 PM The Misfits
6:00 PM Baby Doll

Sorry to say, Don Siegel’s “The Lineup” will not be among them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgkh-nei9hw

I wish they would have given him the prime time treatment. He certainly deserves it.

June 25, 2014
Fantasia St John’s Eve and Lara St John

Okay, I’m back from the Bald Mountain, little the worse for wear. I watched “Fantasia” last night for St. John Eve, and found it interesting that Deems Taylor, in introducing “A Night on Bald Mountain,” mentioned that the setting is Walpurgis Night. Mussorgsky speficies St. John’s Eve. Then, that’s not the only thing Disney ever got wrong. Great flick, though!

Following on the heels of St. John’s Eve, of course, is the Feast Day of St. John. Here is Lara St. John, making a feast of Johann Sebastian Bach.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCIHIjFG_i8

And what the heck, here she is with Polkastra, her polka band, to perform “The Kosher Chicken Dance.”

June 24, 2014

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