Classic Ross Amico

Category: Daily Dispatch

Wizard Music From Lord of the Rings & Harry Potter

This week on “Picture Perfect,” you’ll be spellbound (I hope) by an hour of musical selections from movies about wizards and sorcerers.

Gandalf and Saruman duke it out in Peter Jackson’s frenetic, yet somehow ponderous adaptations of J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings,” films so bloated and poorly paced that anyone who did not read the books probably wondered what all the fuss was about. Its abundant defects didn’t keep the screen trilogy from making over a billion dollars and garnering 30 Academy Award nominations. Three of those were bestowed upon composer Howard Shore. We’ll be sampling from his music to “The Fellowship of the Ring” (2001).

Made for a fraction of the budget, much less self-serious, and arguably way more fun is “The Sword and the Sorcerer” (1982), which holds no pretense to be anything beyond what it is: a schlocky B-movie sword and sandal swashbuckler. However, the composer, David Whitaker, aspired for something greater. Against tremendous time pressures, he turned in a marvelous score, which sounds like Erich Wolfgang Korngold on a shoestring. If this film had been made by George Lucas, Whitaker would be world famous.

After creating one of his greatest scores for Stanley Kubrick’s “Spartacus,” Alex North had his music for Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” rejected – and not in a nice way. (North didn’t find out about it until the lights went down at the film’s premiere.) Fortunately, the composer was able to salvage the best material for “Dragonslayer” (1981). The plot, about a bumbling sorcerer’s apprentice who faces a seemingly impossible challenge, is serviceable at best, but the dragon may yet be the most amazing committed to film. Also, the score is terrific.

Finally, John Williams kicked off another billion dollar franchise with “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” (2001), which in England was released (as was the book) as “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.” Who ever heard of a sorcerer’s stone? I guess the publishers were nervous that Americans would be put off by any association with philosophy.

Prepare to be charmed! It’s music for wizards and sorcerers this week, 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 – ALL NEW! – 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!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

PHOTO: Saruman vexes Gandalf with the exquisite whiteness of his beard

October 11, 2024
Joshua Bell to NJ Symphony A New Era?

I just received a press release announcing that Joshua Bell has been appointed principal guest conductor of the New Jersey Symphony, beginning in the 2025-26 season. Be still, my heart.

The organization’s music director, Xian Zhang, is due to take over leadership of the Seattle Symphony, also in 2025-26, with a contractual agreement of five years. She is bound to the New Jersey Symphony through 2028, so the Seattle commitment will mean a bicoastal existence. Xian assumed the directorship of the New Jersey Symphony in 2016.

Bell, of course, has enjoyed a busy career as a violin soloist. He was named music director of the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields in 2011. The famed chamber orchestra, founded by Sir Neville Marriner, is based in London. Bell keeps residences in Manhattan and upstate New York. This year, the ASMF announced the most recent extension of his contract, also through 2028.

You don’t have to be much of a soothsayer to interpret the new appointment as an extended audition for Bell as the next music director of the New Jersey Symphony.

Here’s the official notice:

https://www.njsymphony.org/news/detail/joshua-bell-named-new-jersey-symphony-principal-guest-conductor-beginning-in-202526-season

October 10, 2024
Supporting the Arts Small Acts Big Impact

I’ll probably never have the bank account to know what it’s like to be a big-time patron of the arts on the scale of a Medici or a Guggenheim; but thanks to crowdfunding platforms even I am able to do my own small part to help underwrite projects that are of particular interest to me.

So I can feel an extra degree of satisfaction that there’s a two-volume chronicle of Jerry Goldsmith’s career and music on the way and that Intrada Records has just completed sessions for a compact disc release of Frank Skinner’s score to “Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein,” also imminent.

I’m especially proud to have been able to kick in for a couple of CDs of Vaughan Williams world premieres for Albion Records, the recording branch of the Ralph Vaughan Williams Society, including “Beyond My Dreams,” devoted to the composer’s incidental music for Greek plays (other than “The Wasps”), released in 2017, and “Royal Throne of Kings,” devoted to his music for Shakespeare, newly issued.

This Saturday will mark Vaughan Williams’ birthday anniversary, and since I believe some potential listeners are not seeing my Facebook teasers for my light music show, “Sweetness and Light,” until too late, if I post them the morning of broadcast, this week I am giving you several days’ notice that I will be including selections from the new Shakespeare disc in a program that will emphasize RVW’s lighter music.

So if you’re a Ralph Vaughan Williams’ fan (he’s one of my favorite composers), do take note! We’ll be humming along with Uncle Ralph on “Sweetness and Light,” this Saturday morning at 11:00 EDT/8:00 PDT, exclusively on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

Stream it wherever you are at the link:

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

Ogle the complete Albion Records catalogue here:

Albion Records

October 10, 2024
Leif Segerstam Dies at 80

Oh no! Leif Segerstam has died.

This Finnish conductor of Falstaffian dimensions was a characterful interpreter of the works of Jean Sibelius, Carl Nielsen, Allan Pettersson, Einojuhani Rautavaara, and other composers perhaps further afield. He served, at various times, as artistic director/chief conductor of the Stockholm Royal Opera, the Helsinki Philharmonic, the Danish National Radio Symphony, and the Savonlinna Opera Festival.

He was also a violinist, a pianist, and a composer. If, by chance, he ever found himself with extra time on his hands, he would simply churn out a symphony. By the time of his death he had composed 371 of them. (That is not a typo.) He also wrote 30 string quartets, 13 violin concertos, 8 cello concertos, 4 viola concertos, and 4 piano concertos.

Although he could hardly be said ever to have been a model of fitness, I am shocked to see him go. He always seemed to be inextinguishable, the very embodiment of Joulupukki, the Finnish Santa Claus, which he so strongly resembled.

The name Leif is of Scandinavian origin and is associated with the Viking Age. What are the odds that this most vibrant and eccentric of Nordic conductors would die on Leif Erikson Day?

Segerstam was 80 years-old. The man was a beast. R.I.P.

Segerstam conducts Sibelius’ Symphony No. 5

Just try to forget this “Scheherazade,” with its highly unconventional, piratical conclusion

Cutting to the chase

Rautavaara’s “On the Last Frontier,” after Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym,” with Rautavaara in attendance

Jolly Segerstam conducts grim Pettersson

Segerstam… gives a TED Talk???!!!

Segerstam’s Symphony No. 253 (again, not a typo)

October 9, 2024
Princeton Soundtracks Movie Music Talk

Pulling together my thoughts, slides, and sound files for the next Princeton Symphony Orchestra Soundtracks talk, “Picture Perfect: Music and the Movies.” The event will be held in the second floor Newsroom of Princeton Public Library, 65 Witherspoon St., in Princeton, NJ, tomorrow (Tuesday) night at 7:00.

I’ll share reflections on, and my affection for, some of my favorite film scores, within the context of broader observations on the evolution of movie music from the silent era to the present. If you have anything to add about Hans Zimmer, a Q&A will follow!

It’s all free, so drop on by and take a load off. Popcorn not included!

October 7, 2024

Tag Cloud

RECENT POSTS