Classic Ross Amico

Category: Daily Dispatch

  • Circus Movie Music Picture Perfect on WWFM

    Circus Movie Music Picture Perfect on WWFM

    Ladies and gentlemen! Boys and girls! Children of all ages! May I have your attention, please?

    Step right up! This week on “Picture Perfect,” it’s music from movies about the circus!

    In 1964, George Pal produced and directed an adaptation of Charles G. Finney’s dark fantasy novel, “The Circus of Dr. Lao.” “7 Faces of Dr. Lao” was envisaged as a real showcase for its star, Tony Randall, who plays not only the mysterious proprietor of an itinerant Old West circus, but also Merlin the Magician, the great god Pan, a Serpent, the fabled monster Medusa, the blind fortune-teller Appolonius of Tyana, and the Abominable Snowman!

    The unusual score is by Leigh Harline, who freshens up tropes of the American Western by applying some Eastern spice. We’ll hear selections from the film’s original elements, remastered for the Film Score Monthly label.

    We’ll also have music from two Academy Award winners: Cecil B. DeMille’s “The Greatest Show on Earth,” voted Best Picture of 1952, with a score by Victor Young, and Federico Fellini’s “La Strada,” Best Foreign Language Film of 1956, with music by Nino Rota.

    Malcom Arnold wrote the music for “Trapeze,” Carol Reed’s 1956 love triangle on high (with Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis, and Gina Lollobrigada), and Danny Elfman understands that every day’s a circus for Paul Reubens in “Big Top Pee-Wee,” from 1988. I know you are, but what am I?

    Finally, with Halloween right around the corner, I couldn’t resist including a suite from Hammer Film Productions’ “Vampire Circus,” from 1972. The composer is David Whitaker, of “The Sword and the Sorcerer” cult status.

    Music for the circus takes center ring, on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, now at its new time, this SATURDAY EVENING AT 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

  • Karen Black Trilogy of Terror Horror Review

    Karen Black Trilogy of Terror Horror Review

    There were few actresses in the 1970s who were as omnipresent as Karen Black.

    She worked with Jack Nicholson, Robert Redford, Robert Duvall, Gene Hackman, Gene Wilder, Christopher Plummer, Alfred Hitchcock, and Robert Altman. Also, Kris Kristofferson, George Segal, Richard Benjamin, Elliot Gould, Lee Van Cleef, Dennis Hopper, and Fabian. She was even nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her work in “Five Easy Pieces” and for a Grammy for her singing and songwriting in “Nashville.”

    But to those of a certain age, Karen Black will probably always be linked with a certain Zuni fetish doll.

    This week on “Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner,” October is upon us. Roy Bjellquist and I will kick off a month of tricks and treats with a horrifying discussion of “Trilogy of Terror” (1975). For once, Karen Black really gets to exploit her range, in three creepy, campy segments – as a blackmailed, hypercorrect school marm; as hostile rival sisters (one’s been sucking on lemons, and the other is a free-spirited Satanist); and as the terryclothed target of a possessed anthropological artifact that sounds an awful lot like the Tasmanian Devil.

    It may have been a made-for-TV, “ABC Movie of the Week,” and the “twists” may have all subtlety of an anvil, but the stories are by sci-fi, fantasy, and horror legend Richard Matheson, and they’re directed by Dan Curtis of “Dark Shadows” fame.

    Black is the new black! Help us exorcise ourselves of the loony Zuni. Leave your comments and insights during the Facebook live-stream of Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner, this Friday evening at 7:00 EDT!

    https://www.facebook.com/roystiedyescificorner/

  • Paul Dukas Beyond The Sorcerer’s Apprentice

    Paul Dukas Beyond The Sorcerer’s Apprentice

    Welcome to another 31 DAYS OF HALLOWEEN… and Paul Dukas’ birthday.

    When we think of Dukas, we generally think of one thing: “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.” And when we think of “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” we think of Mickey Mouse.

    Dukas was an intensely self-critical artist, who wound up destroying most of his own works. Eventually he gave up composition altogether. Rather, like Shakespeare’s Prospero, he broke his staff and drowned his book to become a respected teacher of music, taking up posts at the Paris Conservatory and the École Normale de Musique. Among his students were Carlos Chávez, Maurice Duruflé, Olivier Messiaen, Manuel Ponce and Joaquin Rodrigo.

    Would that this creator of such vivid, brilliantly orchestrated works had left us more. But since all anyone knows is “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” I suppose it hardly matters.

    Here’s a suite from his rarely-heard opera, “Ariane et Barbe-Bleue,” after the Bluebeard story. Bluebeard, of course, is the fairy tale uxoricide whose castle rooms reveal increasingly horrible secrets. But since Dukas’ libretto was taken from a play by Maurice Maeterlinck – whose “Pelléas et Mélisande” Debussy was only just in the process of finishing up – there is less blood, and more layers of airy ambiguity. In fact, Maeterlinck essentially turns the tale on its head, making Ariane a pluckily resourceful, would-be liberator.

    Arturo Toscanini conducts the NBC Symphony and Princeton’s own Westminster Choir:

    “O mes clairs diamants” (“O my clear diamonds”):

    Those expecting a darker, more disturbing, psychologically twisted account of the fairy story should stick with Bartók’s Bluebeard.

    Zut alors! Look what I found! Silent film master Georges Méliès’ adaptation of Bluebeard:

    Mommy! Where’s Mickey Mouse???

    Why, right here, Billy…

    https://video.disney.com/watch/sorcerer-s-apprentice-fantasia-4ea9ebc01a74ea59a5867853

    Happy birthday, Paul Dukas (1865-1935)!

    PICTURED: The key to a dysfunctional marriage

  • September Song Kurt Weill and Walter Huston

    September Song Kurt Weill and Walter Huston

    The last of September. My favorite Kurt Weill song? “September Song,” from “Knickerbocker Holiday.” Here’s Walter Huston in 1938. The lyrics are by Maxwell Anderson.

  • NJ Outdoor Concert Newman Oltman Guitar Duo

    NJ Outdoor Concert Newman Oltman Guitar Duo

    It’s heartening to note that local musicians have been going the extra mile to find solutions to the puzzle of what to do about live performance during a time of pandemic. Last week, while taking steps to ensure that everyone would be safe, the Princeton Symphony Orchestra and the New Jersey Capital Philharmonic Orchestra both tossed their hats into the ring with outdoor, socially-distanced events.

    This weekend, the Newman & Oltman Guitar Duo will join the Hunterdon Symphony for a live concert at Rosemont Valley Farm in Stockton, NJ. The outdoor presentation will take place on Sunday at 3 p.m.

    The program will include a Concerto in B-Flat Major by George Frideric Handel and the “Cavatina” by Stanley Myers, popularized by the film “The Deerhunter.” Both performances will be given under the direction of conductor Lawrence Kursay.

    The duo will also perform “Música Incidental Campesina,” by the renowned Cuban composer Leo Brouwer, and Brouwer’s arrangement of Lennon & McCartney songs, “Beatlerianas: The Fool on the Hill.” Additional selections will be presented by ensembles of musicians drawn from the orchestra.

    Admission is $20 per vehicle, cash or check, payable to “HMA” (Hunterdon Musical Arts). Audience members may choose to remain in their cars and listen to the performance streamed on an FM radio band or use their own chairs and blankets to sit outside, while observing social distancing. Masks are required at all times.

    The farm is located at 700 Rosemont-Ringoes Road. Gates will open at 2:00 p.m. and will close 15 minutes prior to the start of the concert. The rain date is October 25.

    Michael Newman and Laura Oltman are artists in residence at the Mannes School of Music. They are also artistic directors of the long-running Raritan River Music Festival, presented each May in historic venues across Central New Jersey. Due to the unusual circumstances this year, the festival took a different tack, with the concerts shared remotely, online. All four programs have since been archived on the Raritan River Music website, raritanrivermusic.org.

    Of particular interest should be a concert video from May 23, which features a spoken introduction by Brouwer, as well as a performance of his “El Libro de los Seres Imaginarios” (“The Book of Imaginary Beings”), a work written specifically for the guitarists.

    The duo also recorded the piece under studio conditions for inclusion on their new album, “The Book of Imaginary Beings: The Music of Leo Brouwer,” on the MusicMasters label.

    For more information about Newman & Oltman, visit guitarduo.com.

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