Classic Ross Amico

Category: Sweetness and Light

The Importance of Being Ernest (Tomlinson) on “Sweetness and Light”

This week on “Sweetness and Light,” I can confidently say all the music will be Ernest! The focus is on Ernest Tomlinson. Tomlinson, extraordinarily long-lived, was born on this date in 1924. He died in 2015 at the age of 90.

Not only was he a light music master, he was also something of a patron saint of the genre. In 1984, when he was about 60, he learned that the BBC was disposing of its light music archive. He stepped up and founded the Library of Light Orchestral Music, rescuing an estimated 50,000 pieces, which he kept in a farmhouse on his family’s property.

Among his own light music classics are 100 pieces of library music – music to be licensed to film, television, and radio. He also composed thirteen orchestral suites, symphonic works (including works for symphonic jazz), works for solo instrument and orchestra, choral music, a one-act opera, and music for brass band.

I hope you’ll join me for one of his most popular works, his “Suite of English Folk-Dances,” after John Playford, three dances from his ballet “Aladdin,” and selections from a BBC radio play about Cinderella, broadcast on Christmas Eve 1955. It was the success of latter that secured Tomlinson the freedom to devote himself to full-time, freelance composition.

Learn more about the importance of being Ernest, on “Sweetness and Light,” this Saturday morning at 11:00 EDT/8:00 PDT, exclusively on KWAX Classical Oregon!
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Stream it, wherever you are, at the link:

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

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Tomlinson’s website

https://ernesttomlinson.com/

The library he founded, now maintained by The Light Music Society

https://www.lightmusicsociety.com/

Fun and informative 2007 documentary about British light music, featuring Tomlinson and other light music luminaries

September 19, 2026
Chill Out with Undemanding Night Music on “Sweetness and Light”

It’s that time of year when the light is shifting, the days grow shorter, and in the morning there’s a nip in the air. This week on “Sweetness and Light,” we’ll be thinking cool and happy thoughts, with an hour of night music – nocturnes, music reflective of the night sky, even sleep!

I hope you’ll join me for selections by Alexander Borodin, Antonín Dvořák, Jacques Offenbach, Claude Debussy, Manuel Ponce, John Field, and light music masters Charles Ancliffe, Archibald Joyce, and Robert Farnon.

September Saturdays are a good time to chill. I’ll be a fool for cool 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/

September 12, 2026
Once More Unto the Beach on “Sweetness and Light”

Once more unto the beach, dear friends!

This morning on “Sweetness and Light,” for Labor Day weekend, we’ll wring the last from our beach towels as we bid farewell to the summer season.

I’ll have two works that are Jersey Shore specific, including the “Cape May Suite” by Rick Sowash (who lives in Cincinnati) and “The Atlantic City Pageant” by John Philip Sousa – named for the famous beauty pageant and given its first performance on Atlantic City’s Steel Pier.

We’ll also hear from Virgil Thomson, Émile Waldteufel, Ronald Binge, Clive Richardson, Ralph Vaughan Williams, John Williams, and Morton Gould.

It will be hotter than Harfleur, but we’ll seek solace in the surf. Join me by the seaside for the last throes of summer, on “Sweetness and Light,” this Saturday morning at 11:00 EDT/8:00 PDT, exclusively on KWAX Classical Oregon!

Stream it, wherever you are, at the link:

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

September 5, 2026
A Canadian Pancake Breakfast on “Sweetness and Light”

This week on “Sweetness and Light,” the focus is on our friends to the north – all music associated, in one way or another, with Canada. We’ll hear works by Canadian composers Healey Willan and Robert Farnon, including Farnon’s “Ottawa” Symphony, with a few of his light music classics tossed into the bargain.

Neither Emil Nikolaus von Reznicek nor Ralph Vaughan Williams were Canadian, but both wrote music associated with the Great White North. Television audiences of the late 1950s would come to associate Reznicek’s best-known music with the North-West Mounted Police, during the time of the Klondike Gold Rush, when his “Donna Diana Overture” was appropriated as the theme for “Sergeant Preston of the Yukon.” And what a performance we’ll hear, with Hermann Scherchen conducting, in a recording that was made contemporaneously with the run of the show!

Vaughan Williams wrote the music for the Powell-Pressburger film “49th Parallel,” in which patriotic Canadian citizens save our bacon from Nazi invasion. Raymond Massey beating the tar out of a Nazi? Now that’s the kind of propaganda I can get behind!

I’ll be ladling out the syrup and the pancakes will be fluffy, as we salute Canada on “Sweetness and Light,” this Saturday morning at 11:00 EDT/8:00 PDT, exclusively on KWAX Classical Oregon!

Stream it, wherever you are, at the link:

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

August 29, 2026
Celebrating Debussy on KWAX

Catch the wave with the composer of “La Mer.” Today, to celebrate the anniversary of the birth of Claude Debussy (1862-1918), I hope you’ll consider joining me for my Saturday radio shows, “Sweetness and Light” and “The Lost Chord.”

Regarded as one of France’s greatest composers, and one of the foundational figures in 20th century music, Debussy was the most famous representative of a style known as Impressionism (although he himself loathed the term). What’s in a name?

No matter how you choose to classify it, he wrote a lot of beautiful music, and I’ve selected what I think are some of his most delightful pieces (for “Sweetness and Light”), as well some of his lesser-heard ones (for “The Lost Chord”).

On “Sweetness and Light” (11:00 EDT/8:00 PDT), we’ll enjoy orchestrations of his piano works by other hands, as well as the composer’s own arrangement of “La plus que lente” for small orchestra (including cimbalom!).

Then on “The Lost Chord” (7:00 EDT/4:00 PDT), we’ll hear “Six épigraphes antiques” (“Six Ancient Epigraphes”), orchestrated by Ernest Ansermet, and his Prix de Rome award-winning cantata “L’enfant prodigue” (“The Prodigal Son”), in a recording featuring Jessye Norman, José Carreras, and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau.

Interested in Debussy? We’ve got you covered. Join me in lauding Claude on “Sweetness and Light” and “The Lost Chord,” on KWAX Classical Oregon!

Stream both programs, wherever you are, at the link:

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

August 22, 2026

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