Having a lazy Fourth? Enjoy these portraits (and snapshots) of the “Dean of American Composers,” Aaron Copland!
Copland assists Leonard Bernstein in a demo record of music from Bernstein’s “Fancy Free” (for Jerome Robbins):
Rare home movies of Copland on a wintry day in New York City in 1938:
Documentary, “Aaron Copland: A Self Portrait”:
PHOTO: Copland portrait by Gordon Parks
On this Fourth of July, here’s a little Americana, courtesy of Samuel A. “Skip” Livingston. Livingston, a self-professed admirer of the music of Jerome Moross (composer of “The Big Country”), captures some of that same open-air lyricism on his recent album, “Gentle Winds,” issued on Navona Records, the classical music division of PARMA Recordings.
As a clarinetist in The Blawenburg Band, Livingston has a busy summer ahead. The band will present its annual Independence Day concert at Yardley Community Centre, in Yardley, PA, this afternoon at 4:00. Its lawnchair series at Hopewell Train Station will commence on Monday at 7:30 p.m. On Tuesday, Livingston will direct the Blawenburg Dixieland Band at Mary Jacobs Memorial Library in Rocky Hill. And that’s just the tip of the snow cone.
Find out more about Livingston, the Blawenburg Band, and more, in my article in this week’s edition of U.S. 1 Newspaper – PrincetonInfo.
Happy Fourth, everyone!
Charles Ives’ “The Fourth of July:”
His program note:
“It’s a boy’s ‘4th—no historical orations—no patriotic grandiloquences by ‘grown-ups’—no program in his yard! But he knows what he’s celebrating—better than most of the county politicians. And he goes at it in his own way, with a patriotism nearer kin to nature than jingoism. His festivities start in quiet of the midnight before, and grow raucous with the sun. Everybody knows what it’s like—if everybody doesn’t—Cannon on the Green, Village Band on Main Street, fire crackers, shanks mixed on cornets, strings around big toes, torpedoes, Church bells, lost finger, fifes, clam-chowder, a prize-fight, drum-corps, burnt shins, parades (in and out of step), saloons all closed (more drunks than usual), baseball game (Danbury All-Stars vs Beaver Brook Boys), pistols, mobbed umpire, Red, White, and Blue runaway horse,—and the day ends with the sky-rocket over the Church-steeple, just after the annual explosion sets the Town-Hall on fire. All this is not in the music,—not now.”
More about it:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92196531
Be careful out there!
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