Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Jazz

  • Coltrane and Hartman: Too Beautiful

    Coltrane and Hartman: Too Beautiful

    John Coltrane was born 100 years ago today. In 1963, he teamed with vocalist Johnny Hartman to record one of the great make-out albums of all time. According to Hartman, each of the songs was done in a single take, except “You Are Too Beautiful” – because Elvin Jones dropped a drumstick. But alternate takes have since come to light. Hey, when it comes to this album, I am willing to go with the legend. Originally, Coltrane wasn’t even on the track, allowing McCoy Tyner his moment to shine. The album was reissued with additional Coltrane obbligato on three of the songs. The enchantment is so powerful, it bends reality. I can’t listen to it without it taking me to some very wistful places.


    Original versions of “My One and Only Love,” “Lush Life,” and “You Are Too Beautiful,” juxtaposed with reissues featuring more Trane

  • John Dankworth’s Experiments with Mice

    John Dankworth’s Experiments with Mice

    Whenever I hear the name John Dankworth, my thoughts travel back to Philadelphia’s late, lamented classical music station WFLN. Dankworth was one of the leading lights of British jazz, but he recorded an album with the London Symphony Orchestra in 1986, one of the cuts from which found its way onto the playlists of WFLN’s “Morning Potpourri” and “Afternoon Pops.” The piece was called “Further Experiments with Mice.” Dankworth wove the nursery tune “Three Blind Mice” into familiar classics from Beethoven to Gershwin and provided his own sly narration. WFLN changed format in 1997, and I haven’t thought of “Further Experiments with Mice” in years. Now, thanks to the internet, I was able to call it up on YouTube.


    I knew that Dankworth was a jazz artist – a composer, saxophonist, clarinetist, and bandleader, who married Cleo Laine and served as her music director – but it was only yesterday that I found out why the classical parody is called “FURTHER Experiments with Mice.” 30 years earlier, in 1956, Dankworth and His Orchestra released a hit single in the U.K. called “Experiments with Mice,” in which he sent up a number of jazz bands and artists after the same fashion, including Billy May, Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, Stan Kenton, Sauter-Finegan, and others. If you’ve never heard it, here it is.


    The entire London Symphony Orchestra album, “Symphonic Fusions,” has also been posted.


    Dankworth died in 2010 at the age of 82. Remembering him with a smile on his birthday.

  • Maurice Ravel: A 150th Birthday Celebration

    Maurice Ravel: A 150th Birthday Celebration

    He was a natty dresser, a reckless driver, a lover of cats, mechanical toys, and American jazz. Most of all, he was an exquisite composer. Frequently pigeonholed as an Impressionist, he could certainly evoke mood and atmosphere in his music, but he also expressed himself with the transparency and precision of a classicist. I’ve posted a lot about Maurice Ravel over the years. On the 150th anniversary of his birth, here are links to just a few of my past observations. If you’re interested, I hope you’re able to access everything.

    Merci, Maurice Ravel!

    Ravel’s love of toys

    https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=559132580920703&set=a.279006378933326

    Ravel and cats (there are multiple images, so you’ll have to click “view post” at the upper right after following the link)

    https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=2064327513734528&set=pcb.2064339847066628

    Ravel and Gershwin (and, by extension, jazz)

    https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1265378057714588&set=a.883855802533484

    Ravel and Vaughan Williams (again, there are multiple images, so you’ll have to click “view post” at the upper right after following the link)

    https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1057531578499238&set=pcb.1057534635165599

    Ravel and war

    https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=784646281702664&set=a.279006378933326

    Ravel’s “Bolero” (multiple images, so you’ll have to click “view post” at the upper right after following the link)

    https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=1253515038900890&set=pcb.1253593182226409

    Ravel delays possible

    https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=1176348285865793&set=a.279006378933326

  • Duke Ellington Turns 125 Cool Cat Birthday

    Duke Ellington Turns 125 Cool Cat Birthday

    Today is the 125th anniversary of Duke Ellington’s birth. With late April temperatures expected to push 90 on the East Coast, here’s a photo of this coolest of cats keeping cool with some ice cream.

    Duke’s cool lesson lost on an uncool audience

    The Duke and Ella on Ed Sullivan

    “Hot and Bothered”

    “Mr. Gentle and Mr. Cool”

    Duke unadorned (highly recommended)

  • Don Banks Hammer Horror Composer Centennial

    Don Banks Hammer Horror Composer Centennial

    Hammer Studios could always bank on the antipodean artistry of Don Banks, born in Australia 100 years ago today.

    Jazz was Banks’ first love, but he also studied classical composition with Mátyás Seiber and took lessons with total serialist Milton Babbitt. Unlikely as it may seem, both shared Banks enthusiasm for jazz. Another one of Banks’ tutors was Luigi Dallapiccola, also steeped in serialism. He found perhaps greater sympathy in his association and friendship with “third stream” master Gunther Schuller.

    What really buttered Banks’ bread was his commercial music, with a primary source of income derived from writing scores for Hammer films, including those for “The Reptile,” “Rasputin the Mad Monk,” “The Evil of Frankenstein,” and “The Mummy’s Shroud.” In all, he scored 19 feature films, 22 documentaries, and more than 60 television shows. Nearly half of his film scores were for Hammer, where he could really let his hair down. In addition, he wrote music for cartoon shorts, advertisements, and animated television series.

    In the 1970s, he returned to Australia, where he held several education and administrative posts.

    Some of the scores he wrote for Hammer were jazz-inflected, including that for “Hysteria.”

    Sending thanks to Banks on his centenary!

    Jazzy “Hysteria”

    “Captain Clegg” (a.k.a. “Night Creatures”)

    “Confessions of a Psycho Cat”

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L90pLrlqFSw

    “The Mummy’s Shroud”

    “Four Pieces for String Quartet”

    “Blues for Two”

    Examples of Banks’ “third stream” music (a synthesis of jazz and classical)

Tag Cloud

Aaron Copland (94) Beethoven (95) Composer (114) Film Music (151) Film Score (143) Film Scores (255) Halloween (103) John Williams (198) KWAX (233) Leonard Bernstein (105) Marlboro Music Festival (125) Movie Music (166) Mozart (91) Opera (217) Philadelphia Orchestra (91) Picture Perfect (174) Princeton Symphony Orchestra (110) Radio (90) Ross Amico (244) Roy's Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner (290) The Classical Network (101) The Lost Chord (269) Vaughan Williams (107) WPRB (397) WWFM (881)

DON’T MISS A BEAT

Receive a weekly digest every Sunday at noon by signing up here

RECENT POSTS