Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Jerome Moross

Wild Movie Music Picture Perfect on WWFM

This week on “Picture Perfect,” March goes out like a lion… and a bear… and a baby elephant… and the tiger Shere Khan!

We’ll hear selections from John Barry’s music for “Born Free” (1966), based on Joy Adamson’s memoir about the raising of Elsa, an orphaned lion cub who grows to adulthood and is eventually released into the Kenyan wilderness. The music proved a double Academy Award winner for Barry, who was recognized for Best Original Score and Best Original Song.

Jerome Moross, best known for his music to “The Big Country,” had such a strong personality that his immediately recognizable sound extended even to his work on the National Geographic special, “Grizzly!” (1967), a documentary about a pair of ecologists studying North American bears. “Grizzly!” sports an energetic Americana score that is very much cut from the same cloth.

The Korda Brothers’ adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s “The Jungle Book” (1942) stars the charismatic Indian actor Sabu, as Mowgli, raised by wolves, who yearns to reconnect with his human roots. (For the record, Kipling pronounced “Mowgli” so that the first syllable rhymes with “cow.”) Miklós Rózsa wrote the enchanting score.

And we can’t get through the hour without hearing Henry Mancini’s “Baby Elephant Walk,” from “Hatari!” (1962). So many exclamation points in these wilderness titles! The film was directed by Howard Hawks and starred John Wayne. In case you’re wondering, “Hatari!” is Swahili for “Danger!”

Take a walk on the wild side, with a spring in your step, on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, this Saturday evening at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

March 25, 2023
Jerome Moross Frankie and Johnny Rediscovered

Wow! Here’s a neat discovery. An actual performance of Jerome Moross’ ballet, “Frankie and Johnny.”

You probably know the bluesy song, inspired by one or more sensational crimes of passion, in which a betrayed woman shoots her lover. (“He was her man, but he done her wrong.”) There are now so many variants that it’s taken on the quality of a folk song. Elvis sang it. Johnny Cash sang it. It’s been covered by innumerable jazz artists.

Moross uses it as a kind of Greek chorus (sung by a trio Salvation Army sisters) in his brash and jazzy dance piece, which created a sensation at its premiere in 1938. The work predated Leonard Bernstein’s “Fancy Free” by six years and sent the censors into a moral panic.

Though Moross was adept at writing music in many forms – including concert pieces (a symphony for Beecham), musical theater (the cult classic “The Golden Apple,” including the evergreen “Lazy Afternoon”), and opera (“Sorry, Wrong Number”) – he is best known for his classic film scores. He spent much of his career ping-ponging back and forth between New York and Hollywood.

When “Porgy and Bess” concluded its New York run in 1935, George Gershwin invited Moross to join the show, on tour, as a pianist. It was while on a bus trip to Los Angeles to participate in “Porgy’s” west coast premiere that the 23 year-old made a stop in Albuquerque.

“[A]s we hit the Plains I got so excited,” Moross recollected. “. . . [T]he next day I got to the edge of town and then walked out onto the flat land with a marvelous feeling of being alone in the vastness, with the mountains cutting off the horizon. The whole thing was just too much for me . . . it was marvelous, and I just fell in love with it.”

The experience served him well. Moross drew on the memory of that trip in the writing of some of his most famous music, the Academy Award-nominated score for “The Big Country,” with its sense of wide-open excitement in the face of sweeping vistas. Western high-spirits and American jazz color most of Moross’ output.

Happy birthday, Jerome Moross. You tackled everything with exuberance and vitality.

One of the most thrilling credits sequences of all time?

Surely one of the greatest film scores ever written

Rare historic radio broadcast of the Symphony No. 1, with Moross himself at the piano

“Lazy Afternoon” from “The Golden Apple,” sung by Kaye Ballard from the 1954 original cast recording

Theme to “Wagon Train”

Sonata in G major for Piano Duet and String Quartet

August 1, 2022
Western Film Music on Picture Perfect

This week on “Picture Perfect,” hit the sundrenched plains and wide-open spaces, with music from outsized movies set in the American West.

We’ll be living large with selections from “The Big Country” (Jerome Moross), “The Big Sky” (Dimitri Tiomkin), “Big Jake” (Elmer Bernstein), and “Silverado” (Bruce Broughton).

It’s all BIG, on “Picture Perfect,” this Saturday evening at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

Big thanks to everyone who contributed to our recent end-of-the-fiscal-year fundraiser. I am happy to report that we exceeded our goal of $75,000. Here’s looking forward to another year of great music on the radio. Thank you, listener-members, for stepping up and aiming high!

July 3, 2021
Film Composers Beyond the Screen

Played out on the Oscars?

This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” enjoy a triple-feature of concert works by composers better recognized for their work in film.

First, Jerome Moross was ensured a kind of immortality in the hearts of moviegoers for his Academy Award nominated score for “The Big Country.” He composed music for 16 films in all – comparatively few, actually, on account of a bicoastal career. (He was based in New York City.)

Off-screen, he wrote music for five ballets, a symphony, a flute concerto, various works for orchestra and chamber ensemble, and a one-act opera, “Sorry, Wrong Number.” His best-known musical theatre piece is “The Golden Apple,” which spawned the ever-green “Lazy Afternoon.”

Tonight, we’ll hear his delightful “Sonatina for Clarinet Choir” of 1966.

Very little need be said of John Williams. The most successful film composer of all time, Williams has been a household name since the 1970s, thanks to the one-two punch of “Jaws” and “Star Wars.” But by then, he was already two decades into a career that’s now spanned 65 years. With 52 Academy Award nominations and five wins, he is the second most nominated figure in the history of the Academy, behind only Walt Disney.

For the concert hall, Williams has written music for just about every instrument, including an impressive body of concertos. Tonight, we’ll hear his “Essay for Strings,” composed in 1965, when he was 33 years-old.

Finally, English composer Laurie Johnson (pictured) – still with us at 94 – is appreciated for his contributions to, among others, Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove,” the Hammer cult favorite “Captain Kronos – Vampire Hunter,” and the classic TV series “The Avengers.”

Gramophone Magazine described his “Symphony: Synthesis,” composed in 1971, as a masterpiece. “The work becomes increasingly fascinating with each listening,” writes the critic. “This is perhaps the first truly successful combination of the Jazz and European music traditions.”

The recording we’ll hear, made under the composer’s direction, features a number of prominent jazz artists, including Tubby Hayes, Don Lusher, Joe Harriott, Kenny Wheeler and Stan Tracey.

It’s not always about images. Film composers cast themselves against type, on “Typecast IV: The Curse of Typecast.” It will be there for you when the Oscars sputter, this Sunday night at 10:00 EDT; or enjoy it later, as a webcast, on WWFM – The Classical Network and at wwfm.org.

April 25, 2021
Classic Film & UFOs On Air Friday

You’re right. The idea of cowboys lassoing an Allosaurus so that they can show it off in their Wild West show is totally preposterous. But not to worry, we’ll rinse the taste out of our mouths with a three-way bull session devoted to a movie about extraterrestrials who fly around in ice cream cones.

That’s right, it’s another Classic Ross Amico double feature!

Join me this Friday evening at 6:00 EDT, for an hour of music from the western scores of Jerome Moross on “Picture Perfect” – including selections from “The Big Country,” “The Proud Rebel,” “The Jayhawkers,” and “The Valley of Gwangi” – on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

Then at 7:00 EDT, Roy Bjellquist and I will be joined by Joe Metz (my cousin, whom I have not seen in about 35 years) for an in-depth discussion about a movie that influenced us all, Steven Spielberg’s UFO blockbuster “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.”

You can bet your mashed potatoes that the hour will not pass without some discussion of music, which permeates the film on multiple levels.

Catch the Facebook live-stream, and by all means, participate in the running commentary. We look forward to reading your thoughts and reactions.

Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner

Watch us. Watch the skies. When we see you there, we’ll know, truly… we are not alone!

July 31, 2020

Tag Cloud

RECENT POSTS