Classic Ross Amico

Tag: KWAX

Big Western Movie Music on Picture Perfect Radio

Having had the seat of my radio shows shifted to the West Coast, I can assure you it is a big country. Thankfully, the distance is handily overcome through the miracle of online streaming, the transcontinental railroad of the digital age.

This week on “Picture Perfect,” we’ll hit the sundrenched plains and wide-open spaces, with music from outsized movies set in the American West. Live large with selections from “The Big Country” (Jerome Moross), “The Big Sky” (Dimitri Tiomkin), “Big Jake” (Elmer Bernstein), and “Silverado” (Bruce Broughton).

With independence thrust upon me, my declaration is that it’s all BIG, on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

See below for streaming information.

Keep in mind, KWAX is on the West Coast, so there’s a three-hour difference for the Trenton-Princeton area. Here are the respective air-times of my recorded shows (with East Coast conversions in parentheses):

PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday on KWAX at 5:00 PACIFIC TIME (8:00 PM EDT)

THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday on KWAX at 4:00 PACIFIC TIME (7:00 PM EDT)

Stream them here!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

June 30, 2023
Wagner Debussy Holst Early Symphonies on KWAX

Mighty oaks from little acorns grow, and even giants started small.

Young composers who went on to great things tackle that most daunting of musical forms, the symphony, this week on “The Lost Chord,” now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon.

What’s that? Wagner wrote symphonies? That’s right. He took a crack at writing two of them, in Beethovenian style, before finding his niche as a revolutionary opera composer. We’ll hear his Symphony in E.

We’ll also enjoy an early symphony by Gustav Holst, composer of “The Planets,” and one by an 18-year-old Claude Debussy.

Judging from their mature works, these three would be among the least likely to attempt sonata form.

Impetuous youth! I hope you’ll join me for “Bold Heads on Young Shoulders.” Composers at the start of their careers find the courage to strive for symphonic mastery, on KWAX!

See below for streaming information.

Keep in mind, KWAX is on the West Coast, so there’s a three-hour difference for the Trenton-Princeton area. Here are the respective air-times of my recorded shows (with East Coast conversions in parentheses):

PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday on KWAX at 5:00 PACIFIC TIME (8:00 PM EDT)

THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday on KWAX at 4:00 PACIFIC TIME (7:00 PM EDT)

Stream them here!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

LEFT TO RIGHT: Young Debussy, Wagner, and Holst, feeling their oats

June 24, 2023
Classical Music for Dad A Sports-Themed Father’s Day

I may have been told to clean out my locker at a certain classical music station in the Trenton-Princeton area, but happily there’s still room for me on the bench at KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon. So buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack. I don’t care if I never go back!

This week on “The Lost Chord,” it’s the mother of all Father’s Day shows, as we pay tribute to Dad with an hour of music about sports.

I realize it’s possible that not all dads necessarily like sports. However, it’s been my experience that Sunday afternoons and Monday nights have always been off-limits, as far as the family television is concerned. For me personally, that meant that after Abbott and Costello or the Bowery Boys, it was football, golf, or “Wide World of Sports,” and that I never saw “MAS*H” during its first run.

Be that as it may, it’s All-Dads Eve, so we’re going to give him what he wants – an hour of rough-and-tumble, the thrill of victory, and the agony of defeat.

We’ll hear “Rugby” by Arthur Honegger, “Half-Time” by Bohuslav Martinu, “The Yale-Princeton Football Game” by Charles Ives, and highlights from the baseball opera “The Mighty Casey” by William Schuman.

Combine with a La-Z-Boy and a cold beer, and it’s a recipe for dad contentment. I hope you’ll join me for “Good Sports,” now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

See below for streaming information.

Keep in mind, KWAX is on the West Coast, so there’s a three-hour difference for the Trenton-Princeton area. Here are the respective air-times of my recorded shows (with East Coast conversions in parentheses):

PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday on KWAX at 5:00 PACIFIC TIME (8:00 PM EDT)

THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday on KWAX at 4:00 PACIFIC TIME (7:00 PM EDT)

Stream them here!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

PHOTO: Philadelphia Baseball Club, 1887 (Dad center)

June 17, 2023
Movie Music for Father’s Day on KWAX

Even if you’re not appreciated by your former employer, Father knows best; and my old man says I’m better off at KWAX!

This week on “Picture Perfect,” with Father’s Day right around the corner, we’ll celebrate by listening to music for movie dads.

Vito Corleone may not exactly have been a model father, but he did adhere to a certain code of ethics. Besides, what father doesn’t love “The Godfather” (1972)? “The Godfather” was recognized with 11 Academy Award nominations – of which it won three, including Best Picture. However, the awards were not without controversy.

Of course, Brando sent Sacheen Littlefeather to the ceremony to decline his Oscar, in protest over Hollywood’s portrayal of Native Americans in television and film. Then there was the matter of the score, by Nino Rota. Rota was nominated, but the nomination was withdrawn when it was discovered that he had used one of the themes in a 1958 film, “Fortunella,” which starred Giulietta Masina and Alberto Sordi. In the end, the Academy turned around and gave Rota the award anyway, two years later, for “The Godfather Part II.”

“Field of Dreams” (1989) is one of those rare movies that has the ability to reduce manly men – even those without daddy issues – to a pool of tears. Phil Alden Robinson’s superior adaptation of W.P. Kinsella’s novel, “Shoeless Joe,” is a male wish-fulfillment fantasy, in which a man finds redemption, and a new understanding of his father, in the enchanted cornfields of America’s heartland. And it’s all brought about courtesy of America’s pastime, baseball. The evocative score is by James Horner, who rides on the shoulders of Aaron Copland. The composer seems particularly smitten with Copland’s “Our Town.”

William Powell plays Clarence Day, the irascible paterfamilias of an upper-class family of redheads, in the comedy “Life with Father” (1947), for which Max Steiner wrote the music.

And Gregory Peck plays one of his most memorable roles as defense attorney – and model father – Atticus Finch, in “To Kill a Mockingbird” (1962), based on Harper Lee’s beautiful “coming of age” novel. The book was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1961. Peck won the Academy Award for Best Actor a year later. The score is one of the best-loved of Elmer Bernstein.

You can try to rank the music, but Father’s Day generally yields a tie. (Yes, it’s a pun. Dads love puns.) Spare a thought for dear old Dad, this Friday evening, on “Picture Perfect,” now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

See below for streaming information for both of my recorded shows.

Keep in mind, KWAX is on the West Coast, so there’s a three-hour difference for the Trenton-Princeton area. Here are the respective air-times of my shows (with East Coast conversions in parentheses):

PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday on KWAX at 5:00 PACIFIC TIME (8:00 PM EDT)

THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday on KWAX at 4:00 PACIFIC TIME (7:00 PM EDT)

Stream them here!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

June 16, 2023
Mount St Helens Blows Up The Lost Chord This Week

I suppose I should apologize on behalf of my former employer for all the smoke this week. You can’t burn a bridge that’s stood for 28 years without kicking up a little pollution.

That said, my unnatural dismissal from a certain local classical music station puts me in mind of some more natural disasters. With my broadcast base shifting for the time being to the Pacific Northwest and KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon, my thoughts drift back to 1980 and the fearsome eruption of Mount St. Helens. When Helens blew, she killed 57 people, reduced hundreds of square miles to wasteland, and caused over a billion dollars in damage. The most active volcano in the contiguous United States, Helens is situated only a three-hour drive north of Eugene (home of KWAX).

This week on “The Lost Chord” we’ll be dancing around the mouth of the volcano, as it were. Composer Alan Hovhaness was always acutely attuned to nature. For decades, he lived outside Seattle, where he enjoyed a fruitful relationship with the Seattle Symphony. Mountains, in particular, inspired a number of his more reverential works. Commenting on his best-known music, the Symphony No. 2, “Mysterious Mountain,” composed in 1955, he wrote, “Mountains are symbols, like pyramids, of man’s attempt to know God. Mountains are symbolic meeting places between the mundane and spiritual worlds.”

The friction of the natural and the transcendent certainly informs the progression of his Symphony No. 50, the “Mount St. Helens” Symphony, composed in 1983: from a sense of grandeur in the first movement, a prelude and fugue in praise of Helens; the placidity of Paradise Lake, the beauty of which disappeared forever; and the volcano itself, recalled in the third and final movement, most percussively rendered. The violence subsides, and the dawn hymn of the opening returns in triumph.

Hovhaness’ volcano symphony is like a walk in the park alongside the mad inspirations of Icelandic genius Jon Leifs. Leifs’ “Hekla,” from 1961, is probably the closest you’ll ever want to get to a volcanic eruption. Requiring 19 percussionists banging away on anvils, stones, sirens, plate bells, chains, shotguns, cannons, and a large wooden stump, it has been called the loudest piece of classical music ever written. For their own well-being, the performers were instructed to wear earplugs.

As a bonus, with what’s left of our hearing, we’ll also enjoy “Volcanic Eruption and Atonement” from Leifs’ ballet, “Baldr.”

In this graduation season, if there was a degree awarded for distinguished achievement in volcanology, these composers undoubtedly would have graduated “Magma Come Loudly.”

Prepare to be blown away, this Saturday on “The Lost Chord,” now in syndication on KWAX!

See below for streaming information.

Keep in mind, KWAX is on the West Coast, so there’s a three-hour difference for the Trenton-Princeton area. Here are the respective air-times of my shows (with East Coast conversions in parentheses):

PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday on KWAX at 5:00 PACIFIC TIME (8:00 PM EDT)

THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday on KWAX at 4:00 PACIFIC TIME (7:00 PM EDT)

Stream them here!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

June 10, 2023

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