This week on “Picture Perfect,” poised as we are between the birthdays of Henry Mancini (April 16) and Miklós Rózsa (April 18), we’ll hear music by both composers as part of a cinematic carnival of the animals.
Take a walk on the wild side with music from “The Jungle Book” (1942), the classic Korda Brothers’ adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s tale of tails. The film stars the charismatic Sabu as Mowgli. (For the record, Kipling pronounced the name such that the first syllable rhymes with “cow.”) Miklós Rózsa wrote the enchanting score.
We’ll also 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 turned out to be a double Academy Award winner for Barry, who was recognized for Best Original Score and Best Original Song.
Jerome Moross is probably best known for his music to “The Big Country.” His “great outdoors” style lends verve to the National Geographic special, “Grizzly!” (1967), a documentary about a pair of ecologists studying North American bears. The energetic Americana score is both memorable and motivating.
And we can’t allow the hour to pass without listening to Henry Mancini’s “Baby Elephant Walk,” from “Hatari!” (So many exclamation points in these wilderness titles!) The film was directed by Howard Hawks and stars John Wayne. In case you’re wondering, “Hatari!” is Swahili for “Danger!”
No danger in treating yourself to a musical menagerie of classic film scores, on “Picture Perfect,” music for the movies, now in syndication on KWAX Classical Oregon!
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Clip and save the start times for all three of my recorded shows:
PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday at 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – Saturday at 11:00 AM EDT/8:00 AM PDT
THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday at 7:00 PM EDT/4:00 PM PDT
Stream them, wherever you are, at the link!
https://kwax.uoregon.edu
Tag: The Jungle Book
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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.
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Picture Perfect: Cinematic Animal Music
This week on “Picture Perfect,” it’s a cinematic carnival of the animals.
Take a walk on the wild side with music from “The Jungle Book” (1942), the classic Korda Brothers’ adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s tale of tails. The film stars the charismatic Sabu as Mowgli. (For the record, Kipling pronounced the name such that the first syllable rhymes with “cow.”) Miklós Rózsa wrote the enchanting score.
We’ll also 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 turned out to be a double Academy Award winner for Barry, who was recognized for Best Original Score and Best Original Song.
Jerome Moross is probably best known for his music to “The Big Country.” His “great outdoors” style lends verve to the National Geographic special, “Grizzly!” (1967), a documentary about a pair of ecologists studying North American bears. The energetic Americana score is both memorable and motivating.
And we can’t allow the hour to pass without hearing Henry Mancini’s “Baby Elephant Walk,” from “Hatari!” (So many exclamation points in these wilderness titles!) The film is directed by Howard Hawks and stars John Wayne. In case you’re wondering, “Hatari!” is Swahili for “Danger!”
No danger in treating yourself to a musical menagerie of classic film scores, on “Picture Perfect,” this Saturday evening at 6:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
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Kipling’s Muse Koechlin & Martinu
Many composers have been inspired by the writings of Rudyard Kipling, but few more so than Charles Koechlin.
Koechlin is probably better recognized these days as the orchestrator who assisted Fauré and Debussy than for any of his own music. He was fascinated by the movies and wrote works inspired by a number of cinematic celebrities. This yielded, among other things, his “Seven Stars Symphony,” with movements dedicated to Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin and others. The figure he most adored is the now largely-forgotten actress Lillian Harvey, who he admired from afar and honored with a number of compositions.
In addition, Koechlin was an amateur astronomer and an accomplished photographer. He became quite the athlete, in order to keep up his strength after a youthful brush with tuberculosis. As I know I’ve pointed out before, he also had one of the most enviable beards in all of classical music.
Like Percy Grainger, Koechlin harbored a lifelong affection for Kipling’s “The Jungle Book,” and returned to the subject often throughout his career – beginning with some song settings in 1899 and running through the symphonic poem “The Bandar-Log,” completed in 1940.
This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll hear his symphonic poem, “The Law of the Jungle.” Then we’ll turn to the ballet, “The Butterfly that Stamped,” by the Czech composer Bohuslav Martinu.
Like Koechlin, Martinu was prolific by anyone’s standards. And like Koechlin there is so much Martinu nobody has ever heard. In addition to six symphonies, which at least get some play, he wrote concertos of every stripe, as well as 15 operas, a large body of orchestral, chamber, vocal and instrumental works, and – believe it or not – 14 ballets.
“The Butterfly that Stamped” was inspired by a tale from Kipling’s “Just So Stories.”
Get ready to go wild! It’s a Kipling double-bill. Join me for “Kipling Coupling” – this Sunday night at 10:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
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Kipling’s Muse Koechlin & Martinu
Many composers have been inspired by the writings of Rudyard Kipling, but few more so than Charles Koechlin.
Koechlin is probably better recognized these days as the orchestrator who assisted Fauré and Debussy than for any of his own music. He was fascinated by the movies and wrote works inspired by a number of cinematic celebrities. This yielded, among other things, his “Seven Stars Symphony,” with movements dedicated to Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin and others. The figure he most adored is the now largely-forgotten actress Lillian Harvey, who he admired from afar and honored with a number of compositions.
In addition, Koechlin was an amateur astronomer and an accomplished photographer. He became quite the athlete, in order to keep up his strength after a youthful brush with tuberculosis. As I know I’ve pointed out before, he also had one of the most enviable beards in all of classical music.
Like Percy Grainger, Koechlin harbored a lifelong affection for Kipling’s “The Jungle Book,” and returned to the subject often throughout his career – beginning with some song settings in 1899 and running through the symphonic poem “The Bandar-Log,” completed in 1940.
This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll hear his symphonic poem, “The Law of the Jungle.” Then we’ll turn to the ballet, “The Butterfly that Stamped,” by the Czech composer Bohuslav Martinu.
Like Koechlin, Martinu was prolific by anyone’s standards. And like Koechlin there is so much Martinu nobody has ever heard. In addition to six symphonies, which at least get some play, he wrote concertos of every stripe, as well as 15 operas, a large body of orchestral, chamber, vocal and instrumental works, and – believe it or not – 14 ballets.
“The Butterfly that Stamped” was inspired by a tale from Kipling’s “Just So Stories.”
Get ready to go wild! It’s a Kipling double-bill. Join me for “Kipling Coupling” – this Sunday night at 10:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.
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