Classic Ross Amico

Tag: University of Oregon

Halloween Music on KWAX

This week on “Sweetness and Light,” we’ll be cutting holes in Mom’s best sheets for a light music trick-or-treat. Join me for 13 ghostly premonitions of a holiday I am happy to say I never outgrew.

We’ll enjoy Halloween songs, selections from Halloween film scores, Halloween piano miniatures, and Halloween light music classics about a haunted ballroom, an ostracized imp, and a devil’s ride, all lovingly curated by you-know-who. Nothing too terribly terrible. It’s all in good fun. There will be no cowering before this disarming parade of spirits, reanimated corpses, witches, bogeymen, demons, and necromancers!

I’ve carefully examined all the candy for pins and razor blades, so you mustn’t hesitate to indulge. It will be Smarties® and peanut butter cups for breakfast, when you join me for “Sweetness and Light,” this Saturday morning at 11:00 EDT/8:00 PDT, exclusively on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

Stream it wherever you are at the link:

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

Aaah-OOOOOO!

October 25, 2025
Sweetness and Light Autumn Music Brunch KWAX

This week on “Sweetness and Light,” with a nip in the air and color in the trees, it’s a light music autumn!

Pick out a cozy sweater and join me for a fortifying brunch of hot cider and molasses cookies, as we listen to a fall sampler of works by Leo Sowerby, Cécile Chaminade, Archibald Joyce, Billy Mayerl, Virgil Thomson, Vernon Duke, Scott Joplin, Gheorghe Zamfir, and Alexander Glazunov.

It’s the perfect preamble to your epic leaf-fight. The apples are tart, but the music is sweet, on “Sweetness and Light,” this Saturday morning at 11:00 EDT/8:00 PDT, exclusively on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

Stream it wherever you are at the link:

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

October 18, 2025
Insect Songs Celebrate Summer on Sweetness and Light

This week on “Sweetness and Light,” celebrate the season of the cricket and the katydid! Put your legs together for an hour of insect “song.”

We’ll enjoy works by Ralph Vaughan Williams, Paul Lincke, Ernest Bucalossi, Dmitri Shostakovich, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Frank Loesser, Billy Mayerl, Frederic Cowen, and Fred L. Moreland.

Tune in for a wasps’ overture, a glow worm’s idyll, a grasshopper’s dance, a gadfly’s romance, a bumble-bee’s flight, an inchworm’s measure, some insect oddities, a butterfly’s ball, and a doodle-bugs’ parade.

We’ll be buzzing from the start on “Sweetness and Light,” this Saturday morning at 11:00 EDT/8:00 PDT, exclusively on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

Stream it, wherever you are, at the link:

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

IMAGE: Ernst Kreidolf, “Les petits habitants des fleurs” (1924)

August 16, 2025
Dog Days of Summer Music Playlist

This week on “Sweetness and Light,” we’ll be lounging around the water bowl with our legs out. It’s music for the dog days of summer.

When I was a kid, I remember hearing about “the dog days” and wondering what that was supposed to mean, exactly. I assumed it must have been when all the dogs were as flat or extended as possible (now known as splooting). Let sleeping dogs lie!

Later, I wondered specifically when that period was supposed to be. Before the internet, I surmised it must have been the hottest period of summer; and I suppose, more or less, I was correct.

It wasn’t until adulthood that I learned the dog days are an actual span that coincides with the heliacal rise of Sirius – the “Dog Star.” Heliacal rise is a fancy way of saying that the star becomes visible above the eastern horizon just before sunrise. In other words, it’s the morning star.

Modern sources are a little fast and loose with the astrological ties. The dates might as well come printed on the calendar, as in the English-speaking world, the dog days are now inflexibly July 3 to August 11.

Be that as it may, unsurprisingly, the dog days got me thinking about… wait for it… DOGS. More specifically, dogs and music. I hope you’ll join me today for a playlist of canine classics by Arthur Pryor, Peter Schickele, Sir Edward Elgar, George Gershwin, Walter Piston, and Daniel Dorff.

It will have you panting for more!

Better have some Milk Bones and a lint roller handy for “Sweetness and Light,” this Saturday morning at 11:00 EDT/8:00 PDT, exclusively on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

Stream it wherever you are at the link:

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

August 2, 2025
Summer Reading Music KWAX University of Oregon

Now that it’s summer, it’s time to catch up on our reading! Whether it’s a beach book or a timeless literary classic, reading for pleasure is its own reward. This week on “Sweetness and Light,” imagine yourself in a lawn chair, under a good shade tree, perhaps with a beverage at your side, and enjoy an hour of music, hand-picked to get you in the spirit.

It will be a veritable lending library of compositions for concert hall, opera house, musical theater, salon, and film, with works inspired by J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter, Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, Leo Tolstoy’s “War and Peace,” Voltaire’s “Candide,” Victor Hugo’s “The Hunchback of Notre-Dame,” Jonathan Swift’s “Gulliver’s Travels,” Peter Benchley’s “Jaws,” Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird,” and Henry Fielding’s “Tom Jones.”

Celebrate two of life’s great pleasures – music and books! Set aside your cares. They’ll still be here when you get back. Get yourself in the mindset to unplug and enjoy some quiet time. Prime yourself for a carefree summer of reading, on “Sweetness and Light,” this Saturday morning at 11:00 EDT/8:00 PDT, exclusively on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

Stream it wherever you are at the link:

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

Image torn from today’s headlines

June 21, 2025

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