Shostakovitch
Today I had to move my Cd’s away from the wall due to a water leak. I decided to go through them and find something I haven’t listened to in years. I tend to listen to a few core compositions. …
Bud Greenspan
On Christmas Day, Bud Greenspan died of complications from Parkinson’s. Greenspan was a documentary film maker who focused specifically on athletics. For his 1977 film dramatizing the life of Wilma Rudolph, Greenspan cast Denzel Washington in his first role. What …
Pas de Deux
If you haven’t noticed, every-other-little-girl in town is currently appearing in a production of The Nutcracker. Each year a new crop of youngsters gets an introduction to ballet and orchestral music via Tchaikovsky’s charming composition. Initially, The Nutcracker flopped. What …
Hodie
Noel! Hodie Christus natus est. Today Christ is born. Vaughan Williams’ Christmas Choral work, Hodie, begins with this text. The text is taken from the Vespers for Christmas Day. That’s an interesting choice for a composer who wrote Anglican Hymns …
Enemy Children
With school being out and the weather being rainy, I took my six year old daughter and three year old son to an indoor playground. This was our first visit. Apparently I wasn't the only parent with that idea. The …
Rehearsal
Chorus rehearsals for San Deigo Opera started up this week. Here comes Turandot. After 13 years, chorus master Todd Simmons has moved on to become the executive director of New Orleans Opera. Over the past several seasons, principal artists have …
Tale of Two Tenors
For anyone not paying close attention, there was only one Italian tenor during the 70's, 80's, and 90's. Pavarotti may have had the most beautiful voice ever produced and his technique was flawless. Every note he sang was consistent in …
The Decline of the Italian Tenor
In my spin class at the gym, the instructor played some "opera" today. She called it opera but it was Andrea Bocelli and I think we all know how I feel about that. It did get me to thinking about …
Nice
I was driving along the 5 north today coming out of Downtown. The sun was shining, it was warm, I had the windows down and I found the appropriate music. I cranked up Schubert's Mass No. 2 in G. As …
The Perfect Messiah
I went to the perfect Messiah performance the other night at the Neuroscience Institute. The organization putting on the show was the Fan Faire Foundation: where science and music intersect. I'd not heard of Fan Faire but I was impressed …
Pet Peeve
Some people love Italian opera but have no knowledge of Italian diction. Allow me to offer one rule which will immediately make anyone sound like an opera aficionado. The rule involves common operatic nouns like Don Giovanni or Giuseppe Verdi …
Bocelli is NOT an Opera Singer
I made a youtube comment on Andrea Bocelli's inability to sing Nessun Dorma and received a rebuke. The following is the conversation that ensued. The syntax is quirky because of the limited number of characters for youtube comments. Original comment: …
Four Notes
Four repeated notes. Four b flats one right after the other resolved by a descending 3rd to a g flat. Pure, musical, poetry. Go to any keyboard and play four b flats in a row--it's the black key just below …
Wachet Auf
"Wachet auf!" ruft uns die Stimme. "Wake up!" the voice calls to us. The first Sunday of advent is already behind us. Are you awake? Christmas is on the way. Do you have your tree? Have you found your fiesta …
Christmas!
Thanksgiving is over. Now Christmas. When I think Christmas, I think Puccini. Not his Messa di Gloria, which is underrated, but La Boheme. Rodolpho and Mimi meet and fall in love on Christmas Eve. Spoiler alert, she dies. The music …
Frostiana: Seven Country Songs
If you sang in high school choir, any high school choir in any city or town, then one of your favorite choral pieces is Randal Thompson's "Frostiana". In 1958, the town of Amherst commissioned Randal Thompson to compose a choral …
Guilty Pleasure
Sometimes it is necessary to take a break and indulge in something cheap and easy. Granada is just that. This Mexican song written about the Spanish city of Granada has been recorded by just about everybody from Johnny Mathis to …
Walt Whitman
On some days, Walt Whitman is my favorite poet. I'm not a literary critic so all I can truly say is that I like him. The British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams also liked Whitman. Vaughan Williams used Whitman's poetry in …
The Dishonesty of Nostalgia
Images from a simpler time. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLVyRvp2Qbg The music in this video is the quintet from the end of Act I of Copland's "The Tenderland." The editors of this video went with an instrumental version of the music which I think …
From the New World
Dvorak, pronounced duh-vor-zjack, wrote his 9th Symphony on a commission from the New York Philharmonic during his visit to The United States. Dvorak took the task seriously and tried to write music that represented "The New World." This 9th symphony …