Posted in reseña, tagged Gloria Estefan, Latin music, music, reseña on October 6, 2007| Leave a Comment »
Full product information for this item, together with my review, my rating of the product, and any reader comments, can be found at http://www.amazon.com.
She lives parallel lives. And even when she misses, she hits.
These are the thoughts that occur to this long-time Gloria fan upon close and repeated listenings to Into the Light. This 1991 release shows Gloria losing the girl-next-door sweetness and putting on some ‘tude. Some of it doesn’t work. Some of it does. (more…)
Posted in my hometown, paterfamilias, reseña, tagged gadgets, reseña on October 6, 2007| Leave a Comment »
My job makes sure that I spend lots and lots of time in my car. I need three things in order to make that a good thing: great music, good directions, and reliable hands-off phone service.
My 2004 Passat W8 has excellent sound but lacks built-in satellite radio. I’ve installed a Sirius receiver, a Magellan GPS, and a Parrot Bluetooth phone service. That adds up to some serious clutter and a spiderweb of cables. (more…)
Posted in reseña, tagged Billie Holliday, Ella Fitzgerald, jazz, music, reseña, Sunday Times Music Collection on October 5, 2007| Leave a Comment »
In the mid-1990s, the Times of London flogged a very cool disk-per-week club that was everything eclectic can mean. One of those CDs, betitled with formidable understatement simply Two Jazz Ladies, featured Ella and Billie, two African-American stage presences who set the bar on what it meant for a lady to sing the blues. (more…)
Posted in reseña, tagged Brian and Kim tabor, Christian music, Kim Tabor, music on October 5, 2007| Leave a Comment »
The Christian music scene is full of solid people and fine artists who live in the shadow of, say, the Sandy Pattis and Chris Tomlins of the genre. Kim Tabor and husband Brian are examples.
Kim’s voice is supple and strong. Her performance is heartfelt. Yet she remains a relative unknown at the national level. Go figure. (more…)
Posted in my hometown, reseña, tagged classical music, Ensemble Music Society, Frank and Katrina Basile Theater, Indiana History Center, music, reseña, Takacs Quartet on October 5, 2007| Leave a Comment »
My wife recently introduced me to yet another hidden treasure of our Circle City, the Ensemble Music Society (www.ensemblemusic.org). Established in 1944 (!), this all-volunteer assemblage of chamber music enthusiasts manages to bring world-class talent to Indianapolis year-on-year, providing an intimate complement to our very fine ISO. (more…)
Posted in reseña, tagged Great Britain, travel on September 29, 2007| Leave a Comment »
You heard it here first.
The quiet little secret at the heart of the ‘special relationship’ that binds together the UK and the USA to the consternation of the rest of the world is not what you think. It actually comes down to this: clean bathrooms (a.k.a. ‘loos’). (more…)
Posted in reseña, tagged Cuban music, Latin music, music on September 29, 2007| Leave a Comment »
The best thing about Buena Vista Social Club and its musicians is that they are representative. A large, active Cuban musical tradition, of which BVSC is one example, thrives in the hotels and halls of Havana, Camaguey, Santiago de Cuba, and the like.
What has happened here is a marketing coup that ought to be celebrated rather than derided, for it has brought the richness of Cuban son to our ears. If it had not come in the picturesque and personality-rich form of Ibrahim, Compay, and their pals, it would have happened via some other coterie of sonistas who looked and sounded much like them. They are everywhere. (more…)
Posted in reseña, tagged film, reseña, Vietnam War, war movies on September 29, 2007| Leave a Comment »
The most startling aspect of this gripping account of the 101st Airborne’s assault on Hill 937 is that this was not even the bloodiest battle fought by the 101st in Vietnam. That one took place at Dat To and produced more than five times the U.S. casualties, occasioning the throw-away parenthesis of one of Hill’s actors, ‘that was a hill ….’. (more…)
Posted in reseña, tagged Cincinnati Pops Orchestra, Erich Kunzel, film music, music, reseña, Sunday Times Music Collection on September 29, 2007| 1 Comment »
In the mid-1990s, the Times of London flogged a very cool disk-per-week club that was everything eclectic can mean. One of those CDs was entitled Great Film Themes and included music from the likes of Also Sprach Zarathustra, Back to the Future, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, Brief Encounters, Chariots of Fire, Goldfinger, Raging Bull, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Jurassic Park, Casablanca, Gone with the Wind, Doctor Zhivago, and Henry V. (more…)
Posted in reseña, tagged classical music, Henryk Mikolaj Korecki, John Nelson, music, reseña on September 28, 2007| Leave a Comment »
If Maestro John Nelson did not exist, he would have to be invented as a matter of the highest artistic urgency. How else would the rest of us become acquainted with the new or little-known music that is so often recorded under his baton?
Take, for example, the Polish composer Henry Mikolaj Gorecki’s ‘Beatus Vir’, ‘Totus Tuus’, and Old Polish Music. The first of these are newer creations of a very Catholic Poland, redolent of biblical and Roman Catholic piety embedded in the brooding harmonies of Old Poland. (more…)
Canter Bridge 