Posted in reseña, tagged Juan Luís Guerra, Latin music, music, reseña on November 3, 2007| Leave a Comment »
Somewhere along the musical pathway that leads up to a splendid, blue-skied Autumn day in America’s midwest, I may have stumbled upon an album that contained more pure joy than Juan Luís Guerra’s Ni es lo mismo ni es igual.
But I can’t for the life of me think what that might have been. (more…)
Posted in reseña, tagged Christian music, music, reseña, worship music, Yad Hashmona Singers, Zipporah Bennett on November 3, 2007| 16 Comments »
My friend Tim Laniak, who knows the sound and smell of battle, sends me Messianic music to accompany me in mine. Zipporah Bennett’s Kuma Adonai (‘Arise, O Lord’) helps Hebrew language students at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary’s Charlotte, North Carolina, campus refine their aural comprehension.
Here in Indianapolis, on a clear Autumn day, it opens an angle of sight by which a man can just about glimpse heaven. (more…)
Posted in paterfamilias, reseña, tagged reseña, style on October 20, 2007| 1 Comment »
On balance, it’s probably a good thing that the Historical Guy who decided we should be clean shaven was handed that decision. Otherwise, he might have got himself up to some even more lethal project.
As things stand now, a man’s face is one of life’s great hostile environments, what with the scraping we do every morning and the stressing throughout the day. The surface of Mars beats us out only by a few toxic gases and we’re occasionally capable of giving even that one a run for its money. (more…)
Posted in reseña, tagged Arensky, Camille Saint-Saëns, classical music, Delibes, Franz Liszt, Glinka, Grieg, Johannes Brahms, music, reseña, Sunday Times Music Collection, Tchaikovsky on October 20, 2007| Leave a Comment »
In the mid-90s, London’s Sunday Times produced a cheap CD series that managed to be both eclectic and excellent. In the ‘Classical’ branch of that series, High Romantics appeared, presenting tuneful offerings from Glinka, Arensky, Liszt, Saint-Saëns, Brahms, Grieg, Delibes, and Tchaikovsky.
It all adds up to 43 minutes of fine listening, by about minute 22 of which one begins to wonder why we ever moved on from the Romantic period.
Posted in reseña, tagged Christmas, music, reseña on October 20, 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.
I kid you not, there is a market for gentle, Christmas instrumental music that preserves the religious nature of the holiday and does not overpower the motley collection of family, friends, and hangers-on that gather at such times.
This Maranatha two-disk album meets the need. You won’t remember any of these arrangements by February, but that’s not the point anyway. What you want is a little musical Christmas cheer. (more…)
Posted in reseña, tagged Jim Croce, music, reseña on October 20, 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.
Jim Croce’s music, the art of a master storyteller, lives decades after the fact and after the passing of this musician himself because of its profound and accessible human-ness. (more…)
Posted in reseña, tagged Indigo Girls, music, reseña on October 7, 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.
If a reviewer titles his scribblings this way, this does not run against the tide of his admiration for this amazing duo. Rather, it nods in the direction of the deeply introspective tone of the lyrics of this album, prone as they are towards examining the unseemly part of the human heart, both those of the writers and of the flawed human beings they know. (more…)
Posted in reseña, tagged Casablanca, film, film music, Max Steiner, music, reseña on October 7, 2007| Leave a Comment »
Casablanca, one of the twentieth century’s great films, is memorialized here not so much by stirring film music as by the fact that you get the exquisite screenplay banter that still evokes grins at its genius on, say, the forty-second hearing.
I assume that technology did now allow the separation of Max Steiner’s score from the spoken witticisms that begin at the beginning and don’t end until the end of this fantastic movie. As a result, this ‘soundtrack’ is actually a trip through some of Casablanca’s finest moments, spoken and played. (more…)
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…)
Canter Bridge 