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 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 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…)
Posted in reseña, tagged film, Oliver Stone, reseña, Vietnam War, war movie on September 28, 2007| Leave a Comment »
Oliver Stone’s brilliant 1986 film on the grunt’s war in Vietnam had a lot to work with: a controversial subject well placed for dramatic effect, brilliant acting from his three leads (Dafoe, Berenger, and, yes, even Sheen), some stunning visual images (more on this in a moment), and the superb employment of Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings. The result is a movie that must rank in the top three of the 1980s and, to boot, one that is impossible to characterize cleanly as an anti-war movie (No one will suspect it of being pro-war.) (more…)
Posted in reseña, tagged music, reseña, Sunday Times Music Collection on September 27, 2007| Leave a Comment »
In the mid-nineties, London’s Sunday Times ran an excellent CD club with the most eclectic offerings imaginable. One of them was Girlie Pop, which presented hits by a larval-stage Madonna, P.P. Arnold, Marilyn Monroe, The Shangri-Las, The Dixie Cups, Betty Everett, Maria Muldaur, Lesley Gorre, Fontella Bass, The Shirelles, and Lulu. (more…)
Posted in reseña, tagged Christian music, Jaci Velasquez, Latin music, music, reseña on September 27, 2007| Leave a Comment »
This album is for Jaci Velasquez an extraordinary achievement. In it she emerges from the status of a managed star-in-the-making to that of a young woman who really sings. Mi Corazón uses the hit ‘Como se cura una herida’ as its title track, giving Jaci an opportunity to hint at things to come. (more…)
Posted in reseña, tagged music, reseña, Ryan Ahlwardt on September 26, 2007| 2 Comments »
Ryan Ahlwardt’s deep roots in four-part men’s music down at Indiana University show up even in a thoughtful-pop album like I Can See Forever. It’s there in the capacity and control of his voice even when it flits near the limits of his natural range. (more…)
Canter Bridge 