What are you listening to now?

mark · wrote on 28 Oct 2021, 19:33

mark · wrote on 3 Nov 2021, 15:12

This was unexpected. This was linked on the Acoustic Guitar forum. Paul was featured on the cover of the Costco magazine this month and it started a thread because of the all Koa guitar he is holding which lead to this link.

Paul McCartney: “We had two or three afternoons where we just hung out together in a Beverly Hills hotel in the bungalows out the back, and he had his engineer and was set up with a couple of microphones in case anything happened,” he continued. “I was tootling around on guitar, and Kanye spent a lot of time just looking at pictures of Kim [Kardashian] on his computer. I’m thinking, ‘are we ever gonna get around to writing?! But it turns out he was writing. That’s his muse. He was listening to this riff I was doing and obviously he knew in his mind that he could use that, so he took it, sped it up and then somehow he got Rihanna to sing on it."

Link to video

Larry · wrote on 3 Nov 2021, 16:08

content://com.android.chrome.FileProvider/images/screenshot/163595564216357260769.jpg

George K · wrote on 22 Nov 2021, 15:01

Link to video

Also available on Apple Music

mark · wrote on 15 Dec 2021, 16:22

Link to video

Until his death in July of 2021, Jerry Granelli was the last surviving member of the original group led by Vince Guaraldi that played the the soundtrack for the iconic television broadcast A Charlie Brown Christmas back in 1965. In this 2014 recording we see the Jerry Granelli trio perform Vince Guaraldi's "Linus and Lucy".

George K · 22 Jan 2022, 14:48

Link to video

Because one "can" doesn't mean that one "should."

Copper · wrote on 22 Jan 2022, 14:48

@george-k said in What are you listening to now?:

Because one "can" doesn't mean that one "should."

Something is missing

George K · wrote on 30 Jan 2022, 00:57

Link to video

Perfect.

Listen to the chord at 1:17. Totally not what you'd expect, but it really couldn't be anything else, could it? Same at 1:20.

*I've got to tell you I've been rackin' my brain
I have to find a way out
I've had enough of this continual rain
A change is comin', no doubt

(Chorus) It's been a too long time
With no peace of mind
And I'm ready for the times to get better
A long lonely time
With no peace of mind
And I'm ready for the times to get better

You try to take from me what I cannot give
No happiness can I find
I have a dream that I've been trying to live
It's burning holes in my mind

(Chorus)*

George K · wrote on 27 Feb 2022, 15:03

I love the Sibelius 3rd. It's perfect "Winter Music," particularly the 2nd movement.

Mustonen's interpretation is really brisk, the 1st movement being a minute faster than most other performances.

mark · wrote on 17 Jun 2022, 14:45

Link to video

mark · 7 Feb 2022, 22:42

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From a rare 1961 Russian LP which Jacqueline Eymar recorded during her tour in the USSR. Eymar studied with Yves Nat. Timing below:

00:00 - Ravel Gaspard de la nuit

19:31 - Debussy Images

33:21 - Chabrier Idylle (from 10 Pièces Pittoresques)

37:24 - Yves Nat - Le Bûcheron (from 6 Preludes)

mark · wrote on 7 Jul 2022, 21:59

42 years later, we get the 2nd night performance. Listening to it now. Very nice, noise free pressing.

George K · 24 Jul 2022, 02:02

I first saw Thomas Hampson in a performance of Verdi's "Macbeth" staged by the Chicago Lyric Opera. My second encounter with him was when he did a series of songs called "Letters from Lincoln" with the CSO.

I was thrilled - not only because I'm not a huge fan of vocal music - and this really moved me, particularly the "Letter to Mrs. Bixby."

The whole set deserved a listen.

"Abraham Lincoln is my name"

Link to video

"The Gettysburg Address"

Link to video

And, the letter to Mrs. Bixby...

Link to video

*Executive Mansion,
Washington, Nov. 21, 1864.

Dear Madam,--

I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle.

I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save.

I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.

Yours, very sincerely and respectfully,

A. Lincoln*

It opens with the theme from St. Matthew Passion and just goes on to break your heart.

If you listen to nothing else in this collection, take 5 minutes to listen to this wonderful setting.

taiwan_girl · wrote on 24 Jul 2022, 02:02

@George-K That was really good. (And just shows what a very good letter writer was President Lincoln. Definitely that has gotten worse over the years. I am pretty sure he did not have speech writers doing this for him)

mark · wrote on 19 Aug 2022, 16:00

Link to video

#billbruford

#earthworks

Ah, well now, I think this is something special. Written by the tenor horn player and keyboardist Django Bates it was inspired by the harrowing TV pictures of the Romanian orphanages discovered after the fall of the Romanian dictator Ceaușescu. As the Guardian newspaper put it: “They were the pictures that, for many across the world, were the defining image of the aftermath of Romania’s 1989 revolution: emaciated children clothed in rags, looking into the camera with desperate eyes amid the squalid decay of the country’s orphanages”. Still, the candles still flicker: there is hope even in a world as stratospherically cruel as the one we shared with Ceaușescu.

Being still and letting the music do the talking is not as easy as you’d think. The late 1980s were the early days of the drummer being able to trigger harmony and melody, so I get the opening chords, sounded by my Yamaha DX 21. (There didn’t seem to be a module, so I had to cart the whole instrument around with me as part of my drum kit). I love the arrangement; get the sparse unison tenor and bass backing for Django’s piano starting at 3’35”. These boys were, and remain, serious players.