Category Archives: Music

Video Interviews: 61-Year Old Director Tim Burton – Value Of Music In His Films

BFI logoIn an interview filmed just before Christmas, Tim Burton joins Soundtracking podcast host Edith Bowman to talk in depth about his work and the importance of music in his films.

In 1985, Pee-wee’s Big Adventure brought together Burton and a then-unknown composer called Danny Elfman, a collaboration that’s produced 16 films – and counting. With classics such as Batman, Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands, audiences have grown up with a creative partnership that’s formed an unmistakable and formidable artistic voice, spanning over 30 years.

Video Profiles: 69-Year Old Singer Huey Lewis Talks About Hearing Loss (CBS)

Huey Lewis and the News are in the mood to celebrate, joking about their age as they prepare for the release of what is almost certainly their last album, titled “Weather.” At 69, Lewis, who has performed in bands for most of his life, had no intention of slowing down, but his diagnosis of Meniere’s Disease – a hearing disorder which has affected his voice – has made the decision for him. John Blackstone reports.

Classical Music Films: “In Search Of Mozart” (Video)

Pianist Ronald Brautigam explains Beethoven unique and revolutionary ability to appeal to both the masses and the connoisseurs of his time.

Pianist Lada Valešová and historian Cliff Eisen discuss Mozart earliest composition, written when he was just five years old.

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Performing Arts: “The Letters Of Cole Porter” (New Yorker Review)

From a New Yorker online article review:

The Letters Of Cole Porter Yale University Press November 2019Beneath his smooth, genial, almost inhumanly productive and evasive surface, there were turbulent waters. His very name, for all its air of Ivy League ease, represents a burdened legacy. The Porters were his difficult, scapegrace father’s family; the Coles were his mother’s rich and ambitious Indiana family. He was a Porter by birth but, if his mother had anything to do with it, would be a Cole for life.

Certainly, Porter’s ghost could not ask for better care than he has been given in “The Letters of Cole Porter” (Yale), edited by Cliff Eisen, a professor of music history at King’s College London, and Dominic McHugh, a musicologist at the University of Sheffield (and the editor of Alan Jay Lerner’s letters). Laid out with a meticulous scholarly apparatus, as though this were the correspondence of Grover Cleveland, every turn in the songwriter’s story is deep-dived for exact chronology, and every name casually dropped by Porter gets a worried, explicatory footnote.

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Rock & Roll Biographies: “Conversations With Tom Petty” (February 2020)

Conversations with Tom Petty book February 2020Author Paul Zollo conducted a series of in-depth discussions with Tom about his career, with special focus on his songwriting. The conversations are reprinted here with little or no editorial comment and represent a unique perspective on Tom’s entire career. Originally published in 2005 (also by Omnibus Press), Tom’s wife Dana has fully approved this updated edition, which retains its foreword by Petty, adds additional interview material, an expanded introduction as well as additional photos from Petty’s last ever live performance. This is, perhaps, as close as you can get to an autobiography by the great man.

Tom Petty has long been considered one of the great songwriters of American rock ‘n’ roll, as well as one of the key standard bearers of integrity in the music business. Conversations With Tom Petty is the first authorized book to focus solely on the life and work of the man responsible for some of the most memorable rock anthems of our generation, including: ‘American Girl’, ‘Breakdown’, ‘Refugee’, “The Waiting’, ‘Don’t Come Around Here No More’, ‘I Won’t Back Down’, ‘Free Fallin’, ‘Runnin’ Down a Dream’, ‘You Don’t Know How It Feels’, ‘Mary Jane’s Last Dance’ and many others.

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Video Interviews: 67-Year Old Singer David Byrne

David Byrne is burning down the house on Broadway. His show “American Utopia” is a smash hit, but that isn’t the only reason the former frontman for the Talking Heads is so happy. Serena Altschul talks with Byrne about his love of performing, his growing affinity for collaboration, and his optimism, apparent in his “Reasons to Be Cheerful,” a platform that spotlights ways in which the world is getting better.

2020: Major Books, Films And Music From 1924 Enter U.S. Public Domain

From Duke Law “Center For The Study of the Public Domain”:

Center for the Study of the Public Domain Duke LawOn January 1, 2020, works from 1924 will enter the US public domain, where they will be free for all to use and build upon, without permission or fee. These works include George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, silent films by Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd, and books such as Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, E. M. Forster’s A Passage to India, and A. A. Milne’s When We Were Very Young. These works were supposed to go into the public domain in 2000, after being copyrighted for 75 years. But before this could happen, Congress hit a 20-year pause button and extended their copyright term to 95 years.

Films

  • Buster Keaton’s Sherlock, Jr. and The Navigator
  • Harold Lloyd’s Girl Shy and Hot Water
  • The first film adaptation of Peter Pan
  • The Sea Hawk
  • Secrets
  • He Who Gets Slapped
  • Dante’s Inferno

Books

  • A Passage To India E.M. Forster 1924Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain
  • E.M. Forster, A Passage to India
  • Ford Madox Ford, Some Do Not… (the first volume of his “Parade’s End” tetralogy)
  • Eugene O’Neill, Desire Under the Elms
  • Edith Wharton, Old New York (four novellas)
  • Yevgeny Zamyatin, We (the English translation by Gregory Zilboorg)
  • A.A. Milne, When We Were Very Young
  • Hugh Lofting, Doctor Dolittle’s Circus
  • Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan and the Ant Men
  • Agatha Christie, The Man in the Brown Suit
  • Lord Dunsany (Edward Plunkett), The King of Elfland’s Daughter

Music

  • Rhapsody in Blue, George Gershwin
  • Fascinating Rhythm and Oh, Lady Be Good, music George Gershwin, lyrics Ira Gershwin
  • Lazy, Irving Berlin
  • Jealous Hearted Blues, Cora “Lovie” Austin (composer, pianist, bandleader) (recorded by Ma Rainey)
  • Santa Claus Blues, Charley Straight and Gus Kahn (recorded by Louis Armstrong)
  • Nobody’s Sweetheart, music Billy Meyers and Elmer Schoebel, lyrics Gus Kahn and Ernie Erdman

(Only the musical compositions referred to above are entering the public domain. Subsequent arrangements, orchestrations, or recordings of those compositions, such as Yuja Wang’s performance of Rhapsody in Blue, might still be copyrighted. You are free to copy, perform, record, or adapt Gershwin’s composition, but may need permission to use a specific recording of it.)

Classics: VW Bids Farewell To The Beetle (1949-2019) In Animated Music Video

After 70 years, the Volkswagen Beetle is retiring. Say g(o\!/o)dbye with Ren McCormack, Kevin Bacon, Andy Warhol, and Andy Cohen as the little bug drives its last mile. #TheLastMile

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Classical Music: “Overture To William Tell” By Giaochino Rossini (LJS&C)

La Jolla Symphony & Chorus logoRossini’s 1829 opera “William Tell” is rarely performed today, but its Overture lives on as one of the most popular works in the classical repertoire. The Overture is essentially an instrumental suite written in four parts and performed without pause. The best-known section is the last, the allegro vivace, famously used as the rousing theme music for “The Lone Ranger” radio and TV series (and notoriously so in “A Clockwork Orange).

Recorded on 11/03/2019.

More from: La Jolla Symphony & Chorus (https://www.uctv.tv/lj-symphony-chorus)

Video Profiles: Beach Boys Singer Mike Love (PBS)

Singer and songwriter Mike Love is best known as one of the founding members of the Beach Boys, whose infectious harmonies and unique California sound first hit the airways nearly 60 years ago, in 1961. Through the ups and downs of a long career, Love still considers it a “precious miracle” the way fans connect with his music. He shares his Brief But Spectacular take on his life as a Beach Boy.