Monthly Archives: December 2020

Your Daily Dose of Christmas

 The Polar Express is rather a polarizing movie, mostly because of the style of animation Robert Zemeckis used in making it. The landscapes and a whole lot of the film’s compositions are frankly gorgeous, and the story is (for me, anyway) … Continue reading

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How he sounded back then….

Beethoven’s Symphony No 7 in A Major, op. 92, isn’t just one of Beethoven’s personal greatest works. It’s one of the greatest works of music ever composed, and its stature is such that it even rises beyond the history of … Continue reading

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Your Daily Dose of Christmas

 Here’s an album I grew up with…or maybe it wasn’t quite this album, but it was certainly this guy singing. I most definitely remember this version of “We Three Kings”, but I don’t know if this is actually the original record … Continue reading

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Your Daily Dose of Christmas

 Do you have any musical items on your lifelong wish list? Something you’d be sad if you reached the end of your days and never got to hear? I do! I’d love to attend a performance of Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker, … Continue reading

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Your Daily Dose of Christmas

 I had a music teacher in third and fourth grade, when I was going to an elementary school in Hillsboro, OR, who at one point taught us a song from an opera based on the old fairy tale of “Hansel … Continue reading

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Your Daily Dose of Christmas

 And now we’re into the last seven days before Christmas. As tends to be my practice, the selections will get longer as we get close to Christmas, because we could all use more music! This is an entire album by … Continue reading

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Your Daily Dose of Christmas

 Obviously I’ve known for years that Elvis Presley recorded a number of Christmas songs over the years, but I did not know that a bunch of his best-known ones spring from a single album called Elvis’s Christmas Album, and neither … Continue reading

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Beethoven and Billy Joel (yes, really)

 In the wonderful movie Mr. Holland’s Opus, Richard Dreyfuss plays Mr. Holland, a classically-trained composer who needs to make ends meet so he gets a job as a high school music teacher and band director. He figures this will be … Continue reading

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Your Daily Dose of Christmas

 One of my favorite Christmas carols is “The Wexford Carol”, which has that pre-Western harmony thing going on that gives it an air of mysterious beauty. Here it is, performed by Allison Krauss, Yo Yo Ma, and others. Just wonderful!

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Two Hundred Fifty

Music is the one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge which comprehends mankind but which mankind cannot comprehend. –Ludwig van Beethoven Two hundred fifty years ago today, Ludwig van Beethoven was likely born. We don’t know if this … Continue reading

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