Category Archives: On Music

Something for Thursday

I’ve been featuring Donna Summer the last few weeks, and then the other day The Wife and I were driving around doing errands and we were listening to 70s On 7 on SiriusXM, where a string of selections made me … Continue reading

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Tuesday Tones (extending Black History Month, just because)

I couldn’t decide which of three pieces to feature today, so I said to myself, “Why limit myself to one?” That’s right, you get all three. Composer and flautist Valerie Coleman has had a deeply impressive career already. A native of … Continue reading

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Something for Thursday

It’s late in the day and it was a long and busy one today and my brain’s mush, so I’m sticking with Donna Summer. Here’s “Hot Stuff”! A bonus: Summer’s song was perfectly used in The Full Monty:

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Tuesday Tones (Black History Month)

Oh, is THIS piece a “banger”, as the kids say! (A really good song is a banger now. Up ’til now, if you said “banger” to me, I’d have assumed you were talking about a British breakfast sausage.) Composer Kevin … Continue reading

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Something for Thursday (I’m sick and just not in a great mood edition)

Last week I featured Donna Summer. This week, I’m going to do so again. This one’s pretty trippy: It’s a suite of three songs, joined together to make one big nearly eighteen-minute suite. The main attraction is “Macarthur Park”, a … Continue reading

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Tuesday Tones (Black History Month)

Courtney Bryan is a composer from New Orleans, born in 1982, who is currently a professor of music at Tulane University. She holds a doctorate and was a 2023 MacArthur Fellow. She is also, by the evidence of the piece … Continue reading

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Something for Thursday (Black History Month)

The other day, someone posed an interesting question over on the Threads platform: Dear white people, It’s Black History Month. Who made you see us? Who was your first Black celebrity crush? It didn’t take me long to figure out … Continue reading

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Tuesday Tones

I kind of screwed up my calendar this year, which means that I missed the start of Black History Month when posting last week’s selection. For the last bunch of years I’ve been using this month to feature Black music … Continue reading

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Something for Thursday

John Williams, who turns 94 on Sunday (and I’ll have more to say about him, believe me), is an example of a curious phenomenon: he has been so prolific, and so many of his amazing themes have become part of … Continue reading

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Tuesday Tones

Today we conclude the exploration of Music Inspired By Water, with a gigantic work by English master Ralph Vaughan Williams. From what I’ve learned, I could keep doing Music Inspired By Water for months! But I think it’s time to … Continue reading

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