Category Archives: On Music

Tuesday Tones

Continuing my exploration of queerness in music for this Pride Month, I turn to composer Wendy Carlos, a great transgender artist who is a notable late-20th century pioneer in electronic music. Carlos was born in 1939 as Walter Carlos, but … Continue reading

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A musical offering….

Any accounting of the greatest composers of the Baroque era would include, as a short list, the names of J.S. Bach, Alessandro Scarlatti, Antonio Vivaldi, and George Frideric Handel. We’re talking about Handel briefly today, partly because of his immense … Continue reading

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Pride Month: Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Today begins Pride Month, so let’s listen to some Tchaikovsky. It is not actually conclusively known if Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky was gay or not, but most biographers and historians have concluded, from the nature and the durations of the various … Continue reading

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Something for Thursday

In amongst my various reading activities, I have a couple of longer reading projects going on. One is a complete re-read of Guy Gavriel Kay’s books, and the other is a partial re-read, coupled with first-time reads, of Ian Fleming’s … Continue reading

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Tuesday Tones

Today, a concerto: specifically, a trumpet concerto. This one was written by the great film composer John Williams, who has somehow over his incredibly busy years of scoring many films and maintaining a hectic conducting schedule managed to find time … Continue reading

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Something for Thursday

I first heard this song when I first watched The Big Lebowski a number of years ago. I remember looking the song up and being surprised to learn that it was a Kenny Rogers song. It was recorded first by Jerry … Continue reading

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Tuesday Tones

Igor Stravinsky is not a composer i know terribly well, and honestly, that bothers me a bit. More than a bit, really. Stravinsky is considered to be the major bridge composer between the Romantic era and the Modern one. His art … Continue reading

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Something for Thursday (Friday edition)

Yesterday was just…busy, folks. That’s all. Anyway, one stalwart conversation starter that comes around social media with amazing regularity is naming one’s favorite cover song, or naming a cover song that’s better than the original. This one most definitely fills … Continue reading

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Tuesday Tones

Wind ensemble music today, by prolific composer David R. Holsinger. My band director in college formed quite a fascination with Holsinger’s work and programmed something by him each of the years I was there. I don’t think this was one … Continue reading

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Tuesday Tones

I wrote yesterday about how we attended the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra’s performance to film of the score to Raiders of the Lost Ark, and I noted how impressed I was with the orchestra’s technical precision during the action cues, particularly the … Continue reading

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