Sometimes you just want an 80s power ballad, so here’s one of the best ones. This is the song that introduced me to Phil Collins back in the day.
Something for Thursday
Something for Thursday (For Sir Patrick Stewart)
What an amazing, long, good, great life Sir Patrick Stewart had. He brought art and joy and wisdom to so many, and I hope that some part of his spirit remains firmly embedded in humanity so that in a very real way he is still with us when we finally do reach the stars.
As soon as I heard that he was gone, I knew what today’s selection had to be. This, more than any other, is the theme I hear in my head when I think of Sir Patrick Stewart: this wonderfully stately theme from Star Trek First Contact, which in my ears is a theme of stately maturity, symbolizing the steps forward that await humanity as we learn once and for all that we are not alone in the universe. I think this musical association is a good one.
Farewell, Sir Patrick, and good sailing in the Undiscovered Country.
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Something for Thursday
Some weeks I know what I want to feature here. Other weeks, not so much, so I do other things, like what I did today: On my way home from work I did not listen to a podcast, but rather played WNED Classical (which isn’t actually called that anymore, now it’s BTPM Classical, which stands for Buffalo Toronto Public Media) to see if they featured something I’d want to put here. And the first thing I heard was a contender, let me tell you!
But the second think I heard was the keeper. I’m not nearly familiar enough with Rodgers and Hart, apparently; I had never heard this song before I heard this rendition, by Dawn Upshaw, on my way home. I need to listen to more of this kind of thing. A lot more.
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Something for Thursday
Composer George Fenton has died. He was a prolific film composer, and he was one of those guys whose work is good and yet whose work I have never really explored deeply except for seeing quite a few of the movies he scored. That’s more on me than a statement on him; listening to his work is never a bad time. This is from his score to Dangerous Beauty, a movie from the 1990s that I have somehow forgotten about even though it’s really good.
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Something for Thursday
Many years ago, when I was but a “yoot” and I was taking piano lessons, my teacher–a lovely old lady named Margaret Hooker–invited me, along with several other students, to go see a piano duet that was making the rounds. I don’t remember their names, sadly; I’d like to look them up, but I have no idea where I’d ever start to try to look. They played on two gigantic Boesendorfer pianos that weren’t content to stand with 88 keys; no, these monsters had 92 keys. The new ones were way down at the left end, at the very bottom of the register, and they were all four colored black so as to help the pianists maintain their place. That was a fascinating concert: two pianists sitting across from each other and maintaining the ensemble nature of their music.
Not all piano music for four hands requires two pianos, though! Oftentimes the work puts both pianists behind the same keyboard, so the entire work is executed from a single instrument. This always looks like a fraught process to me: how do the two manage to never cross their hands or stray? Or, what if some composer perversely writes the work so they have to?
I suppose ultimately it’s just one of those things that the good ones just know how to do. Four-hand piano music always sounds…well, four-handed, I guess. What I mean is that it’s clearly only a piano, or maybe two pianos, that you’re hearing…but the work is still somehow larger, more sonorous, with that extra playing going on.
I heard this work yesterday while I was driving around on the last day of my autumn vacation. It’s a suite of six short piano duet pieces by Gabriel Faure, called the Dolly Suite. “Dolly” was the nickname Faure used for the daughter of one of his mistresses. The work is pleasantly urbane and even a bit innocent, with an exuberant dance in the finale.
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Something for Thursday
Something for Thursday
Something for Thursday
OK, I don’t have anything picked for today. I went back to work after a nice six-day vacation and I got nothin’. And now The Wife and I are home and I’m dinking around while she gets dinner ready. Her Pandora is playing on the Bluetooth speaker, so you know what I’m gonna do? I’m going to feature here the very next song that comes up on her Pandora, no matter what it is. So just hang tight a few minutes…
I wonder what it will be…
We need some quiz-show suspense music…
OK, here we go…the last song is winding down….
What will it be!…
(The current song is Neil Diamond’s “America”, btw)
(“Everywhere around the world, they’re comin’ to America!” God, I love Neil Diamond….)
Ooooh, here we go…oooooh! It’s a good one! You don’t get better than this. It’s an underappreciated subgenre that you don’t hear much anymore: the big rock power ballad.
I don’t think I’ve ever featured Air Supply in this space before. And you know what? I apologize for NOTHING!
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Something for Thursday
If you’re a subscriber to my newsletter, you already read about my latest celebration of one of the Albums of my Life. (If you’re NOT a subscriber to my newsletter, sheesh, whassamadduhwithyou?!)
This latest letter was about my love of Yanni’s wonderful album Live at the Acropolis. Here is one of my absolute favorite tracks from that album. I don’t have anything much new to say about this that I didn’t say in the newsletter, so let me just get out of the way.