httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aA-tOsM6F4Y
Maybe I’ve been hanging out with too many ladybodys in Macau, but this is pretty damn cool. Lin Yu sings Dolly Parton classic on Taiwanese talent show Super Star Avenue, giving his all for the $1 Million prize. (Parton wrote and first recorded the song, which Whitney Houston later recorded.)
Adam Guettel is the composer and lyricist for “The Light In The Piazza” – a musical, but really worthy of the title “opera”. I’ll tell you first why Piazza and Guettel interest me, and then following will be more biographical info and article links.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ikqeG4ab3Q
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gz7HCGpRZDM
Leonard Bernstein. Young people’s concerts. What is Orchestration?. March 8, 1958
Bernstein discusses orchestration beginning with Rimsky-Korsakov live performance examples. He also plays examples of bad orchestration.
Continue reading “Leonard Bernstein – What is Orchestration?”
Happy Easter 2010!
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMSEPUuNP8k
(Part Two is the performance, so I post it first)
Itzhak Perlman and Peter Schickele mix it up in a hilarious duet at a Boston Pops Concert with John Williams conducting. Part 1 is mostly the setup, with Peter Schickele expounding on the life of P.D.Q. Bach, “the 21st of Johann Sebastian Bach’s 20 children.”
PDQ Bach is the ultimate in combining High Art and Low Art for awesome high brow comedy. It was great in this video to see PDQ Bach, violinist Itzhak Perlmand and composer/conductor John Williams all working together on the gags. I also like how the music makes you wait for each subsequent gag as they are interspersed with a fiarly straight ahead Riccoco style orchestration.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJ4E6irKQtE
Introduction to Orchestration by Thomas Goss. See my “Orchestration” category here on my blog for more music orchestration study tips.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yIKu3LSwcE
Gustav Holst – The Planets Op.32 Mercury, the Winged Messenger
Here is an example of the full score and following that is a two piano reduction. I have been racking my brain in several futile attempts to find the most economical and free way to do orchestral sketches on the computer – and I think the two piano reduction idea is fantastic. It seems like a painfully obvious approach to me now – but I was very frustrated with the idea of sketching with a single piano part because it’s difficult to think in tonal colors and sections with that approach. I don’t want to spend a lot of time editing – I want to input the ideas. The 2 piano approach gives me room for counterpoint between sections – and to insinuate different textures. Orchestrally, the counterpoint happens between sections and textures rather than just notes – so Viola!
Continue reading “Holst Mercury – Example of Orchestral Sketch and Piano Reduction”
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xzf0rvQa4Mc
Piano sketches by Aaron Copland of his Fanfare for the Common Man orchestra work. A look into how the composer prepares an orchestral sketch before full orchestration.
Continue reading “Copland Sketches – Fanfare for the Common Man”
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9mrXagbva8
Insight into how Aaron Copland would sketch his music before full orchestration.
Appalachian Spring rough sketch page 15 by Aaron Copland. Copland wrote his orchestra sketches at the piano at a slow pace, often at night.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Copland
Aaron Copland sketches can be found here:
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/copland/index.html
Appalachian Spring second sketch, a little cleaner with more notes and info on score:
“Speculation has circulated that Cirque du Soleil would create a Las Vegas show based on Mr. Jackson’s music, as it already has done with Beatles’ music. If it does, a soundtrack album of some kind would likely be part of the deal.”
That is an excerpt from an article released today. A $250 million dollar deal between Sony and the MJ estate.
Jackson’s music is very much about love and my experience has been that Cirque shares this vision. Music that “lifts our eyes to the mountains”. It will be exciting to see what happens with this.