A ZAIA fan has recorded their own rendition of the song NOI from the show, complete with photos from the Zaia theater performances and pics of the band. (Hey, I’m in those pics!). Chicago Rose who performs this song in the show with the cast says “I love it”. And I think it’s pretty darn cool too.

Zaia is a resident Cirque Du Soleil show performing at the Venetian casino in Macau, China which opened in July 2008.

Video Description:

This is a recording of me singing Noi by Violaine Corradi. the piece is from show Zaia of cirque du soleil.

This 10-part series takes an in-depth look at the process of bringing Shrek to Broadway through interviews with the Tony Award-winning creative team and cast, behind-the-scenes footage and exclusive content.

A montage of the clowns of Cirque Du Soleil. I see Dimitri Hatton here from our ZAIA Cirque show doing his Montgolfiere passage and “Mad Conductor” act. I’m sure that Onofrio Colucci is also in this video but I’m not sure which clown he is (formerly with “O” and Zaia, currently with ZED in Tokyo).

You’ll also see Brian Dewhurst from Mystere. I had the chance to see Mystere performed in Vegas several years ago and the pre-show antics of Dewhurst stand out in my memory as one of the highlights of the show. He is SO funny.

Where do Musicals come from? Also on my blog you can find related clips from “Broadway: The Golden Age”. I own this movie and it’s fantastic for giving an understanding of the roots and development of the American Broadway Musical. This short clip here is from the same producers. (In fact I did a glowing review of the film and one of the producers posted a comment here on my blog – not THAT’S cool.)

Award-winning Producers Rick McKay & Jamie deRoy (“Broadway: The Golden Age”) produced this piece about Broadway-bound young composers long before Mckay made the hit film “Broadway: The Golden Age” or deRoy became a successful Broadway producer. The prescient short film stars young composers Adam Guettell (who would go on to write “Light in the Piazza”), Michael John LaChiusa, Marcy Heisler & Zina Goldrich and John Meyer as well as appearances by Wiley Hausam, Mitch Douglas, Maury Yeston, B.D. Wong, Ira Weitzman, Joseph McConnell, Michael Price, Bobby Horowitz and more. Edited by Jay Keuper, Exec Producer: Jeff Folmsbee

(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.

Part 2 is the real gem however that shows off Perlman’s violin brilliance and perhaps a heretofore unexpected comedic genius.

PDQ BACH

P. D. Q. Bach is a composer invented by musical satirist “Professor” Peter Schickele. In a gag that Schickele has used in a four-decade-long career, he performs “discovered” works of this forgotten member of the Bach family. Schickele’s music combines parodies of musicological scholarship, the conventions of Baroque and classical music, and slapstick comedy.

The name “P. D. Q.” is a parody of the three-part names given to some members of the Bach family that are commonly reduced to initials, such as C. P. E., for Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. PDQ is an initialism for “pretty damn (darn) quick”.
Schickele regularly tours, and has recorded on Vanguard and Telarc labels.

Among the many “facts” about the composer’s life in Schickele’s fictional biography of the composer, we find the following:

P.D.Q. Bach was born in Leipzig on April 1, 1742, the son of Johann Sebastian Bach and Anna Magdalena Bach; the twenty first of Johann’s twenty children. According to Schickele, Bach’s parents did not bother to give their youngest son a real name, and settled on “P.D.Q.” instead. The only earthly possession Johann Sebastian Bach willed to his son was a kazoo.

In 1755, P.D.Q. Bach was an apprentice of the inventor of the musical saw, Ludwig Zahnstocher (German for “toothpick”). In 1756, P.D.Q. Bach met Leopold Mozart and advised him to teach his son Wolfgang Amadeus how to play billiards. Later on, P.D.Q. Bach went to St. Petersburg to visit his distant cousin Leonhard Sigismund Dietrich Bach (L.S.D. Bach), whose daughter Betty Sue bore P.D.Q. a child.

Finally, in 1770, P.D.Q. Bach started to write music, mostly by stealing melodies from other composers.

P.D.Q.’s final words, which were spoken to Betty-Sue Bach, were “Time, gentlemen.” The time was exactly eleven o’clock on the evening of May 5, 1807[3] in Baden-Baden-Baden, Germany.

P.D.Q. Bach’s grave was marked “1807–1742”. The reverse order of the dates has led to some controversy, but Prof. Schickele calls the theory that P.D.Q. Bach lived his life backwards, Merlin-like, “too fanciful to merit serious consideration” and insists that the marking on the grave was a “transparent attempt [by] the Bach family to make it appear that P.D.Q. could not possibly have been sired by Johann Sebastian, who died in 1750.” Nevertheless, when listing the dates in sheet music or program notes, he always includes a question mark: “(1807-1742)?”

P.D.Q. Bach’s Epitaph reads [as requested by his cousin Betty Sue Bach and written by the local doggerel catcher]:
In the “original” German:

Hier liegt ein Mann ganz ohnegleich;
Im Leibe dick, an Sünden reich.
Wir haben ihn in das Grab gesteckt,
Weil es uns dünkt er sei verreckt.

Translated:
Here lies a man with sundry flaws
And numerous Sins upon his head;
We buried him today because
As far as we can tell, he’s dead.

The translation above is provided by Schickele in the “biography”. A more literal translation:
Here lies a man entirely without equal,
Fat in body, rich in sins.
We’ve put him into the grave,
as it seems to us he’s kicked the bucket.

In preconcert lectures, Schickele has revealed that P.D.Q. Bach had a substantial influence on Beethoven’s deafness: Beethoven came to dread P.D.Q. Bach and his music so greatly that Beethoven resorted to stuffing coffee grounds into his ears whenever he saw P.D.Q. Bach coming.
Before performing the Concerto for Horn and Hardart, Schickele stated, though no documentary evidence existed, that the dance music of P.D.Q. Bach generally suggested that one of P.D.Q. Bach’s legs was shorter than the other. Later on in his Music for an Awful Lot of Winds and Percussion album (in the introduction to the Six Contrary Dances), Schickele states that a recently discovered doctor’s note proves that P.D.Q. Bach’s hollow leg was considerably longer than the other one.

Music

Schickele describes P.D.Q. Bach as having “the originality of Johann Christian, the arrogance of Carl Philipp Emanuel, and the obscurity of Johann Christoph Friedrich.” The most distinguishing feature of P. D. Q. Bach’s music, in the words of Schickele, is “manic plagiarism”.

P.D.Q. Bach seldom wrote original tunes; he stole melodies from other composers and rearranged them in often funny ways. P.D.Q. Bach’s music uses instruments not often used in orchestras, such as the tromboon, slide whistle, hardart, lasso d’amore, left-handed sewer flute and kazoo, as well as items not normally used as musical instruments, such as balloons, fog horns, and bicycles. His music also calls for unusual methods of playing traditional instruments, such as blowing through double reeds by themselves (that is, detached from the instruments) throughout Iphigenia in Brooklyn. His parts for vocalists include coughing, snoring, sobbing, laughing and yelling.

P.D.Q. Bach’s work pokes fun at music including Baroque, Romantic, modern, country music (Oedipus Tex and Blaues Gras), and rap (Classical Rap). The “Schickele” or “S.” numbers whimsically assigned to P.D.Q. Bach’s works parody musicologists’ catalogues of famous composers, such as the Köchel catalogue of Mozart’s works.

There is often a startling juxtaposition of styles within a single P.D.Q. Bach piece. The Prelude to Einstein on the Fritz, which alludes to Philip Glass’s opera Einstein on the Beach, provides an example. The underlying music is J.S. Bach’s first prelude from the Well-Tempered Clavier, but with each phrase repeated interminably in a minimalist manner that parodies Glass’s. On top of this mind-numbing structure is added everything from jazz phrases to snoring to the chanting of a meaningless phrase (“Koy Hotsy-Totsy,” alluding to the art film Koyaanisqatsi for which Glass wrote the score). Through all these mutilations, the piece never deviates from Bach’s original harmonic structure.

The humor in P.D.Q. Bach music often derives from violation of audience expectations, such as repeating a tune more than the usual number of times, resolving later than usual or not at all, unusual key changes, or sudden switches from high art to low art.

Schickele divides P.D.Q. Bach’s musical output into three periods: the Initial Plunge, the Soused Period, and Contrition.
During the Initial Plunge, P.D.Q. Bach wrote the Traumarai for solo piano, an Echo Sonata for “two unfriendly groups of instruments”, and a Gross Concerto for Divers’ Flutes, two Trumpets, and Strings.

During the Soused (or Brown-Bag) Period, P.D.Q. Bach wrote a Concerto for Horn & Hardart, a Sinfonia Concertante, a Pervertimento for Bicycle, Bagpipes, and Balloons, a Serenude, a Perückenstück (literally German for “Hair-piece”), a Suite from The Civilian Barber {spoofing Rossini’s The Barber of Seville}, a Schleptet in E-flat major, the half-act opera The Stoned Guest {the character of “The Stone Guest” from Mozart’s Don Giovanni}, a Concerto for Piano vs. Orchestra, Erotica Variations {Beethoven’s Eroica Variations}, Hansel and Gretel and Ted and Alice, an opera in one unnatural act (Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel and the 1969 film Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice), The Art of the Ground Round {Bach’s The Art of Fugue}, a Concerto for Bassoon vs. Orchestra, and a Grand Serenade for an Awful Lot of Winds and Percussion.
During the Contrition Period, P.D.Q. Bach wrote the cantata Iphigenia in Brooklyn {Gluck’s Iphigenia in Aulis, etc.}, the oratorio The Seasonings {Haydn’s The Seasons}, Diverse Ayres on Sundrie Notions, a Sonata for Viola for Four Hands, the chorale prelude Should, a Notebook for Betty Sue Bach {Bach’s Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach and Buddy Holly’s “Peggy Sue”}, the Toot Suite, the Grossest Fugue {Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge}, a Fanfare for the Common Cold {Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man}, and the canine cantata Wachet Arf! {Bach’s Wachet auf}.

He composed the religious work Missa Hilarious (Schickele no. N2O, N2O being nitrous oxide or “laughing gas”), which was found along with documents pertaining to his excommunication.

Compare the two conducting and performance styles for Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture.

Top video is concluding part two of Tchaikovsky’s famous 1812 Overture performed by the Hallé Orchestra, conducted by Mark Elder at the Royal Albert Hall during the Nations Favourite Prom 2004

Bottom video is the Osaka Philharmonic Orchestra.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6LY11kV444

In this interview with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust survivor Rabbi Gerd Jacob (Zwienicki) Wiener shares his memories of Kristallnacht, the November 1938 pogroms.

A young man with no disabilities and many abilities! This should inspire most people to be thankful for what we’re given and to realize most of our limitations are decided by ourselves. And I think his Claire De Lune sounds pretty good!

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AQN6FCOJXI

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ed4t8yC6uR0

Penn & Teller talk about how the only way they feel world peace is to be achieved. From the Penn and Teller show “Bullshit”.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCWEpaLBa6U

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDDxF3j4Q4g

The Creationism segment from Penn and Teller’s “Bullshit” show.

Includes footage of Duane Gish from the Insitute of Creation Research and also the Cobb County school board in their voting process to include creationism as part of the school science curriculum.

One of the other websites I run is a bible discussion website. The Creation vs. Evolution debate section of that website is located at:
http://forum.bible-discussion.com/forumdisplay.php?f=17

You can spend many hours there reading debates between “creationists” and “evolutionists”. The debates include specific points of biology and geology. I have been literally amazed to see the amount of effort and research members put into their posts. For me, the most telling element of these debates is to see which side consistently posts documented information to support their side; and to see which side consistently changes the argument mid-stream.

Many US residents are not aware that the creation vs evolution “debates” are primarily an issue solely in the United States. There is not such widespread conversation on this subject outside the USA; although it has begun to spread to Australia.

Penn and Teller are magicians from Las Vegas. They devote a lot of their time to bring up subjects they consider “Bullshit”. If you search their other videos on YouTube you might be surprised to see some of the other subjects they cover.

Kolejne tłumaczenie. Tym razem wyświetlanie napisów poprawione, aczkolwiek nie do końca jeszcze idealne. Mam nadzieję, że program jak i tłumaczenie się spodobają.

Penn i Teller są duetem od kilkudziesięciu lat i wciąż pokazują triki w Las Vegas. Opracowali pewną rutynę – Penn gada ile wlezie, Teller nie mówi nic. Nic.
Ich sposób bycia został wypracowany jeszcze zanim się poznali, Penn by przyciągnąć uwagę publiki przekrzykiwał ją, Teller milkł. Tak zostało do dziś, Penn gada i krzyczy, Teller robi w tym czasie sztuczki i posługuje się mimiką.
Bullshit! jest programem sceptycznym. Penn i Teller są nastawieni sceptycznie do wszystkiego: religii, rządu, wszelkiego new age, nadprzyrodzonych zdarzeń i organizacji, które wciskają ludziom kit. Można powiedzieć, że podobnie jak Pogromcy mitów obalają co się da. Różnica polega na tym, że Penn i Teller atakują całe społeczności, systemy, przekonania, a nie jak Adam i Jamie, “urban legends”.

Penn and Teller: Bullshit! jest więc o wszechobecnym kicie, wciskanym nam przez kulturę, rząd, organizacje, prywatne osoby, które na ludzkiej naiwności chcą zbić kasę. Penn i Teller podchodząc do tematu spotykają się z ludźmi z obu stron barykady, z właścicielami firm, naukowcami, psychologami, przedstawicielami organizacji i politykami. Temu co ci ludzie mówią towarzyszy dosadna narracja Penna, który z tymi, którzy są w opozycji do niego, robi głupków oraz bezkompromisowo miesza ich poglądy z błotem. Ich zresztą też. Oto przykłady określeń z losowego odcinka: asshole (najczęściej używane określenie), sickfuck, motherfucker, power-junkie. Penn i Teller naśmiewają się nawet z ludzi, którzy trzymają ich stronę. Umiejętnie edytują materiał, humorystycznie komentują ich wypowiedzi, śmieją się z ich ubioru. Twórcy Bullshit! sami się przyznają do tego, że są dupkami.