Inspiration
Music, when soft voices die, vibrates in the memory-
Below is a collection of music or films I love. If you have hours to spare, take a wander.
30 May 2022
Lo fi. Perfect
30 May 2022
30 May 2022
A great songwriter.
26 November, 2021
Wow.
Wow
14 November, 2021
RIP
26 June, 2021
My favourite Elton song.
May 11, 2021
I fell in love with John Prine the first time I saw him live, in Sydney, only 3 or 4 years ago. Sadly, a victim of Covid 19.
May 1, 2021
This cleaned out my ears whilst a student at the Conservatorium in 1987.
May 1, 2021
Simply beautiful song of regret.
May 1, 2021
I was in Kyoto last year and went to various Zen Gardens. This piece is a beautiful musical realisation of both the textures and experience of them. Kaija Saariaho (born 1952).
September 9, 2020
A Bugs classic.
September 9, 2020
Musically, I knew very little post Stravinsky, until I studied Composition at the NSW Conservatorium in the mid 1980’s. My time there, whilst stultifying in so many ways, was definitely distinguished by an aural explosion of contemporary classical music. It was in a class by the famed musicologist, Richard Toop, (1945-2017) where I first heard the music of György Ligeti (1923-2006), amongst many others, and had my life altered. Toopy, who was very connected in his own right in this international academic world, had a fax from Ligeti up on the wall of his office. It stated, in reference to a monograph Toopy had written on Ligeti, that he had really 'got' him. We were all impressed by this! ‘Lux Aeterna’ (Eternal Light) was composed in 1966 and is for 16 voices. You will know it from Kubrick’s 2001.
September 1, 2020
And he has the coolest headstone.
Sister Rosetta Tharpe (1915-1973). This clip comes from a tour to the UK, thus the rain.
September 1, 2020
Hello in There
August 23, 2020
Chuck Jones’s 1957 masterpiece is utterly magnificent in every possible way. It was the first cartoon to be selected for preservation in the USA National Film Registry. He had another two added later. To Chuck, Bugs represents who we would like to be, whilst Daffy represents who we really are.
August 23, 2020
Hardly played these days, this piece by one of my favourite composers, Edgard Varèse (1883-1965) is one of the first, and certainly the best, work composed entirely for percussion. Finished in 1931, with its’ delicate use of timbre, texture and density, rather than melody or harmony, as organisational tools, this composition led the way toward future, more radical ideas, especially in electronic music.
August 15, 2020
Lucinda Williams (born 1953) and one of her saddest songs
August 15, 2020
Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990) truly is the complete musician. Conducting from the piano, he gives a typically passionate take on the famous Rhapsody in Blue. Lots of mistakes, but he doesn’t seem to care, and nor do I.
August 15, 2020
My living musical hero, Randy Newman (born 1943). Unarguably, the greatest living American songwriter. Deceptively clever both musically and intellectually, funny, tough and hooky. Having grown up with a plethora of earnest singer songwriters, it was a marvel to find someone who was more interested in the psychology of the characters he creates to sing the songs, than he was in displaying his own inner world.
August 12, 2020
Arvo Pärt (born 1935) is the most performed living composer on the planet, so he hardly needs a plug from me.
To quote Wiki…
‘Fratres’ … ‘is three-part music, written in 1977, without fixed instrumentation and has been described as a “mesmerising set of variations on a six-bar theme combining frantic activity and sublime stillness that encapsulates Pärt’s observation that ‘the instant and eternity are struggling within us’.
I’d agree with that.
August 12, 2020
This has always moved me. I believe I may have seen it in the early 80’s. Pina Bausch (1949 - 2009) was very big then. This seemingly simple idea, the lyrics of a timeless love song, become painfully exposed by the ‘choreography’ of the deadpan sign language and its’ inherently beautiful movement.
August 10, 2020
Sarah Mary Chadwick is New Zealand born and Melbourne based. She is not in this clip. Its a terrific song of real despair with a witty and humble video made as a counterpoint.
August 6, 2020
In answer to Chadwick’s question above, I’d be very happy to have death come whilst listening to Telemann (1681-1767). After the vaguely daggy ‘entrance’ of the soloists, the ensemble joins, and the physical force and sensuality is astonishing.
August 6, 2020
This is beautiful. If you can, try to listen to the complete piece. I understand the musical language may be challenging for some, but I can guarantee, the more you listen, the more your ears will open up to him.
August 4, 2020
King Curtis (1934 - 1971) and the Kingpins teach us how to write music and have fun.
August 4, 2020
Composed by Girolamo Frescobaldi (1583 - 1643)’
August 1, 2020
Paul Simon (born 1941) with one of his greatest songs and one of his worst outfits. A beautiful melody and a lyric that is still so relevant.
August 1, 2020
The great ending to the great film with the great Jerry Goldsmith score.
August 1, 2020
The one that started it all for me. I reckon I saw it at a drive in Erina in about ‘68. Don’t know what Mum and Dad were thinking. They probably thought I would fall asleep. No way. Not with this score. To my ears, it is the most original piece of film music ever. Ennio Morricone (1928 - 2020).
July 27, 2020
It’s the old rule that drunks have to argue
and get into fights.
The lover is just as bad. He falls into a hole.
But down in that hole he finds something shining,
worth more than any amount of money or power.
Last night the moon came dropping its clothes in the street.
I took it as a sign to start singing,
falling up into the bowl of the sky.
The bowl breaks. Everywhere is falling everywhere.
Nothing else to do.
Here’s the new rule: break the wineglass,
and fall toward the glassblower’s breath.
Rumi
Composed and played by Jon Hassell (born 1937)
July 27, 2020
The man can do no wrong. Ray Charles (1930-2004). Watch the moment at 44 sec in, when the music hits, and Ray enters the ‘zone’. It reminds me of a similar moment in an old Marx Brothers movie, when Harpo, after some fab pianistic gags that send the surrounding kids wild, stops the clowning, moves across to HIS instrument, raises his eyes to the heavens and plays. I will try to find it.
July 27, 2020
And here it is. Harpo (1888-1964).
July 27, 2020
My cry for today…Simone Lamsma (violin) - Davida Scheffers (cor anglais)
From the notes on Youtube….
Davida Scheffers has lived her dream in winning a contest and the opportunity to play with the Dutch Orchestra. Davida suffers from an extremely painful neuromuscular condition that derailed her career, and she thought she would never get to play in a professional orchestra again... The young blond lady is her daughter and was 18 years old that day. Video from RTL Netherlands. Special thanks to RTL NL for not blocking this video for copyrighting, masterpiece of human feelings representation through music. (sic) It had to be shared...
It did.
John Williams (born 1932)
July 24, 2020
I grew up thinking recorders were daggy…I was wrong. Peppy first movement. But at around 3:30, the slow movement starts. It is magnificent.
July 24, 2020
July 21, 2020
This is one of the key movies that kicked me down this road in life -"‘Aguirre - The Wrath of God’. It’s as compelling now as it ever was. Featuring one of the many great collaborations between Werner Herzog (1942) and Klaus Kinski (1926-1991) with Krautrock band Popol Vuh handling the score. This is the kind of maverick film making that one could only dream of these days.
July 21, 2020
Take an hour out of your life with this guy. One of the best around in my book.
Brad Mehldau (born 1970)
July 19, 2020
If you have another hour to spend with Steve Reich (born 1936) and The Ensemble Intercontemporain, you won’t regret it. This is one of the great American minimalist pieces.
July 19, 2020
Nothing to do with music, but everything to do with make believe.
July 17, 2020
Anton Webern (1883 - 1945). My favourite composer of the Second Viennese School. Clear, concise, beautiful and unsentimental.
July 17, 2020
Clear, concise, beautiful and very sentimental. Taylor Swift (born 1989).
July 17, 2020
Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928 - 2007), in ‘72, speaking of his student days in the ‘50’s, and his profound thoughts on form and the relationships between music and biology.
July 15, 2020
The classic ‘Sail Away’ depicts a 19th Century slave trader selling the wonders of the USA that await his audience. Americans aren’t big on irony, nor do they often grasp songs written ‘in character’ rather than the preferred heartfelt emotions of the author’s own.
July 15, 2020
Luciano Berio (1925 - 2003) This piece changed my life when I first heard it as a student at the Conservatorium. Mahleresque in ambition, it’s a piece about absolutely everything, or absolutely nothing depending on how you want to view it!
July 15, 2020
Townes Van Zandt (1944-1997) sings of the hard choices we make. The ones that save ourselves, but betray our friends, leaving us with the bitter scars of guilt and emptiness.
July 15, 2020
“Death in Venice” (1971). Not much I can contribute to all that has been written about this exquisite film.
July 13, 2020
Aretha Franklin (1942 - 2018) and King Curtis. What a pairing.
July 13, 2020
Conlan Nancorrow, (1912-1997) the unique American composer, who lived most of his creative life completely unknown in Mexico, creates humanly unplayable music on the only maschine available at the time to do it…the player piano.
July 11, 2020
My second favourite living songwriter. And one of my all time favourite lyrics. Joni (born 1943).
July 11, 2020
I don’t play jazz but I listen to it more than anything else. And Thelonious Monk (1917 - 1982) is my king.
July 9, 2020
Today’s genius. Kendrick Lamar (born 1987).
July 9, 2020
Scofied (1922 - 2008) plays Salieri (1750 - 1825). The pain you feel when you hear something way beyond your own ability.
Happens every day.
July 9, 2020
Prine’s performance of Blaze Foley’s song.
July 9, 2020
I began my slog in the Arts in 1984, when Geoffrey Rush (born 1951) invited me to join an acting ensemble in Adelaide. He changed my life in more ways than one. I will never forget him excitedly shoving the cassette of this into his VCR, whilst we sucked on ciggies and guzzled D’Arenburg. The sheer audaciousness of this performance has remained with me ever since. As has Geoffrey. My first real mentor and a great friend.
July 7, 2020
The Stabat Mater is a 13th Century Christian hymn to Mary depicting her suffering as she watches her son dying on the cross. This is for all of us who have suffered the pain of watching a loved one die. Dame Emma Kirkby (born 1949), England’s great early music specialist, sings exquisitely.
July 7, 2020
Continuing that theme…
July 7, 2020