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Shakespeare: My mistress’ eyes
In my 9th grade English class, all of the students had to memorize a Shakespearean sonnet. I chose “Like as the waves make towards the pebbl’d shores,” but only because another student had already chosen “My mistress’ eyes.” Alan Rickman—whom I first encountered in Galaxy Quest—delivers his stirring rendition with gravitas and subtle passion.
Joe Budden: Freedom Freestyle
A remix of Beyonce, and Kendrick Lamar’s “Freedom” this piece is filled with references to the Black Lives Matter movement as well as actual video content from many of the murders and assaults on people of color from the past few years. The work is combined with Jesse Williams’ incredibly powerful BET Awards speech about cultural appropriation.
Blood Orange: Do You See My Skin Through the Flames
Written under his “Blood Orange” moniker, Devonte Hynes wrote this piece as a collection of his thoughts, a delve into the life, and mind, of a person of color in the modern world. Racial profiling, murder, stereotyping, all things that people of color face daily. It is less of a song, and more of a stream of consciousness set to music.
Prince, feat. Eryn Allen Kane: Baltimore
Finding himself deeply affected by the death of Freddie Gray (April 19, 2015 – Baltimore, Maryland), Prince wrote this tribute song. Mentioning both Michael Brown and Freddie Gray, the piece is a reflection on the violence that spread through the country in the past few years from unjust killings. The piece ends with a direct quote from Prince: “The system is broken. It’s going to take the young people to fix it this time. We need new ideas, new life…”
Lauryn Hill: Black Rage (Sketch)
Set to the tune of “My Favorite Things” from The Sound of Music, “Black Rage” was a reprisal, brought back shortly after the shooting of Michael Brown (August 9, 2014 – Ferguson, Missouri). The piece looks at the atrocities the African American community has faced for years and how this hatred can take us into dark places.
Common, feat. John Legend: Glory
Written for the movie 2014 film “Selma” which followed the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., this Oscar winning song connects the struggle and victories from the civil rights era to modern America and the battle that continues to wage for equality between all races. “We say that Selma is now because the struggle for justice is right now” (Common, Academy Awards acceptance speech).
Dave Frishberg: My Attorney Bernie
Dave Frishberg has the most urbane sense in his songs. He writes about everyday things but somehow makes them oh so cool. I mean, what’s so great about your lawyer? If you have one, maybe you are having problems. And they are so expensive! But My Attorney Bernie makes me want to meet Bernie and hang with him. I guess there are terrific people to be found in any profession, which is what Mr. Frishberg seems to be celebrating.
Gustav Mahler: Ablösung Im Sommer
Summer is usually the time when love has the greatest opportunity to bloom. The soft evenings, the lingering twilight, the wonderful cuisine—fresh produce of every kind—all add up to an awakening of the senses. The collection of German folk poetry Des Knaben Wunderhorn is full of parables about war, love, betrayal, and fidelity. “Ablösung Im Sommer” is one of these.
Jimmy HcHugh & Dorothy Fields: On the Sunny Side of the Street
Summer is when we get the most sun. Most of us brown up a little, even without getting to the beach. The tomatoes and peaches are coming in, the breezes are warm, the city streets are less crowded, and life is full of pleasures we just can’t experience when it’s cold. To remind us how to hang on to that feeling throughout the year, here is Esperanza Spalding singing (and playing her bass in) “The Sunny Side of the Street”. She’s an amazingly gifted artist, and she’s got all the high notes and all the low notes in her arsenal.
Hector Berlioz: La Spectre de la Rose
Summer is full of nature, and it’s the time we usually get out into it, and let our senses partake of the beauty, inhale smells, and feel warm breezes on our skin. Then there is the plucked flowers perspective. Death is imminent, but the rose lives on as an unworldly comfort to us still in nature. Here is the translation of the Berlioz’s “La Spectre de la Rose” from Nuits d’ete. And following the translation, the link to the song performed by Lorraine Hunt Lieberson. She is the rose whose art visits me at night, and whose love and I can still feel in her voice.
Pedrito Martinez: Ay Amor
It’s really summer now. When August first rolls around, the end of summer is in sight. But, we still have a delicious month left before the kids (and many of the grown ups) go back to school, and back to their quotidian routines. But since we have a month, this week will be devoted to my personal musical associations with summer. I have lots, so this will be a wide ranging selection of songs.
Samuel Barber: Knoxville: Summer of 1915
Soon after Samuel Barber was commissioned by soprano Eleanor Steber to compose a work for her, he stumbled upon a long prose poem by James Agee, published in The Partisan Review. “Knoxville: Summer of 1915” was a deceptively simple piece that, as its author later said, expressed “a child’s feeling of loneliness, wonder, and lack of identity in that marginal world between twilight and sleep.”
Charles Aznavour: Yesterday When I Was Young
Lena Horne developed into one of America’s most unique singers, but she didn’t start out that way. From her Cotton Club debut (at the age of 16) through her galley years as one of MGM’s first black stars, Horne was required to be glamorous and unexpressive, a sort of cocoa Dinah Shore. A tough childhood and unrelenting racism also contributed to her desire to repress her feelings in performance, and her refusal to play either servants or prostitutes shortened her Hollywood career. With the help of her second husband, the arranger Lenny Hayton, she eventually developed a kind of toughness in her performances, which became another way to protect her from her emotions and isolate her from her audiences.
Francis Poulenc: Les Chemins de l’Amour
Shortly after the 1940 Nazi invasion of France, Francis Poulenc was asked to write incidental music for a light drama by Jean Anouilh, Léocadia. It starred the celebrated French actress and singer Yvonne Printemps, and Poulenc took advantage of her presence in the cast to add to his instrumental score a “valse chantée”, called “Les Chemins de l’Amour.”
Rodgers & Hammerstein: A Wonderful Guy
When Mary Martin died in 1990, the headline of her New York Times obituary called her “the first lady of musicals.” Probably now unknown by anyone younger than 40, Martin was, in her time, one of the most famous performers in the United States, and the creator of two classic Broadway musical roles (Nellie in “South Pacific” and Maria in “The Sound of Music”). But her fame was enhanced by her characterization of Peter Pan, in a musical version that she performed on Broadway in 1954, before televising it a number of times. It’s safe to say that nearly every American child of the 1950s and 60s knew that Peter Pan flew, crowed, and was played by an exuberant lady who, like her character, never grew old.