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Joni Mitchell: Big Yellow Taxi
Of all of today’s jaw-dropping political insanities, the fact-free, capricious dismissal of climate change strikes me as the most destructive and short-sighted. We can’t lose time, we can’t blame it on China, we can’t just tweet it away. I’ve been thinking obsessively about this Joni Mitchell classic for the past few days—“Big Yellow Taxi,” a cheerful tune with a sharp, still-timely environmental message.
Tchaikovsky: A Tear Trembles
One tiny step for mankind: I finally finished the program for NYFOS’s Tchaikovsky concert next January. It had been about 82% done for several months, and I kept swearing I just needed a weekend to polish it off. But the longer I looked at the playlist, and the more I listened to the songs Antonina Chehovska and Alexey Lavrov and my colleague-slash-student Nikolay Verevkin had suggested, the more I waffled.
Rob Schwimmer: Holding You in My Arms
I gave the recording a spin the next night. It’s called Beyond the Sky, and that it exactly where it sent me. I was bowled over by Rob’s musical prowess. People use the word “humbled” a bit too often for my taste, but that is what I felt: humbled. Rob is a master of the 88s—and a fine composer—and a modern jazz wizard (some of the tracks sound like Alban Berg with a backbeat)—and he can even play a theremin in perfect tune. “Oh, he’s a better pianist than either of us,” Michael Barrett said breezily the next day. My hackles quietly went up, of course. My motto is “Never compare, never compete,” and it has served me well. But I had taken the measure of my new colleague, and I was in awe. A breathtaking musician, and a man of warmth and generosity.
Leonard Bernstein: Take Care of This House
I had planned a different Leonard Bernstein tune to finish out my most enjoyable stint as “Song of the Day” blogger, but the events of last week compelled me to swap out my initial choice, so: some other time.
Cy Coleman: Our Private World
My “Song of the Day” blog began this week with an enchanted train; in actuality, a wheezy rickety commuter train on the Long Island Rail Road. Today, I’ll turn to the “prince of wheels–the luxury liner of locomotive trains”: the Twentieth Century, Ltd., which zoomed like a comet through the Broadway firmament of my halcyon days.
Dino Oliveri: J’Attendrai
Given that, this week, I’m writing about songs for NYFOS, I’d be remiss if I didn’t select at least one song in a foreign language.
As a show tune fan, I would have had a few options to choose from—“Dites-Moi” from South Pacific, say, or “Abbondanza” from The Most Happy Fella—but why be doctrinaire? Besides, one of my all-time favorite songs of any provenance came to me via an EMI collection of French popular chansons, Paris by Night, one of those many evocative international anthologies that were released in the first decade of the compact disc.
Richard Rodgers: Take the Moment
Many great songs are American standards; some fly under the radar of popular culture. And then there are a few great songs that haven’t even been properly introduced to the radar. In 1965, you would be hard-pressed to find two songwriters who better represented the relay race of Broadway show tunes than Richard Rodgers and Stephen Sondheim.
Jerome Kern: The enchanted train
I grew up on Long Island, forty-five minutes from Broadway (actually forty-nine) and my father commuted to the city and back on the Long Island Rail Road, five days a week, for 38 years. One night, he trudged wearily through the front door, tossed his briefcase aside, collapsed in a chair and said, “I’ve just added it up: I’ve spent three-and-a-half years of my life on the Long Island Rail Road.” “The Enchanted Train” offers a far more uplifting portrait of that venerable conveyance, the local commuter train.
Sufjan Stevens: Fourth of July
Sufjan Stevens’ seventh album “Carrie and Lowell” reveals the possibility of turning darkness into something honest and powerful. These eleven laments seek to find answers during a very private struggle for Sufjan— reflecting on life, death, and finding God after the death of his mother who abandoned him. Sufjan quietly retreated to find these answers in simple orchestrations and haunting poetry that dive into a place of unapologetic grief.
John Cage: The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs
I really adore this little John Cage song, “The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs.” It’s a setting of Joyce’s Ulysses and goes against every kind of traditional text setting I can think of -— it sort of deals with Joyce words but not really, it’s just cycles through the same pitches over and over again. And yet it works —
Jacob Cooper: “Unspun” from Silver Threads
Jacob Cooper is a fellow member of Sleeping Giant, my composers’ collective. I was really hoping to get his music on the show, but alas nothing quite fit. So I’m featuring this really beautiful song of his. Unlike Bon Iver, the voice is not transformed. Instead a lost sample of La bohème is transformed into a pulsing and repeated chord.
Kanye West: Blood on the Leaves
I love Kanye. I also love “I love Kanye”. Lots of folks can’t stand him but something I fundamentally love about him is his blatant appropriation/re-adaptation of older materials. In “Blood on the Leaves” he pulls one of the most audacious moves I can think of — sampling the very famous recording of Nina Simone singing Billie Holiday’s “Strange fruit” and combines it with TNGHT’s “R U Ready”.
Bon Iver: 715 – CR∑∑KS
If there’s two things I love in music, it’s weird sounds, and beautiful harmonies; and the power of what happens when they’re mixed together. “715 – CR∑∑KS” is a perfect example of both. Throwing his voice into a vocoder, Justin Vernon of Bon Iver transforms his voice into a virtual choir, but not without the artifacted nature of these vocal transformations revealing the fundamental fragility of the intentions of its protagonist.
Duke Ellington/Marshall Barer: C’est Comme Ça
Most of you have certainly heard of Duke Ellington, but how many of you are familiar with the work of the lyricist Marshall Barer (1923-1998)? He had his greatest Broadway success as the lyricist for the musical Once Upon a Mattress, written with composer Mary Rodgers, whose songs are part of this week’s NYFOS “Rodgers, Rodgers, & Guettel” concerts. Barer is often referred to as the greatest lyricist you have never heard of.
Rob Mathes: The Rose, The Lily, The Sun, The Dove
A few years ago, a friend of mine gave me an album entitled Rob Mathes: Orchestral Songs. Those familiar with this CD will no doubt nod in agreement when I tell you that it is not the music to put on when you are multi-tasking—this music compels you to stop. And really listen.