Earworm du Jour

I sort of heard this on someone's phone this afternoon and it stuck in my head. I remember how much I loved this song.

It's Green Man Review Time

And here we are again with our usual mix of goodies:

Live music from Lúnasa in Australia, Taco Tapes’ Trad is Rad, Robert’s Visit to the Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History, Alastair Reynolds’ The Prefect audiobook, Tom Baker’s Birthday, Jennifer Stevenson’s Lasagna and Other Neat Stuff

So dive in and enjoy.

What's New at Green Man Review

Through lock-downs, insurrections, and all the rest, Gren Man Review has a slate full of goodies for you:

On Hobbits in print and on film, An unusual Inn, Jabberwock puppets, Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate, Classical Music and Other Winter Comforts

So hunker down with a nice warm drink and ignore the news for a while.

Culture Break: Ravel: Bolero: Two Versions

I don't know if I've ever posted this particular flash mob before, but it's a fairly appeapling:

And of course, who could forget this one?

Random Note

I have more Philip Glass in my music files than Mozart and Beethoven combined. This is from a collaboration with a number of South American composers, Aguas de Amazonas.

What's New at Green Man Review

"Boxing Day has come and gone!" -- Short and sweet, but that's only the header. Our usual eclectic mis fo tyhis, that and yet more, so scoot on over and enjoy.

What' New at Green Man Review

We're back, with our usual eclectic mix of goodies:

An Appalachian Mystery, a Most Unusual Fox, Chicago’s Own Wizard for Hire, Iceland, a Family Christmas, Boiled in Lead, Fairport, and much, much more

Click on over and hunker down with a nice cup of hot cocoa and enjoy.

Culture Break: Arvo Pärt: Stabat Mater

I normally try to keep the "Culture Break" entries somewhat brief, say the length of a popular song or slightly longer. However. I found myself listening to this one and got copletely lost in it. So, I'm going to recommend that you turn off the world for half an hour or so and let the music surround you:

What's New at Green Man Review

As promised, here's another edition of Green Man Review:

A Very Special Cat, a River Journey, Breakfast, Tomb Raiders, Ultimate Pogues, Indonesian Pop, Beethoven, and more. . . .

Lots of goodies, so hunker down with something warm and enjoy.

Review: Igor Stravinsky: Works of Igor Stravinsky

Fairly frequently I have reason to consider the relative importance of tradition and innovation in the performance of music, usually coming to the conclusion that both have value, and that a successful performer will find a balance point between moribund traditionalism and wild-eyed radicalism.

Of course, historically one of the problems with traditions were that they were so easily lost: not every great performer has had disciples willing to continue his/her traditions. Fortunately, the advent of sound recording has removed most of those problems, so that we now know how Gershwin thought Rhapsody in Blue should sound, and can experience Rachmaninoff’s thinking on his own piano concertos. And we now, thanks to Sony BMG, have a very clear idea of how Igor Stravinsky thought his own works should be performed.

Works of Igor Stravinsky is a massive set: 22 CDs of performances of Rite of Spring, Symphony in E-Flat, The Rake’s Progress and more under the direction of the composer, with additional performances by his disciple Robert Craft under Stravnisky’s supervision, and a disc (the Sympony in E-Flat disc, actually) that includes recordings of rehearsals and Stravinsky discussing his own music.

It’s hard to overstate Stravinsky’s influence on twentieth-century music. It is so pervasive that, for example, while listening to Petrouschka, I was reminded of the soundtrack for every busy urban scene in every film practically since sound became part of movies. No less a figure than Claude Debussy wrote to Stravinsky: “It is a special satisfaction to tell you how much you have enlarged the boundaries of the permissible in the empire of sound.” And this was in 1913, when Stravinsky was still only in his thirties.

Of course, I’m not one to think that the creator necessarily has the final word on his creations. Others may see things that he is too close to discern, or facets that he didn’t think important may take on new weight as times change. In this regard, I found Stravinsky’s interpretations often fairly dry – not quite academic, but without the elements of romance that other interpreters have found in the works. This is not an overwhelming objection, mind you, but after hearing something like the as interpreted by Seiji Ozawa, Stravinsky’s version is relatively tame.

I would also have preferred a different organization for the set, which is set up by type of work – ballets, symphonies, oratorios, sacred music, etc. I think it would have been more illuminating to have set this up in chronological order. Stravinsky, like most artists, when through various stages in his career, from the radical avant-gardism of his youth, through a period, much like Bartok, Kodaly, Enescu, and Vaughan Williams, of incorporating folk and traditional materials into his work, and from there into a strict neoclassicism and a modernist synthesis. This is a progression that I think could have been very well illustrated – and led to a deeper understanding of Stravinsky’s music -- by organizing the collection to take account of it.

However, I’m not going to say pass this up. It’s a tremendous collection, the music of Stravinsky straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak. But shop around: since I bought my set, as might be expected, the price has skyrocketed, if you can find it at all.

If you’d like to hear the way one of the twentieth century’s most important composers thought about his own music, go for it.

(Sony / BMG Int’l, 2007)

Culture Break: Arvo Pärt: The Deer's Cry

A bit of a break from the chaos that's ruling the news these days. I haven't listened to Pärt for a while, which is maybe a little odd, considering that one summer, in my (relative) youth, his Passio was my beach music (early in the morning, when there weren't many people around yet. At that point, it was the only work of his available in the U.S. (Strangely enough, there's not a whole lot of his music on YouTube. Go figure.)

Needless to say, I did review it, but that's one of the lost works from our horrendous move to a new host at GMR. Look for it in the next edition on November 29.

Yes, It's Been Two weeks

And our new edition of Green Man Review is up:

Alternate Histories, Arthur Redux, Seafood, Teenage Superheroes, Music — Traditional and Not, Rodents, and more. . . .

So click on over and hunker down with a nice hot drink (if your weather is anything like ours today), and dig in.

Culture Break: Eskil Romme: Forårsfred

Believe it or not, I do listen to something besides loud obnoxious rock and impenetrable contempoerary avant-garde music. I actually listen to quite a bit of Nordic traditional music. Eskil Romme is one that shows up a lot on my playlist. This is from his album Himmerlandsmelodier, which I reviewed as part of this group.

What's New at Green Man Review

It's been two weeks, and sure enough, there's a new bunch of reviews at Green Man Review.

A Space Opera That’s Not, Earthsea Illustrated, Rhubarb, A Zombie Romance, Live Tull, Live Fiddles, and more. . . .

You know the drill. Get yourself a nice warm drink (if your weather is anything like ours today) and settle in for some really interesting reading.

What's New at Green Man Review

Finally! Our second biweekly edition, and it's all about Halloween -- well, some of it is.

It’s Late October So Some Halloween Matters and Not So Halloweenish Matters as Well

So click on over and hunker down -- there's a lot there.

At Last! Green Man Review for October 4, 2020

In case I didn't mention it before, Green Man Review has gone to a biweekly publication schedule. That means you won't see us as often, but when you do, there's lots and lots of stuff to enjoy.

Diverse Music including Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, Warren Ellis Goes Graphic, Spider-Mans, Peanut Butter and Chocolate, A Cherryh’s Alliance-Union Universe novel and Other Pleasant Diversions

So, you can click on over and spend some time with your favorite subjects.

What's New at Green Man Review

Yes, the move to a new host is done (and the less said about it, the better) and we're back again with a new edition. Note: we're going to biweekly review editions, with the stories alternating, so needless to say, this edition is packed full of neat stuff. This is just the tip of the iceberg:

Autumnal Folkmanis Puppets, Demon Detectives, British Mysteries, Soundscape Designers, and more

So hop on over and enjoy.

I'm Back

Being so fed up with Wordpress that I've decided to stick with the new, "improved" (hah!) Blogger.

Actually, it doesn't seem to be stalling my computer the way it was, so maybe something's corrected itself.

In other news, Green Man Review is back, and has a new edition up. Our Coda this time is a couple of songs by Cameron Hawthorne; you can see the videos at the link. Here's one I wanted to include, but that would have been overkill. It's a nice change of pace from the two in the Coda:

And, as you can see, in addition to being a talented musician, he's a real cutie.

What's New at Green Man Review

Our usual mix of this, that, and the other, with a couple of surprises:

Penguin Cafe Orchestra and Son, Hugo Award Winners, King Arthur Revisited, the Universe, a Graduating Class, and Other Cool Stuff

So, off you go to enjoy all the goodies.

Culture Break: Penguin Cafe: 'Protection' for Erased Tapes

Penguin Cafe is the successor to Penguin Cafe Orchestra (reviews of their music are here and here. This piece was a new one for me, that I ran across quite by chance. I like it a lot:

I don't know if this has been released on an album, but you can find a review of their album A Matter of Life. . . at Green Man Review this coming Sunday.

They're worth checking out on YouTube, as well -- lots of nice stuff.