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Category: Music

My Favorite Holiday Albums

Having Christmas carols in the background is part of our holiday ambience

Because why the heck not? I have almost 15 hours of music on my playlist that’s rated over 3/5 stars. I realize the idea of buying a “CD” or other album format is almost as quaint as Currier & Ives prints, but … well, get off my lawn.

Anyway, we have a lot of favorites, but here are some that sort to the top of the 4-5 star list.

Annie Lennox, A Christmas Cornucopia (2010)

Lennox belts things out with such raw passion, that hearing the former Eurythmics star with songs like “Angels from the Realms of Glory,” “God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen,” and the Coventry Carol is almost a painful experience.

Bruce Cockburn, Christmas (1993)

These are mostly traditional tunes, sung in a country-pop style by Cockburn. “Mary Had a Baby,” “Down in Yon Forest,” and an original, “Shepherds” are some of my faves.

Loreena McKennitt, To Drive the Cold Winter Away (1994)

McKennitt’s dulcet tones do great with older, traditional English carols (with an occasional original). High marks to the Winter Garden (1995) as well, though it has only five songs on it.

Jo-el Sonnier, et al., Cajun Christmas (2002)

Some fine Cajun / Zydeco Christmas carol instrumentals. Great renditions of “The First Noel” and “Deck the Halls”. Fresh and zingy and fun — just as a carol should be.

Vince Guaraldi Trio, A Charlie Brown Christmas (2012)

A full album of jazzy, piano-forward carols from the guy who did the Charlie Brown Christmas Special of holy name. Very mellow, enjoyable set of background music for any holiday party.

Misc., A Classic Christmas 

A great collection of 1950s-60s Christmas tunes from Perry Como, Ella Fitzgerald, Dean Martin, Eartha Kitt, Bing Crosby, et al. We love the mid-century classic carol albums, and this one is a great combo of those.

This one I can’t find on Amazon any more … but, then, I picked it up in a store on a visual impulse buy. And there are plenty of compilations of favorite crooners and classic singers doing Christmas that you can find what you are looking for. That’s how we ended up with a lot of our holiday selections.

Bach again, after all these years

Google helps you create a Bach ditty.

Today’s Google Doodle (in some areas of the world) is celebrating the birthday of Johann Sebastian Bach, the greatest European Baroque composer.

You even can even create your own little Bach-esque tune by entering in four notes and then watching the AI generate the accompaniment based on Bach’s extensive corpus of music.

Here was mine.

It’s the first AI-powered doodle that Google has put out. Fun stuff.

Accordions are In!

They’re perfect to “turn your group on!” And today’s modern accordions are electric, so you can “let loose piercing lead and swinging chords in audio colors that will flip your audience!” And if you don’t believe them, you can send in the coupon for a recording of “the fab Combo’Cordion Rock/Sound”!

All the cool kids are doing it! Don’t you want to be a cool kid, too?

(Note: if shirts and hair like that are cool, I have photographic evidence of my own coolness from that same era. None of them, sadly, with an accordion.)

[h/t Mitch Wagner, from here]


A nicely done music vid to various Marvel movies

I’ve seen a lot of “movie cuts set to music” videos, but this one not only has some great MCU imagery, but it’s both nicely clustered and the timing on it is exquisitely matched to the music. Bravo to the creators (as well as to the MCU and Barns Courtney).

[h/t James]

When H.P. Lovecraft Joined the Beatles

[h/t Daniel Swenson]

The Halftime Show

Best video of last night’s #SuperBowl halftime show. https://t.co/iP2O5bwksq

An Evening with Itzhak

I grew up in a household of classical string music. My parents met in the Stanford University Orchestra, and retained their love of classical music all their lives. Mom and Dad practiced their violin and cello every night, and played chamber music with friends at least monthly. Classical music was on in the car, and about the house during the weekend.

So when I learned last fall that Itzhak Perlman — one of the greatest living concert violinists — was going to be soloing with the Colorado Symphony this week, tickets seemed like the perfect birthday gift for my mom.

Based on her reaction, it was. And while my devotion to classical music is maybe a scosh less than Mom's, I had a great time.

The first half of the concert was the CSO alone, but in the second half, Perlman zipped out on his scooter — he's only in his early 70s, but was crippled by polio — and leveraged himself up onto a chair on a dais by the conductor. From there, through the performance of Beethoven's Violin Concerto, Perlman performed with studied ease and verve, treating the music as old friend, ably backed by the Symphony.

We had overall good seats, Mezz 4 to the far audience right of the orchestra, but from one perspective the second worst in the house, as the conductor blocked our view of Perlman for much fo the performance. (At that, we were better off than folk in the very expensive front row whose view of Perlman was blocked by his scooter.) But even when we couldn't see him, we could hear him. Heavenly stuff.

A lovely evening, and I think Mom enjoyed it a lot.




3 new photos by Dave Hill

Original Post

Three Media Questions

@GailSimone 1. No idea. They all blur together. I know a lot of the early ones were yellow-spine DAW pbs.

2. New Teen Titans #2

3. Simon & Garfunkel’s Greatest Hits (on cassette).

That THX Music

Y'know, the set of chords they play when they demonstrate that the theater is equipped with THX (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zgaqv3eCcgs)? Yup, it has music. And a composer (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_A._Moorer).

Cool.

[via +James Hill]

 

Original Post

The Flute Recital

A few years back, the kid started going to a private flute instructor, to bolster his flute-playing beyond the work he was doing at school. The one that he was referred to by another student was Tamara Maddaford, who, if you are looking for flute instruction for your kid in the south Denver metro area or even further south (she’s located in Castle Rock), I highly recommend. She’s done a great job with expanding +James Hill‘s repertoire and skills.

Twice a year they have a flute recital — one for the holidays and one in the spring/summer (end of the school year). Here’s James’ performance for that, last evening, a solo piece called “Kokopeli” by Katherine Hoover.

Original Post

Another pleasant evening at the theater

… up at the Arvada Center for their production of Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George. Now I want to learn more about George Seurat, but I suppose that’s the point (heh).

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As the world shifts to streaming “licensed” material

Once upon a time, you bought records. The tapes (of various sorts). Then CDs.

You bought the music and, beyond certain laws against using it for a public performance, it was yours: tangible, possessable, loanable.

(Of course, if you lost the CD, or the LP got a bad scratch on it, you were SOL. So there was that down side.)

The rise of online music services created — for a time — a hybrid model. You could buy stuff, but that stuff could be kept online. No need to download it. Heck, if you already had music files, you could upload them to those services.

Gradually, those services started pushing streaming content — you don’t “own” the music, you pay for a period of access to a library of music. Once you stop paying, you can’t listen.

There was still a hybrid model, though — the streaming services (we’ll tag the main ones as iTunes, Google Music, and Amazon music) let you upload the MP3 files you owned, and you could listen to them (or the matched tracks from the streaming service), and you could (for a monthly fee) access the streaming service as well.

Now that model is beginning to fade, as Amazon announces that it will stop letting you upload music to its Amazon Music servers; you’ll still have access (when that goes into effect) to music you bought at Amazon, or, of course, to the Amazon streaming service.

It is probably incredibly Luddite to me that I still prefer knowing that I have my own, personal copy of my music files, not contingent on Amazon (or whomever) staying in business, or not changing the terms of the streaming agreement. But by a wild coincidence I was looking today at options for music access on family mobile phones (given our own internal, weird music setup of physical files, iPods, etc.), and had decided to go with Google vs Amazon as the streaming / connecting / music site of choice.

If I had any doubts about it, Amazon just settled them.




Amazon Music removes ability to upload MP3s, will shutter storage service
Take some time to re-download all those tracks you previously uploaded.

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Christmas Carols and Grammar Lessons

A neat video on some of the tricky grammar and language used in “Away in the Manger, “Silent Night,” “God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen,” and “Deck the Halls.” It’s always better when you know what you’re singing!

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“Santa Baby” (1953)

One of our high-rotation numbers at Christmas time, as sung by the incomparable Eartha Kitt.

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The First Song on Mars

Happy Birthday, Curiosity!

Watch the video to learn about the first musical tune played on Mars. That we know of, at least.

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“Atlas!”

This Squarespace commercial has been out for a while, but I only spotted it while binge-watching some shows while sick. It’s both funny in that “awkward album covers” way, but also a useful look at how branding can help distinguish (or not distinguish) a person or company.

 

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Bohemian Rhapsody Noir

Nice. Very nice.

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Dance of the Sugar Glass Fairies

You know that trick your dad or grampa would do in the restaurant, making his wine glass "sing" by rubbing the edge, until either the waitress or your mom would chide him to stop doing it?

Now turn that into an instrument …

[h/t +Gloria Hill]

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Not Your Father's Oompah Music

A lovely ensemble of tubas and euphoniums (tenor tubas) playing the hymn "Down in the River to Pray." Beautiful.

This one's for +Kay Hill.

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Tickling the Familial Ivories

It seems the +Kay Hill​ is doing keyboard work with her school Winter Percussion group, so while we're out in California for the holidays, she getting some piano lessoning from +Gloria Hill​.

 

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