Saturday's Music The Return

Today's featured music is from the world of jazz.

This piece of music is a very influential one. Quite often in church we sing hymns that are variations on today's piece. I do not know if it is an actual variation or whether the unusual time signature of the hymn and today's featured music make them sound nearly the same. What time signature is that? 5/4.

Anyway, today's featured music is Take Five by the Dave Brubek Quartet. The featured video is from 1961 live performance. Without further typing I present to you The Dave Brubek Quartet performing Take Five:

Bean Madness - Saturday's Music for Tonight

Sometime ago holed up in a Madison Motel I was channel surfing and the cable there has an "arts" music channel that plays music videos of classical music, ballet, and the like. I bop down to it every now and then and sometimes I watch & listen for a time. One such time made me aware of tonight's Saturday's Music piece. In fact, I post that same video tonight.

After petroleum, this bean is the worlds most traded legal commodity. What bean do I refer to? I refer to the coffee bean that makes the coffee many of us drink. I have two mugs pretty much every morning not too light not too dark.

Anyway, Today's piece is a "conversation" between a father and a daughter. The daughter likes to drink coffee and the father is not so keen on that, however at the end the father relents and his daughter can still drink coffee. The last movement essentially says that drinking coffee is natural (and is the father, the daughter, and the narrator).

The wiki entry I point to and the start of the video seem to indicate to me the piece is only the last of ten movements.

So without further typing I bring you the last movement of the Coffee Cantata by JS Bach:

Saturday's Music Or Today's Earworm

Earlier today I was working on some web development and as usual I was listening to a music feed. I did not like the first feed so I logged onto XM Radio online and tuned into channel 110. Just at about that time Saturday's earworm came on. This particular piece has been leaping into my head all day ever since.

The work was written in 1819 by Franz Schubert, but not published until 1829 one year after Schubert's death (at a way too early 32 years of age).

Anyway, since I am not a British disc jockey I quite writing and present to you today's version of Saturday's Music: Franz Schubert's The Trout:

Saturday's Music - Another Alpine Connection

Tonight's featured musician performed his last show at Alpine Valley. He perished shortly after the helicopter he was on crashed almost immediately after takeoff. Tonight's featured musician is Stevie Ray Vaughn. I am in a blues kick of late and Stevie in my mind is a blues guitarist.

His music is frequently played on the classic rock stations, WOZZ, WIBA, and if you listen to WRLO for about an half-hour you are bound to hear one of his songs. I just picked up Couldn't Stand the Weather and there are a number of songs on there that you will recognize, but my favorite doesn't get a lot of play. It is track #1 Scuttle Buttn a fast and catchy jam. Of course, technical gadgetry can make guitar play do much to make an ordinary guitarist seem masterful, but it is an incredible piece of guitar playing. The problem is finding a YouTube of it being played, I finally found an acceptable one:

Again One Day Early

Since tomorrow I will be carving up Ski Brule like it was a Thanksgiving Day turkey I once again present Saturday's music one day early.

Another group I have seen personally, this time at InterContinental Hotel in Al-Ain, UAE. This time this group is more jazz than anything, but they do play some classical pieces.

Today's featured music is performed by Rhythm and Brass a group of five horn players and one percussionist. Some years ago they toured the Middle East paying homage to Duke Ellington. I remember the show and it was very good, the instruments they cold mimic with just their horns was amazing.

Anyway I found a You Tube video featuring Rhythm and Brass and it contains a sampler of their work and at least two arrangements you may recognize:


What pieces do you recognize?

Another Early Edition of Saturday's Music

This one features another birthday composer.

Funny, there are three today. Eric Kunzel, JS Bach, and today's featured composer Modest Mussorgsky. Most likely you know the piece I will feature. In any event I feel it to be rather appropriate given today's weather not being bright and springy.

Modest Mussorgsky was born today in 1839 in Russia. Interestingly enough one of his works is entitled Boris Godounov which I guess Boris Badenov (Natasha and Boris from Rocky & Bullwinkle) is play off of.

Another famous piece by Modest is entitled Pictures at an Exhibition which is one of those works with a very heroic ending.

Happy birthday Modest, you would be 169 years old today! Funny, in my mind Modest is a post-romantic composer though the time period in which he lived is definitely romantic.

Anyway the gabbing ends and Night on Bald Mountain begins:


Here is the ending to Pictures at an Exhibition:

Head Start on Saturday's Music

Since inspiration strikes I post Saturday's music tonight instead of on Saturday.

I was just reading LGF and Charles posted an e-mail published on The Corner. Essentially, it was criticizing people for their open wonderment about Silda Spitzer standing by her man. The letter said she is to be commended for that act and if anything Spitzer is to be criticized for using her as a prop.

This situation reminds me very much of the end of Mozart's Le Nozze Di Figaro aka The Marriage of Figaro. Figaro is a servant of the Count's and Figaro's wife Susanna works for the Countess. Since Figaro & Susanna at the start are engaged and not married The Count is working to exercise his right of first refusal (and he is not refusing). However, The Count jealously guards the purity of all those under him.

At the end The Countess and Susanna swap clothes and plot to trap The Count. Figaro (as is usual there are plots in plots on top of schemes and wrapped in conspiracies) sees this and figures it all out and joins in by making out with the woman dressed as The Countess (i.e. Susanna his wife). The Count comes and sees this and immediately demands satisfaction. Figaro begs forgiveness, "The Countess" begs forgiveness, the crowd (now coming to see the ruckus) begs forgiveness. However the Count's only response is no, no I will not give. Then the real Countess emerges and reveals The Count's hypocrisy. You guessed it, he humbly begs for and receives forgiveness from his wife.

That sums this Spitzer situation up very well (at least the end). He never showed mercy and was absolutely ruthless to those he was out to destroy and then like a clap of Thor's hand Eliot is on his knee begging for and (apparently) receiving his wife's forgiveness. I do not fault her for it, I fault him for needing to ask for it.

Anyway this installment of Saturday's music is in honor of Silda Spitzer and is the final scene from Mozart's Le Nozze Di Figaro (Gente, gente all'armi):

Beware The Earworm - Saturday's Music!

I recently picked up this Saturday's Music featured piece and since doing so whether I have the CD playing or not it is in my head, beware the earworm. The composer whose music is featured has been a Badger Blog Alliance guest in the past. In the runup to the first snowstorm of the year I put up an appropriate work of his and last week I commemorated his 329th birthday. Will The Beatles have the same following 279 years from now? I am skeptical.

Anyway, the music and the time in which this composer live is considered baroque and is marked by ornate detail and little open space on the musical canvas. When I listen to the work on CD I am constantly discovering new details in the music.

Anyway, I present to you The Mandolin Concerto in D (Lute RV 93) by il Prette Rosso – The Red Priest aka Antonio Vivaldi: If you are not smiling by the end of the piece, don't worry we will call 911!

Saturday's Music February 2, 2008

Comes from this week's birthday composer.

Without doubt you know many of this man's works, in fact this composer being born in 1932 is still alive. If you have ever stepped into a movie theater especially the blockbuster movies of our era you have heard his works.

He wrote the theme for a movie and that movie became the highest all time grossing box office hit until another movie came out two years later. John Williams also wrote the theme for that movie. What were the movies? Jaws and Star Wars.

The You Tube for tonight's Saturday's Music however comes from neither movie, but a big hit none the less. The music is very heroic which indeed befits Indiana Jones!

I hope you enjoy this rendition of the Theme From Indiana Jones a work by John Williams:

Saturday's Muisc - January 26, 2008

Today's edition of Saturday's Music features tomorrow's birthday boy. His incomplete baptismal name is Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus... there is one more to add, but that would give the puzzle away.

Our featured composer is likely to be a fairly frequent visitor here and lived during the classical era (as opposed to the blanket term classical music). This composer's catalog of works consists of roughly 625 works, while this is modest in term of earlier composers (however, his shortened life may account for the relatively small number of compositions) it is certainly prolific by later standards.

I have amassed a fair sized collection of his works and his third and fifth violin concertos were the first pieces of classical music I owned (on the old record album, just as CDs were getting into the marketplace). What is really neat as you start to become familiar with one set of his compositions you can start listening to another and he sounds fresh again. For example, I can pretty much pick out one of his piano concertos as his even if I have not heard that particular piece in the past (as I suspect I hear right now. Just confirmed I was correct.), but then I then hear a string quartet and I am unable to name the composer.

None of his music (at least none I have heard) I would characterize as listless and the piece I pick out is definitely not listless music!

So, lets all wish Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart a happy 256th birthday while we enjoy the fourth (the rondo) movement from his Serenade number 7 featuring Jascha Heifetz:

Saturday's Music January 19, 2008

Today's installment for Saturday's Music comes from the region and the pop genre. In fact the recording I am going to present is also dated July 17, 1989 and I was there!

This band arose out of Haight-Ashbury music scene of the mid to late '60s and toured until the mid '90s and time to time still tours under a different name.

This music lives on on many dusty cassette tapes and no doubt on dusty CDs and the group took clippings from the shows to make an official DVD.

July 17 was a hot-hot day and my '82 lynx overheated and blew its frost-plug (thank God for that) along side the road. I spent the two nights renting a spot on a local farm and ran into a college buddy (who had dropped out) working at the farm.

Many regard the July 18th show as the band's finest concert performance and that one I do have a bootleg CD of.

Anyway enough of that. The pieces I am presenting are the opening numbers of the concert and the concert set. The fisrt one is very catchy and I believe a cover tune the second one is a song only familiar to the more hardcore fans of the band.

Ladies & Gentlemen I present Let the Good Times Roll and Feel Like a Stranger the opening numbers for the Grateful Dead's July 17, 1989 concert at Alpine Valley (the first of three), enjoy!

Saturday's Music

Something a lighter than the usual politics here!

I will attempt to make this a regular posting, but we will see.

So, what is Saturday's Music? I will find YouTube postings of music I like (If you want music you like, get your blog) for you to check out. Since I like mostly classical (classical used generically here) music most will be that sort of music. However, I have some other ideas in my head too. Check the videos out with an open mind, I will post pop music, I will post up-tempo music, I will post slow-tempo music what I will not post is listless music.

Anyway the first contribution is strange even in comparison to its strange recording on the group's eponymously named 1986 album. Funny enough, I recall one morning hearing WAPL (105.7) out of Appleton play this song from the album, which I recently purchased.

I suggest you buy it, pop it into your car's CD player, play track 14, and turn up the volume. You WILL turn heads.

What group? The Kronos Quartet! What song? Jimi Hendrix's Purple Haze transposed for a string quartet and this rendition is different from the album's in the fact on the album the tempo is completely consistent with the original, but in this YouTube recording the tempo varies between original and slower than the original.

Ladies & Gentlemen I present today's Saturday Music: