Charles Ives – Symphony No. 2
An evening pause: This is long for an evening pause, but you can let it play in the background if you have other things to do. Recorded live January 2022 in Amsterdam.
Hat tip Dan Morris.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
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Metallica + the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra
Chase Center, S.F., (Sept. 6&8, 2019)
https://youtu.be/ld9XAHE5pTI
->2:28:48
“I don’t often listen to Metallica, but when I do, so do my neighbors.”
Sad news-Vangelis has died.
Jon & Vangelis
“The Friends of Mr. Cairo” (1981)
https://youtu.be/dABcmAbm-fk
12:12
When I lived in the Hudson Valley, I used to attend artsy-fartsy Bard College’s “Rediscovering (Insert Name of Composer)” series – two weekends of concerts from 10 am to 10 pm sandwiched by a week of lectures and symposia. Ives came from right down the road in Danbury CT, and music was in his blood – his father was a regimental band master in the Civil War (bandsmen performed their traditional task in combat of evacuating wounded from the battlefield) and led the town band in concerts on the village green after the War. He was notable for including folk music and “American” themes in his works as well as being a pioneer in “experimental music”
“Sources of Ives’s tonal imagery included hymn tunes and traditional songs; he also incorporated melodies of the town band at holiday parade, the fiddlers at Saturday night dances, patriotic songs, sentimental parlor ballads, and the melodies of Stephen Foster.”
A good place to start is perhaps his most famous work, “Three Places in New England” – its three movements are
1) The “St. Gaudens” in Boston Common (Col. Shaw and his Colored Regiment)
2) Putnam’s Camp, Redding, Connecticut
3) The Housatonic at Stockbridge
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=three+places+in+new+england&&view=detail&mid=C8A0A84CDB5F462B92C9C8A0A84CDB5F462B92C9&&FORM=VRDGAR&ru=%2Fvideos%2Fsearch%3Fq%3Dthree%2Bplaces%2Bin%2Bnew%2Bengland%26FORM%3DHDRSC3
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Places_in_New_England#Borrowing