Joaquin Rodrigo – Concierto de Aranjuez, 2nd movement
An evening pause: One of my favorite pieces of music, performed by Xuefei Yang and Barcelona Symphony.
Hat tip Danae.
Category: The Evening Pause
A nightly pause from the news to give the reader/viewer a bit of classic entertainment.
To Scale: The Solar System
An evening pause: What this attempt achieves more than anything else is to demonstrate that the scale of the universe is almost impossible to simulate or to conceive. There is a lot of emptiness out there.
Hat tip Rocco.
Construction by helicopter
An evening pause: As noted on the youtube webpage, “The last two components of the Incity Tower spire were put in place by helicopter on Sunday 21 June [2015]. This metallic spire, which measures 50 metres and weighs 25.9 tonnes, took the building to its final height of 200 metres. This confirms its position as the highest tower in Lyon and the third highest in France. Three aerial beacons and a lightning rod will now be placed at the top.”
Hat tip Phill Oltmann.
Sounds of a Glass Armonica
Nat King Cole – Red Sails In The Sunset
The modern glassmaker
An evening pause: Though the last two minutes are a commercial and can be ignored, the rest of this video shows the modern way glass is produced for our technological society. Most fascinating, especially because the way it is done surprised me.
Hat tip Rocco.
The Lion Roars
An evening pause: A very short pause, but one that I think is appropriate today with the success of the grassroots tea party movement in forcing John Boehner out as House Speaker.
Hat tip Diane Zimmerman.
Harvesting tulip bulbs with modern engineering
An evening pause: The harvester is the equivalent of a mobile factory assembly-line that operates in the field. It also reminds me of the animated cartoon Transformers.
Hat tip Phill Oltmann.
Robert Tiso – Moonlight Sonata on glass harp
Around the World in 80 Days
An evening pause: Hat tip to Phil Berardelli, author of the new edition of Phil’s Favorite 500: Loves of a Moviegoing Lifetime, who notes, “Producer Mike Todd lured dozens of stars to appear in cameos in his still-glorious take on the classic Jules Verne novel, and nowhere were they more delightful than in the San Francisco saloon scene.”
How many well known actors and performers can you spot doing cameos in this short clip?
Philomena Cunk’s Moments of Wonder: Time
An evening pause: This hilarious parody of BBC science documentaries, which are not much different than many American PBS science documentaries, captures perfectly the typical empty-headed interviewers that I myself have sometimes had to deal with during too many of my television and radio appearances. They are not only often ignorant of some basic science, they are also ignorant of their own ignorance. They think they know a lot, and thus are easily confused and defensive when suddenly confronted with that ignorance.
I especially like her description of “the famous Greenwich Marillion line.”
Hat tip to Danae.
Auckland Symphony Orchestra – Angry Birds
An evening pause: I must admit I am entirely ignorant of what the Angry Birds game is. The music here and the playing however is stellar.
Hat tip to Danae.
Railroad thermite welding
An evening pause: These railroad construction workers don’t waste a move or a word as they weld two track lengths together. It is like watching a roughhewn ballet.
The engineering itself is clever, more than a hundred years old, and fascinating. This video explains it.
Hat tip Phill Oltmann.
Lou Reed and David Bowie – Waiting for the Man
Gale Garnett – We’ll Sing in the Sunshine
The Bridge at Q’eswachaka
An evening pause: On this anniversary of one of human history’s darkest acts, instigated by madmen who enjoy destroying things, let’s watch some normal humans from a normal society build things.
Hat tip Phill Oltmann.
Brandon Ridenour & Rachel Kudo – Fantasy Variations” on a theme by Paganini
Earl Scruggs & Men with Banjos – Foggy Mountain Breakdown
Al Stewart – Year of the Cat
How a scuba tank is made
An evening pause: The complex engineering that goes into the things we use and take for granted is sometimes astonishing and breath-taking. It is important to remind ourselves of this sometimes.
Hat tip Phill Oltmann.
Glen Campbell & Flip Wilson ~ Rocky Racoon
An evening pause: Comedy meets the Beatles in this 1969 performance from the Glen Campbell television show.
Hat tip Tom Biggar.
The Tokens – The Lion Sleeps Tonight
An evening pause: As always, it is enormously pleasurable to watch performers who clearly are having a good time.
Hat tip Edward Thelen.
Jay Ungar & Molly Mason – Ashokan Farewell
Largest glacier calving event ever filmed
An evening pause. Hat tip Phill Oltmann. I had sworn I had posted this already, but now can’t find it on BtB. And even if I have posted it, it is worth watching again. My only comment is that I am baffled by the film’s description of the event as “horrifying.” I don’t find this natural event horrifying, I find it awe-inspiring. It reminds us that the scale of the universe if far far beyond anything we can imagine.
The elephants of Bushcamp Company’s Mfuwe Lodge
An evening pause: As the youtube website explains, “This is perhaps the only hotel in the world where you may need to make way for passing elephants when checking in. During the month of November, a small herd of pachyderms nonchalantly tromps through reception on their way to a wild mango tree.”
Hat tip Danae.
Alexander Rybak – Into A Fantasy
An evening pause: Rybak returns, this time performing live in 2014 his song for the animated film How to Train your Dragon 2 (2014). I normally don’t post videos made by audience members, but this time I make an exception because the performance is good and the videographer had the sense to soon ignore the dancers and stay focused on Rybak, who grabs the audience and holds them.
Hat tip Danae.
Alexander Rybak & Stefan Ibsen Zlatanos – Clair de Lune
An evening pause: Hat tip Danae. Tomorrow the evening pause will be an entirely different piece of music written by tonight’s violinist. As Danae noted in describing Rybak to me, “Composer, singer, dancer, musician on violin and piano, actor and impersonator of famous vocalists on Eurovision TV’s equivalent of American Idol, this 29 year-old, though occasionally temperamental, is a rising star in Europe. He was born in the Soviet Union, but has lived in Norway since he was four years old, and speaks Russian, Norwegian and English fluently.”
The Statler Brothers – Flowers On The Wall
An evening pause: I posted a 1960s television performance in 2012, but this recent live version is also worth watching, if only to see how time has changed the performers.
Hat tip Diane Zimmerman.
Rod Hull And Emu – How To Groom An Emu
Tooth of Time
An evening pause: Tonight we take a short aerial tour of a mountaintop that every Boy Scout who has backpacked at the Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico will immediately recognize.
Hat tip to Steve Golson, whose son is currently doing this very hike.