An evening pause: For me personally, this song is perfect, on my birthday. Or as Gordon Dickson wrote in his magnificent science fiction book, Way of the Pilgrim, “He felt the urge to speak like a great hand at his back, pushing him forward, a hand that could not be resisted.”
An evening pause: Performed by the Eufonico String Orchestra, Rafał Nicze, conductor, as part of the 3rd Polish Nationwide Music Schools’ Symphonic Orchestras Competition, May 19, 2015.
The music here is soooo British, as it should be, written by Holst in honor of the St Paul’s Girls’ School where Holst was Director of Music for almost thirty years.
An evening pause: I especially like the silent interplay between the two. Very much all in fun, but with a nice spark.
Hat tip Edward Thelen.
An evening pause: The intro is long, but stick with it, it will all be worthwhile.
Hat tip Edward Thelen.
An evening pause: They are having so much fun doing this. Hat tip Jeff Poplin.
Just an ordinary story about the way things go,
Round and round nobody knows.
But the highway
Goes on forever.
That ol’ highway
Goes on forever.
An evening pause: Hat tip Jim Mallamace, who wrote, “This video is maddening to a male. I’m afraid to show it to my wife.”
.
A evening pause: Hat tip Edward Thelen. The camera work could be better, but the song is really good, and as Edward notes, “I have to say that any group with a name like this is cannot be all bad.”
An evening pause: I previously posted a biography of Robert Mitchum by this same filmographer. This one, about James Garner, is equally worth a viewing. And like the Mitchum biography, it shows how humble and ordinary a man Garner was.
Hat tip Willi Kusche.
An evening pause: The music is Monody by Christian Büttner, known generally as TheFatRat. The singer is Laura Brehm.
Hat tip Wayne DeVette.
An evening pause: The music is by Enrico Morricone from the film The Mission (1986). There it is entitled Gabriel’s Oboe, a musical piece I have posted previously here as an evening pause. Here it is sung to lyrics written by Chiara Ferraù, celebrating the joys that freedom brings. “I dream of souls that are always free,/Like the clouds that fly.”
Hat tip Jim Mallamace, who notes that this song is written by an Italian and sung by a Korean about the American aspiration of freedom. Seems to me that this illustrates two aspects of that American aspiration, one of which is freedom, the second of which is that freedom is something all people from all cultures aspire to.
An evening pause: Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Jeff Lynne, and Tom Petty. Roy Orbison was also part of this late 1980s band (they show a framed photo of him in this video), but he passed way before the band’s second album in 1990 was recorded.
An evening pause: To help start out a new year, a scene from the 1940 John Ford classic, The Grapes of Wrath, based on John Steinbeck’s novel. While the movie tended to make government a saintly hero, which bothered me from the first time I saw it, it also captured the heart and generosity of the American spirit, as certainly existed in the previous century. Even if you are poor and desperate, if you insist on paying your fair share and don’t ask for a hand out, Americans immediately rally around you, in a quiet unassuming way, without wishing credit or accolades.
Hat tip Wayne DeVette.
Note that I am in need of suggestions for evening pauses. If you have made suggestions before, you know where to send them. If you haven’t and want to, leave a comment here and I will email you. Don’t include the link to the pause, however, as I want to schedule it, and that will blow the punchline.
An evening pause: Performed live in 1975. A nice song for the new year. We should all have someone to make us feel brand new.
Hat tip Diane Zimmerman.
An evening pause: Hat tip Jim Mallamace, who asks, “Ok guys, what would be your description on the order form?”
An evening pause: A nice way to close this year’s Christmas season. Hat tip Wayne DeVette, who notes this performance’s “unique arrangement.” Quite refreshing.
An evening pause: Most people in the secular world today know this version of the hymn, but this performance of the original is so magnificent I think all should see it, whether you are Christian or not. And for those who are Christian, what better day but today to hear it.
To me, it was this performance from 1987 by Jean Redpath that is most meaningful, but in good will I — a secular humanist born a Jew — post the gospel version now.
An daytime pause: For me, this version, starring Alastair Sim, remains the best of all the many adaptions of Charles Dickens classic short novel. Always worth seeing during the holiday season. As I wrote last year when I posted it, “I watched this again and felt like weeping, not because of the sentimentality of the story itself but because it is so seeped in a civilized world that increasingly no longer exists. There was a time when this was our culture. I fear it is no longer so. As noted by the Spirit of Christmas Present, ‘This boy is ignorance, this girl is want. Beware them both, but most of all beware this boy.’”
May all my readers have a wonderful Christmas, and a Happy New Year.
