Following up

How could I use the line in the post below and not add this?



I had to use Ethel Merman's version, the classic.

Stand up on your lazy feet and sing: Hallelujah!

--the BB

A hauntingly lovely song

մասիս
Mt Ararat

This is an Armenian song about a young man from Bingyol who is very much in love and missing his beloved. I found myself lost in the harmonies. Zulal at a Songs and Flight Concert in Northridge, CA.

h/t to Janine at Facebook. Shnorhagalatyun'n.

What the heck? Let's have some more of these talented young ladies.



--the BB

Tarahiki (Cicada) - updated

Update: If you have a problem with the embed, click on the YouTube link below.



I ran across this today at Crooks and Liars. Too cool! nonny mouse posted it, and I thank you. thecelticinme poasted it at YouTube, and I thank you.

Nonny tells us it is "an old Maori haka sung by New Zealand’s most famous soprano, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, with a dozen Maori back-up vocalists." The song is evidently over 300 years old and is here performed in a blend of traditional haka and symphonic orchestra. It's just way cool.

The following is from the YouTube post:
Footage taken from "Faith and Music" with a little editing.

******

E, pakia kia rite
E, ko te rite kia rite
E, takahia kia ngawari
E, torona kei waho
Hoki mai

E whakarongo ai au
Ki te tangi mai
A te manu nei,

A te tarakihi,
I te weheruatanga
o te po

Tara ra-ta kita kita
Tara ra-ta kita kita

Wiri o papa, towene, towene
Wiri o papa, towene, towene

Hope whai-a-ke
Turi whatia
Ei! Ei! Ha!


*****

Clap in unison,
in unison, in unison.
Stamp your feet smoothly
Hands outstretched
then back.

I listen
to the cry
of this flying creature

of the cicada
in the middle
of the night.

Tara ra ta ki ta ki ta
.... (cicada noises)

Quivering rear end, whirring, whirring
Quivering rear end, whirring, whirring

Knees bent
hips swaying
Ei! Ei! Ha !

Enjoy!
--the BB

Music Friday with Herman Put Down The Gun

This is a cool video made (with talent and no money) by an Atlanta group. Enjoy!

Now, pop over to Mimi's to read the story behind this and comments from some of the musicians. How cool is this?

Keep on making music, gang!!!!

--the BB

A Sunday evening benediction - updated

This is what my world looked like a little after noon today. We have had sprinkles and thunder.

I would like to tell y'all about the first time I heard Tomaso Albinoni's Adagio in sol minore per archi e organo.

It was on my semester abroad in France in autumn 1967. I was living with a family in Montpellier, home of one of Europe's oldest universities, where Rabelais had studied. One day we went to the movies and instead of a cartoon preceding the feature they showed a clip of Albinoni's Adagio with time-lapse black-and-white photography of clouds over the Pyrenees. Just those majestic vistas and that painfully delicious music. It reached right down into my guts.

To this day it is difficult for me to hear it and not get weepy. (Yes, I am related to the sister of whom our niece said "Oh, Aunt Iva, you weep at Wal-mart openings.")

You may listen to the original tune here, accompanied by some very powerful non-verbal graphic animation (think "origami puppets"). Embedding is disabled, so just click the link.

And, now with some Italian lyrics added to it, the Adagio performed by Il Divo at the coliseum in Pula. The words did not matter. The music still makes me weep.

UPDATE:
Göran pointed out that Albinoni is not really the composer of this work. Here is what Wikipedia notes

The Albinoni Adagio in G minor is a 1958 composition entirely composed by Remo Giazotto, which Giazotto claimed to have based on fragments from a slow movement of an Albinoni trio sonata he had been sent by the Dresden State Library.

[Footnote: ^ >Letter from the Saxon State Library (consultant Marina Lang), 24 September 1990, reproduced in facsimile by Wulf Dieter Lugert and Volker Schütz, „Adagio à la Albinoni“, Praxis des Musikunterrichts 53 (February 1998), pp. 13–22, here 15.]

Enjoy.

--the BB

Some gratuitous Mozart for a Sunday evening

Mozart Violin Concerto No. 5 in A major (Turkish) K219,

Artists: Janine Jansen violin, European Union Youth Orchestra, Vladimir Ashkenazy conductor

BBC Proms 39 18.30 - 20.45: Royal Albert Hall
Saturday 12 August 2006

[This excerpt is part 2 of 5]
--the BB

G'wan, just enjoy the music

John Aravosis at Americablog observes that Matt Alber sounds very much like Rufus Wainwright. I quite agree. And this is a nice piece of music (with a touch of romance to make a gay man's heart flutter).




You can see and hear more of him here.

(That playful smile. I think I have a new crush.)

Enjoy!
--the BB

Isabel Bayrakdarian

David@Montreal brought Isabel Bayrakdarian to my attention in a comment and I am sharing a video here so you may all get a taste of her singing.



When looking at the Wikipedia article about her, I noticed she has sung on the soundtracks of Ararat and LOTR: The Two Towers, so I had already heard her in two movies.

Enjoy.

Thanks, David!

Updated to correct a typo.
--the BB

The Lord of the dance

Nataraja: Copyrighted to Himalayan Academy Publications, Kapaa, Kauai, Hawaii. Licensed for Wikipedia under Creative Commons (with attribution)

I know I was quite taken by “The Lord of the dance” when it was popular in the 70s. We sang it in seminary, youth groups seemed to enjoy it, and it captured the folk-song ethos of the time. It was a happy marriage of “Simple gifts” with a vibrant image of the Christ that contrasted strongly with what we perceived to be a very stodgy, frowning, and unappealing Jesus of our parents.

That, combined with the image of the Nataraja (Ruler of the Dance), Shiva in his dance of creation and destruction, must have had a powerful influence on my mind. To this we probably need to add Aslan singing Narnia into existence (about which I once wrote a sonnet--final line: "and a world breaks forth like a note upon his lyre"). All of which is to say that cosmic imagery and poetic expressions of the doctrine of creation are really big for me.

In the mythic imagery and cosmogony of my fictional world, the pagan version of creation is that of a dance manifesting the joyous heart music of the All Transcending. In the creation hymn are found these words:

From the heart music of the One
came the dance of delight
and the Dancer was Senjir
whose footsteps patterned the worlds

If we go back a number of years to a Eucharistic prayer I composed (and we used at St Cuddy’s), the theme of the divine dance shows up again.

We and you are joined in Jesus,
offering ourselves and all creation to you,
Maker of all things, for healing and blessing
through your transforming Spirit.
In his death you embrace death and every evil
that life and goodness may prevail.
In his rising you triumph,
drawing all creation once more
into the dance of endless joy and life that cannot end.

My thinking and theologizing are done in poetry and in visual images. The Heart of God is, for me, the only true reality. We only exist because of it and within it. There is no other place. We are part of a dance and God is our music. Let us not be grudging dancers. Whether clumsy or lightfooted, we are all called to be caught up in the joy. You don’t need to know the steps ahead of time, just get up and move. The Music will take care of you and you will share in boundless delight.

[Please respect the copyright of the block quote passages above.]
--the BB