Joy in the Congo

Music for the Ride

Penguin Cafe Orchestra

Lately I've been enjoying the music of Penguin Cafe Orchestra. Very cool classical melodies and perfect background music. Here's an interesting quote on Wikipedia from Simon Jeffes about the forming of the group:

"In 1972 I was in the south of France. I had eaten some bad fish and was in consequence rather ill. As I lay in bed I had a strange recurring vision, there, before me, was a concrete building like a hotel or council block. I could see into the rooms, each of which was continually scanned by an electronic eye. In the rooms were people, everyone of them preoccupied. In one room a person was looking into a mirror and in another a couple were making love but love-lessly, in a third a composer was listening to music through earphones. Around him there were banks of electronic equipment. But all was silence. Like everyone in his place he had been neutralized, made grey and anonymous. The scene was for me one of ordered desolation. It was as if I were looking into a place which had no heart. Next day when I felt better, I was on the beach sunbathing and suddenly a poem popped into my head. It started out 'I am the proprietor of the Penguin Cafe, I will tell you things at random' and it went on about how the quality of randomness, spontaneity, surprise, unexpectedness and irrationality in our lives is a very precious thing. And if you suppress that to have a nice orderly life, you kill off what's most important. Whereas in the Penguin Cafe your unconscious can just be. It's acceptable there, and that's how everybody is. There is an acceptance there that has to do with living the present with no fear in ourselves."

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Igudesman And Joo: 'I Will Survive'

Here's a great example of having fun with music. In addition to watching the video, listen to the original story that aired on NPR a couple weeks back.



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Violinist in the Subway

Here is a fascinating story about an accomplished violinist playing music for people in the subway. Isn't it amazing how we can easily just walk right past beauty when we're just too "busy" to stop and listen?

Keep writing (and listening),
Ben

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"Please Silence Your Phones!"

If you didn't hear about this in the past couple weeks, there was a symphony conductor who halted a performance when he heard a cell phone ring in the front row of the audience (read about it here). If you read music, I think you'll appreciate the link below.

Source: http://euge.ca/2012/01/13/interruption/

(For those of you who couldn't figure it out, the red notes are the classic Nokia ringtone.)



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Engineer Geoff Emerick on Lyrics

In Emerick's recent book Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles he makes this observation:

"For some reason, I never used to listen to lyrics all that closely. Perhaps it was because of my taste for opera and classical music that the vocal always seemed like just another instrument to me. I was attracted to it solely for the way it fit in with the backing, not for the words that were being sung. Lyrics simply never sold me on a particular song--it was the overall sound that did."

I think it's sometimes easy to get too worked up about what the lyric says that how the message is said gets lost.

Keep writing,

Ben

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"Les Baricades Mistérieuses" by Couperin

Though I can't really give the film a rave review (first I have to figure out its meaning), I fell in love with this piano piece, and appreciated the role music played in the story:



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Bach - "Sleepers Awake"

At a recent wedding, the bridesmaids entered to this beautiful Bach song. Pay attention to the counter melodies throughout the song. One of my favorites!



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Chopin, Nocturne in E-flat Major, opus 9 no.2

In my opinion, this piece by Chopin captures life's bittersweet reality better than any other song. Watching this visual video is a helpful reminder that there are highs and lows constantly playing together in the symphony of time. At any given moment, on any given day, we can point to something good but also point to something difficult.

I believe theologian John Piper said something to the effect that there is no unadulterated joy in this life, yet there is no sorrow so deep that light cannot break through it. I think Chopin decided to say it without using words: