Saturday 05 July, 2008
|
|
Saturday 05 July, 2008
|
|
|
|
 |
 |
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
 |
War Is Hell 2006-01-22
The difficulty of listing these CD's is that I've given so many away I only have the covers and not the inside information. In fact one of the interesting things about the covers of these CD's is that the art work was so big that they were actually the back of the CD! Weird but true. So where the information was normally on the inside cover, the information now was...well anyway it was worth trying to explain. Information in terms of who all the composers are and how long they last is not available at present for the front cover is the back and the back is normally the front, and I am thorought confused now.
So! As in this particular one, I can list the titles and the movies they represent but not all the other stuff as a rule. For that I give you my humble apology. Nevertheless, I do still have comments about certains pieces on the album.
When compiling the music for this CD about War or military things, one of the pieces I would really have loved to use was the them from Stripes composed by Elmer Bernstien. You can see we have The Great Escape and that was also composed by Elmer so I called him to see whether or not he had the music available. He was his usual, amiable self as I explained that we were going to record The Great Escape and also the Magnificent Seven on the Wild Wild Westerns CD and I would love to have the score to Stripes. One, because it was more current and two, because as the Artist/Conductor I loved the piece. He laughed, was thrilled with the idea and then explained to me with an apology that the title was just 60 seconds long and probably would not be that suitable because of length. He was, of course, right but after I thanked him and hung up from the phone conversation, it was several weeks later and too late when I came up with an idea that I should have persued it further to see if he had enough cues that I could have written a longer piece to represent the movie. There's a little regret there for not thinking faster, in the moment.
All in all I like this album but the great piece for me was the performance of the strings on Samuel Barber's Adagio For Strings.
As I explained on another album, we, me the production company did not have a huge budget. The Orchestra of the Americas was, in actuality, the pops division of the Mexico City Philharmonic. I had a most incredible time with these musicians. The orchestra broke down into three languages: Hispanic, Russian and American. However, the word of tongue had to be Spanish. Thank goodness for Italian the international language of music. No! I don't speak it, but you can be sure that at the top of every musical piece was the Italian word for what I wanted.
Anyway, back to the big budget issue. We really had about 40 minutes to rehearse each item recorded and about 20 minutes to record each item.
Adagio For Strings! Ha! It might as have well been Mount Everest!
However, as the story truly goes, we had a good day of recording and the orchestra was ahead of schedule so I found myself with a good 11/2 hours for rehearsal. At about this time the sound engineer lets me know that he read some place that Leonard Bernstein rehearsed this piece for three days before he recorded it! That's good news to be sure!
I took my 11/2 hours. The strings were comprised mostly by the Hispanic's and the Russian's. We began to record and they began to play...I mean really play.
There are certain times in a musician's life, a composer's life, a conductor's life (and this is my own opinion) that the MUSE takes over, overcomes, over powers the moment and this was one of those times.
After the 2nd take I looked at these wonderful people playing so determinedly. I mean I looked at each one, made eye contact, put my hand over my heart, raised my first finger for one more time, patted my chest (over my heart) a few times, took a deep breath, paused and gave a down beat.
Something happened during that 3rd take. At the end there was dead silence. I looked around to these wonderful string players. I saw tears in their eyes and there were definitely some in mine. The "phone" (intercom) rang. I picked it up and heard the producer say "What the ...... happened!" I just simply said "music".
I know that this is not the greatest recording of Adagio for Strings but it is a good one. And many are those, who have heard the album, that have been in touch with me to tell me about it. It was one of those wonderful moments as a conductor, as a musician that every soul had a singular purpose and goal and it all came together in about 2 1/2 hours one day, in a place of many languages and they all spoke the same one! Ahh! Music!
Here's the play list:
In the past year or so we have lost composer's such as Jerry Goldsmith (in a compositional class all to himself) and Elmer Bernstein, who for many years became and lived the standard of musicianship that most of us should strive for. It's a worthy effort to study those who have gone before, for that's how they learned as well.
Without trying to stand on the proverbial "soap box" one of the greatest needs I see in the industry today, and hear in the industry today, is to know where it came from and study those who have gone before. It's not a problem to have your own style of "whatever", but it is my humble opion, that good study in the traditions that have gone before can only enhance, and to a great degree, what you want to accomplish. Back to History Flashbacks 1990's
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
4 users online
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
 |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
 |
 |
 |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
:: top of page ::
All material copyright Music by Broughton |
|
|
