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You know what is hard? Playing a song from memory. What’s harder? Singing along with your playing. This is the first song that I can do both on. Full disclosure, the Vocal part still needs work as my fingers want to sing along with the melody instead of accompanying me during some parts. Nevertheless, a start has been made. :)
Of course, we must remember here in North America it is also May Day a celebration of organized labour. Let’s get down with Pete Seeger and remember what people working and standing together can do.
Prelude in G minor, Op. 23, No. 5, is a music piece by Sergei Rachmaninoff, completed in 1901. It was included in his Opus 23 set of ten preludes, despite having been written two years earlier than the other nine. Rachmaninoff himself premiered the piece in Moscow on February 10, 1903, along with Preludes No. 1 and 2 from Op. 23.
The Prelude’s taut structure is in ternary form, consisting of an opening “A” section with punctuated sixteenth-note chords (marked Alla marcia), a more lyrical and melancholy “B” section with sweeping arpeggios in the left hand (marked Poco meno mosso), a transition into the original tempo, and a recapitulation of the initial march.
I have not listened to Tori Amos in awhile. I shouldn’t have stopped, she’s still great.
Amos wrote “Spark” after suffering a miscarriage. She discussed the song in an article from Q magazine in May 1998.
“Y’know, once you’ve felt life in your body, you can’t go back to having been a woman that’s never carried life. The other thing is feeling something dying inside you and you’re still alive. Obviously when it was happening, it was already over, but in my mind, you don’t know that it’s over yet. You’re doing anything, thinking, ‘Oh God, maybe if I put a cork up myself, maybe it’ll keep this little life in.’ That’s why in ‘Spark’, I say, ‘She’s convinced she could hold back a glacier/But she couldn’t keep baby alive.’ You just start going insane. There’s nothing you can do, so so you surrender and then… start again.
You don’t really know what’s going to happen to her, but that’s not the point. She’s trusting her instincts in a way she never has before, she’s finding something in herself she never knew even existed. The man who’s trying to find me, probably is the driver. You don’t really know too much about him, but you know she’s got to get away from him. The water shot – it was about an hour and a half. It was 5:30 at night, and the sun was going down. [switches to up-close shot where she wriggles from the blindfold] Here, right here, I’m in a different water tank, and they had me swimming around for a while trying to get close-up shots. [About the overhead shot where we see Amos running along the banks of the river directly after the water sequence] Well, that was my double, right there. She was walking in a forest while I was shooting all this, because it took hours to get those two seconds. I had changes of clothes – I had wet clothes and dry clothes, and in the middle of the forest the girls would stand around me in their parkas and I’m putting the wet clothes on and putting on the muddy clothes to get the right outfit at the right time. “Here [the car at the end], these two are brother and sister, and they’re in the album artwork, where they look like angels in the artwork, although here they’re very much like the Village of the Damned. You don’t know what’s going to happen to this girl, but she has a will to live.
Lyric Pieces (Norwegian: Lyriske stykker) is a collection of 66 short pieces for solo piano written by Edvard Grieg. They were published in 10 volumes, from 1867 (Op. 12) to 1901 (Op. 71). The collection includes several of his best known pieces, such as Wedding Day at Troldhaugen (Bryllupsdag på Troldhaugen), To Spring (Til våren), March of the Trolls (Trolltog), and Butterfly (Sommerfugl).
Damn, but I really liked these guys back in the day. Until I saw this CBC clip, I never knew how they got their name.
And of course, one of my favourite songs. Hold Back the Rain.
One of my many guilty pleasures. :)
The Suite bergamasque is one of the most famous piano suites by Claude Debussy. Debussy commenced the suite in 1890 at age 28, but he did not finish or publish it until 1905.[1]
The Suite bergamasque was first composed by Debussy around 1890, but was significantly revised just before its publication in 1905. It seems that by the time a publisher came to Debussy in order to cash in on his fame and have these pieces published, Debussy loathed the earlier piano style in which these pieces were written.[1] While it is not known how much of the Suite was written in 1890 and how much was written in 1905, it is clear that Debussy changed the names of at least two of the pieces. “Passepied” was called “Pavane”, and “Clair de lune” was originally titled “Promenade Sentimentale.” These names also come from Paul Verlaine’s poems.
The first piece in the suite is entitled “Prélude”. “Prélude” is in the key of F, in tempo rubato. It is full of dynamic contrasts with a vigorous beginning and ending. It is a festive piece, which holds much of the baroque style that is commonly found in preludes.
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
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