More music

Time for some more music clips!

Joseph Haydn, Trumpet Concerto, featuring Wynton Marsalis.  I especially like the third movement--real Saturday morning music!

Georges Bizet, "Parle-Moi de Ma Mere" from Carmen.  A Placido Domingo-Angela Gheorgiu duet from a Metropolitan Opera production. If I could bring one composer back from the dead, it would be Bizet. Mozart, Schubert and Chopin also died young, but they were so prolific that you can feel they had full careers. What might Bizet have created if he'd lived longer?  You'd think that "nice girl" Michaela would be a thankless role, but Bizet even came up with wonderful music for her, both here and in her third-act aria!

Giacomo Puccini, Humming Chorus from his Japanese opera Madama Butterfly.  One of my favorite choruses, an atmospheric conveying of waiting.

Rudolf Friml and Herbert Stothart, "The Donkey Serenade" from The Firefly.  Just about my favorite operetta song ever. Alan Jones, who had the Zeppo role in a couple of Marx Brothers movies, serenades Jeanette MacDonald in the 1937 MGM movie of Friml's 1912 operetta. (Yes, Jeanette did make movies without Nelson Eddy or Maurice Chevalier!) That song was actually added to the show, with the melody coming from another Friml composition.  It was originally set in Bermuda but they moved the setting to Spain during the Napoleonic Wars, presumably because the Spanish Civil War was in the news.

Tommy Dorsey and Buddy Rich, "Hawaiian War Chant." A clip from the 1942 MGM movie Ship Ahoy from the golden age of big jazz bands. (That's the great Eleanor Powell at the end!)

The Beach Boys, "Wouldn't It Be Nice." From their classic album Pet Sounds, this song grows on us as we get older and feel nostalgia for the time when we were young and impatient. (I especially like the opening!)

Ravi Shankar at the Monterey Pop festival, 1967.  DA Pennebaker's Monterey Pop is one of my favorite concert movies, and Ravi Shankar's  long sitar piece is one of my favorite numbers.  It works even better in a cinema!

Patrick Williams Orchestra, theme from The Streets of San Francisco.  One of the great TV series themes, it's a wocka-wocka classic!

Ultravox, "Dancing With Tears in My Eyes" from Lament. This tragic video meant a lot to me back in the '80s.  Nice touch with the film melting away at the end!

Kevin Spacey doing Bobby Darren's "Beyond the Sea." in Beyond the Sea.  Sure, Spacey's in the doghouse now, but I must say that this is a funny number. (Like "My Way," "Beyond the Sea" is based on a French song: Charles Trenet's "La Mer"!) Mad magazine used to make fun of Darren a lot, depicting him as Narcissus once.