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Josef Stalin once dismissively asked, “Oh yeah? Well, how many divisions does the Pope command?”
In the same manner, we American patriots at the Orange Juice Blog may well ask, “How many great composers hail from Standard and Poor’s, anyway? How much memorable music is THAT ratings agency responsible for? We realize some folks like to hear ‘standards’ – but performed poorly? Probably not so much.”
To rally the American troops left right and center in these interesting times, our beloved editor Vern Nelson is performing a concert of all American composers this Friday night, 7PM, at the Huntington Beach Central Library, which should put to rest for good the question of who is the wellspring of musical greatness – the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave or the incompetent agency which continued to give the highest rating for Credit Default Swaps right up into the Great Crash they helped precipitate. Tickets are $10; but $5 for children or the indigent, sad, and those who may be suffering from heightened interest rates due to our undeserved downgrade. Program:
- John Philip Sousa: Stars and Stripes Forever (arr. Horowitz and VN, with new lyrics by VN*)
- Dave Brubeck: Blue Rondo a la Turk
- Charles Griffes: his great 1918 Sonata (an amazing early 20th-century American composer who died young)
- John Coltrane: Central Park West, My Favorite Things, Naima
- Charles Ives: his crazy Waltz-Rondo (1910)
– intermission –
- Chick Correa: Spain
- Duke Ellington (really, his boyfriend Billy Strayhorn) : Lush Life
- Andrew Imbrie (my old composition teacher from UC Berkeley) : Short Story (1980)
- Bill Evans: Waltz For Debby (wild arrangement by VN)
- George Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue, 1923
– possible encores –
- Carlos Santana: Black Magic
WomanMarker (arr. VN) - Thelonious Monk: ‘Round Midnight
Come and help support the Orange Juice Blog, Orange County’s Political Mosh Pit!®
*Be kind to your web-footed friends
For a duck may be somebody’s mother.
Be kind to your friends in the swamp
For they live where it’s very very damp.
You may think that this is the end:
You’d be wrong, like a million more before you.
This song’s rated Double-A-plus,
And after this we have a dozen more to bore you!
“In the same manner, we American patriots at the Orange Juice Blog may well ask, “How many great composers hail from Standard and Poor’s, anyway?”……… Hmmmm
Oh yeah? I do not see any Bohemian great composers like Dvořák, Janáček and Smetana.
Because this particular concert happens to be an all-American concert. *DUH*
“*DUH*”……. Hmmmm
Dvořák wrote first American symphony *DUH*
For all practical reasons Dvořák lived in America and wrote lot of music here.
Without Dvořák this country was bunch of rednecks.
BUMPER:
I did think about it for a minute, but the concert’s already long enough. And actually the Griffes Sonata contains what sounds like a quote of the first three notes from Dvorak’s second movement at one point.
Perhaps next time if you want to claim intellectualism.