cooltunes

It is 6 ft 6 in. tall, and was the symbol for an instrument factory that is no longer. But it can be seen at the Horniman Museum in England.

All you can eat to the music of Mozart, Beethoven and Shubert.

It is, after all, the Year of the Boar.

While many are aware of the song, it is usually the Andrea Bocelli and/or Sarah Brightman versions that come to mind.

For my mom’s funeral service, Chris Botti’s was the better choice. I wanted at least one horn piece. There is a quality in some works that reach into the depths and encounter an aching sadness. At the same time, they will emerge, and reach a height of emotion that combines this sadness with a triumph that is cleansing and healing.

The purity of Botti’s work is, very simply, inspiring.

I’m thinking that many tracks will go in my Halloween music collection. The deep male chorus sounding like they’re recording from a flickering studio in the bowels of Hell, a very sinister-sounding clarinet, the heroine’s lullaby that will remind listeners of the haunting one from ‘Rosemary’s Baby’ - really excellent stuff!

Hardly any kids show up on Halloween, so it’s always a good time for me to enjoy all my chilling music. Which this year will include the soundtrack from ‘Das Parfum’ as well.

I’m looking forward to seeing the movie, but I’ll be scared. Getting shivery just listening.

I can usually manage two major projects at once, but today there’s another, with a rapidly approaching deadline. Hyper music won’t do, nor will soothing.

‘The Copland Collection’ features Copland’s orchestral and ballet works from ‘36 - ‘48. Should take me to lunch. It includes ‘Appalachian Spring’, ‘Rodeo’, ‘Billy the Kid’ and ‘Fanfare for the Common Man’, the latter being a piece my kids played in their high school wind ensemble.

There I was, sitting on the sidelines at some bizarre audition-like situation with a band whose music I was less than enthused about. Not metal, but something akin to. The large woman beside me and I were supposed to be singing backup, which she knew how to do, but when I asked for the music, there was none.

It gets better.

She got up to solo, and knowing this kind of music, she rocked out to the enthusiastic response of the crowd. Then it was my turn.

Every song I ever knew vanished immediately from the repository in my brain. I stood for some awkward moments, then began. The only thing that popped back into my mind was “‘What a Wonderful World”, the Louis Armstrong classic. It’s the kind of music played in front of stores that don’t want teens to loiter. Lots of teens in the audience.

But what saved me was that I sang the Eva Cassidy version. And because my mom is freshly in another world watching over me, I woke up. But the dream hung on, as early morning ones tend to do, and I was explaining to the audience that I picked it as a tribute to a singer who died at 33.

“What a Wonderful World” was the last song she performed in public.

Her recording of “I Know You by Heart” works well as a lament of someone losing a lover. But in a chapel as part of my mom’s funeral service, it was unbearably sad.

There’s a new Deep Chord release coming out. Limited to 500 copies, 2 X 12 + one 7″ single. Contains remixes from Convextion and Echospace (Rod Modell + SoulTek).

The discogs page for the release is here.

We lost my mom on the 29th, and I’m putting together the soundtrack for the slide show that will run in the background during her service Friday morning.

This is developing into one of the most difficult things I’ve ever had to do.

It is almost unbearable to run through the music (which includes Bach, Tavener and Brian Eno), but while I am cropping and otherwise processing the photographs, Enya is about the only thing I can listen to today.