#copy cat choir tales | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

silentmagi · 6 years

Text

Miraculous (Gummi Bears rewrite)

Based on the them for Disney’s Gummi Bears - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJmWyZlW2sE

Marinette wasn’t sure what Alya wanted to show her, but knew it had something to do with her new project on the Ladyblog. To say she was curious would have been an understatement. Nino and Alya had been secretive about the entire project, often inviting her and Adrien for lunch and other things, only to duck off after the food was gone to work on the project. At least she had started to become a better friend to Adrien, with less stuttering, and more caring listening.

So to find him sitting there with Nino grinning like the devil from the front of the room probably didn’t raise the red flags that it normally should. For one, he didn’t normally do that, that was more Alya’s territory. For another, Adrien was blushing a bright crimson for some reason. “H-hey Marinette, you’re getting the preview too?”

“I-I so guess, I mean I guess so,” she responded, wincing as she reacted to Adrien like it was several weeks ago. Turning to look at Alya, she found herself being pushed into the seat next to Adrien.

“Now that the both of you are here, Nino and I want to show you a project we’ve been working on, it’s the reason we’ve had to bail on you so often, so I hope you realize it was for a good reason,” Alya announced proudly while pulling out a laptop from behind the desk in the front of the room, and connecting it to the overhead projector.

Marinette bit back a remark about it being a scheme of Alya’s and just decided to watch whatever this project was, at least with Adrien here Alya wouldn’t go too far. After all, Nino was Adrien’s bro, right? He’d save Adrien, and keep Marinette from dying of embarrassment out of their childhood friendship. Right?

Maybe she should look for an exit.

That’s when a trumpet blast began to ring out, drawing her attention away from the doorway, where she swore she saw the tops of people’s hair, and focused instead on the screen at the front of the room, which was showing clips of her and Chat racing towards one Akuma or another. The drumline was pretty solid too, and then Alya’s voice cut in. “Dashing and daring,” the recording sang out softly, showing a picture of them posing in front of an akuma six times their size.

She still remember the bruising she had after that fight. It was not fun, but outwardly she just kept watching as the movie played out. “Courageous and caring.” There was Chat carrying one of the child akumas to their parents, split screened with Ladybug extending a hand to help a crying Chloe to her feet. She had gotten better, and she could almost see why Adrien liked her when they were younger.

The two heroes of Paris sharing a smirk as they slowly extended their hands for a fist bump. “Faithful and friendly,” rang out as the pair stood back to back, protecting each other, and shooting out quips. She could almost remember the pun that Chat had said that caused her to roll her eyes fondly.

Sadly that was cut to a shot of the pair of them on the Eiffel Tower looking out over the city that they loved so much. “With secrets to keep.”

Wait, did Alya just acknowledge that the two of them were keeping secrets? That was surprisingly mature of the journalist that had vowed to find out their identities many times. Then why did it fill her with dread?

“All across Paris, their laughter rings out,” Nino joined in backing up Alya, the clips of them zipping down the streets of Paris returning, this time of them on Patrol. They were playing a game of tag it seemed as they were laughing and Chat kept trying to catch Ladybug. “Swinging along as their calls fill the air!”

“MIRACULOUS!” a literal choir blasted out over the speakers causing Marinette to jump and nearly fall from her seat. The clips continued playing out, showing them fighting against akumas, and saving people, “Working hard to save all of Paris!”

“High heroism that’s beyond compare!” the chorus continued to explode out of the speakers, showing Ladybug cradling Chloe to her chest as she tried to get away from the latest Akuma, who was after her for her father for once, and not for herself. “They are MIRACULOUS!”

Back to Alya’s solo, showing Chat with his cataclysm readied, while in another half of the screen, Ladybug was summoning a lucky charm, the two of them timed and curiously swirled around. She didn’t remember a drone being in one of their battles, let alone two. Maybe she should pay more attention to the surrou- yeah no. As long as that drone wasn’t bothering them in combat, it was fine.

THE GIANT AKUMA ATTACKING THEM TAKES PRIORITY THANK YOU!

She almost missed the line song in the background about “Magic and mystery,” before it cut to a picture of the Egyptian tablets showing off the Ladybug at the time spinning her weapon, it was then superimposed by a painting of a cat noir from some orient country, if she had to guess China, but she wasn’t familiar with the script on the bottom. “Are part of their history.”

Huh, she didn’t get to see Chat Noir’s past often, that was awesome. Maybe she could get a copy of it and make it into a wall scroll for Chat, she’d even offer it as a piece on her shop site so he could deflect where he got it from. She’d have to ask Alya where she got the picture of… wait, that’s Ladybug glowing pink and Chat Noir glowing black and pulling back to reveal civilian shoes. “Along with the secret, of their identities.”

Thankfully it cut away, but she had seen more than she wanted of Chat’s secret identity. And someone knew who they were, and given Alya proof. Okay, she could manage this, Alya was a superhero buff, she’d understand the reasoning, right? RIGHT?!

As the music continued to swell, she forced herself to remain still, but her mind continued to race. She could almost swear that she knew his sneakers. The signature orange color, and the black butterfly on his heel. They were Agreste brand sneakers from his casual teen line.

Adrien wore them all the time, and so did many other boys in Paris.

She really didn’t want to think about how tell-tale her own shoes were. She was going to have a LONG and PANIC RIDDLED conversation with Tikki about that tonight.

Oh, that was a nice shot of them in front of Hawkmoth’s giant ego, err head. The time that he used a massive head to talk to them directly… nope, not his ego. Just a big head. And then she began purifying the entire swarm of moths. “Their legends are growing,” Alya cut in with the lyrics, as it showed Chat blocking a slash from one of the sword based Akuma with his staff, saving someone from being sliced to ribbons. “They take pride in knowing…”

The two of them against were at the top, as several of their toughest akumas scrolled through the bottom portion of the screen, converting to their civilian self halfway through. “They’ll fight for what’s right in whatever they do!”

And then the chorus hit again, not as startling as the first time, but just as loud. If Alya took her criticism on this piece, she would advise turning down the chorus just a bit. It kinda blasts away the rest of the video. There were new videos of them swinging through Paris, this time it was when they were racing to the Louvre with huge grins on their faces. It was showing that they were still teens, despite everything else.

Then it cut back to the softer melody, with Nino joining in the original verse. There were more scenes of them fighting akumas, all while Nino and Alya sang about their qualities that helped them be heroes, things they had thought anyone would have. That was before they found out about Hawkmoth and the ills of the world, but Marinette kept hope. And perhaps that was all that was needed to be a hero. Hope, and a reason to keep fighting for what’s right.

Taking her eyes off the screen, she found Adrien with tears in his eyes, and realized that he wasn’t the only one. Her eyes had started misting over somewhere along the way, but she hadn’t realized it. Licking her suddenly dry lips, she forced herself to focus on the movie, while her hand reached over to Adrien’s and gave him a friendly squeeze.

He looked like he needed someone there.

She felt him squeeze back, just as the chorus picked up again, this time, instead of them serving Paris it was more of the quiet moments they shared. The two leaning against each other on the Arch de Triumph, heads leaned against each other. That had been a hell week of finals and two akumas a day, and that was the Saturday that Hawkmoth decided to cut back. They had sat down to talk and catch their breath, and just sort of drifted to sleep there, sharing a view few others would be able to.

The music took a softer tone as the camera zoomed in on the napping pair, fading out to show Adrien and Marinette in the same positions as the super heroes, a live feed as they were still watching the movie and holding hands. “When you’re in danger, they’ll be there.”

“Lives and secrets that we all protect,” Alya sang softly, joined by several other voices as the camera slow panned away from the two ‘stars’ of the show, revealing the entire class in the background, giving them hopeful smiles. “They are Miraculous.”

The camera zoomed in on Marinette and Adrien with dawning horror on their faces as the pieces began falling into place for them. “You are Miraculous,” the chorus of classmates sang out with a softer, more supportive tone.

Finally the lights came on, and everyone seemed to focus on the two exposed teens; Alya walking forward with a sway to her hips as she lived for the drama and being extra. She was joined by Nino at the last moment as she hugged her friends close, whispering into their ears before the rest joined in. “You are Miraculous.”

#Miraculous Ladybug #Marinette Dupen Chang #Adrien Agrese #Nino Lahiffe #Alya Cesaire #story #My writing #Identity Reveals #Songfic #Someone stop me before I do more of these.

6 notes · View notes

aiweirdness · 7 years

Text

Disney songs, sung by a neural network with a very short memory

I train neural networks, which are a type of computer program that try to learn to copy human things by looking at examples. By giving them just a list of names and no further instructions, I can get neural networks to invent names for paint colors, guinea pigs, craft beers, and more.

The way I set up a neural network will control how well it does at its task. One important parameter I can control is the length of its memory. Let’s see what happens when I make its memory really, really short.

Dory Image spiced up by Neural net-generated deep dream

Here’s why memory is important for a neural network: As it’s generating the letters of new words, it’s looking at the letters it has already generated, trying to figure out what comes next. If it can look back over several words or even sentences, it will be more memory-intensive to run than a neural network that can only see a couple of words at a time, but it will also be better at learning long phrases.

Here’s how this plays out when I train a neural network to write lyrics to Disney songs.

I started with a list of 224 Disney songs from a lyrics dataset posted by GyanendraMishra on Kaggle, about 8200 lines in all.

50 character memory

At first, the neural network had a modest memory length of 50 characters - that is, 50 letters. Its view of the dataset, and of the text it generates, looks something like the this:

ow you the world Shining, shimmering, splendid Tel

Humans who know the “I can show you the world” song from Aladdin can probably recognize this bit and fill in what comes next. The neural network can work with this too. It memorizes whole lines of songs, although it sometimes jumps between different songs - I’ve built a small degree of randomness into its choice of which letters to use next so it doesn’t always go with its top choice.

A whole new world (A whole new world) A new fantastic point of view No one to tell us no Or where we will live Oh so surprise Every time to spare Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow, let it snow, let it snow, let it snow But I couldn't do that it's all around the sun With all the colors of the wind Can you paint with all the colors of the wind Can you paint with all the colors of the wind Can you paint with all the colors of the wind Can you paint with all the colors of the wind Can you paint with all the colors of the wi

You’ll notice that it tends to get stuck on certain repetitive lines - that’s because those lines repeat in the original dataset, so the neural network learns that one “paint with all the colors of the wind” line is followed by a second. What it doesn’t know, however, is how many “colors of the wind” lines it’s already seen at a given point. Its view of these lines at any given time is something like:

paint with all the colors of the wind Can you pain

And it has no idea whether to move on to the next line, or to keep singing the same one. Usually, like Dory, it just keeps singing.

20 character memory

With less than half the memory that it had before, the neural net is struggling a little harder. Its view of the training data looks something like:

ow you the world Shi

It still can memorize phrases (it can spell supercalifragilisticexpialidocious like a champ), but now gets lost and jumps between songs more easily. It tends to string together songs with some similarity, so Heigh-Ho (we dig dig dig dig dig dig dig in our mine the whole day through) gets mixed up with drip drip drop little April shower, and Mama Odie’s song from Princess and the Frog (you gotta dig). And once it starts singing Heigh-ho, Heigh-ho, it basically doesn’t stop.

A new fantastic point of view No one to tell us no Or where to go Or say in the wood Is the savage one is mine! We dig dig dig dig dig dig dig dig dig dig dig dig dig dig dig dig dig dig up with your pretty little song Greatest are seppation for you You paint with your pretty little song Gay little song right The savage one is way to sing with your pretty little song It's gonna be a change Shake you are the sky is cloudy You gotta dig Choir: (dit) Mama Odie: Dig and dig and diggety-dig Heigh-ho, heigh-ho Heigh-ho, Heigh-ho Heigh-ho hum Heigh-ho, heigh-ho Heigh-ho, heigh-ho...

10 characters

A memory this short is seriously unfair to give a neural network that’s trying to learn whole phrases. That line from Aladdin now looks something like:

ow you the

But it does its best.

[Troy] If you say that must be true When you leave the world and the same place in the sky You can fly You can fly You can fly You can fly You can fly You can fly When you're staring straight back at me? Why a true!! We're breaking free. [Troy] Oh the most wonderful time of the year Winnie the Pooh Willy nilly silly old bear Winnie the Pooh, Winnie the Pooh Willy nilly wearing, when you're welcome, she's going the bare necessities of life will come to you I've been searching to find the bare necessities of the wind I've seement her dont and bring you can fly You can fly You can fly You can fly You can fly You can fly You can fly You can fly

5 characters

Evil laughter. It’s honestly a surprise that a neural network with a 5-character memory can manage to function at all.

ow yo

That’s what the line from Aladdin looks like now. This what the neural network has to work with. This is what songs are to it now.

It attempts “Under the Sea” or possibly “Part of Your World” from The Little Mermaid.

Wish the sky What's the street too I wonder the sea Under the sea Under the sea Under the sea she wants to dreamed to me Un the shore here where the world in by me about the river bend I wanna be so far I could be to place I'll see it there to start And the shore shore Underer the sea When the sea Under the sea Under the sea Under the sea

It is going to try to be king. Or a wolf.

I've been in the sun It's longing with a s This, dilly, dilly sofver who do it once a smiling A whole new world to the told me so If think with you And I wonderful from the wolf cry to the blue corn mountain This where who one souls So be king So good in a staring as the beginning with your cat I'll never thing thing the start A whole new world with new the wolf cry to the tole on the otter that the same That down tomb told me so I'll be king, dilly, dilly dain ine told me soy And I'll never paint with new world with all the colors of the cores the sun I'll be king Oh, so chue the wolf cry to the colors of the beginning with your to I wanna be king is the wolf cry to the storm to tell your corn who want the roll me soy I'll never seen the blue here, and the chain as old as the sun start And I'm fine I'll try I'll try

It has a seriously metal-sounding version of Beauty and the Beast.

Something to the beast And and the beast The door When the beast The door When will bare necessities The beast When the most wonderful time to spart of the house your learn and black as the sun And the beast Tale as old as time Song as old as rhyme Beauty and be soul It's the sun We're only friends and the door When will sell you see her fleight and and bring about your heart don't say a way the most wonderful time of the time of the shock The beast And a secret, winnie the Pooh Willy all the same I saw There'll be you feel the Hokey the beast

And then it rears up, gathers all its neurons, and flounces out an impressive:

Birdriillagilisticexpialidocious

Want more strange songs from this last neural network? It really likes to do metal versions of Beauty and the Beast. Become a supporter of AI Weirdness to get them as bonus content.

Want to help with neural network experiments? For NaNoWriMo I’m crowdsourcing a dataset of novel first lines, after the neural network had trouble with a too-small dataset.

Go to this form (no email necessary) and enter the first line of your novel, or your favorite novel, or of every novel on your bookshelf. You can enter as many as you like. At the end of the month, I’ll hopefully have enough sentences to give this another try.

#neural networks #char-rnn #disney #disney songs #beauty and the beast #memory #dory

790 notes · View notes

welovelofi · 4 years

Text

Tales Of Murder And Dust: Fragile Absolutes. We Feature, We Love.

https://open.spotify.com/album/6DMVg3nHhAadARNNw1dfpl?si=iuFBfCgKQhGEiYq-M2alqw

Århus based, Tales Of Murder And Dust are freshly out with their 3rd full-length LP, Fragile Absolutes. It’s the result of a long gestation and steady evolution of both the line-up and context of the group.

“It’s been the most difficult process we’ve ever had” is bandied around like a mantra in the organization. Why though? Tomad seems to have at times in their 12-year career, everything going for them in spades, but if you pull up specific moments of dormancy – a heck of a lot of forces working against them. Like plate tectonics or glacial migration – slow building pressures ripping them apart that the human sensory array could only detect with seemingly topographic charts.

After 2016’s “The Flow In Between” saw the band signing to English neo-psych magnate, Fuzzclub Records, they parted ways with founding member Kristoffer Vilsgaard, who shared lead vocal and songwriting duties with Christian Sinding Soendergaard. Vilsgaard left the operation amicably and still remains active in their now extensive ‘extended family’. Around the same time, TOMAD saw a drastic line-up shift in virtually every position except drums. Fellow ZRN (formerly Zeroine, a ‘side’ collab between Ess Beck and Soendergaard) and real-life partner, Ess Beck moved in on keys and auxiliary guitar, Rasmus Aaen Jensen entered on bass, and the slimmer, leaner line-up headed to USA for their very chaotic inaugural tour – plagued by missed connections, transportation break-downs and hellish drive times.

“It was our first time in the states, and instead of being able to soak it all in, we got into a van and drove 35 hours straight to a gig” remarks Jakob Korsgaard (drums). “I kinda feel like it doesn’t even count, that tour – it was just so chaotic at times”.

The Flow In Between sold well internationally for them, and the EU bookings were steady, yet it seemed always to this writer that it was getting increasingly difficult to see them here in Aarhus or let-alone find their records in one of the many physical shops. In fact, I ordered my copy of “Fuzz Club Sessions” from England (the 2018 Ltd edition live-in-studio EP, first to feature the re-vamped TOMAD line-up), and it took weeks to get here (You can fly direct from AAR to Stanstead though for less than the price of a beer and be wheels down in 1.5 hours). Something was rotten somewhere.

The difference between The Flow In Between and Fragile Absolutes is significant in almost every way. All plusses though if you’ve gotten this far. WHEN one was able to catch TOMAD in this constellation between records, I always had the feeling there was something über-special about their sound. It was like something was gestating, brewing…fermenting even. ZRN seemingly would cycle through a period as well, ESS and Christian seemed to dichotomize the sound picture. TOMAD at times would be more punky or gothic, while ZRN would move into territory that was more ambient, improvisatory and even post-modernist ‘classical’. It seemed like the two groups had a significant impact on each other – which makes sense with the personnel being partly the same, but yet able to morph under a different moniker and (for lack of a better term) ‘power dynamic shift’. At any rate – TOMAD was evolving and peeling away from the “Psych” or “Shoegaze” pigeonholes that seemed to be applied by the lesser astute of my colleagues over the decade.

With the departure Of Vilsgaard as co-lead, That left Soendergaard in full creative control of the group. This is one of the important dynamic shifts that lead to the content and feel of “Fragile Absolutes”. Far from being a 3-legged cat however – Soendergaards growth as an atmospheric composer and arranger in a more widescreen cinematic format was amplified. With the departure of Vilsgaard, also left the final leanings of TOMAD being justifiably a “Psych” outfit. The darker hues of something weightier and more substantial began covering the band like strangler vines around the once verdant trees of the woods.

“Fragile Absolutes” was recorded in several different locations – initial basic tracking began a few years ago in Aarhus’s Tapetown studios. Tapetown’s penchant for recording “Alternative” and “Indie” genres served as a template for a slightly more bombastic base coat to several of the numbers. For whatever reason, TOMAD decided to complete the recording in various settings where they could hack away at it. A cabin on the west coast of Jutland is mentioned (the closest thing Denmark has to an artic desert), and various bits and pieces here and there. I’m sure all of this adds to the mystery surrounding the record, but the end result and finished ‘product’ is a record that is produced by the band with an air of achieving perfection in whatever it is they first set out to do.

Knowing the genesis and long gestation of the record – I see this as a re-birth for the band. They might not notice it. A heap of things in the band’s own personal life have also necessitated the change. Some members became parents themselves, geographical and logistical strife caused periods of inactivity and even as I write, a global pandemic has altered the way the band has to plan live bookings. I hate to say something as pedestrian as: “you gotta roll with the punches”, but this record existing at all, let alone being the masterpiece that I truly deem it to be, is no small feat.

The Review

In my 2016 review of “The Flow In Between” I ended up calling it “Probably the greatest record to come out of Jutland”. Before we get going on the breakdown – I’ll have to amend that bold statement from 4 years ago and relegate “TFIB” to “Probably the best record to come out of Jutland as of 2015”. Fragile Absolutes has frogged its way into #1 for me. Shucks – I’m even going to have to one-up myself here. It’s my favorite Danish album, ever. There’s a LOT of great albums out of my adopted home country too. Laban 4 comes to mind….

“Fragile Absolutes” kicks off with the wallop of the monastic meets Viking cinema “Distances”. It’s evident that they are picking up in context where some of “The Flow In Between” leaves off (see: “Sisters”). There’s a heavier texture of orchestration underneath which basically weaves it way through the record. There are shimmering jangly bits layered with piano, synths and whatever the hell else they used bathed in subtle sustained feedback. This continues into the slightly dirgy title track “Fragile Absolutes”. The monotonic guitar lines giving way to almost plainsong layered choirs underpinned by some subtle tinkling on the ivories and a chugging and building rhythm section that leads into orchestral stabs at a climax and finally a resolution.

“Crippled Figurines” treads on more familiar territory in a sense. The Percussion is sidelined, instead being inferred by a gently strummed acoustic guitar set in counterpoint by the ever- present drone and simple right-handed synth melody, comfortingly recalling something that wouldn’t be out of place on a late 80s Depeche Mode album. All this mood is closer in reality to say, an early Fever Ray track rather than a gothic synth-pop piece and retaining the best integral bits of each.

With “Flawed Beliefs” we’re back to the structure of the opening gambit of the record – the ever-present drone met by delicate flights of neatly layered butterfly kisses from unidentified hands. “Flawed Beliefs” builds again upon a simple but effective passage, subtly and organically changing shape to a cacophony of doom until disappearing.

“Wear Your Skin” again pairs the dulcet tones of fluttering sprinkles of what sounds like hammer dulcimer with a tightly layered cauldron of foreboding flares in the lower register. You wouldn’t be wrong for hearing traces of Cocteau Twins or even “Pornography”-era Cure, hence why some folks can’t resist attaching a “Goth” accreditation to TOMAD on this album cycle. I’m not sure Goth is such a dirty word anymore – I’ve dabbled myself and in these Isolation times – I don’t think anyone should blame me. “Deconstructed and Dissolved” follows this mood perfectly, plunging the listener further down the k-hole of the world in flames while simultaneously being frozen in the wasteland that our collective esoterism has created.

“Entropy” and “Consoling Words” again bring us back to the now familiar overall vibe of the record. Infinite layers of aurally pleasing yet disturbing symphonic drones paired with a slowly plodding and ever-present funeral march of backbone.

You’d be forgiven for being lulled into a sense of not knowing where the album begins or ends at this point in the record – but the whole affair is masterfully shuttered with the somewhat surprisingly delicate and bare “Remnants” – where for the first time, a simple piano and vocal are to the fore of the mix. There is something heartbreakingly haunting about Soendergaard’s vocals on the closing number – finally pushed into the theoretical spotlight, yet still fragile and nearly incomprehensible. It’s a perfect ending to the constant wash of dark matter and symphonic pummeling of the previous 8 tracks.

“Fragile Absolutes” as a whole, is damaging in its epic-ness. I know “epic” is thrown around a lot in somewhat ironic terms by suited frat boys on TV, but I honestly can’t think of another term for what this LP puts you through. From the invocational wallop of the opening numbers and the adagios and lulls of the moodier tracks, it’s quite an emotional roller coaster. Everyone I know who has heard any of these tracks all drop references to “Soundtrack”, “Nordic” and “Dark”. I’m happy to agree, even if I can’t offer up a pigeonhole of a mini-sub sub- genre to attach to it. The remnants of Shoegaze and Neo-Psych are still evident, these are the kind of bands that TOMAD will always be billed with – but “Fragile Absolutes” is their most powerful and complete work to date. While the bulk of the writing may be Christian Soendergaard’s singular vision now, What the rest of the band add to the mix is staggeringly appropriate and serve the material with a reverence and aplomb that is rarely found in a band that have been through this massive of a personnel shift since their last record. My only wish on several of the songs is that there were more dynamic builds and decrescendos – adding to the romantic and cinematic appeal of some of the “louder” cuts on the LP. This only means that it can evolve and grow live in my book – and for my dollar, I can’t wait to see what TOMAD can do in full flight with this material and line-up at a proper concert whenever that is possible. That will have to occur in 2021 though. Thanks Corona virus.

Words - Bobby McBride

Order Vinyl/CD direct from band: https://talesofmurderanddust.bandcamp.com/

Follow FB: https://www.facebook.com/talesonline/

Follow Insta: @talesofmurderanddust

#music reviews #newmusic #underground #indie #noise #vinyl #talesofmurderanddust #aarhus #tapetown #fuzzclub #2020 #denmark #shoegaze #doom #psych #goth

0 notes

fayewonglibrary · 5 years

Text

Viva the Divas! (1996)

FROM AMERICA TO ASIA, STYLISH WOMEN SINGERS ARE FORCING THE BAD BOYS OF POP MUSIC TO STEP ASIDE

BY: RICHARD CORLISS

There was something feminine about Elvis. His mouth formed the pout of a sullen schoolgirl; his hair was swathed in more chemicals than a starlet’s; his hips churned like a hooker’s in heat. Presley was manly too, in a street-punk way. For him, the electric guitar was less an instrument than a symbolic weapon–an ax or a machine gun aimed at the complacent pop culture of the ‘50s. Performing his pansexual rite to a heavy bass line, Elvis set the primal image for rock: a man and his guitar, the tortured satyr and his magic lute.

He also established the androgyny of the male star. When a guy could provide his own sexual menace, long hair, coquetry and falsetto singing, who needed women? Oh, they were allowed to scream in the audience, or maybe sing backup, but not to rock on, down and dirty, with the big bad boys. Even today girls are no more encouraged to pick up a Stratocaster than to pilot an F-16. They are expected to play only one instrument: the voice.

And do they! After nearly 40 years as second-class citizens, women singers are staging their own revolution, The upheaval may be demure, even ladylike; Miwa Yoshida does not froth on the concert stage, nor is Faye Wong likely to trash a hotel room. But they have stormed the barricades where it counts: on the charts of best-selling CDs and in the hearts of a billion or so fans around the world. They have reconfigured pop music. This is the era of the pop diva.

Diva means goddess. The dictionary definition is more modern: “an operatic prima donna.” Let’s fiddle a little with those words. “Operatic”: note the strenuous, hyperemotional, aria-like feel to many pop ballads. “Prima donna”: remove its suggestion of imperious temperament and translate it literally as “first lady.” Voila! Celine Dion or Gloria Estefan, Whitney or Mariah, Madonna or Enya, Miwa or Faye, Toni Braxton or Tina Arena, Annie Lennox or Alanis Morissette. They come from the U.S., of course, but also from French and English Canada, from Cuba, Ireland, Scotland, France, Germany, Australia, Japan and China. In every country, in any language: la diva.

Like so many other forms of popular culture, the diva genre exists both locally and globally at the same time. Dion, from French Canada, alternates albums in French and English. Estefan, born in Cuba and raised in Miami, records in Spanish and English. Dion was chosen to open the Olympic Games in Atlanta with a pop hymn, The Power of the Dream, backed by a 300-member gospel choir, and Estefan was there on closing night to sing her anthemic Reach. Both singers embodied success stories as potent as any come-from-behind Olympic fairy tale: Dion, the youngest of 14 children who has become this year’s Diva Deluxe; and Estefan, brave survivor of a 1990 bus crash that broke her back, who is now back on top. “So I’ll go the distance this time,” she intones, “seeing more the higher I climb.”

Divas can’t climb much higher. They nestle at or near the top of their country’s music charts. Some, like Dion, Houston and Mariah Carey–not to mention, for the moment, Canada’s crack-voiced outlaw diva Alanis Morissette–have been on the Top 10 lists in Europe, the Americas and the Pacific Rim simultaneously. More important, most are damn fine singers. They are a link between the great voices of the past (think of Ella Fitzgerald, Ethel Merman, Edith Piaf) and the ears of people who can’t get attuned to the howling self-pity of much contemporary rock but aren’t ready to give up on pop music.

Like the Olympic spirit, the divas’ internationalist impulse reflects both a curiosity about other cultures and a nose for smart marketing. To spur Japanese sales of her Colour of My Love album, Dion added a new song, To Love You More, from the Japanese TV mini-series Lover, backed instrumentally by the Japanese ensemble Kryzler & Kompany. Dion sang it in English, but the locals didn’t mind: they bought 1.5 million copies.

A diva needn’t be Western to have the international flair. Nothing forces Yoshida, the soul-jazz sensation who fronts the band Dreams Come True, to go west to increase her Japanese fan base. She still writes and performs songs in her native language. Yet she usually records in Britain, and she cut her first solo set, Beauty and Harmony, in New York City with some top American sidemen. The collaboration produced vocals that were more precise, more regimented, than her past work. But it showed the need for even top regional artists to prove their chops in the U.S., which is still revered as the big leagues for singers.

Some stars of the Pacific, like Tina Arena, have long set their sights on America. An Australian who has sung publicly since she was five, Arena has an easy authority as vocalist and songwriter; her cool-teen voice matches her rock-easy compositions, which are so infectious that six-year-olds would learn them instantly and so familiar that you might think they were big hits a decade ago (they’re all new, all hers). When Arena gets precision and voltage into the songs–Heaven Help My Heart, Greatest Gift, Standing Up–she sounds like a kid sister to Elaine Paige, superb star of London musicals, who introduced such instant standards as Don’t Cry for Me Argentina (from Evita), Memory (from Cats) and a quite different Heaven Help My Heart (from Chess). But England is not Arena’s destination. She’s moved to Los Angeles because, like a lot of divas, she may believe she can’t be a star until she’s an American star.

Wong is too cool to entertain those ambitions. Indeed, she prefers to record in her native Beijing, where she can concentrate on her music, rather than in Hong Kong, where for years she was a formulaic Canto-pop singer known as Shirley Wong. Her striking, angular looks–think of an elongated pixie who moonlights as a sorceress–made her a natural for movies, but her debut made few notice; in Beyond’s Diary she played the girlfriend of a pop musician.

Gradually she found her own style, on records and on film. Her second picture, Wong Kar-wai’s Chungking Express, made her a hip pinup to sophisticated moviegoers on both sides of the Pacific. The film also internationalized her choice of music. She plays a dizzy waitress in a fast-food restaurant who is obsessed with going to California and playing, over and over and over, the 1966 California Dreamin’ by the Mamas and the Papas. Over the end credits she sings a Cantonese cover of the Cranberries hit Dreams. And now, on her Restless CD, she meets the international market on her own terms: five of the songs have no intelligible lyrics at all, and two irresistibly obscurantist cuts were written and produced by Scotland’s Cocteau Twins. Wong remains the spooky gamin of Chinese music, and Restless is a wondrous blend of Canto-pop and lollipop.

Wong’s approach alternates between a blissed-out whisper and bright piping in a register so high only Pekingese pups can hear it. That puts her squarely in one tradition of divadom: the vocal virtuoso. For decades, two Americans defined this style. Patti LaBelle, a gospel-trained ranter, has enthralled the faithful with her mad-woman riffs. Bette Midler, known internationally as the blowsy star of movie comedies, built her career as a throwback singer who could evoke Sophie Tucker’s bawdiness and Bessie Smith’s soul-in-hell emotional exhaustion with equal power and facility. The virtuoso mode can also be heard in the florid, world-weary style of France’s Catherine Ribeiro and, with glances back to the glamour of Piaf and Dietrich, in the bitter brilliance of Germany’s Ute Lemper. Though their styles were unique, all these women kept bright the flame of the traditional torch singer.

But none of them became international superstars or encouraged others to do the same. For that you can thank Houston (and her mentor at Arista Records, Clive Davis). It was an old recipe–great chops, exotic looks and a clever choice of material–that served Lena Horne, Abbey Lincoln, Eartha Kitt, and Houston’s cousin Dionne Warwick. But in the harsh prevailing winds of mid-'80s rap and heavy metal, Houston was a welcome spring breeze. Her delicacy of phrasing made songs like Saving All My Love for You and The Greatest Love of All easy listening in the best sense. Her prom-queen glamour made her an ideal star for the early video era, an antidote to Cyndi Lauper’s goofy-girl atavism and Madonna’s bad-girl sass. Her first album, Whitney Houston, sold 10 million copies.

Houston has retained her eminence, if not pre-eminence, while curtailing her output: she has released less than a single regular album’s worth of songs, only 10, since 1990. But her example and her relative quiescence have spurred a dozen divas-in-waiting. Many noted the structure of Houston’s big hits–a slow-tempo devotional tune that escalates from the foreplay of whispers to the explosive orgasm of wails and whoops–and made the mistake of imitating it. (Houston made that error too.) Dion’s early English-language albums are almost touching in their fidelity to the Whitney formula. It took her a while to realize she could relax on record.

Today’s top Whitneyesque star is Mariah Carey. Like Houston, she’ll mix ballads with synthesized dance music; she’s a handsome woman with a video flair; she has a patron in Tommy Mottola, boss of her record company, who is also her husband. Carey has even outsold Houston in the '90s, because she releases albums at a busier pace.

One big difference: Houston sings straight soprano with some church inflection; Carey is a coloratura. She could even be called a cubist, for she appraises nearly every note in every song from a dozen or more angles. In When I Saw You from her current Daydream CD, Carey breaks the word knew into an amazing 26 separate notes (this is only an estimate: we played these four seconds over and over, and got up to 26 just before we went mad). Her jazzy riffs suggest demon virtuosity, but it could also be musical browsing. Maybe Carey can’t decide which interpretation is the right one, so she tries them all.

Like Carey, many female singers co-write their music. Many others don’t, and are thus handicapped by pop’s 30-year tyranny of singer-songwriters. Hey, if you don’t write, you’re not an artist. “Vocal interpreter” used to be an honorable job description–good enough for Ella, Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole. Now the epithet is often an insult. It conjures up images of a Las Vegas lounge singer crooning Feelings.

All right, maybe the top pop songwriters of the day–Babyface and David Foster (who collaborated on Dion’s The Power of the Dream) and Diane Warren (who helped Estefan write Reach) aren’t Gershwin and Stephen Foster and Harry Warren. But they can write good songs for good singers. These three composers all had a hand in Toni Braxton’s fine Secrets CD–dusky, mellow, infectiously commercial, like a grownup Tina Arena.

And there’s plenty of other good music to record. Alison Krauss, a child fiddle prodigy from Illinois and later a world-class bluegrass singer with her band Union Station, became a star with her 1995 compilation Now That I’ve Found You. The set puts Krauss’s mountain-stream soprano on pretty display. She caresses standards from R. and B. (the title song), gospel (the soul-lifting When God Dips His Pen of Love in My Heart) and the Paul McCartney catalog (an elfin I Will). Think of it: a singer with no gimmick but a passionate talent and a great, rangy taste in music.

If there’s a knock on the modern divas–whether pop, like Carey, Houston and Dion, or pure, like Krauss–it’s that their material is just too amiable. Much of their music is not just middle of the road; it tiptoes on the white line in the middle of the middle of the road. Dammit, they sing like girls! And in social norms, the pop diva adheres to the proper side of the gender split in music. She is expected to be a sister before a lover; the operative slur word is “nice.” Pop is the boarding school where the good girls live. Rock is the shooting gallery where the naughty boys hang out.

Somewhere between these extremes there should be an outlaw diva. She can do cool-guy things: write songs about malaise and disorientation, play a harmonica, take herself very seriously, sell 16 million copies of her first big CD. Why, she could be Alanis Morissette–the anti-Whitney, the pariah Mariah, the outre Faye, the mean Celine.

Anyway, that’s how the 22-year-old comes across on a first listen of the Jagged Little Pill album. Morissette’s songs sound aggressive, grudging, desperate. Her alto lurches among the octaves, from growl to shriek. A typical phrase will end in a gasp, as if one of the emotional inferiors in her songs had suddenly retaliated by pressing thumb and forefinger on her windpipe. The voice of Sinead O'Connor, you imagine, in the mind of Patti Smith.

But Morissette is not that simple. A former teen star in her native Canada, she’s smart enough to give her choruses sing-along melodies–the likely contribution of co-writer Glen Ballard, who formerly produced Wilson Phillips, the trio of cool-harmonizing, second-generation pop stars. In the perkier tunes (You Learn, Head over Feet), the singer overdubs tight harmonies that might have come from Wilson Phillips. And that is Morissette’s dirty little secret: inside her edgy plaints are craft and a yen to please. She’s a mainstream diva in spite of herself.

Morissette may soon discover that the rock machismo she approximates is often just an acid flavor of the month: a hit, a burnout, a trivia question. But being a diva is a life’s work. The Scottish Annie Lennox has been at it for 20 years, developing a husky voice and a gift for weaving a dramatic spell that is almost visual. Her 1995 Medusa album has 10 old and new songs written by others. The opening cut, No More “I Love You’s,” relies on Lennox’s evocation of love’s demons–“Desire, despair, desire, so many monsters”–and her conjuring up, in a mid-song monologue, of a little girl for whom these monsters come to life. A woman’s bed of sad passion has telescoped into a child’s bedroom fears at midnight.

The final number on Medusa is Paul Simon’s 1973 Something So Right. In Lennox’s gorgeous reworking, she answers the pessimism of No More “I Love You’s” and completes the album’s circle. “Some people never say the words I love you, / But like a child I’m longing to be told.” Again a girl in a woman’s supple voice, Lennox finds salvation foraging in a child’s garden of cries from the heart. Lennox might be Piaf here–there’s that eerie understanding of a lyric–but with the fever adjusted to room temperature.

Piaf is still an icon, both for her poignant life story and for her ability to hurdle emotion over the language barrier. But in the world market of the '90s, when virtually every album with gigantic global sales is in some form of English, what’s a diva to do? Cultivate her own garden, for the worldwide boom in CD sales means there are more people searching for something different. Morissette’s album is bubble-gum music next to Tori Amos’ Boys for Pele, with its forbiddingly opaque lyrics, a voice that runs amuck over the octaves and the famous inside photo of Amos with a suckling piglet at her breast. Yet the album has sold millions. Moral: You can’t be too weird. You must be you.

That is the message attended to by Wong in her recent take-me-or-leave-me mode, and by Yoshida in her American experiment. It surely applies to singers who harbor nations within themselves. Enya, the Celtic lass whose ethereal soundscapes might have emanated from a very gentle UFO, sings in Gaelic, English and Latin–the languages of family, school and church. Her melodies are so mellow as to seem downright shy, yet they’re so popular that an entire genre of new music is known simply as Enya.

By that standard, the pop brand of Cuban-American music should probably be called Gloria. With time, the Estefan sound has grown full and wise, Latin rhythms accompanying rather than defining the melody. Estefan has also learned to write for her voice and disposition; on her latest album, Destiny, she has taken her own advice. Reach–higher.

And Celine Dion has reached inside. The Falling into You CD, a supercharged superproduction, will yield perhaps half a dozen smasheroo singles, and it’s a treat to hear her belt a song to bits. But a bigger piece of her heart can be found on The French Album. There the girl from Quebec sings in her mother’s language and in a voice so ardent and discreet it reminds you of Elvis in the intimate ballads he recorded in his time off from creating the bad-boy iconography of rock. Murmuring like the heart just before sleeping, Dion’s voice summons the power and the glory of the diva.

–With reporting by Charles P. Alexander/Montreal

------------------------------------------------------------------

SOURCE: TIME MAGAZINE

#1996

0 notes

placetobenation · 5 years

Link

Fun and Fancy Free

Release Date: September 27th, 1947

Inspiration: “Little Bear Bongo” by Sinclair Lewis and “Jack and the Beanstalk”

Budget: N/A

Domestic Gross: $2.04 million

Worldwide Gross: $3.165 million

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 67%

IMDB Score: 6.6/10

Storyline (per IMDB): Disney version of fairy tale “Jack and the Beanstalk”, featuring Mickey, Donald, and Goofy in the main roles. Also contains another short film, re-released as “Bongo”.

Pre-Watching Thoughts: We continue on with the Disney canon and we have the fourth of the six package films to be released during this time. It was no surprise that Disney was still feeling the effects of World War II and were still in money-saving mode, but unfortunately the quality of the films has taken a bit of a hit after starting out so strong. Since there are only two shorts in this film instead of multiple shorts like in Make Mine Music, hopefully this film will be a bit more streamlined and that it will be a vast improvement on the previous films.

Voice Cast: So we have a bunch of returning actors for this film which was fine since we get a lot of familiar faces on the screen in terms of the characters and therefore, we didn’t have a reason to add that many new voices. The returning actors making an appearance here include Cliff Edwards who returns as Jiminy Cricket, and we also have Walt Disney himself, Clarence Nash, and Pinto Colvig voicing Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Goofy respectively. This is actually a pretty sad moment because this would be the last time that Disney would voice Mickey Mouse aside from archived footage of him being used way down the line. We also have legendary singer Dinah Shore return as the narrator and singer of “Bongo”, and finally Billy Gilbert returns as well as he provides the voice of Willie the Giant. Of the new people that were brought in, we had puppeteer Edgar Bergen serve as the narrator for “Mickey and the Beanstalk”, and he even brings his puppets Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd to assist him. His special guest is child star Luana Patten who had appeared in “Song of the South” and makes an appearance here, and finally Anita Gordon appears as the singing harp and the King’s Men also make a return here as the singing crows in Happy Valley. It was good to have some familiar voices involved since they have become synonymous with the characters they played and they played their roles well in this film.

Hero/Prince: N/A

Princess: N/A

Villain: For the first time in quite a while, we have a few villains in the film which was interesting since we didn’t have a clear hero or heroes unless you consider Bongo, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy as heroes though for me they didn’t quite make it. We first have Lumpjaw the bear who tries to steal Lulubelle from Bongo only to fall victim to him and his unicycle and he is swept away in the river, and he was a fine villain though he was on the lower end of the villains. In that same vein, we also have Willie the Giant who steals the golden harp from Happy Valley to help him sleep, and he tries to kill Mickey, Donald, and Goofy when they come to his castle only for them to reclaim the harp and Willie is seemingly sent to his death when they destroy the beanstalk though we see he survives and continues to look for them. Willie does seem to be a gentle and fun giant though he does show some unpleasant tendencies when he goes after Mickey and his pals, but it is not enough to rank him high on the list and more than likely he might be at the very bottom since he is a gentle giant. It is important to note these package films don’t focus on a lot of these first few categories since there are multiple segments and there is no real interlocking storyline.

Other Characters: We do have a solid number of characters sprinkled throughout both segments and even in between the two segments, and we start that right off the bat with Jiminy Cricket making his return to help bridge the two segments. For “Bongo”, we have Bongo the bear himself as he goes from being a circus act to living in the wild which he has a hard time adjusting to, and then we have Lulubelle the bear who Bongo falls in love with and ends up fighting Lumpjaw for. We also have the other animals in the wild who end up befriending Bongo and the rest of the bears who stand in fear of Lumpjaw until Bongo gets rid of him, and while none of the characters have dialogue the story is still well told by Dinah Shore. For “Mickey and the Beanstalk”, we of course have Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Goofy who are starving farmers who climb the beanstalk to the castle, and we also have the singing harp that Willie steals and Mickey and his friends rescue. Given that there were only two segments in this film as opposed to the multiple segments in the previous film, it was fine to have this few characters in the film since they were fine being in their own segments.

Songs: After the last film which featured a lot of songs that were already known, we go back to original songs for the film and we have a lot of songs to carry the film. We kick off with “Fun and Fancy Free” which was the title track for the film, and as I mentioned before it always seemed like they just wrote a song that features the film title in it. The next song is when Jiminy sings “Happy Go Lucky Fellow” which he does a fine job at, and then we go right into “Bongo” as Dinah Shore sings the songs “Lazy Countryside”, “Too Good to be True”, and “Say It with a Slap”, all of which were fine songs for the segment and Shore shows why she is a legend in the music business. We then have the few songs for “Mickey and the Beanstalk” which include “My, What a Happy Day”, “Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum” which was sung by Willie, and finally “My Favorite Dream” sung by the harp which was also a trio of fine songs for the segment. Again while these songs may not rank high in the overall canon, they were fine enough for this film and were good for their specific segments.

Plot: Unlike Make Mine Music which was pretty much just a series of segments set to music with no real flow between them, we follow the formula similar to the Three Caballeros where we have two segments that are tied together in a very loose way. Jiminy Cricket acts as a host of sorts and the two segments that we get are told in the style of a story being told, “Bongo” through a record narrated by Dinah Shore and “Mickey and the Beanstalk” told by Edgar Bergen to his guest Luana Patten. It was pretty clear that “Mickey and the Beanstalk” was the main segment of the film and “Bongo” was just here to help fill out the film, and I also liked how we only had two segments which made the film feel more streamlined as opposed to having multiple segments with no consistent flow. It is nice to see Mickey, Donald, and Goofy together in a film especially considering this would be their only film that wasn’t a short segment, and since they wouldn’t be in a full-length film again it was a fun enough short to feature them especially in a familiar fairy tale.

Random Watching Thoughts: We get another theme song shoehorned in to match the title of the film; How much did this choir get paid for doing these films I wonder?; It’s good to see Jiminy Cricket again on the big screen; “Misery for the Masses”, just the kind of book everyone needs in their collection; Cleo the goldfish makes a return as well; Even though it is the 1940s, those newspaper headlines could easily be used today with what is going on in the world; Since when did cats like to eat crickets?; I like how Jiminy talks to the dolls like they are real people even though he knows they’re dolls; I don’t know how many children would have classical records by the likes of Beethoven and Brahms in their collection; Wrong story about bears there Jiminy; That is the most talented bear ever if he can do all those things in the circus; Even back then, they brought up the poor conditions for animals in the circus; That had to be the easiest escape from a locked door ever; The two chipmunks in the tree looks just like Chip and Dale; So Bongo is easily able to climb a pole in the circus yet he can’t climb up a tree; It is always interesting how they portray the beauty of nature in the eyes of the animals; The animals took a quick liking to Bongo even though they were earlier laughing at him for not being able to climb the tree; I feel like some of the designs of the animals were just copied over from the animals in Bambi; Ahh, the real quiet of nature while the insects cause a major commotion; Nature turned on Bongo extremely quickly after luring him into it; I do like how they showed how hard it is for Bongo to transition from a domesticated bear to living in the wild; Even in nature we have love at first sight; Even though my views on these package films have not been too positive, I will never deny that the animation in them is fantastic; Where did all those bears come from?; Lumpjaw just sounds like a name for a villain; So bears show affection for each other by slapping each other in the face; Bears clearly have no rhythm when it comes to square-dancing; Lumpjaw makes a complete mess of the forest by knocking all those trees down, you would think he was a lumberjack; How lucky was Bongo to have his hat catch on a branch to save him from falling down the waterfall; I’m surprised that even though they are bears, they didn’t catch flak for the fact that a male bear was slapping a female bear in the face; My how the world has changed as a little girl staying with an older man and two puppets was perfectly acceptable in the 1940s, but today he would be accused of being a potential pedophile; Charlie the puppet is quite the cynic; Only a harp would be able to keep a valley completely happy and when it was taken, the land fell into depression; That is the saddest excuse for a sandwich ever when it’s two super thin slices of bread and a thin slice of a bean; Donald says that he’ll be all right as his eyes spin like crazy; Charlie is a dark puppet if he’s talking about killing a cow in front of a little girl with no remorse; Fun fact of the film: there was talk about showing a scene of Mickey selling the cow and the two he would be swindled by were none other than Honest John and Gideon from Pinocchio, and another potential scene saw him be sold the beans by Queen Minnie Mouse; Another interesting fact is that Walt Disney was originally against the idea of doing “Mickey and the Beanstalk” because he thought it destroyed the characters; It’s amazing how long that cottage was able to hold out before being destroyed by the beanstalk, and that they are able to stay asleep as long as they are even if they are being thrown around by the beanstalk; So reading up on this short, it was originally intended to be released on its own and production began after Dumbo, but RKO Radio Pictures doubt on the film coupled with World War II forced it to be released like this; Donald you fool, why would you taunt the giant mosquitos?; Goofy is going through so much trouble trying to get his hat on that giant glob of J-ELLO; Is it just me or does the model of the harp look like an inspiration for a certain fairy we will see in a few films?; I love how they hyped up the giant to be a mean and scary thing only for us to find out he was really a gentle giant; Chocolate pot roast with green gravy just doesn’t sound appetizing; So he gets excited about the pot roast only to then make himself a sandwich; Since when did Mickey have the ability to be a palm reader?; The harp is smart to sing the instructions to Mickey so he doesn’t get caught; You know everyone talks about the giant falling when they cut down the beanstalk, but no one talks about the potential damage the beanstalk causes on the areas where it crashes down, especially considering how big it is; How was Willie able to survive falling down the beanstalk like that?; So we find out that the house is overseeing Los Angeles since we see Grauman’s Chinese Theater.

Overall Thoughts: Overall, this film was a significant improvement on the previous two films though it still pales in comparison to the films that came out prior to the package films. It’s hard to completely fault Disney for taking this route as they were still recovering from World War II and the loss of profits overseas, and it’s clear that they were just trying to get through the decade any way they could while saving as much money as they could. That said, we have seen a pretty big decline in the quality of the films after starting the decade strong though again the onset of World War II was a bit out of their control. Hopefully, the last two package films can match this one in terms of its quality and help end the decade on a high note, and as for this film it is about in the middle as it is one of the better of the package films.

Final Grade: 5/10

#IFTTT #Place to Be Nation

0 notes

brattbeatweekly · 7 years

Photo

The Last Dance: Life, Love & Loss in Words & Music

Sat Feb 17th 3:00pm - 5:00pm

Guilford Community Church

Facebook

$15 per person

By FOMAG

Guilford, Vt. - Friends of Music at Guilford's (FOMAG) annual Midwinter Musicale begins at 3:00 p.m. on Saturday, February 17, in the sanctuary of Guilford Community Church. A propos for Valentine's week, this program is a multimedia consideration of love, as it is woven inevitably through the weft of life and loss, and it includes elements of music, movement, and the spoken word.

Last summer, Jessica Gelter, a former trustee and occasional soloist for Friends of Music, proposed performing David Lang's "Death Speaks" song cycle. Lang had won a Pulitzer Prize for his 2007 "Little Match Girl Passion," a choral work based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale. To create this 2011 companion piece of five love songs in the voice of Death, Lang combined excerpted texts from a study of over 600 lieder by Franz Schubert. Mezzo-soprano Gelter will perform the resulting 25-minute work with baritone Tony Grobe, violinist Michele Liechti, guitarist David William Ross, and pianist Keane Southard.

To build a concert-length program around the Lang piece, four gravestone epitaph settings by Putney composer Tom Baehr will be reprised by the reconstituted RIP Singers, who presented a full concert of similar works in 2014. They will also perform Baehr's recent setting of "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" by Dylan Thomas, with piano accompaniment by Southard. The RIP Singers include Tom Baehr, Amy Cann, Christina Gibbons, Tom Green, Jenny Holan, Steve John, Bruce Landenberger, and Andrea Matthews, all members of other regional choral groups and choirs.

To complement the music through other expressive modes, FOMAG administrator Joy Wallens-Penford envisioned including the literary arts, particularly poetry that offers solace and inspiration in the face of death, which can seem to signify not only the end of life but of love. A few selections expanding this limited view will be read by actors Adrienne Major and Tom Green. Poets include Kahlil Gibran, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Henry Scott-Holland, as well as Valerie DuBois of Chicago, whose post on a poetry site in early January was selected only a couple of days later.

Relevant prose possibilities began to rise to the fore one by one as well. Jess Gelter asked for a version of "The Little Match Girl," so a summary of that heart-rending tale awaits the FOMAG audience. Then FOMAG member Valerie Abrahamsen offered to read from her 2015 book "Paranormal: A New Testament Scholar Looks at the Afterlife," based on research into near-death experiences. Listeners will note that these two works share some common themes and offer an element of hope.

Other published viewpoints on the topics of death and love and moving forward include the first chapter of Robin Truelove Stronk's irreverent memoir "Vet Noir: It's Not the Pets, It's the People Who Make Me Crazy," which deals with the euthanasia of a beloved cat. Since the author, now a full-time artist, spends winter in the tropics, Guilford veterinarian Laurie Schneski will step in as reader for this down-to-earth and entertaining episode.

When Guilford-based poet and author Verandah Porche lost her husband Richard Coutant in 2015, just six weeks after a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, the decision was made to bury him on the property he so loved and tended at Total Loss Farm in Packer Corners. She will read her poignant and poetic essay on their story, published in the Spring 2016 issue of Northern Woodlands magazine.

Blending poetry and movement is interpretive dancer and hand-signer Beverly Miller, who lost a grown son a few years ago. To move through her own grieving process, she began writing daily haiku and taking nature photographs to pair with them. While Miller interprets a baker's dozen of the haiku being read by Adrienne Major, the paired images will be screened for the audience to enjoy.

Various resources on death and dying will be made available for attendees, including the opportunity to order copies of some of the works being presented on the program. Beverly Miller is coordinator of the local chapter of The Compassionate Friends, a national organization serving families grieving the loss of a child and will be glad to speak to anyone interested in participating.

Admission at the door for "The Last Dance" is $15 per person, which includes a teatime reception of warming homemade soups, hearty breads, various sides, and desserts, with mulled cider and other hot beverages. Guilford Community Church is at 38 Church Dr., Guilford, off Bee Barn Rd. and Rt. 5 in Algiers village, just a bit over a mile from Exit 1 off I-91. The facility is handicap-accessible.

Friends of Music at Guilford is a community-based music organization known for presenting unusual repertoire and offering its core programs on a donation basis to make music accessible to as broad an audience as possible. For further information and a season calendar, contact the FOMAG office by phone at (802) 254-3600, email [email protected], or visit online at www.fomag.org and Facebook.

FOMAG's 52nd concert season enjoys media sponsor support by Vermont Public Radio and through the Vermont Arts 2017 and 2018 programs of the Vermont Arts Council.

#brattbeat #FOMAG #arts #David Lang #music #spokenword #Guilford #Guilford Community Church

0 notes