Never-before-broadcast memories from JFK's confidantes recorded just after the assassination. Hosted by legendary journalist Robert MacNeil.

We Knew JFK: Unheard Stories from the Kennedy Archives

Background, context, and transcript: http://www.brainpickings.org/2015/05/01/jfk-amherst-speech/

MORE/TRANSCRIPT

JFK on poetry and power (Amherst College, 1963)

"Why", P.I. Tchaikovsky's romance
Valeriya Zelenskaya, Soprano


"Why", P.I. Tchaikovsky's romance

I recorded this on my own and then got insecure about  a cappella intro so redid for my album with other musicians. But now I like this version better

Dead Meat Demo

Mixed sextet, written for the Composers Studio 2017 at RCM
Performed by:
Alex Roberts, Clarinet in B flat
Juan Antonio Garcia Illanas, Tenor Saxophone
Rory Cartmell, Trombone
Marie Schreer, Violin
Jenny Ames, Viola
Colin Alexander, Cello

Night Train To I Don't Know

Performed by the RCM wind ensemble, led by Simon Channing, on 15.2.2018

Kuje

Commissioned by the Windsor Symphony Orchestra in celebration of Point Pelee National Park's 100th anniversary.  The work is a musical description of the seasons in the park.  Pelee (Part 1) contains the first 2 sections of the orchestral work ("Snow & Ice", and "The Birds")

Pelee (Part 1): "Snow and Ice" & "The Birds"

Commissioned by the Windsor Symphony Orchestra in celebration of Point Pelee National Park's 100th anniversary. The work is a musical description of the seasons in the park. Pelee (Part 2) contains the last 2 sections of the orchestral work ("Heat and Fog" and "Butterflies")

Pelee (Part 2): "Heat and Fog" & "Butterflies"

NOW AVAILABLE ON iTUNES AND AMAZON.

Please follow the following link to see Dances of Life and Death, the short film.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6kPJFfIhP8

Elizabeth Bailey (soprano), Brno Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Mikel Toms.

Music by Andrew Webb-Mitchell
Words by Joanna Boulter

“In Songs of Awe and Wonder, Andrew Webb-Mitchell has created a stunning set of symphonic songs on a grand scale. The music is full of passion and heroism, with glorious harmony and beautiful textures. The orchestration is beautifully detailed and the vocal writing creates a soaring line that carries the listener right through the vast canvas of the cycle. The work is dedicated to Mahler but, although the scale of the work is comparable to a Mahlerian song cycle, the music is in no way derivative and Andrew Webb-Mitchell has his own unique style and sound-world.”

Tasmin Little, violinist

Dances of Life and Death is an intimate portrait of Anna Pavlova as she prepares for the role in which she became most closely associated, The Dying Swan.

Anna Pavlova was a Russian ballerina of the late 19th and the early 20th century. She is widely regarded as one of the finest classical ballet dancers in history and was most noted as a principal artist of the Imperial Russian Ballet and the Ballets Russes of Sergei Diaghilev. Pavlova is perhaps most renowned for creating the role of The Dying Swan, a solo choreographed for her by Michel Fokine. The ballet, created in 1905, is danced to Le cygne from The Carnival of the Animals by Camille Saint-Saëns. Pavlova was purported to have studied the movements of swans in depth before attempting her performance. In 1912, she bought a home in London called Ivy House, which had an extensive garden and a pond. Several pictures were taken during this time showing her entwined in an embrace with her favorite swan, Jack.

While touring in The Hague, Netherlands, Pavlova was told that she had pneumonia and required an operation. She was also told that she would never be able to dance again if she went ahead with it. She refused to have the surgery, saying "If I can't dance then I'd rather be dead." She died of pleurisy, three weeks short of her 50th birthday. She was holding her costume from The Dying Swan when she spoke her last words, "Play the last measure very softly."




Every movement seemed to be an understated reinterpretation of the swan.
And the people passing by wondered who on Earth she could be.

Her demeanour, so convincing.
Her charisma, so entrancing.

Each and every gesture that she made revealed a deep instinctive understanding of the role.
By the water it was plain to see one was learning from the other.

This was what she did and who she was, her nature,
servant of an all consuming art,
enacting a transformation and slowly becoming the embodiment of sound.

Dance, dance through the threshold of fear.
Dance, dance with abandon.

In the twilight, an ethereal look.
In the darkness, unforgettable words.

"Play the last measure softly."

Buy on iTunes

Dances of Life and Death - Brno Philharmonic Orchestra, Mikel Toms

Classical Composer and Director of the British Schools Foundation Choral Programme in China.