When I first heard this song and saw this movie, I was maybe 10 years old, and lived in the middle of nowhere: a rural part of the third world country Brazil, where culture was really hard to come by. I managed to lay my hands on a pirate copy of this movie and the video looped for days on our newly acquired VHS machine. What a song, what a desert, what a beautiful story. Had I ever heard a voice like that ? NO. It is one of those things I will never forget.
Read MoreI heard Gino Paoli’s “Senza Fine” for the first time in a TV series in Brazil. It was sung by Italian singer Ornella Vanoni in a very sexy arrangement that I loved back then, but soon started sounding quite dated. Years later, a Brazilian singer named Zizi Possi recorded a beautiful and more timeless version of the tune, mixing in a bossa nova accompaniment, while still masterfully retaining the authenticity of the song.
Read MoreI went to France several times as a kid and ended up living there at the age of 15, having been introduced to the wonderful music of Jacques Brel. Though not a Parisian himself (Brel was born in Belgium), he contributed much to our idea of what is a “French” sound today. Brel wrote many songs in his short life, and this is one of my favorites, both for its poetry and for his complete mastery over the language. It is unreal what he does closer to the end of the song as it gets faster and faster …
Read MoreI love the melodic and harmonic sound world of Piazzolla, which is uniquely his own. This is to me the ultimate recording of this song: it features Italian actress/singer Milva, Astor Piazzolla himself and his incredible band. The way the song builds and builds and builds … is just too powerful for words. It always leaves me wanting more.
Read MoreBaritone and Five Boroughs Music Festival co-founder Jesse Blumberg discusses his varied career and dodges our final question. Jesse will return to NYFOS’s Mainstage in Hyphenated-Americans on February 20, 2019 at Merkin Hall.
Read MoreDaffodils, again–bookending the week with everybody’s favorite perennial! This song was a persistent backdrop to my first few months in NYC. Everything in it combines to powerfully suggest the things we can’t communicate: the insistent waves of static harmony, the elusive but urgent text by Pablo Medina (which is here), and the voice, trailing aural phosphenes and finally ebbing away altogether like the impression of light after you close your eyes.
Read MoreTori Amos is a truly captivating performer. Example: I made the mistake of keeping the youtube track running as I was coming up with this intro and quickly forgot how to form words in my brain and type them, as her voice overrode my mental circuits. Amos runs the vocal gamut in Yes Anastasia, which is also quite a compositional feat, positively Schubertian in the cyclical nature of its material.
Read MoreMany works by the famed medieval poet-composer Guillaume de Machaut are formes fixes: complex musico-poetic structures requiring skill and finesse to create. This is an example of one such form, a rondeau. I
Read MoreWhat is it about vocoders? They add a distance to the human voice that, in the skilled hands of Laurie Anderson, renders it omnipotent, supernatural.
Read MoreThe underrated Earl Kim’s setting of Samuel Beckett’s “thither” occurs twice in Now and Then, Kim’s 1981 song cycle for soprano, flute, viola, and harp. At just over 30 seconds, “thither” the song is a haunting shiver, a ghost aria, unforgettable even without the reprise.
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