Thanks to Plastic Sax Blog for this clip of Birds singing at Charlie Parker's Grave in Lincoln Cemetery
Showing posts with label Music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Music. Show all posts
Saturday, May 7, 2011
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Save The Best For Last: Interview with Guillaume Kashima
“We asked friends, musicians and other "music obsessed" ones to make a seven songs podcast as a soundtrack for their funeral."
Pat McNally: Your project, Save the Best for Last, features podcasts from an eclectic and creative group of people, with the brief of putting together a seven song podcast of music for their own funerals. I’ll tell you right away that I wish I had more clients like your friends, as it’s not often that I get to play the music of the Baka Forest People of South Cameroon, The Mills Brothers ‘Smoke Rings’ or Bjork’s Aurora at a funeral. This project is a wonderful way for us to experience new music, or familiar music in a new context, as well as for us to get a new perspective on what kind of expression can be meaningful at a funeral. Please tell me how this project started and what your goals were in pursuing it.
Guillaume Kashima: It started at my grandfather's funeral, few years ago. We were asked to choose a song. My mother and my uncle argued as she proposed a Nana Mouskouri song, my grandpa's favorite singer. He said it was not appropriate ...or something like that, I can't really remember. Then there was the ceremony with this cheap random song that they play when nobody can agree on one. It was a really sad moment.
Nad Love Less' Podcast
 |
1 . Slowdive : When The Sun Hits (1993) 2 . Suede : The Next Life (1993) 3 . Nick Drake : From The Morning (1972) 4 . Mazzy Star : Into Dust (1993) 5 . Johnny Cash : I See A Darkness (2000) ~ Will Oldham Cover (1999) 6 . Antony And The Johnsons : Hope There’s Someone (2005) 7 . Echo & The Bunnymen : The Killing Moon (All Night Version) (1984) - - - Photo by Nobuyoshi Araki “Kajou” (2000) |
PM: What are some of the songs you would have chosen to play at your own funeral? Has your involvement in this project changed what you would choose?
GK: I still don't know what I would play. I guess that's also why I ask people to do it ... So I can get inspired. I have started to work on it a thousand times.
PM: How did you go about selecting this diverse and creative group of collaborators to create these podcasts?
GK: I was in charge of the first 10 ones. I wasn't really sure about how it was going to be so I asked close friends, who are related to music or for whom music takes a big part of their life. There needs to be trust also, because it may sound weird to be asked a podcast for your own funeral. Some refused, but I would say, I'm really glad about the ones you can listen today.
Henning Specht's Podcast |
1 . Olivier Messiaen : Louange à l'immortalité de Jésus (1940) 2 . Nico : My Only Child (1970) 3 . The Mills Brothers : Smoke Rings (1932) 4 . Roy Orbison : Crying (1962) 5 . Elliott Smith : Everything Means Nothing To Me (2000) 6 . Henning Specht : Daddy's Gone (2008) 7 . J.S. Bach : Jesu Bleibet Meine Freude, by Dinu Lipatti (1950) - - - Photo by Valerie Belin “untitled” (2008) |
PM: Based on your impression of the participants, have you been surprised by the contents any of the playlists? Based on the podcasts, whose funeral would you make sure you attended?
Guillaume: I would say no. As I said, those are close friends and I really see them through their selection. Not that I would know all the songs they selected, but I was not surprised by the tone. Sad, melancolic, happy or at moments, even funny, it's often a good picture of everyone's personnality. As an "amateur" of music, I could notice that people from and after my generation listen to the same bands. Globalisation I guess. For the next ones, I wish I can ask older people, who got other references and backgrounds. You woud be a perfect collaborator, if you're up for it!
Jules Julien's Podcast
 |
1 . Schubert : Ein Wolf Im Schafspelz, by Josephine Foster (2006) 2 . Piero Umiliani : Crepusculo sul mare (1969) 3 . Nico : Secret Side (1974) 4 . John Zorn : Invitation to a suicide (2002) 5 . Chopin : Valse, Op. 69, No. 2 en Si Mineur, by Alexandre Tharaud (2006) 6 . Ghedalia Tazartes : Tazartes Transport (1977) 7 . Chicks On Speed / Kreidler : Where The Wild Roses Grow (2001) - - - Photo by Guido Mocafico “Nature Morte à la Vanité” (2007) |
PM: I would absolutely be up for it, Thank you! What is next for you and for this project?
GK: The next season is curated by Marie. She chose the collaborators and the images that illustrate each podcast.
Please visit Save The Best For Last for the full Season One Podcasts, and more information about the participants. My thanks to Mr. Kashima for sharing this work on The Daily Undertaker.
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Santa Baby..Musical Legend Eartha Kitt Passes Away
Jazz legend and Entertainment Icon, Eartha Kitt, passed away today at age 81. This incredible performer will truly be missed. I am grateful that I had a chance to watch her perform about ten years ago. At 70 years old, she was a show stopper, and incredibly engaging and alluring. Ms. Kitt had personality and talent to spare. It's interesting that the artist who is perhaps best known for the song 'Santa Baby' left us on Christmas.
Here is her obituary from BBCNews
Once described by Orson Welles as the most exciting woman in the world, Kitt's smouldering, feline drawl in memorable hits, such as Santa Baby, Old Fashioned Millionaire and I Wanna Be Evil conveyed a wealth of innuendo.
Ostracized at an early age for her mixed race heritage, international star Eartha Kitt defied criticism of her illegitimate past and conquered the entertainment world with finesse.
Born in 1927, she endured a tough childhood. Kitt's mother, who worked on a cotton plantation, was just 14 when she gave birth, the white father thought to have been the son of the plantation owner.
Kitt's features, neither black nor white, led to her being accepted by neither community. She was given away by her mother at the age of eight to live with an aunt in Harlem, New York City. Little did she know that this would be the start of a long showbiz career.
With a flair for the dramatic, Kitt, aged 15, auditioned for the famed Katherine Dunham Dance Troupe and won a spot as a featured dancer.
The work took her worldwide, and her unique style was enhanced as she became fluent in French during the European tour. It was during a performance in Paris that she caught a certain director's eye, and was cast as Helen of Troy in Orson Welles' production of Dr Faust.
Kitt made her name back in New York in the 'New Faces of 1952' revue. Her show-stopping performances, which ran for a year, led to a national tour and a follow up feature film with the same title.
Other films followed, such as St Louis Blues with Nat King Cole, and she played the title role in Anna Lucasta alongside Sammy Davis.
For her succession of best-selling records Kitt earned a Grammy nomination, she received her first Tony nomination for her acting, and also managed to complete her first volume of autobiography Thursday's Child.
One of Kitt's more recognisable roles was her part as Catwoman, in succession to Julie Newmar, in the late 1960s television series Batman. She excelled in the part, and her trademark growl became a part of pop culture.
In the late sixties, however, Kitt's career encountered a substantial setback after she made her anti-Vietnam war views explicit during a White House luncheon.
The CIA put together a dossier on her and she became professionally exiled from the US. She worked abroad for 11 years, where her reputation remained unscathed, but returned triumphantly to New York in 1974 to star in a Broadway spectacle of Timbuktu!
One-woman show
Kitt became a firm fixture on the Manhattan cabaret scene. Live theatre was always her passion and, in 2001, Broadway critics singled her out for praise for her role in The Wild Party.
More recently, she starred in US tours of The Wizard of Oz, and Cinderella, and appeared as the Fairy Godmother in The New York City Opera production.
Her distinctive voice and great versatility enthralled an entirely new generation of fans when she lent her services to the role of Yzma, the villain, in Disney's animated feature The Emperor's New Groove.
In 1994 she also was part of BBC Radio's adaptation of The Jungle Book, where her role as Kaa the python was performed with a ferocity and bite.
She visited England many times throughout her career, firstly in the early 1950s and, most recently, for Follies in 1988, which she followed with a one-woman show in March 1989.
Eartha Kitt will be remembered as a distinguished and charismatic performer who, up to her death, could boast she had worked in more than 100 countries.
Alongside her cabaret performances, her singing career and her roles in film and television, Kitt was also a prominent jazz singer to which the "sex kitten" in her voice seemed aptly suited.
She appeared at legendary venues, such as The Cafe Carlyle, Detroit's Music Hall and Seattle's Jazz Alley, where she became the epitome of chic. Her strong onscreen independence was mirrored off screen, since Kitt spent most of her life alone.
She was married briefly, from 1960 to 1965, from which a daughter, Kitt McDonald, was born in 1961. She became her mother's manager.
Up to the end of her life, Eartha Kitt was the national spokeswoman for Project On Growing, a programme which teaches homeless families to grow their own food and feed themselves.
Ostracized at an early age for her mixed race heritage, international star Eartha Kitt defied criticism of her illegitimate past and conquered the entertainment world with finesse.
Born in 1927, she endured a tough childhood. Kitt's mother, who worked on a cotton plantation, was just 14 when she gave birth, the white father thought to have been the son of the plantation owner.
Kitt's features, neither black nor white, led to her being accepted by neither community. She was given away by her mother at the age of eight to live with an aunt in Harlem, New York City. Little did she know that this would be the start of a long showbiz career.
With a flair for the dramatic, Kitt, aged 15, auditioned for the famed Katherine Dunham Dance Troupe and won a spot as a featured dancer.
The work took her worldwide, and her unique style was enhanced as she became fluent in French during the European tour. It was during a performance in Paris that she caught a certain director's eye, and was cast as Helen of Troy in Orson Welles' production of Dr Faust.
Kitt made her name back in New York in the 'New Faces of 1952' revue. Her show-stopping performances, which ran for a year, led to a national tour and a follow up feature film with the same title.
Other films followed, such as St Louis Blues with Nat King Cole, and she played the title role in Anna Lucasta alongside Sammy Davis.
For her succession of best-selling records Kitt earned a Grammy nomination, she received her first Tony nomination for her acting, and also managed to complete her first volume of autobiography Thursday's Child.
One of Kitt's more recognisable roles was her part as Catwoman, in succession to Julie Newmar, in the late 1960s television series Batman. She excelled in the part, and her trademark growl became a part of pop culture.
In the late sixties, however, Kitt's career encountered a substantial setback after she made her anti-Vietnam war views explicit during a White House luncheon.
The CIA put together a dossier on her and she became professionally exiled from the US. She worked abroad for 11 years, where her reputation remained unscathed, but returned triumphantly to New York in 1974 to star in a Broadway spectacle of Timbuktu!
One-woman show
Kitt became a firm fixture on the Manhattan cabaret scene. Live theatre was always her passion and, in 2001, Broadway critics singled her out for praise for her role in The Wild Party.
More recently, she starred in US tours of The Wizard of Oz, and Cinderella, and appeared as the Fairy Godmother in The New York City Opera production.
Her distinctive voice and great versatility enthralled an entirely new generation of fans when she lent her services to the role of Yzma, the villain, in Disney's animated feature The Emperor's New Groove.
In 1994 she also was part of BBC Radio's adaptation of The Jungle Book, where her role as Kaa the python was performed with a ferocity and bite.
She visited England many times throughout her career, firstly in the early 1950s and, most recently, for Follies in 1988, which she followed with a one-woman show in March 1989.
Eartha Kitt will be remembered as a distinguished and charismatic performer who, up to her death, could boast she had worked in more than 100 countries.
Alongside her cabaret performances, her singing career and her roles in film and television, Kitt was also a prominent jazz singer to which the "sex kitten" in her voice seemed aptly suited.
She appeared at legendary venues, such as The Cafe Carlyle, Detroit's Music Hall and Seattle's Jazz Alley, where she became the epitome of chic. Her strong onscreen independence was mirrored off screen, since Kitt spent most of her life alone.
She was married briefly, from 1960 to 1965, from which a daughter, Kitt McDonald, was born in 1961. She became her mother's manager.
Up to the end of her life, Eartha Kitt was the national spokeswoman for Project On Growing, a programme which teaches homeless families to grow their own food and feed themselves.
Enjoy 'Santa Baby', video courtesy of YouTube
Sunday, December 21, 2008
The Tear Jerker
Kyu Sakamoto
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Obituaries of Note: Joza Karas
There is a lot we can all take from this obituary from the New York Times. Joza Karas recovered and preserved the beauty that was somehow created in a hell. We need to learn how to create, appreciate and preserve our humanity and our memories.
December 3, 2008
Joza Karas, Who Recovered Music From Concentration Camp, Dies at 82
By DOUGLAS MARTIN
Joza Karas, a musician and teacher who became a sleuth in his quarter-century-long search for the music and stories of composers who managed to do masterly work in a Nazi concentration camp, died on Friday in Bloomfield, Conn. He was 82.
His family announced the death.
In 1985, Mr. Karas (whose first name is pronounced YO-zha), published “Music in Terezin, 1941-1945.” The book chronicled the thriving musical life in the disease-ridden and notoriously lethal concentration camp at Terezin, in what is now the Czech Republic. The camp was also known by its German name, Theresienstadt.
Mr. Karas collected more than 50 pieces of the music written there and produced editions that have been widely performed.
In films and by other means, the Nazis made propaganda use of the four concert orchestras and as many chamber groups that flourished at Terezin. An opera company mounted several full-scale productions. A jazz band was called the Ghetto Swingers.
In a legendary deception, when the International Red Cross went to inspect the camp in 1944, the Nazis sent the old and sick to gas chambers, painted buildings, planted flowers and even opened a well-stocked chocolate shop. A film of this fake environment received global notice, becoming known by its informal title, “The Führer Gives a Village to the Jews.”
Flower pots obscured the feet of musicians who had no shoes.
In truth, Terezin was a place where 140,000 people, mainly Jews, were held in a labor camp or transferred to death camps like Auschwitz. Many died at Terezin through execution, disease and starvation. About 60,000 people were crammed into an area meant for 7,000.
But the music was real, developing spontaneously after a pianist found and repaired a piano abandoned in the town. Soon there were several choruses. Inmates smuggled in instruments in pieces.
Joza Karas, Who Recovered Music From Concentration Camp, Dies at 82
By DOUGLAS MARTIN
Joza Karas, a musician and teacher who became a sleuth in his quarter-century-long search for the music and stories of composers who managed to do masterly work in a Nazi concentration camp, died on Friday in Bloomfield, Conn. He was 82.
His family announced the death.
In 1985, Mr. Karas (whose first name is pronounced YO-zha), published “Music in Terezin, 1941-1945.” The book chronicled the thriving musical life in the disease-ridden and notoriously lethal concentration camp at Terezin, in what is now the Czech Republic. The camp was also known by its German name, Theresienstadt.
Mr. Karas collected more than 50 pieces of the music written there and produced editions that have been widely performed.
In films and by other means, the Nazis made propaganda use of the four concert orchestras and as many chamber groups that flourished at Terezin. An opera company mounted several full-scale productions. A jazz band was called the Ghetto Swingers.
In a legendary deception, when the International Red Cross went to inspect the camp in 1944, the Nazis sent the old and sick to gas chambers, painted buildings, planted flowers and even opened a well-stocked chocolate shop. A film of this fake environment received global notice, becoming known by its informal title, “The Führer Gives a Village to the Jews.”
Flower pots obscured the feet of musicians who had no shoes.
In truth, Terezin was a place where 140,000 people, mainly Jews, were held in a labor camp or transferred to death camps like Auschwitz. Many died at Terezin through execution, disease and starvation. About 60,000 people were crammed into an area meant for 7,000.
But the music was real, developing spontaneously after a pianist found and repaired a piano abandoned in the town. Soon there were several choruses. Inmates smuggled in instruments in pieces.
http://claudet.club.fr/Terezin/MyKrasa.htmlEventually, more than 10 composer-inmates created original works, many of which were performed in the camp. One such composer was Viktor Ullmann, who had studied with Arnold Schoenberg. He formed the Studio for New Music at Terezin. Others were Hans Krasa, Gideon Klein and Pavel Haas.
Despite propagandizing the music, the Nazis had no interest in preserving it, and the composers and musicians could not: many of them were killed. Tracking it down became Mr. Karas’s obsession.
“Why should I, a Christian, get involved in a research project virtually untouched for 25 years, since the last puff of smoke had darkened the skies of Auschwitz?” he wrote in his book. “Putting aside these questions, I felt attracted to the project because I am a Czech musician, and this was a subject dealing with the music of Czechoslovak Jews.”
Josef M. Karas was born in Warsaw on May 3, 1926, and learned to play the violin when he was very young. His father, Frantisek, was a government official, a professor of Polish and an author who wrote about Czech customs; he also helped Jews as part of the World War II underground.
As a boy, Joza noticed that his Jewish classmates had stopped coming to school with no explanation. He saw signs warning people away from Jewish-owned stores. Jews began to wear the yellow Star of David.
In 1948 Mr. Karas escaped the country, which by then was under Communist rule, and made his way to the United States by way of Colombia and Canada. In 1955 he began more than a half-century of teaching the violin at the Hartt School of Music at the University of Hartford and of playing the instrument in the Hartford Symphony.
In 1970 Mr. Karas read three small articles in a Czech music magazine reporting that eight short compositions and fragments of music from Terezin had been deposited in the Jewish State Museum in Prague. Investigating this seemed a perfect project for summer break.
On his first trip to Prague, he made several major finds. One was the piano reduction and orchestral version (for 13 instruments) of Hans Krasa’s children’s opera “Brundibar.” It had been the most popular musical production in the camp, presented 55 times from September 1943 to October 1944.
Mr. Karas made a performing edition of the opera, which is about a brother and sister whose efforts to buy milk for their sick mother are thwarted by an evil organ grinder. (The Nazi guards apparently never grasped the metaphor.)
He conducted the North American premiere of the opera in Czech in 1975 and the English language premiere in 1977, using a translation by him and his wife, the former Milada Javora, who had died in 1974.
In 1993 Channel Classics recorded his version as part of its “Composers From Theresienstadt” series. Mr. Karas conducted.
Mr. Karas is survived by his second wife, the former Anne Killackey; his sons, Francis, Henry, Michael, Joseph and Alexander; his daughter, Joan K. Carrasquillo; his brothers, Zdenek and Frantisek; his sister, Jana Spacek; and seven grandchildren.
“When I started my research, I used to have nightmares,” Mr. Karas told The Hartford Courant. “And guilt. I’d pick up a piece of chocolate and I couldn’t eat it.”
He recovered. “They say Czechs get used to anything,” he said. “Even the gallows.”-from the New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/03/arts/music/03karas.html
Despite propagandizing the music, the Nazis had no interest in preserving it, and the composers and musicians could not: many of them were killed. Tracking it down became Mr. Karas’s obsession.
“Why should I, a Christian, get involved in a research project virtually untouched for 25 years, since the last puff of smoke had darkened the skies of Auschwitz?” he wrote in his book. “Putting aside these questions, I felt attracted to the project because I am a Czech musician, and this was a subject dealing with the music of Czechoslovak Jews.”
Josef M. Karas was born in Warsaw on May 3, 1926, and learned to play the violin when he was very young. His father, Frantisek, was a government official, a professor of Polish and an author who wrote about Czech customs; he also helped Jews as part of the World War II underground.
As a boy, Joza noticed that his Jewish classmates had stopped coming to school with no explanation. He saw signs warning people away from Jewish-owned stores. Jews began to wear the yellow Star of David.
In 1948 Mr. Karas escaped the country, which by then was under Communist rule, and made his way to the United States by way of Colombia and Canada. In 1955 he began more than a half-century of teaching the violin at the Hartt School of Music at the University of Hartford and of playing the instrument in the Hartford Symphony.
In 1970 Mr. Karas read three small articles in a Czech music magazine reporting that eight short compositions and fragments of music from Terezin had been deposited in the Jewish State Museum in Prague. Investigating this seemed a perfect project for summer break.
On his first trip to Prague, he made several major finds. One was the piano reduction and orchestral version (for 13 instruments) of Hans Krasa’s children’s opera “Brundibar.” It had been the most popular musical production in the camp, presented 55 times from September 1943 to October 1944.
Mr. Karas made a performing edition of the opera, which is about a brother and sister whose efforts to buy milk for their sick mother are thwarted by an evil organ grinder. (The Nazi guards apparently never grasped the metaphor.)
He conducted the North American premiere of the opera in Czech in 1975 and the English language premiere in 1977, using a translation by him and his wife, the former Milada Javora, who had died in 1974.
In 1993 Channel Classics recorded his version as part of its “Composers From Theresienstadt” series. Mr. Karas conducted.
Mr. Karas is survived by his second wife, the former Anne Killackey; his sons, Francis, Henry, Michael, Joseph and Alexander; his daughter, Joan K. Carrasquillo; his brothers, Zdenek and Frantisek; his sister, Jana Spacek; and seven grandchildren.
“When I started my research, I used to have nightmares,” Mr. Karas told The Hartford Courant. “And guilt. I’d pick up a piece of chocolate and I couldn’t eat it.”
He recovered. “They say Czechs get used to anything,” he said. “Even the gallows.”-from the New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/03/arts/music/03karas.html
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Contact Me
- Patrick McNally
- Funeral service faces a crisis of relevance, and I am passionate about keeping the best traditions of service alive while adapting to the changing needs of families. Feel free to contact me with questions, or to share your thoughts on funeral service, ritual, and memorialization. dailyundertaker@gmail.com