In which someone notices I’m a man
kjhvm April 29th, 2008
Yesterday morning, Ariela and I were up at the crack of, no, actually we were up before dawn, racing down to WORT 89.9 fm in downtown Madison for a show of Other Voices. From 5-8 AM Ariela was playing some classical music performed by and/or conducted by women. This was, after all, a show intended to highlight the contributions of women to classical music.
You can listen to the show online here at this link, but it is not available to be downloaded as an mp3. (This will be available from now through May 4th 2008 - on May 5th next week’s show will record over it)
For the first hour and forty-five minutes, Ariela went solo, playing music performed by women, and its good stuff if you want to listen to it. At the 105 minute mark (you can skip ahead if you want to), Ariela cut the music that was playing to introduce the next topic: Holst’s The Planets, and some of its influence on science fiction film music. Let me tell you a little about its genesis, and what happened off the air during the show.
First of all, I’ve got a huge SciFi soundtrack collection “unthinkable” was the word Ariela used to describe it on the air. Basically, I have enough full soundtracks that I could play one per week on my show and never play from the same album for over a year. I have a couple dozen other soundtracks that are incomplete. There are a lot more tracks to get out there, but I think you get the idea.
As a consequence of playing and listening to all of these soundtracks, I have come to notice quite a few patterns in the genre, and pick out some major influences. (Also, I might add, I’ve found places where some big-name composers have been cheap and re-used the same themes in later pieces. Even John Williams.) Two of the biggest influences are The Day the Earth Stood Still, and The Planets.
Before we left Davis, Ariela and I put together a combo show on her show, Ariela’s Appassionata, to play Gustav Holst’s The Planets, and connect it to science fiction music. We did pretty well, although we didn’t get to all the pieces because her show was only an hour long.
Here in Madison, Ariela got on Other Voices a few months ago, and started the challenging process of searching for classical music that heavily involves women. She’s played Hildegard von Bingen, Nixon in China (libretto was written by a woman), and more. She’s gotten a lot of complimentary calls from listeners, and only one complaint…
Read the rest at The Inoculated Mind, where comments may be left.
