SUMMARY: Loretta Lynn's six decades of boundary-breaking country music and a 1980 film adaptation of her life, "Coal Miner's Daughter," took her from Kentucky poverty to American legend. But in all those years, she says she never had a birthday party...until now. In early April, country superstars and 12,000 fans came together to celebrate her life and musical legacy in Nashville. Jeffrey Brown reports.
SUMMARY:This week marks 100 years since the birth of Nelson Mandela, who led a struggle against apartheid and brought his country to a new democratic future, while setting a political and moral example recognized around the globe. Now a new book that offers insight into Mandela's remarkable story through his own words. Jeffrey Brown takes a closer look with special correspondent Charlayne Hunter-Gault.
SUMMARY: Composer Camille Saint-Saëns would have celebrated his 181st birthday on Sunday. During his lifetime, he was one of the world's most famous composers. Today he is best known for his “Carnival of the Animals,” a legacy he would have found hard to swallow; Saint-Saëns wrote the pieces as a joke for a Mardi Gras party. Composer and musician Rob Kapilow joins Jeffrey Brown to discuss.
JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour): Rob Kapilow, welcome.
ROB KAPILOW, Composer: Thanks for having me.
JEFFREY BROWN: So, today, we're marking the birthday of Camille Saint-Saëns. This is a story of a great composer who didn't quite get the legacy that he wanted.
ROB KAPILOW: During his lifetime, I mean, he was a famous composer, one of the most famous composers in the world, writing serious operas, serious symphonies.
JEFFREY BROWN: Tell us a little bit about him, for those who don't know.
ROB KAPILOW: Well, you know, he was also one of the world's greatest musical prodigies. In fact, many people think he was even more of a prodigy than Mozart or Mendelssohn.
He started piano at two-and-a-half. He wrote his first piece at four-and-a-half, made a public debut at 10, in which not only did he play two concertos and write his own cadenza, but, for an encore, he offered to play any Beethoven sonata from memory that the audience wanted. That's 32 sonatas at the age of 10, one of the great musical proteges, utterly famous, yet then, for a joke, he writes this piece that literally became his legacy.
JEFFREY BROWN: So, “Carnival of the Animals,” written for a friend, becomes this famous piece. Tell us about it.
ROB KAPILOW: Yes, it was a little party piece, and, in it, he took 14 animals in this grand zoological fantasy, is what he called it.
And each movement turns an animal somehow into music. And the simplest way is to take the sound of the actual animal, and, in the first movement, that's what happens. A lion's roar is turned into music.
But, sometimes, for example, in “Hemiones,” which is a wild Tibetan donkey famous for running at blinding speed up and down rough mountains, he turns the idea of the animal into music, and turns that into two pianists running up and down the keyboard at blinding speed in unison.
I am Retired U.S. Navy (22yrs) and a Vietnam Veteran. After my Navy retirement I was in the computer related industry, now retired. In 2000 I was a registered Republican and voted for George W. Bush. Six months of having Bush in the Whitehouse forced me to re-evaluate my political stance. I had always thought of myself as a Moderate Republican, but was a Republican by "default" NOT because of close examination of the GOP. Due to what has happened in America since 2000, I now consider myself a progressive, and registered as a Non-Affiliated voter.
*Anti-First Amendment policies that attempt to turn America into a theocracy by enshrining ANY religious belief as law.
* Any attempt to suppress human or Constitutional rights.
* Any law or policy that supports discrimination based on religion, ethnicity, race/color, gender, sexual orientation, or any law that does NOT support Equal Treatment under the law.
*Any law or policy that attempts to suppress Freedom of the Press or Free Speech.
LINK DISCLAIMER:
There is no guarantee that any link provided in this blog will always work, especially for older links. The validity of any link is governed by the source-site policies. Some sites will archive articles and require subscription to access. Very small sites, such as a local town newspaper, may not archive at all.
