Music Magg

by MARK GABRISH CONLAN Copyright © 2019 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved I watched the 61 st annual Grammy Awards two nights ago, a musical spectacular I make a point of watching every year, and there had been the usual controversies swirling around it even before it happened. Some major artists who were invited to perform, including Ariana Grande and Kendrick Lamar (though I regard Kendrick Lamar’s “music” as total shit, even more obnoxious than the common run of most rap, and especially annoying in that his records are so overproduced you can’t even make out what he’s saying — and one would think in rap, which has embraced only words and rhythm and thrown out melody, harmony and all the other traditional aspects of music, the sine qua non would be that at least you should be able to hear the words!), declined. That meant I didn’t have to endure either one of Lamar’s repulsive production numbers in the show itself or the reviewers afterwards inexplicably hailin...

by MARK GABRISH CONLAN Copyright © 2019 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved Two nights ago my husband Charles and I watched something special on TV: a tribute concert to Hector Berlioz broadcast from the Paris Philharmonie last January 11 with the following program: Benvenuto Cellini (Ouverture) Beatrice et Bénédict (Ouverture) Le Carnaval romain (Ouverture) Roméo et Juliette: Roméo seul - Grande fête chez les Capulets Harold en Italie Encore: La Damnation de Faust – Hungarian March Tabea Zimmermann, Alto Les Siècles Dir.: François-Xavier Roth I had seen this performance available on a download but found I couldn’t open the video file on my computer, nor could I burn it to a DVD — but I could copy it onto a flash drive and play it on the TV from that. Berlioz is one of my favorite composers, partly due to his sheer Romanticism and also due to his quirkiness. He’s the one French composer of the 19 th century whose music stacks up at the same le...