Cuarón, Roma (trailer), Pink Floyd

This is a beautiful film, gorgeously photographed in black & white, casual and breathtaking at the same time, impeccably choreographed, alive with the mystery that is life.  Yeah, I really liked it.  Best to see it on the big screen.  This trailer just appeared to remind me of the films transcendent greatness.  The Pink Floyd music (not used in the actual film) really sells it.

Igor Stravinsky – The Rite of Spring (just the music)

19630000d DLB 8th gradeNostalgia department:  in 1963, my Mother & Step-Father took me to the Dayton (Ohio) Philharmonic Orchestra (on a school night!), my first experience with live classical music.  I distinctly remember the part where the musicians “tuned up” their instruments, thinking that was part of the work which was subsequently performed:  Igor Stravinsky’s  Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring).  It was to be my introduction to “classical” music and it was memorable.  Of course, I knew nothing of its history, that it was a riot causing sensation when it premiered (as a ballet) 50 years before in Paris, that it was to become one of the most monumental and influential musical works of the 20th Century, I just thought all classical music must be AWESOME!  Two takes on the work:

Leonard Bernstein & the New York Philharmonic Orchestra (probably from the 1960s), a treat to watch Bernstein conduct:

And, interestingly, Stravinsky wrote a version for piano (2 performers, 4 hands, 1 piano) which was published about a year before the Orchestral/Ballet version (one can only imagine what it was like to hear Stravinsky and Claude Debussy performing it to an unsuspecting audience in 1912).  Here is a stunning performance by Dutch Brothers Lucas & Arthur Jussen: