Tumbling Villa-Lobos RSS

A Villa-Lobos tumblelog, from the guy who brought you the Villa-Lobos Website and the Villa-Lobos Magazine. Focus, Dean, focus! Traduzir para Português

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Jul
17th
Thu
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Timbrando is the new CD from the Meridian Arts Ensemble, five brass players & one percussionist, who hail from New York. Featuring all sorts of interesting music from Brazil, the disc includes an arrangement of BB#5 that sounds intriguing: as member Daniel Grabois says in the notes to the new Channel Classics disc, “The solo soprano line is taken in the Meridian version by the horn and marimba playing in unison.” Though the disc isn’t available on Amazon.com yet, you can pre-order it here. If you happen to be in Austin for the Chamber Music Festival right now, you can hear the group live on Friday night, July 18th, at 7:30 p.m. They’ll be playing this really interesting repertoire.

Timbrando is the new CD from the Meridian Arts Ensemble, five brass players & one percussionist, who hail from New York.

Featuring all sorts of interesting music from Brazil, the disc includes an arrangement of BB#5 that sounds intriguing: as member Daniel Grabois says in the notes to the new Channel Classics disc, “The solo soprano line is taken in the Meridian version by the horn and marimba playing in unison.”

Though the disc isn’t available on Amazon.com yet, you can pre-order it here.

If you happen to be in Austin for the Chamber Music Festival right now, you can hear the group live on Friday night, July 18th, at 7:30 p.m. They’ll be playing this really interesting repertoire.

Jul
14th
Mon
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The Araponga, a Brazilian bird with a distinctive call. Villa-Lobos quoted this in his Bachianas Brasileiras #4. Telling this to Nicholas Slonimsky during his visit to Rio in the early 40s, he sent his visitor off to a bird shop to verify the story. But there were no Arapongas to be found: “I returned to the government office of music education in Rio de Janeiro, where Villa-Lobos served as director, and I reported to him my failure to find an araponga. He called in one of his assistants and asked him, ‘What is the high note that the araponga sings?’ ‘Si bemol!’ the other answered with assurance. ‘Vous voyez?’ Villa-Lobos said to me. The more evidence he produced, the less I believed it; I even harbored the sneaking suspicion that the whole scene had been carefully rehearsed for my benefit.”Perfect Pitch: An Autobiography, p. 156 Got perfect pitch? Listen for yourself.

The Araponga, a Brazilian bird with a distinctive call. Villa-Lobos quoted this in his Bachianas Brasileiras #4. Telling this to Nicholas Slonimsky during his visit to Rio in the early 40s, he sent his visitor off to a bird shop to verify the story. But there were no Arapongas to be found:

“I returned to the government office of music education in Rio de Janeiro, where Villa-Lobos served as director, and I reported to him my failure to find an araponga. He called in one of his assistants and asked him, ‘What is the high note that the araponga sings?’ ‘Si bemol!’ the other answered with assurance. ‘Vous voyez?’ Villa-Lobos said to me. The more evidence he produced, the less I believed it; I even harbored the sneaking suspicion that the whole scene had been carefully rehearsed for my benefit.”

Perfect Pitch: An Autobiography, p. 156

Got perfect pitch? Listen for yourself.

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Claudio Lara's Teatro Municipal on Flickr 2009 is the 50th anniversary of Villa’s death. It’s also the Centennial of this great building, the site of so many important Villa-Lobos concerts. Great picture by Claudio Lara on Flickr.com.  Nice that Lara has linked to a couple of Villa-Lobos tunes.
Jul
12th
Sat
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Heitor Villa-Lobos is considered one of the greatest writers for the acoustic guitar. His ability to conjure up a twilight stillness which glows through slow cascades of guitar ambience is one of the finest achievements of twentieth-century music.
—

Mark Prendergast, The Ambient Century: From Mahler to Moby - The evolution of sound in the electronic age, Bloomsbury USA, 2003, p. 19.

Prendergast’s book is enlightening (and I enjoyed Brian Eno’s introduction).

Jul
11th
Fri
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Villa-Lobos’s office is a madhouse - he is managing a division of education or something, and I have a suspicion that he lacks administrative talents….
— Nicholas Slonimsky, in a letter from Rio de Janeiro, August 30, 1941.  From his autobiography Perfect Pitch, p. 254.
Jul
9th
Wed
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Yara de Mello’s jazzy version of Melodia Sentimental from Forest of the Amazon.
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I have written a great deal of music. Some of it is bad, but some of it is very good.
— Villa-Lobos as quoted by Olin Downes in his review of the first performance of the orchestral version of Rudepoema, performed by Koussevitsky and the Boston Symphony at Carnegie Hall.  NY Times, March 15, 1945, p. 47.
Jul
8th
Tue
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Cool poster for an upcoming concert for voice & guitar, in Criciúma SC, Brazil.
Cool poster for an upcoming concert for voice & guitar, in Criciúma SC, Brazil.
Jul
7th
Mon
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Lou Harrison, when he lived in that walk-up on Bleecker, was the first to play me Bidu Sayao’s record of the Villa-Lobos. Who wrote the text of the central section? Over and over, until it cracked, we played the final measures of that section, to pin down the harmony.
— Ned Rorem, Lies: A Diary 1986-1999, p. 182.  Nov. 20, 1989, Da Capo, 2002.  By the way, the author of the text was Ruth Valladares Corrêa.
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Villa-Lobos conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra.  The first performances of the 8th Symphony and the Harp Concerto were with the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1955.
Villa-Lobos conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra.  The first performances of the 8th Symphony and the Harp Concerto were with the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1955.
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Lend faith to those who trust that the day will come when music becomes the Sonorous Flag of Universal Peace.
—

Villa’s “Invocation to St. Cecilia,” read on a 1939 radio broadcast.

From Michael L. Mark’s Music Education: Source Readings from Ancient Greece to Today, Routledge, 2002, p. 1

Jul
2nd
Wed
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Philharmonica - the new Pro Musica Disc (PPC9050) with Sigmund Groven, harmonica. Great to have another recording of the great Villa-Lobos Harmonica Concerto. You can buy the MP3s at this interesting Norwegian music site.

Philharmonica - the new Pro Musica Disc (PPC9050) with Sigmund Groven, harmonica. Great to have another recording of the great Villa-Lobos Harmonica Concerto.

You can buy the MP3s at this interesting Norwegian music site.

Jun
25th
Wed
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The amazing Quinteto Villa-Lobos plays the Little Train of the Caipira movement from Bachianas Brasileiras #2. This is really fun!
Jun
17th
Tue
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[The music of Villa-Lobos] …impressed the young Messiaen who later described Villa-Lobos as ‘a very great orchestrator.’ Beyond that, Paul Griffiths has pointed out that ‘the fast movements of Messiaen’s early works for orchestra, up to and even including the Turangalila-symphonie, taste the same frenzy and vividness’.
— The Harlequin Years: Music in Paris, 1917-1929, Roger Nichols, University of California Press, 2003, p. 257.
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Ellen Ballon, the Canadian pianist who commissioned Villa’s first piano concerto.
Ellen Ballon, the Canadian pianist who commissioned Villa’s first piano concerto.