The organ

[AdamSmith]

Gilligan's Island!!! You crack me up Mr Smith!

Some of the funniest comedy ever written! I first learned to write (and speak! ) from these genius screenwriters.

 

Along with of course those of the B. Hillbillies!

 

They were brilliant technicians, who taught me everything.

 

Alongside of course the Irwin Allen universe.

[AdamSmith]

And too of course...!

 

[whipped guy]

Yes, the Beverly Hillbillies! Real mountain folk...

 

[whipped guy]

Gladys Kravits!!!!

 

 

[AdamSmith]

Gladys Kravits!!!!

 

 

LMMFAO!!!

 

Growing up in the 1960s and '70s as I did was like being on LSD the whole time! Without even knowing!

 

My generation had no idea how lucky it was!

[whipped guy]

LMMFAO!!!

 

Growing up in the 1960s and '70s as I did was like being on LSD the whole time! Without even knowing!

 

My generation had no idea how lucky it was!

Exactly... and I think it is the reason that I watch very little TV today. Back then there were only a handful of stations and there were so many excellent choices. High standards and especially regarding comedy! Today there are hundreds of channels.... well to get the one or two that I watch regularly one needs to get the "package"... and it is impossible to find anything decent to watch! Stupid reality TV... and even the Food Network offers silly programing with contests where one has to make a meal with can of sardines and a can of garbanzo beans as the main ingredients. So ironic!

 

Last year my local Comcast stopped offering the YES network... baseball... and I was like a lost puppy. I hardly turned the TV on, but I did catch up on other things. Fortunately they made a deal this season and its back on. So Jeopardy, baseball, the odd episode of Judge Judy when I think of it... she's such a bitch that I love her... that's about it... Forget the news!

[AdamSmith]

Forget the news!

Easy enough to do! There no longer is any.

 

Except for Jim Lehrer (and certainly a small handful of others). But once the sly, impish MacNeil left, the show could become a bit leaden & somnolent.

 

[AdamSmith]

What Chapuis gives us here (a repost but sublimely worthy):

 

Just rewatching this, reminded of some of the funny practical things why performers on very old instruments have to study the machine for a bit of time before performance, to learn its oddities. The trackers and stickers for instance on different keyboard and pedal keys may have warped from age in different, entirely random, directions, just due to the nature of the wood used. (Or when a mouse dropping fell into the slot! But that thing Really Does Happen, quite often!) So the time-behavior of when each key or pedal strike makes a pipe rank speak may be unpredictably different.

 

And in like manner, differing pipe ranks and likewise individual pipes themselves may have undergone purely physical change over time, like the toe opening narrowing just randomly from effect of gravity pulling the tin-lead pipe down into the soundboard hole over centuries.

 

All thus giving, over decades and centuries, mechanical-action organs each their own distinct personality, which the performer is obligated not only to manage, but to EXPLORE, in the day of rehearsal required before performance. And exploit in the service of art.

 

The great organ composers knew all this, and wrote it into the flexibilities of their works!

[AdamSmith]

Repeating myself.

 

[AdamSmith]

(Re)-repeating again. For no particular reason, just because.

Vulnavia!

[TruHart1]

A new pilot program, (Imagine L'Elisir d'amore staged in an Italian airport!) with the great tenor Vittorio Grigolo!

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=1486776974747460

 

TruHart1

[AdamSmith]

Month late and a repost at that. But can never have too much of this!

 

BTW!!! I am pretty sure (too lazy to look it up, just going on the sound) that this performance is on the recently restored Aeolian organ. Embedded, mostly, in stone chambers at the front of the crossing of Duke Chapel. With a few, mainly decorative, publicly presented ranks. [Contrast with the visual presentation of the Flentrop gallery instrument's pipe ranks is most instructive.]

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolian_Company

 

Fenner wanted to rip out & throw away this absolutely most glorious production of the Aeolian Co.! He and his fellow tracker-action purists had, themselves, their own demons & blind spots!

 

I crawled through it, under Fenner's guidance, in 1979, and agreed with him at the time.

 

Thank ye Gods that appreciation has since dawned of the glory of the early electropneumatic instruments.

Before the 'eclectic' movement took hold.

[AdamSmith]

Harold Hecuba!!!

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3R2djy6RnaU

[whipped guy]

A new pilot program, (Imagine L'Elisir d'amore staged in an Italian airport!) with the great tenor Vittorio Grigolo!

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=1486776974747460

 

TruHart1

Well Vittorio Grigolo is always looking for ways to push the operatic envelope and certainly does so here. I guess in this version Nemorino joined the Italian airforce as opposed to the army hence his uniform with wings? Or was he recruited as an Alitalia co-pilot... not sure, but obviously the woman climbing up those stairs is his beloved Adina and my guess is that he never gets on the plane. Sargent Belcore... though in this version he is an airforce or is that Alitalia captain... again not sure... is stunned to find out that Adina is not going to marry him (nobody marries the baritone in opera so what the heck was he thinking!) but rather the tenor! Dr. Dulcamara enters and says that it is all due to the magic elixir that he is selling in his cafe that is between the airport duty free shop and the Mrs. Field's Cookie counter... an elixir that will not only make you rich, but get you the girl or guy of your dreams! All ends happily! As the curtain falls the cash register at Dulcamara's is ringing up record sales!

[+ WilliamM]

(Re)-repeating again. For no particular reason, just because.

 

There is a good reason: Judy Garland died on June 22, 1969, 48 years ago today.

 

Easy for me to remember because it was the day I arrived in Oakland from Vietnam after spending a year in the Army there. The day after Garland's death, I visited the University of California Berkeley.

[+ WilliamM]

Forget the news!

 

There are wonderful news-related programs on C-Span, especially on the weekend. I also like many of the documentaries on HBO. My parents bought a TV just before I started first grade in 1949. It was the first time I saw Pres. Truman broadcast live, quite a difference from the radio.

[AdamSmith]

BTW!!! I am pretty sure (too lazy to look it up, just going on the sound) that this performance is on the recently restored Aeolian organ. Embedded, mostly, in stone chambers at the front of the crossing of Duke Chapel. With a few, mainly decorative, publicly presented ranks. [Contrast with the visual presentation of the Flentrop gallery instrument's pipe ranks is most instructive.]

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolian_Company

 

Fenner wanted to rip out & throw away this absolutely most glorious production of the Aeolian Co.! He and his fellow tracker-action purists had, themselves, their own demons & blind spots!

 

I crawled through it, under Fenner's guidance, in 1979, and agreed with him at the time.

 

Thank ye Gods that appreciation has since dawned of the glory of the early electropneumatic instruments.

Before the 'eclectic' movement took hold.

Glancing over the stoplists, def the Aeolian.

[AdamSmith]

[AdamSmith]

Whole story of the glorious Duke Aeolian's origins, recovery & restoration...

 

https://chapel.duke.edu/sites/default/files/Aeolian_rededication.pdf

[+ WilliamM]

I keep in touch with several of the students I have met auditing courses at nearby Penn. One student was accepted recently at Duke Law School. So I should be following this thread more closely.

 

Perhaps more interesting, one recent graduate is the star of a Disney series about "football" broadcast only in South America. When I knew him at Penn, he was watching many Hitchcock films, especially "Rear Window" and "Vertigo." Somehow he mentioned living on Roxbury Drive in Beverly Hills. He was surprised when I told him Jimmy Stewart (and Lucille Ball) once lived on the same street.

[+ g56whiz]

Sargent Belcore... though in this version he is an airforce or is that Alitalia captain... again not sure... is stunned to find out that Adina is not going to marry him (nobody marries the baritone in opera so what the heck was he thinking!) but rather the tenor!

 

LMAO.

 

So true!! I always regreted being a baritone until I came to terms with my sexuality and realized that the baritone roles were more interesting.

[whipped guy]

LMAO.

 

So true!! I always regreted being a baritone until I came to terms with my sexuality and realized that the baritone roles were more interesting.

Always the bride's maid and never the bride... or rather always the dastardly villain and not the groom!

[TruHart1]

LMAO.

 

So true!! I always regreted being a baritone until I came to terms with my sexuality and realized that the baritone roles were more interesting.

That's exactly why there are so many "barihunks" in the world of opera. The baritone roles are always portraying either villain (in drama) or the also ran boyfriend, constantly losing the soprano's love to the (who cares what he looks like as long as his high notes are gorgeous) tenor! I guess many of the younger generation of baritones spend more time in the gym than their tenor rivals!!! LOL

 

TruHart1

[whipped guy]

That's exactly why there are so many "barihunks" in the world of opera. The baritone roles are always portraying either villain (in drama) or the also ran boyfriend, constantly losing the soprano's love to the (who cares what he looks like as long as his high notes are gorgeous) tenor! I guess many of the younger generation of baritones spend more time in the gym than their tenor rivals!!! LOL

TruHart1

And all this time I thought that @TruHart1 liked opera for the singing... now I discover it's a sexual thing...

 

 

 

 

I would bet that he even has a Barihunk In Bed Calendar collection!

 

[AdamSmith]

Gilligan's Island!!! You crack me up Mr Smith!