Westport Public Library MOVIE & MUSIC Blog

The recent issue of my college alumni magazine contains a lengthy article about the Syracuse International Film Festival which will have its 5th anniversary next year. Syracuse University is among the ever growing list of film festivals sponsors, and not alone among the many foreign film festivals and series available to enjoy.

The Westport Public Library offers you a chance to hold a private international film festival right in your living room. Our collection of films from many countries continues to grow. Patrons have told us that foreign films hold a special appeal. In particular, several have noted that these films have a charm or sweet innocence often lacking in modern American films. Other people enjoy the opportunity to learn more about a country’s culture through film or refresh their language skills by avoiding the subtitles and just listening to the flow of the language.

There are lots of new films to choose from. Not sure which to choose? Staff recommends three recenlty acquired movies.

Sallah starring Topol in Hebrew with English subtitles: Originally released in 1964 this classic satire is the most successful film in Israeli history and follows the saga of a new immigrant.

La Moustache is a French drama featuring Cincent Lindon and Emmanuelle Devos. Why doesn’t anyone notice when a man shaves off his trademark moustache? Is it a conspiracy?

Casi Casi is a light hearted coming of age Puerto Rican film which many critics compare to a more innocent version of the classic teen comedy Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Share it with a teen in your life. The film is in Spanish with English subtitles.

Please feel free to recommend a foreign movie to the Westport Library staff. Many of our purchases are by customer recommendation.

On Wednesday, August 29, 2007, Fairfield County is in for a gigantic treat with the appearance of the great American pianist, composer, and jazz leader, Herbie Hancock at the Ridgefield Playhouse. Hancock's ability to navigate various musical genres and experiment with traditional boundaries of composition and performance has made him a unique figure in 20th and 21st century music. He not only has an enormous jazz catalog but is an accomplished composer of movie and television soundtracks including Blowup, Death Wish, A Soldier's Story, 'Round Midnight, Colors, Charlie's Angels, Comedian, Are We Done Yet? etc.

Born in Chicago on April 12, 1940, he was a piano prodigy who performed the first movement of Mozart's Piano Concerto in D major with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at the age of eleven. He attended Grinnell College where he had a dual major of music and electrical engineering. By this time, his classical music interests included jazz, as he played with the saxophone player Coleman Hawkins and trumpet player Donald Byrd in Chicago's clubs. He moved to New York with the Byrd quintet where he made his first album as a leader under the Blue Note label. This album, Takin’ off, demonstrated his funky blues style in the pieces "Driftin" and "Watermelon Man".

He played piano, electric piano, and organ with the Miles Davis quintet and performed on Davis' seminal albums, In a Silent Way, Bitches Brew, and A Tribute to Jack Johnson. During this time, he composed the notable jazz pieces "Maiden Voyage" and "Dolphin Dance". He utilized his engineering skills with the adoption of musical synthesizers on the album Headhunters. His performances encompassed traditional, free, and acoustic jazz; he holds the distinction of joining jazz with electro funk fusion.

He is the recipient of Grammy Awards, MTV Video Awards, Gold Note Jazz Awards, French Award Officer of the Order of Arts & Letters, an Oscar, Playboy Music Poll Award, and NEA Jazz Masters Award.

The Library invites you to check out his Cantaloupe Island, The Herbie Hancock Box, Perfect Machine, and Possibilities.

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of English composer Edward Elgar. Anyone who has participated in an American or British high school or university graduation would recognize his processional Pomp and Circumstance with the famous trio section known as "Land of Hope and Glory". He was largely self-taught as he grew up with and experimented on the various musical instruments in his father's music shop in Worcester. This practical musical environment along with the culture and landscape of his own country inspired him to create a significant amount of symphonic literature.

At the age of 16, he officially became a freelance musician. His activities included organist of St. George's Roman Catholic Church, violinist with the Worcester Amateur Instrumental Society and the Worcester Philharmonic (1879), conductor of the Glee Club, bassoonist in a wind quintet, violin teacher, and coach and conductor of the staff at the County Lunatic Asylum at Powick. He played violin in the Three Choirs Festival which involved the townspeople as well as the Anglican cathedral choirs of Worcester. He still devoted an inordinate amount of time to composition.

Although he struggled for many years to gain recognition and respect for his work, fame eventually came with the masterful Variations on an Original Theme (‘Enigma’) in 1899. One of his greatest religious pieces was The Dream of Gerontius, based on John Henry Newman's English Catholic poem. His Symphony #1 of 1908 gave him the praise that he so desperately needed. His productivity continued with the 1910 Violin Concerto in B minor performed by the virtuoso Fritz Kreisler. His Symphony No. 2 of 1911, which was dedicated to the memory of King Edward VII, did not garner the same acclaim and accolades as its predecessor.

After World War I, he createe the Violin Sonata in E minor, the String Quartet in E minor, the Piano Quintet in A minor, and the glorious Cello Concerto in E minor. In 1932, he recorded his Violin Concerto with the 16-year-old wunderkind Yehudi Menuhin. Two years later he died of a malignant tumor.

For further information, the Library recommends Robert Anderson's Elgar.

Who can turn the world on with her smile? Who can take a nothing day, and suddenly make it all seem worthwhile? The answer: Mary Tyler Moore. The Library recently added the first four seasons of the show to our collection.

The show, in addition to being one of the highest-rated sitcoms in history, broke new ground in television. The Museum of Broadcast Communications writes:

As Mary Richards, a single woman in her thirties, Moore presented a character different from other single TV women of the time. She was not widowed or divorced or seeking a man to support her. Rather, the character had just emerged from a live-in situation with a man whom she had helped through medical school. He left her upon receiving his degree and she relocated to Minneapolis determined to "make it on her own." This now-common concept was rarely depicted on television in the early 1970s, despite some visible successes of the women's movement.

Growing up in Minneapolis, I was naturally a huge fan of the show. It seemed to always be on in syndication and I have fond memories of watching it with my mother nearly every day. In May of 2002, I was even present for the unveiling of the Mary Tyler Moore statue in downtown Minneapolis (erected on the very corner where Mary threw her hat up in the air during the show's theme song). Everybody in attendance received a beret. Mary Tyler Moore and Paul Williams, who performed the show's theme, were there to lead a crowd sing-along of "Love is All Around." Of course, at the end we all threw our hats in the air.

It is hard to believe that we are in the last throes of summer. As the calendar ticks away, children are getting ready for school. With just a few remaining days of fun and relaxation, here are some suggestions of music to ease the transition from vacation to work. These selections would delight both children and adults. Enjoy!

Bizet, Georges. Jeux d'enfants

Debussy, Claude. Children's Corner

Grieg Edvard. Peer Gynt

Humperdinck, Engelbert. Hansel und Gretel

Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus. 5 Variations on Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star

Mussorgsky, Modeste. Pictures at an Exhibition

Stravinsky, Igor. Rite of Spring

Saint-Saëns, Camille. Carnival of the Animals

I admit it; I always make sure to have a wad of tissues prior to entering a movie theatre. But you may have noticed unusually brisk sales of tissues lately. Entertainment Weekly recently released a list of their choices for the Top 50 Tearjerker movies. There were some hands down winners on the list such as Sophie’s Choice, Ghost, and Life is Beautiful and Tearms of Endearment. Zeffirelli’s Romeo & Juliet made the list as did its modern counterpart West Side Story.

And, contrary to what many men I know claim, it is not just women that enjoy a good cry at the movies. Here’s an interesting tidbit from the folks who bring you Kleenex®. According to the "Kleenex® For Men Crying Game Report" more men actually shed a tear over sad moments in film and TV (44%) than over the break up of a romance or relationship (39%). Peter Marsh, psychologist and co-author is quoted as noting, "Sad moments in films and TV act as 'triggers' that allow men to release 'stored up' emotions, connected with events or experiences in their own lives." The Westport Library collection offers some classics alike will surely offer a good cathartic bawl for gals and guys alike. Why not revisit the Field of Dreams or the Civil War with Glory or Brokeback Mountain or WWII with Saving Private Ryan.

What is your favorite tearjerker?

I was quite sad to learn of the passing of Max Roach, the innovative, virtuostic bebop drummer, who worked with the giants of the jazz scene including Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, etc.

According to the New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, bebop or bop represented a new, sharp direction from early jazz with abstruse rhythms, dissonant harmonies, and unforgiving, fearless technique. Roach was a major proponent of this music and was always looking to expand his boundaries. He not only performed with his own instrumental complement of trumpet, saxophone, bass, and drums as quartets and quintets, but added the Uptown String Quartet which included his daughter Maxine on viola. He formed a group of ten percussionists who performed on over a hundred percussion instruments encompassing Western orchestral, African, and Latin music.

He was politically involved with the civil rights movement and worked with the lyricist Oscar Brown Jr. on the album We Insist! Freedom Now Suite. He broadened his horizons and collaborated with choreographers, movie directors, playwrights, and video artists.

He was one of the first jazz musicians to procure a teaching position at a college in 1972. His experimental and superlative achievements were recognized by the MacArthur Foundation with his receipt of a genius grant.

The Library's recordings of his music include Brown and Roach Inc., More Study In Brown, and It's Time.

Today marks the 85th birthday of one of America's pre-eminent conductors and composers, Lukas Foss. Of German birth, his early musical education of piano, composition, and flute took place in Berlin and Paris. After moving to the United States with his family in 1937 to escape the Nazi regime, he attended the Curtis Institute where his teachers included Isabelle Vengerova, Rosario Scalero, and Fritz Reiner; his college summers were spent with conductor Sergei Koussevitzky at the Berkshire Music Center and with composer Paul Hindemith at Yale University.

Success came at the age of 22 when his cantata The Prairie, based on Carl Sandburg’s poem, won the New York Music Critics’ Circle Award. He served as pianist in the Boston Symphony Orchestra 1944 -1950, received a Guggenheim Fellowship for composition in 1945, a fellowship at the American Academy in Rome 1950–51, and won a Fulbright grant 1950-1952. On October 7, 1951, his second piano concerto was premiered in Venice with Foss as the soloist.

His numerous accomplishments include music director of the Ojai Festival, election to the National Institute of Arts and Letters, music director and conductor of the Buffalo Philharmonic, conductor of the Brooklyn Philharmonia, the Kol Israel Orchestra of Jerusalem, music director of the Milwaukee Symphony, and many appearances as guest conductor throughout the USA and Europe.

The Library has his Orchestral Works and his piano arrangement of Aaron Copland's Billy the Kid . His work as a conductor include Compassion: A Tribute to Sir Yehudi Menuhin, and The Complete Clarinet Music of Carl Maria von Weber.

A feast for the eyes will take place on Sunday night, August 12 at Westport's Rolnick Observatory. Viewers are invited to witness the Perseid meteor shower from 9:00 - 11:00 p.m.

As comets orbit the Sun, they shed an icy, dusty debris stream along its orbit. If the Earth moves through this stream, spectators are treated to a meteor shower. The comet Swift-Tuttle will be spraying its dust into the Earth's atmosphere at 132,000 miles per hour. Since there will be a new moon with extremely dark skies, visibility will be enhanced. Meteor showers derive their names from the constellation from which they appear to fall; thus, the Perseid meteor shower comes from the constellation Perseus.

To get into the mood for this event, you may want to listen to some "celestial" music. Selections from the Library's collection include Gustav Holst's The Planets, Aaron Jay Kernis' "Musica Celestis" from The Lark Quartet plays Aaron Jay Kernis, Meredith Monk's "Earth Seen From Above" and "Other Worlds Revealed" from Voices 1900/2000, and Richard Strauss' Also Sprach Zarathustra.

One of Westport's summer delights is the Levitt Pavilion where free, interesting concerts and shows are presented most summer nights. The opportunity to listen to music, see friends, gaze at the Saugatuck River, or enjoy a picnic dinner makes the Levitt a mandatory summer activity.

On Friday night, August 10, 2007, Kenny Loggins will perform at the summer gala, the major fundraising event for the Levitt Pavilion. This gifted singer-songwriter and guitarist, who successfully conveys the essence and spirit of his music, has been in the public eye for over thirty years. He not only has twelve platinum albums but has had hit songs throughout the decades. He is fondly remembered as half of the 1970's duo Loggins and Messina. With his long-time friend Michael McDonald of the Doobie Brothers, he shared the 1979 Grammy award for Song of The Year “What A Fool Believes”; in 1980 he won the Best Male Pop Vocal Grammy for “This Is It.” His fame grew during the 1980s with performances of movie theme songs, like "I'm Alright" (from Caddyshack), "Footloose" (from Footloose), "Danger Zone" (from Top Gun), and "Nobody's Fool" (from Caddyshack II).

If you wish to sample his music, feel free to check out the holdings of the library.

I can still remember the day when my older cousin Deirdre appeared on the television show American Bandstand. That day, her sister Barbara and I sat in front of the screen and were mesmerized by the music and the dancing. She was one of the lucky ones who actually spoke to Dick Clark.

I am walking down memory lane as the 50th anniversary of the show's premiere approaches on Sunday, August 5. As many of us remember, American Bandstand started in Philadelphia in 1952 with a young disc jockey, Dick Clark. He became the host of the TV show which first aired on August 5, 1957. This show, which was the first TV show that was dedicated solely to rock 'n roll, adhered to a set format of dancing teenagers, popular entertainers singing their latest hits, and a listing of the week's top 10 songs. It lasted for over 30 years and finally was cancelled in 1989 six months after the departure of Dick Clark.

For those of you who would like to continue the reminiscences, the Library has Dick Clark and Fred Bronson's Dick Clark's American Bandstand, John A. Jackson's American Bandstand : Dick Clark and the Making of a Rock 'n' Roll Empire, Michael Shore's
The History of American Bandstand, and the video Dick Clark's Best of Bandstand: the Superstars.