Westport Public Library MOVIE & MUSIC Blog

To create a celebratory, fun-loving, sports-oriented atmosphere prior to the game, I have listed some musical works available at the Westport Public Library:

Brown, James. 20 All -Time Hits

Goldman Band. Greatest Band in the Land!

Ives, Charles Yale-Princeton Football Game

Rossini, Gioacchino. La Gazza Ladra Overture

Rossini, Gioacchino. William Tell Overture

Sibelius, Jean. Finlandia

Sousa, John Philip. Sousa

Springsteen, Bruce. Born to Run

Vangelis. Chariots of Fire

Various Performers. Sopranos: Music From the HBO Original Series

Wagner, Richard. Flying Dutchman Overture

Williams, John. Star Wars

Fairfield County's own American Chamber Orchestra has an exciting program planned for Saturday, February 2 at 8 p.m. at the First Presbyterian Church in Fairfield. Renowned cellist Kangho Lee will display his multitudinous talents in Edouard Lalo's Cello Concerto in D minor. He not only has given solo recitals in Boston, Los Angeles, New York and St. Louis but has performed with numerous orchestras including the Korean Symphony, the Round Top Festival Orchestra, the Sofia National Academy and the Yale Philharmonia.

To round out the concert, Christopher James Hisey will conduct Mikhail Glinka's A Life for the Tsar Overture, Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings and Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky's Symphony #2, known as the "Little Russian".

Before the concert, stop by at the Westport Public Library to sample these pieces; to learn more about these composers, try the electronic resource Grove Music Online on our website.

We all know that Mendelssohn and Mozart were extraordinarily gifted composers and musicians. Have you ever had the chance to witness a child prodigy perform at a concert? Tomorrow night you have the opportunity to hear five exceptional young artists at the Norwalk Symphony Orchestra. These students include twelve-year-old cellist Allison Giebisch, seventeen-year-old violinist Nicole Kilroy, seventeen-year-old cellist Danielle Merlis, and twelve-year-old violinist Tristan Zeman.

One of the youngest students ever accepted to Philadelphia's Curtis Institute of Music is twenty-one-year-old violinist Stephanie Jeong. Ms. Jeong, who has won several prestigious competitions including the Philadelphia Orchestra's Albert M. Greenfield, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's Feinburg and the National Yamaha Young Performing Artists, will show her interpretative and virtuostic skills in Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 4 in D Major, a piece that he wrote at the ripe old age of nineteen. Franz Schubert will be represented on the program with Symphony No. 5, a work that he created also at the age of nineteen. Edvard Grieg's Holberg Suite will round out the evening.

If you wish to acquaint yourself with these pieces, the Library has recordings of the Holberg Suite with the London Festival and Rotterdam Chamber Orchestras, the Mozart Violin Concerto No. 4 with Itzhak Perlman and Isaac Stern and the Schubert Symphony No. 5 with the Georgian Festival Orchestra.

Are you a struggling singer or actor who is always reading Back Stage to find the next opportunity? Do you find yourself frantically searching for the perfect song and accompaniment that would match a potential role? Have you ever wished for a copy of a piano, vocal and guitar score of a musical that will be revived at a summer stock theater? Do you ever need sheet music of a particular song for an upcoming audition? The Westport Library is here to help you locate the music or compact disc that you may need.

The music collection contains vocal scores with accompanying piano of leading Broadway shows, collections of songs for a particular voice, popular songs throughout the decades and compilations of tunes from different productions. Composers of musicals include Leonard Bernstein, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers, and Stephen Sondheim. Available scores range from Company, Paint Your Wagon to West Side Story. If you are looking to impress a director, please consider Belter's Book of Comedy Songs, Broadway Showstoppers or The Best Torch Songs Ever. If you are looking for classic or contemporary standards, you may want Best Songs of the 70's, Greatest Songs of 1890-1920 or Love Songs: Complete Lyrics for 200 Songs. If you are looking for career guidance, David Black's The Actor's Audition, Michael Dansikar's The 16-Bar Theatre Audition or Arabella Hong-Young's Singing Professionally may satisfy your needs. If you want to listen to a show, please check our catalog. Additionally, please feel free to contact me with suggestions.

So where did the craze for crossword puzzles begin? Word squares go back to ancient times. Archeologists have found a word square in the ancient ruins of Pompeii. But the crossword as a newspaper feature dates to Dec. 21,1913 when the Sunday New York World printed a puzzle called a "word-cross creating an immediate success and a new weekly obsession was born. The name evolved into the more melodic sounding "cross-word," and the hyphen was eventually dropped. Given the popularity of the New York Times puzzle, it is hard to believe that this paper didn’t get on the bandwagon until 1942. Today, it is estimated that over 50 million people do crosswords each week. Do you?

During this time, Hollywood was pioneering with the first sound musicals. Max Fleischer, the prominent animator, joined Paramount Pictures and used the company's large song catalog and affiliated recording artists in his black-and-white cartoons. Some of the notable singers heard in Fleischer's works were Cab Calloway, Rudy Vallee and the Mills Brothers. Fleischer was anxious to adapt the Popeye figure to his animated movie medium. On July 14, 1933, the femme fatale Betty Boop introduced Popeye the Sailor to a wide audience. New York composer Sammy Timberg created Popeye's inimitable musical theme. With that auspicious beginning, Popeye went on to have his own successful cartoon series.

Throughout the years, cartoon music has drawn from various genres including classical, electronic, jazz and popular. For those interested in the development of this music, Daniel Goldmark's The Cartoon Music Book and Gary Marmorstein's Hollywood Rhapsody: Movie Music and its Makers 1900 to 1975 may be consulted. Bud Sagendorf's Popeye, the First Fifty Years provides a detailed description of the Thimble Theater comics.

To help celebrate his extraordinary feats, you may want to listen to music that evokes the majesty of the Himalayas or Alps. Selections from the Library's collection include Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony #9, Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique, Alan Hovhaness' Celestial Fantasy, Olivier Messiaen's Quartet For the End of Time and Tan Dun's Hero.

Rodgers & Hammerstein's The Sound Of Music has proven itself as one of the pillars of the musical theater. It has withstood the test of time and continues to be criticized, discussed, hummed, praised, sung and written about. Laurence Maslon provides a photographic depiction of Maria Von Trapp and the musical rendition of her life in his new book The Sound Of Music Companion. Max Wilk recounts all the gory details and events leading up to and culminating in the musical throughout the years in The Making of The Sound Of Music. For background information on the inimitable collaboration of Rodgers & Hammerstein, one may check Stanley Green's Rodgers and Hammerstein Fact Book : A Record of Their Works Together and With Other Collaborators and Frederick Nolan's The Sound Of Their Music:The Story of Rodgers and Hammerstein. The original Broadway cast or movie soundtrack would be an appropriate backdrop as you explore and learn about this musical classic.

James H. Billington, The Librarian of Congress recently named 25 motion pictures to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress. These selections join 450 others in the registry. The selections were made as part of a program to assure the nation’s movie heritage with the aim preserving the movies for all times. Billington cites some sobering statistics about the deterioration of an important part of our nation’s history, the movies. He notes, “Even as Americans fill the movie theatres to see the latest releases, few are aware that up to half the films produced in this country before 1950 – and as much as 90 percent of those made before 1920 are lost forever.”

The 2007 choices span genres and across time. The most recently produced films to be nominated are Back to the Future(1985) and Dances with Wolves (1990). The earliest film on the list proves that directors have long seen the value of movies as a medium to convey a social message, Tol’able David (1921) is a coming of age story about a youth who must overcome savage, bullying neighbors. Watch our catalog, the library is planning to purchase a copy on DVD.

To combat the January blahs, the New York Times is hosting a weeklong celebration of the arts January 7-13, 2008. Two-for-one admissions and/or discounts will take place at certain Broadway shows, movies and museums throughout the New York metropolitan area and at selected cities and venues throughout the nation, Canada, and Europe. Imagine the chance to purchase "twofers" for musicals like Avenue Q, The Fantasticks, Hairspray, The Pirates of Penzance or Spamalot. How about experiencing a symphonic moment with the American Symphony Orchestra, Brooklyn Philharmonic or the New York Philharmonic? If you would prefer to remain in Connecticut for culture or entertainment, the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Bruce Museum of Arts and Sciences or Beardsley Zoo may be visited. For those who prefer local events, feel free to attend the various programs at the Westport Public Library.

If you or your family are ever in a waltzing mood, feel free to peruse the compact disc collection. The Boskovsky Ensemble's The Charm of Old Vienna, Creampuffs from Vienna, Andre Rieu's Emperor Waltz, or Johann Strauss' Christmas Waltzes, may just make you yearn for the magic of Vienna.