This is one of the dances from Leonard Bernstein’s 1957 musical, West Side Story, which is a retelling of Romeo and Juliet set in New York, with rival Puerto Rican and white gangs. The mambo originated in Cuba in the 1940s. This is possibly the most fun that you could ever have in an orchestra!
Here is a video showing the choreography for the Mambo, from the 2009 Broadway production of West Side Story:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_8_pbu_cNo
This song was written in 1967 by John Lennon for a TV broadcast called Our World, which was the first ever live, international satellite TV arts broadcast. The 2 hour programme had segments from different countries, featuring opera star Maria Callas and painter Pablo Picasso. The Beatles were the UK contribution.
The song features quite a few musical quotations. It begins with the opening of La Marseillaise, the French national anthem, and also includes Glenn Miller’s In The Mood, the traditional song Greensleeves, Bach’s Invention No.8 in F, and the Beatles’ own song She Loves You.
Perhaps one of the most famous openings of any classical piece, Also sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spake Zarathustra) was written in 1896 by Richard Strauss. The piece is a tone poem based on a book by Nietzsche. The complete piece lasts for an hour, but is not nearly as well known as its opening, which represents the sunrise. This performance features some particularly flamboyant cymbal playing!
It became famous for its use in Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and is now forever associated with space:
There is also this awesome jazz version:
Louis Armstrong (1901-1971) had a remarkable career as a jazz musician right from its beginnings in New Orleans in the 1920s up until the 1960s. Nicknamed ‘Satchmo’ (short for Satchelmouth owing to his particular way of playing the trumpet), Armstrong was a trumpeter, singer and actor and was at the forefront of lots of new ideas, for example scat singing, which you can hear him doing in this video:
This piece was written by Finnish composer Jean Sibelius in 1915. Sibelius is a hero of the Finnish people for giving them a national musical identity, and his birthday is a national holiday.
The epic theme played by the french horns at 1:12 was said to be inspired by the sight of a flight of swans. HOLD ON for one of the most monumental key changes in all music at 2:05!!
Just as the tango is the musical blood of Argentina, bossa nova is part of Brazil’s musical soul. Garôta de Ipanema, or The Girl From Ipanema, is sung here by Astrud Gilberto mostly in Portuguese. If you want to know why Brazilians speak Portuguese when most of South America speaks Spanish, click this link.
So this is what life is like for the musicians providing the music for a West End show. In a show like Hamilton, which is through-sung (i.e. there is no spoken dialogue), the musicians are playing all the time during the show. This is a feat of concentration and musical stamina, especially when there are 8 performances every week.
Notice a few things about the technology they are using: their sheet music is on big iPad-like screens where pages will turn automatically or with a foot switch. The keyboard player has different things plugged into their keyboard which gives them the ‘patches’ or different sounds they will need.
Possibly the most famous piece of organ music ever written, Johann Sebastian Bach composed Toccata and Fugue in D minor at some point in the first half of the 18th century. A toccata is a piece featuring lots of short, fast notes, while a fugue is a polyphonic structure where the main melody or ‘subject’ comes in each part in turn:
The fugue here starts around 4:30.
You can see in the video the organist using four manuals (keyboards) and the pedal board (which is just like another keyboard for your feet). Playing the organ is a real feat of co-ordination! All of the switches and buttons you can see on the sides of the manuals are so that you can choose the different sounds for each manual.
The piece has been orchestrated by Leopold Stokowski and appears in the legendary 1940 Disney film Fantasia:
Erykah Badu is an American singer who has been called the Queen of Neo-Soul. This song was nominated for the Grammy award for Best R&B Song for 2001.
Erykah’s voice has often been compared to legendary jazz singer Billie Holiday. What do you think?
A brilliant example of what is possible with just voices, and nothing else!
Hayes Music blog 