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A Special Letter Featuring Scott Fitzgerald to My Beloved John Wilson, After His Appearance with the Sinfonia of London at The Glasshouse, Gateshead UK, 11 November 2023

See the name up in the title of this posting, The Glasshouse? Got it right this time. The only reason I kept the out-of-date jpg up on your schedule, John, is because I love this picture of Gateshead so much and got too lazy to change to the new name. Expect that pic to crop up again in some other impersonation in the future.

Number two. This picture. Okay, I will admit to a sudden unexpected and totally unfamiliar onrush of an irrational emotion. But if you don’t understand how you get to me there’s no hope for you or your generation.

Number three. This picture. An honest artistic statement. Yeah I stole your selfie. Come and get me, coppers.

Number four. The matter at hand. I got the strong impression last night, John, that you were still in Gateshead (you’ve probably finished your Liverpool gig by now) and needed some sort of psychic “Daphne Moon” boost from me. Glad to oblige. I’ll tell you the story, long overdue, of how my dad and mom met and got married. It has to do with two of my aunties not-really-aunties-but-older-cousins—years of letter writing—and the Jai-Alai Building in Manila…

Shoot, time passes…now I’ve got to go be with Mister Grumble for a while. Tonight we’re listening to (my baby angel’s blind, remember?) the near-beginning of The United States of Socialism by Dinesh D’Souza; the middle of The Con Man by Ed McBain (“Mendo-zaaaaaaaah!”); and the last chapter of The Simulacra by Philip K Dick. Oh! And streaming the fifth season of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

I’ll return on my next writing day, which fortunately is tomorrow.

I see they’re making you travel from Gateshead down west to Liverpool and then back up north to Glasgow and then back down to Nottingham and finally over to Manchester. Jeez, what a schedule for you and your people.

So you want to hear more about my dad. Okay! I’ve owed you this for a while, sorry for the lateness, juggling a lot of balls, including a heart episode, not to winge. Continuing what I wrote in “25 May—Two Birthdays: My Dad’s and My Beloved English Conductor John Wilson’s“…

Well, after that whole thing about not being able to marry the woman he wanted to because of the miscegenation laws of the state of California, my dad and his white fiancee (never found out her name but it was the late 1940s so I bet it was something pretty like Helen or Margaret) went back to her home in Missouri where, like in most of the interior states, there were no legal barriers.

[4:30pm 13 Nov 2023 Pacific Time. Have to go now, Mister Grumble’s dictating his new novel to me, his sixth…be back as soon as I can…]

Mister Grumble is calling his latest novel The Last Bohemia. It’s about our old neighborhood, New York’s East Village, during the cheap-rent artsy 1980s. I’m really looking forward to it.

Back to my dad. So John, the marriage didn’t work out, of course, name me another interracial couple who made it work in the midwest in the 1940s-50s. So when they broke up in St Louis, my dad I guess was at a crossroads. There were two things he knew how to do, box (he was a small-time prizefighter in California in the 20s, a flyweight like his hero, Filipino 1923 champion-over-Welshman-Jimmy-Wilde, Pancho Villa)—and cook.

This is where that Minneapolis railroad tycoon comes in and where the story enters Scott Fitzgerald country in more ways than one.

[2:20pm 14 Nov 2023 Pacific Time. If it doesn’t rain I promised to take Mister Grumble out for a beer, he can’t go out anymore by himself. (He has a red-tipped cane, but sighted people just don’t pay attention and the sidewalks are too littered anyway.) Still, the IPAs here are pretty good, so… ]

[WHOEVER’S READING THIS WHO ISN’T JOHN: If you’re around him during this tour and you can pass him a couple words when he won’t bite your head off, just let him know CANTARA GOT HIS DAPHNE and will try to write more soon. Right now I’ve got to talk about Kennedy]

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“If Ever I Would Leave You” from Camelot by Lerner & Loewe, Played by The John Wilson Orchestra and Conducted by John Wilson, BBC Proms 2019

I don’t think I’ve ever been more in love with John than now, watching him surrender to the exquisiteness of Alfred Newman’s Oscar-winning orchestral arrangement. From the 2019 BBC Proms, which can be seen in entirety here. So recent I can see the silver in my bonny lad’s hair.

John Wilson Tryptich 2

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The Equalizer Comes to New York’s East Village, Plus Stewart Copeland’s Theme Music

With the coolest theme on American TV, The Equalizer introduced Copeland’s stunningly unique sound to the mainstream audience. In keeping with the series’ mash-up concept of “tradition merged with New Age high tech,” Copeland’s musical accompaniment would, one: with the exception of hero Robert McCall himself, forego the Wagnerian structure of identifiable leitmotifs, and instead choose to score the city of New York itself as a primary character; and, two: fuse classical structure with the combo of  “percussion carrying melody and synthesized strings” attached to world rhythms. Copeland’s would be a coldly ethereal yet dense “urban ballet” sound inexorably linked to the modern cityscape. This sound would influence composers such as Hans Zimmer and Thomas Newman.

610 East 9th Street NYCThey shot several episodes in my old neighborhood, the East Village, at great risk to star Woodward (two heart attacks and once he fell through an apartment building roof–not ours thankfully). That’s 610 East 9th Street, where we lived 1981-86. Rent for our 4-room inc full kitchen and full bathroom, 2 bedrooms and 1 living room, facing street: $250/m. You read that right. $250 a month.

Copeland was born in 1952. The son of CIA officer Miles Copeland, Jr (who appears as a character in Norman Mailer’s epic spy novel Harlot’s Ghost), he took up the drums at 12, was raised internationally in Cairo, Beirut, the US and England; and throughout the 1970s alternately worked as road manager and backup drummer for various groups until founding in 1977, along with Sting and Henry Padovani (later replaced by Andy Summers), the English progressive rock band The Police. After The Police went on extended hiatus in 1986, the drummer with a composer’s sensibilities dove headlong into scoring—to this day, one of his most notable works is as musical voice of The Equalizer, on which he composed 51 of 88 total episodes of the series.

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My First Music: “Dahil Sa Iyo” and My Sentimental Devotion to Bonny John Wilson, Conductor

If you could, my bonny John Wilson, imagine me wearing a maria clara (like great-grandmother Aberin below) and you wearing a barong, I’d be singing you this song:

Sa buhay ko’y labis
Ang hirap at pasakit, ng pusong umiibig
Mandi’y wala ng langit
At ng lumigaya, hinango mo sa dusa
Tanging ikaw sinta, ang aking pag-asa.

Dahil sa iyo, nais kong mabuhay
Dahil sa iyo, hanggang mamatay
Dapat mong tantuin, wala ng ibang giliw
Puso ko’y tanungin, ikaw at ikaw rin

Dahil sa iyo, ako’y lumigaya
Pagmamahal, ay alayan ka
Kung tunay man ako, ay alipinin mo
Ang lahat sa buhay ko, dahil sa iyo

“Dahil Sa Iyo”
Mike Velarde Jr music (1938), Tom Spinoza, lyrics
Cora and Santos Beloy, vocalists
Tri-World Records (1964)

Great-Grandmother Aberin 1.jpgMy mother’s lola, my great-grandmother, the spitting image of my mother the way Georgiana Drew is the spitting image of Drew Barrymore and I’m the spitting image of my dad. I have no documentation for my assertion—my gran’s house and possessions were completely destroyed during the Japanese Occupation. But whenever we came across this picture in the media—in an article in Time, for example—my mom would always point her out and tell me the story of how my great-grandfather came over from Ireland and, upon discovering he was meeting fellow Catholics in a sea of Asians, stayed, changed his name from O’Brien to Abérin, and married the local beauty. How Van Camp found her is anybody’s guess.

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John Wilson and His Sinfonia of London Tour UK, Including His Home Town of Gateshead, with Hollywood’s Greatest Hits, 04 – 15 November 2023

John’s pop fans in Britain have nothing to worry about—all the goodness of The John Wilson Orchestra (1994-2019) is now squeezed into his new/old/new group, the Sinfonia of London in their brand-new “Hollywood’s Greatest Hits” tour. Thank Kennedy Street Productions, who brought Barry Manilow and Gladys Knight to UK’s shores, for this shrewd spectacular run aimed at the 2023 Holiday Season. Now we’ll hear the rest of the movie music John’s been transcribing all these years.

[JOHN’S PAST AND PRESENT CONCERT SCHEDULES]

Above: John’s own overture, “Hooray for Hollywood” for his 2011 appearance at the Royal Albert.

More info to come as I find it. I understand since 2 December 2022 tickets have been flying off the box office shelves.

Glad you asked. Here’s the Sinfonia’s jam-packed “Hollywood’s Greatest Hits” tour schedule:

Sat 4 November 2023 19:00

The Anvil Theatre
Basingstoke UK
Get Tickets Here

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Sun 5 November 2023 19:00

Brighton Dome
Brighton and Hove UK
Get Tickets Here

___

Mon 6 November 2023 19:30

Royal Albert Hall
London UK
Get Tickets Here

___

Tue 7 November 2023 19:00

St David’s Hall
Cardiff UK
Get Tickets Here

___

Thu 9 November 2023 19:30

Symphony Hall
Birmingham UK
Get Tickets Here

___

Sat 11 November 2023 19:30

Sage Gateshead
Gateshead UK
Get Tickets Here

___

Sun 12 November 2023 19:30

Philharmonic Hall
Liverpool UK
Get Tickets Here

___

Mon 13 November 2023 19:30

Royal Concert Hall
Glasgow UK
Get Tickets Here

___

Tue 14 November 2023 19:30

Theatre Royal & Royal Concert Hall
Nottingham UK
Get Tickets Here

___

Wed 15 November 2023 19:30

The Bridgewater Hall
Manchester UK
Get Tickets Here

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Things I Did for Love of Geordie John Wilson, 1: Watched Get Carter (British MGM 1971, Mike Hodges Director) and Sarah Millican; and Listened to, But Didn’t Watch, The Orville

This is all to do with my beloved John Wilson, Conductor being from Gateshead. Except for that Seth MacFarlane show.

Sarah Millican first. Tried listening to this fast-talking comedienne from nearby South Shields the middle of 2019 but could not keep up with her pace or her accent. Later I started watching old episodes of Auf Wiedersehn Pet, The Likely Lads, Byker Grove (which starred BGT presenters Ant & Dec when they were kids), and now one of my favorite shows ever on television, Our Friends In the North (all episodes here) etc etc but they’re just so…masculine, you know? Which I suspect probably pretty much characterizes Geordie culture anyway… So I started alternating watching that show with When the Boat Comes In, which was more successful for me, as the estimable Northumbria-born actress Jean Heywood provided a good model of what a feminine northeast accent sounds like. After her it was a snap to follow Millican.

Second, The Orville, Seth MacFarlane’s Star Trek-like TV series. Like the 70s folksinger says, “I’m a stoner, I’m a trekker, I’m a young sky walker…” So yeh, I’d be interested in watching this show just to see if it measures up to the standards of my youth. Unfortunately, none of MacFarlane’s (post-Family Guy) projects ever sound interesting enough for me to overcome my intense personal dislike for him. So…maybe later. I did, however, listen to the show’s theme music, which was written by Andrew Cottee, the same young man who wrote some arrangements for The John Wilson Orchestra over in England. The theme does everything expected of it.

Third, Get Carter, starring Michael Caine and the City of Newcastle. Made this movie last on my list because it deserves two paragraphs, being the British noir classic that it is…

Sidebar: As we all now know from film school, existentialism is the engine of noir, which means that petty details like Michael Caine speaking in a thick Cockney accent* when his character’s supposed to be from Newcastle-upon-Tyne oughtn’t to matter to the sophisticated auditor. But I had a problem. I’m sorry. Three years ago I wouldn’t have cared, one Brit being the same as any other. Then I fell in love with John Wilson, a Low Fell lad, and individuality suddenly became a very important thing to me.

The Movie Overall: Not quite sure why the filmmakers transplanted novelist Ted Lewis’s story from his original setting in Lincolnshire (Lewis’s birthplace), to Tyneside, but since it’s the classic story of the Anti-Hero’s Revenge, which works anytime, anyplace, it does fine here. Michael Caine’s a little podgy but quick with his reflexes and still a treat for the ladies. Lots of sex and violence, lots of local atmosphere, local faces, and landmarks like Tyne Bridge, the Newcastle Racecourse and, of course, the carpark across the Tyne River.

The Carpark in Gateshead Scene: By a stroke of luck Get Carter was just streamed on Criterion so I watched the entire movie, then to make sure, watched the carpark scene twice more in order to understand why it so sticks in the mind. Because it does, you know, even though I’m not a fan of movies like this. I guess it’s because there’s rather a high elegance to this scene that contrasts with all the mundaneness and phony poshness around it… Very arty, but a genuine statement. Or maybe it’s just because I like watching Michael Caine get all riled up.

EXTRA! Mark Steel’s in Gateshead. Say no more.

The now torn-down carpark at Trinity Square in Gateshead in this famous scene was a dreary piece of English Brutalist architecture that, according to its creator, was never meant to stand the test of time anyway. That’s the theme to The Orville above.

*I understand that a stage version of Get Carter was recently performed in Newcastle, with Carter’s accent vocalized accurately.

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Alondra de la Parra Conducts The Orchestra of Paris in Darius Milhaud’s “Le Bœuf Sur le Toit”, Philharmonie de Paris, 2015

Have you ever seen a conductor so much in the heart of the music as 43 year-old, New York-born Mexican-American Alondra de la Parra? Bernstein yes, definitely. Carlos Kleiber was also known to joyfully respond to a joyful chord. And this girl, like those fine blokes, has got it all—joy, knowledge and consummate control. On the road to being one of the greats, she is.

Alondra de la Parra

The title “Le Bœuf Sur le Toit” is that of an old Brazilian tango, one of close to 30 Brazilian tunes, or choros, quoted in the composition. The piece was originally to have been the score of a silent Charlie Chaplin film; its transformation into a ballet was the making of the piece, with a scenario by Jean Cocteau, stage designs by Raoul Dufy, and costumes by Guy-Pierre Fauconnet. There is no real story to speak of, but is a sequence of scenes based on music inspired by Brazil, a country in which Milhaud spent two years during World War I.

The ballet’s premiere was given in February 1920 at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, and in turn gave its name to a celebrated Parisian cabaret-bar, Le Bœuf Sur le Toit, which opened in 1921 and became a meeting place for Jean Cocteau and his cronies.

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Gordon Cole: The Link Between Twin Peaks and Billy Wilder; Plus “The Emperor Waltz” by Johann Strauss II, Conducted by Daniel Barenboim with the Berliner Philharmoniker, 2013

What is the connection between David Lynch and Billy Wilder?

Goddammit, I’ve posed this question to all my Twin Peaks groups on Facebook, and nobody got it. Now I’m going to give it to you.

“The Emperor Waltz”: the music and the film.

Assistant Deputy Director Gordon Cole of the FBI is a character on Twin Peaks.

Assistant Producer Gordon Cole of Paramount Pictures is an unseen character in Sunset Boulevard. Gordon Cole wanted to borrow Norma’s classic car for a “Crosby picture”—Billy Wilder’s 1949 film The Emperor Waltz, starring Bing Crosby and Joan Fontaine.

The entire film THE EMPEROR WALTZ directed by Billy Wilder is available to watch here

But that’s not all. There’s an artistic, almost metaphysical link, to the David Lynch work and the Billy Wilder work. For all its color and seeming frothiness, The Emperor Waltz the film barely conceals the same awful truth Lynch made clear in episode 8 of the third season of Twin Peaks: that at a particular point during the middle of the 20th century, Evil partnered with the willing Spirit of Man to try to annihilate the human race. Joe McBride you big fat blowhard, I got that drowning mongrel puppies thing too. I was just a little girl when I first saw this movie and the drowning puppies bit shocked me at once—because, you know, puppies. But also because of what Mrs Weisberg taught us in 4th grade class. And, you know, Anne Frank.

David Lynch and Billy WilderAbove David Lynch and Billy Wilder: Daniel Barenboim conducts the Berliner Philharmoniker in Strauss’s grandest waltz.

In the Revolution of 1848, Johann Strauss II (or Jr) had sided with the dissidents—the anti-Habsburg faction—while Strauss Sr his father had been an avowed royalist, composing the Radetsky March in honor of the great general who played a large part in suppressing the Revolution. For some time the court looked with misgivings and suspicion at Strauss Jr, however important he proved to the Austrian image.

There’s a file of a police interrogation where the younger Strauss was asked why he had dared to play the Marseillaise. In an Austria of strict censorship, that was a loaded question. Strauss answered, “Because it is good music and good music is what concerns me.”

But the wounds of the revolution gradually healed. Soon Austria had a new emperor. When the emperor celebrated the 40th anniversary of his accession in 1888, Strauss composed a waltz in honor of Franz Josef.

My signal, my flame, my beloved John Wilson conducted this piece in Stockholm 29 March 2019.

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The Music of Humoresque (Jean Negulesco dir, Warner Bros 1946): Lalo, Waxman, Wagner etc; Plus My Persistent Desire for BBC Conductor John Wilson

This is Joan Crawford at her witchiest, which could only be brought out by operatically tragic love. Of course it’s over a musician.

It also has Oscar Levant. Oscar Levant! Novelist Nora Johnson’s object of primal teenage lust!

And it’s just a gorgeously-shot movie (by Ernest Haller, a good friend of Crawford).

The entire film HUMORESQUE (1940) is available to watch here

Fourthly, the music (see below)…

Humoresque

Above: “City Montage” from Humoresque by Franz Waxman. John Musto, Russell Warner arrangers; Andrew Litton conducts the London Symphony Orchestra.

I’ll add links as I find them and like them one of these days:

  • Antonín Dvorák / Humoresque, op 101 no 7 in G-flat major
  • Howard Dietz+Arthur Schwartz / I Guess I’ll Have To Change My Plan
  • Richard Rodgers+Lorenz Hart / My Heart Stood Still
  • Cole Porter / You Do Something to Me
  • Cole Porter / What Is This Thing Called Love?
  • James F Hanley / Zing! Went The Strings Of My Heart
  • Al Dubin+Harry Warren / Don’t Say Good-Night
  • George+Ira Gershwin / Embraceable You
  • George Gershwin / Prelude II
  • George Gershwin / Prelude III
  • Frederic Chopin / Etude in G-flat major op 10 no 5
  • Frederic Chopin / Ballade No 4 in F minor op 52
  • Richard Wagner / Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde
  • Georges Bizet, Franz Waxman arr / Carmen Fantasie
  • Edouard Lalo / Symphonie espagnole in D minor op 21
  • Felix Mendelssohn / Violin Concerto in E minor op 64
  • Franz von Suppé / Poet and Peasant Overture
  • Pablo de Sarasate / Zigeunerweisen (Gypsy Airs) op 20
  • Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky / Violin Concerto in D major op 35
  • Henryk Wieniawski / Violin Concerto No 2 in D minor op 22
  • César Franck / Sonata for Violin and Piano in A major
  • Edvard Grieg / Piano Concerto in A minor op 16
  • Sergei Prokofiev / Piano Concerto No 3 in C major op 26
  • Dmitri Shostakovich / Polka from the ballet The Golden Age op 22
  • Johannes Brahms / Waltz in A-flat major op 39 no 15
  • Johann Sebastian Bach / Sonata No 1 in G minor BWV 1001
  • Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov / Flight of the Bumblebee

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My First Music: “Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen” Cantata 51 by Johann Sebastian Bach

I was 17 and my voice was not going to get me to the Met, but I enjoyed singing to the tiny group that gathered on Friday afternoons in Room 204 of Northrup Auditorium at the U in Minneapolis. The month my draftee boyfriend Jesse got out of the army (May 1972, just before he joined the Black Panthers) my teacher lent me an album of Teresa Stich-Randall and I picked out this number to do. It’s not a hard piece to learn but whoa, that breath control… That I managed to make it to the very end with some grace is due to Bach’s blessing to singers—all that forward motion impels you. But the effort was worth it. What a high!

Johann Sebastian Bach

Bach composed BWV 51 during a period when he composed church cantatas only irregularly, some of them to complete his earlier cycles. Both the soprano part, which covers two octaves and requires a high C, and the solo trumpet part, which at times trades melodic lines with the soprano on an equal basis, are extremely virtuosic. The cantata is one of only four sacred cantatas that Bach wrote for a solo soprano. The first aria, “Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen” (“Exult in God in every land”), is in da capo form, with extended coloraturas. The theme, with a beginning in a triad fanfare, is well suited to the trumpet. It is first developed in a ritornello of the orchestra and then constantly worked in the soprano part. At least, that’s what I remember.

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My First Music: Soames Rapes Irene in The Forsyte Saga (BBC, 1967); “Halcyon Days” from Eric Coates’s Three Elizabeths Suite Played by the BBCPO and Conducted By My Excellent John Wilson

I was twelve when The Forsyte Saga was first shown on American TV and I thought it was the coolest series ever.* It was about a large, rich and, though unconnected, influential family living in late-capitalist England circa 1879, who keep getting into pretty heated conflicts with each other—which at the bottom are really about, more or less, the value of art and the inner life vs commerce—all the while being beautifully attired and beautifully well-spoken. Hearing this royal fanfare “Halcyon Days” that opened the show was enough to get me all excited with anticipation on a Sunday night, but it wasn’t until last year around May when I finally discovered the composer of the piece, Eric Coates, plus the rest of this ravishing movement, when I fell in love with conductor John Wilson and developed a raging need to get close to the music he’s close to.

Screening Room, SF 1979Above: Above Soames played by Eric Porter—The Man of Property, Noted Art Collector, and about as Mr Wrong as you can get—who mistook his wife for a soulless mannequin and, in novelist John Galsworthy’s sardonic words, “asserted his marital rights and acted like a man” in this scene, in which the BBC made shocking good use of Nyree Dawn Porter’s lovely embonpoint: My gorgeous, wondrous John Wilson leads the BBC Philharmonic in Coates’s “Halcyon Days”.

My beloved John conducted this 29 March, 2022 in Salford, as part of a program devoted exclusively to the music of prolific BBC composer, Eric Coates. It was glorious.

Here’s a remembrance of Nyree Dawn Porter and The Forsyte Saga in The Guardian reprinted in FB, including my protestation over the use of the word “frigid”.

*In fact it got me to read the entire cycle of nine novels the series was based on; finished them when I was thirteen. Dinny Cherrell’s my favorite character.

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The Triumph of Barbara Maier Gustern (1935-2022) Plus an Appreciation of Oklahoma-Born Playwright/Scenarist Lynn Riggs—Why I Won’t Be Listening to John Wilson’s Chandos-Produced, RHO-Sanctioned Oklahoma!

Below is an early portrait of gay, part-Cherokee, Claremore OK native playwright/scenarist Lynn Riggs (1899 – 1954), whose 1931 stage play, Green Grow the Lilacs, was successfully produced by the legendary Theatre Guild and revived 12 years later as the musical…well, you know.

But before those Oklahoma! checks started rolling in, Riggs plied his trade in Hollywood as a screenwriter—here are two of his most enjoyable movies on my YouTube channel:

In 2019 a radically reimagined Oklahoma! premiered on Broadway with a new, scaled down arrangement, using Robert Russell Bennett’s framework but giving the music a vibrancy and an authentic twang I’ve really never heard before. New orchestration by Daniel Kluger; vocal coaching by Barbara Maier Gustern, her shining triumph:

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“Changing My Tune” from The Shocking Miss Pilgrim by The Gershwins and Rescued by Composer Kay Swift, George Gershwin’s Married Secret Lover

We can thank composer-arranger Kay Swift, composer of “Fine and Dandy” and George Gershwin’s married secret lover, for making sure this song found its perfect setting in this 1947 20th Century Fox musical after his untimely death ten years earlier.

Castles were crumbling
And daydreams were tumbling
December was battling with June
But on this bright afternoon
Guess I'll be changing my tune

swift-gershwinAbove Kay Swift and her secret love: Barbara Cook and Tony Perkins sing “Changing My Tune” in Ben Bagley’s legendary recording series of deep Broadway cuts.

“When someone in the story is famous, every moment of his existence has, for people who care, an aura of significance, and there will always be people with a quasi-authority who think they know things they could not possibly know, simply because they have a lot of information and curiosity and a sense of entitlement to “the truth” about George Gershwin, as if sufficient obsession and possession of a lot of verifiable facts can earn both entitlement to and knowledge of the unknowable.”

from The Memory of All That (Broadway Books, 2012)
by Katharine Weber, Kay Swift’s granddaughter

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The Death Star and The Dam Busters Played by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Conducted by John Wilson, 2007 BBC Proms

A grand movie score by the prolific Eric Coates, very inspiring and very English. This is the kind of piece that cues you to proudly fly the Union Jack, which predictably some chap did, right in the middle of the Royal Albert Hall. I’m guessing this is some sort of tradition. The 2007 BBC Proms included the famous climactic shots from The Dam Busters—you know, the movie George Lucas ripped off when he did Star Wars. Not the Death Star down there, though, it’s the Eder Dam in the heart of Nazi Germany.

Starts at 6:05 and listen for the Grand Organ. It’s really stirring.

I thoroughly enjoy watching John conduct the works of Eric Coates as he seems to have taken a personal delight in this particular composer—note his endearing look of satisfaction unclouded by thought at 9:10.

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