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To My Beloved Conductor John Wilson on His 50th and 51st Birthdays and Beyond; Plus John+His Sinfonia of London Play British Classics at the BBC Proms, 2022

John dear,

Above this 2023 NYT news shot of my shining, desired one: The entire 2022 BBC Proms concert at the Royal Albert Hall, John and his Sinfonia of London performing British Classics: Ralph Vaughan Williams – Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis; Huw Watkins – Flute Concerto; Arnold Bax – Tintagel; William Walton – Partita for Orchestra; Edward Elgar – Enigma Variations Oh John, you and Elgar together again…

On three out of your last five birthdays, awful things happened in my country that couldn’t be ignored (the worst happening on your 48th in my own old neighborhood) so I’m sorry I didn’t have anything amusing to post after your 47th. Because you share the same day of birth as my father (you were born the year he died) I had thought what I’d be doing is alternating birthday congrats to you with memories of my dad, like this one…

Well, that didn’t work out. Things and events are crowding so fast…and I can’t catch up to the connection—association—context of it all fast enough…

But there is one thing I want you to remember through all this global mishegoss: I’m still in love with you as much as I ever have been. In fact the more I learn about you, the more it makes me love you. Even through your clunkers, John, John / Glorious John.

If you were my boyfriend and you had a struggling rock group, there’d be posters on every lamppost in San Francisco. But you (and your people) must have figured that out by now.

FULL DRESS // A gifted mesmerist—a sinister composer—a naive young conductor from the north…inspired by an episode from the life of Rachmaninoff // DOWNLOAD FREE BOOK POSTER

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Directed by My Old Boss, Rouben Mamoulian: The Room at the Inn Scene in Queen Christina (MGM, 1933) Just for the Man I Love, Conductor John Wilson

I have been memorizing this room. In the future, in my memory, I shall live a great deal in this room.

Find this scene on my YT channel here and apologies for the quality of the vid but it was the best available. Underscoring for Mamoulian’s classic is by the esteemed 1st music director at MGM, Herbert Stothart. Stothart’s adorable “Donkey Serenade” is featured in The MGM Jubilee Overture, written in 1954 by 2nd music director Johnny Green and restored to the repertoire by my bonny. I’m moving to your rhythm, John.

The complete film QUEEN CHRISTINA directed by my old boss, Rouben Mamoulian (MGM 1933), can be viewed here

FULL DRESS // A gifted mesmerist—a sinister composer—a naive young conductor from the north…inspired by an episode from the life of Rachmaninoff // DOWNLOAD FREE BOOK POSTER

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Cantara, 1973

New York. Me at nearly 19, around the time I started booking gigs as a topless dancer to pay for my extra singing lessons. Polaroid shot by boyfriend while he was taking a break putting together my bookcase in my new apartment. That’s a still from Casablanca on the wall. Here’s the famous nude pinup that got me in trouble on FB, the one of Lyle Waggoner, which just came out the previous summer; it’s a little off-screen to the left.)

Cantara Waiting for Bookcase

FULL DRESS // A gifted mesmerist—a sinister composer—a naive young conductor from the north…inspired by an episode from the life of Rachmaninoff // DOWNLOAD FREE BOOK POSTER

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Casablanca Suite Composed and Orchestrated by Max Steiner, Played by The John Wilson Orchestra and Conducted by My Beloved John Wilson, 2013

Steiner’s suite (written score here) is clearly patched together from various melodies in the film Casablanca, including the Nazi drinking song “Die Wacht am Rhein” (Schneckenburger/Wilhelm, 1853); “La Marseillaise” (de Lisle, 1792); and, of course, “As Time Goes By” (Herman Hupfeld, 1931). And is that a little of Steiner’s own King Kong? The Warner Bros Pictures music theme at the beginning is entirely Steiner’s composition. (Most of the) orchestration by Steiner’s frequent collaborator, Murray Cutter.

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I feel a raging, yearning, unchaste tenderness for my beloved John Wilson when he conducts schmaltzy pieces like this, which sort of makes up, as I say, for the times his fatuous pronouncements exasperate me. Above John: Steiner’s Casablanca Suite.

Click here to see John in action with The JWO in 2013.

The entire 2013 BBC Proms concert Hollywood Rhapsody with The John Wilson Orchestra is available here

FULL DRESS // A gifted mesmerist—a sinister composer—a naive young conductor from the north…inspired by an episode from the life of Rachmaninoff // DOWNLOAD FREE BOOK POSTER

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“Quand Tu Dors Près De Moi” from the Film Aimez-Vous Brahms? Sung by Tony Perkins

Straight, gay, sexually messed up by his mother, I still had a major crush on Anthony Perkins when I was a girl; no time more than when he was cast as the fumbling young lover of soignee Parisienne Ingrid Bergman in Goodbye Again (United Artists, 1961) the film version of Francoise Sagan’s novel Aimez-vous Brahms? (Though that he turned her down in real life just kills me.)

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“Quand Tu Dors” is, of course, taken from the 3rd movement of Johannes Brahms’s Third Symphony, and you’ll recognize it when you hear it. That’s Herbert Von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic.

FULL DRESS // A gifted mesmerist—a sinister composer—a naive young conductor from the north…inspired by an episode from the life of Rachmaninoff // DOWNLOAD FREE BOOK POSTER

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My First Music: “Donkey Serenade” Sung by Allan Jones in The Firefly (MGM, 1937)

Another MGM musical, pre-Freed Unit. Music by Bob Wright, Chet Forrest and Herbert Stothart (adapted from “Chanson” by Rudolf Friml); lyrics by Bob Wright and Chet Forrest, who would go on to adapt the music of Rimsky-Korsakov for the 1953 Broadway musical Kismet.

Two years earlier Allan Jones made a big splash as Kitty Carlisle‘s tenor squeeze in the Marx Brothers romp A Night At the Opera. Here he is in a clip on my YT channel movie-romancing a reluctant Jeanette MacDonald, who was smack in the middle of a fraught but passionate affair with a baritone with a thrilling voice and a black temper—Nelson Eddy, who, upon learning that Jones was putting the real-life moves on MacDonald, crashed the cast party of Firefly, collared Jones and beat him to a bloody pulp. Now that’s love.

Donkey Serenade.jpegPlayed the violin part in this in my junior high school orchestra. Liked it more than Bach. Above: “Donkey Serenade” by Oscar-winning MGM musical director, Herbert Stothart. Stothart, recently deceased, was paid tribute to by incoming MGM musical director Johnny Green in his 1954 MGM Jubilee Overture, the signature tune of my beloved John Wilson and his Orchestra.

FULL DRESS // A gifted mesmerist—a sinister composer—a naive young conductor from the north…inspired by an episode from the life of Rachmaninoff // DOWNLOAD FREE BOOK POSTER

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Obsession, Directed by Brian De Palma and Scored by Bernard Herrmann

Saw this first run in New York in 1976 with my boyfriend, another huge Brian De Palma fan. The loopiest, nuttiest romance in all of moviedom. In fact I like this movie better than Vertigo, another nutzoid Bernard Herrmann-scored love story: this one’s much more sexually transgressive, always a sure-fire turn-on for me.

Here’s the giddily overwrought ending. If you haven’t seen Obsession it’s not going to make any sense, so just close your eyes and listen to Herrmann’s ravishing score, the next-to-last one he ever wrote before his death at the age of 64.

FULL DRESS // A gifted mesmerist—a sinister composer—a naive young conductor from the north…inspired by an episode from the life of Rachmaninoff // DOWNLOAD FREE BOOK POSTER

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