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

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Mon 6 November 2023 19:30

Royal Albert Hall
London UK
Get Tickets Here

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Tue 7 November 2023 19:00

St David’s Hall
Cardiff UK
Get Tickets Here

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Thu 9 November 2023 19:30

Symphony Hall
Birmingham UK
Get Tickets Here

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Sat 11 November 2023 19:30

Sage Gateshead
Gateshead UK
Get Tickets Here

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Sun 12 November 2023 19:30

Philharmonic Hall
Liverpool UK
Get Tickets Here

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Mon 13 November 2023 19:30

Royal Concert Hall
Glasgow UK
Get Tickets Here

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Tue 14 November 2023 19:30

Theatre Royal & Royal Concert Hall
Nottingham UK
Get Tickets Here

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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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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: 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 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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Going Hollywood, Grieving for a Lost Star, “Stereophonic Sound” by Cole Porter, and Two Degrees of Separation from My Beloved English Conductor, John Wilson

From 2018: It actually would hurt me, John Wilson my beloved, if you ever believed I think of you the way MacFarlane thinks of you—as more or less part of his gig rather than as who you are, which is to say John Wilson. Something I’d like to throttle him for but’ll probably go on watching the pre-2013 Family Guy anyway. Nothing personal against your chum.

john-wilson-with-macfarlane (1)

No, I lie, it’s personal.

About 13, 14 years ago the best friend of the son of my (now ex-) friend died unexpectedly in New York, and it was a shock to everyone. My own son, who was the same age, was a big, big fan of his—more than a fan, in fact, he practically worshipped this young actor—and was in tears that day. I texted my friend and we shared our shock and grief. Daniel Day-Lewis stopped an interview, sobbing, “I didn’t know him, I have a strong impression I would have liked him very much…and so looked forward to the work he would do in the future.” I’d so like to have witnessed this young man’s progress on screen and stage through the years myself. He was the new Brando—better than Brando, in fact, as he not only acted and directed but wrote as well. And he wasn’t even thirty. He was handsome and vigorous, he had a beautiful speaking voice. He was the most committed actor I’d seen on screen since Nicholson in Five Easy Pieces.

So there he was dead in NY. On the streets of Beverly Hills, some roving celebrity reporter from one of the gossip shows was out and about getting sound bits for his show, and came across Rob Lowe and MacFarlane. After some genial exchange of bullshit the rover blurted, Did you hear the news from New York? and without a pause went right into giving them the news. Lowe dropped his mask, truly stunned for a moment, and turned human, while MacFarlane drawled almost offhandedly, “We-ell, this is disconcerting…” And at that moment I started to genuinely dislike the calculating little creep. MacFarlane’s an almost supernaturally gifted dealmaker, Stewie’s a pretty inspired animated character, and the guy seems to have a genuine fondness for the old styles…but that just isn’t enough for my scorecard. If you could say that there’s such a thing as a Seth MacFarlane Tolerance Level, mine’s pretty low I guess.

Anyway, I’m less ironical and more earnest than one would assume at first. And I tend to take things like that hard. Not exactly an asset around here.

On another note:

“Stereophonic Sound”
Silk Stockings, MGM 1957
Janis Paige, Fred Astaire
Rouben Mamoulian, director
Andre Previn, music director

As I said in another post, I’m three degrees away from my beloved John Wilson with one particular MGM musical, Give a Girl a Break, as the bridge. But! I’m only TWO degrees away from the man I love with this MGM musical, Silk Stockings—from me to Rouben Mamoulian to Andre Previn to John.

Silk Stockings was adapted from the 1955 stage musical of the same name, which itself was an adaptation of the film Ninotchka (MGM, 1939). It was directed by my old boss, Rouben Mamoulian, produced by Arthur Freed, and stars Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse (who wound up as Mamoulian’s neighbor on Schuyler Road). Musical director was Andre Previn. It was the last movie Mamoulian, aka The Old Man, ever did (at 60—he died at 90), and “Stereophonic Sound” is one of the numbers on John Wilson+Orchestra’s 2014 Cole Porter album. But watch the clip instead. Janis Paige is the focus in this number but Fred Astaire at 58 is still a joy.


The entire film SILK STOCKINGS directed by my old boss, Rouben Mamoulian, is available to watch here


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Porgy and Bess at the English National Opera, Conducted by John Wilson, Fall 2018

In a podcast interview for the English National Opera, this is what my bonny John Wilson, Conductor had to say:

“There are very few pieces I can say I’ve been waiting all my life to conduct, and this is one of them. In my, kind of, college years or whenever that was, I got the Simon Rattle LP and I kind of wore out the groove of those records and had to buy ‘em on CD…

“Of course it’s known for the hit tunes that have been extracted from it, but it’s much more than that… And I would even say that the most interesting music in the opera is the ariosos, the small pieces which link everything together and the incidental music… It’s really very ambitious… It’s George Gershwin at his most inventive, and as Gershwin was arguably the greatest tunesmith of the twentieth century, you’re looking at melodic material from the very very top drawer…”

Porgy and Bess ENOAbove: Nadine Benjamin sings “Summertime” in rehearsal


Tunesmith—sheesh.

And I miss the goat. Without the goat, there is no Porgy and Bess (2:31:25 at this complete 2002 Lincoln Center production).

Thanks to LA producer/theatre & film critic Myron Meisel for his commiseration on the goat, and for his comments on Gershwin and my old boss, Porgy & Bess‘s original director (1935) Rouben Mamoulian, on Facebook, which I answered there.

EXTRA! I found this pre-performance talk with John and a bunch of astonishingly, insultingly no-nothing weeds on Soundcloud here; my beloved is a fount of knowledge about Gershwin’s habits when writing P&B at least


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John Wilson with Top Tips for Becoming a Conductor, 2017 Edition

This interview with my sweet John was put out into cyberland on the BBC Scottish Symphony Facebook page around 2017. I couldn’t resist the temptation to transcribe it verbatim, in its entirety (that’s Coates’s “Dancing Nights” above my darling):

John: “I think a lo’ of the successful relationships between the conductor and orchestra are founded on mutual need, so find a group that really needs you, whatever level that is, whether it be a community orchestra, a community choir, an amateur orchestra, a brass band, a musical theater group, and bring what professional skills you have to them so that you can feed off each other. And all that time, never stop studying scores. You know, that’s the single most useful piece of advice to give to any conductor, is learn your scores. Practice your technique and learn your scores. Learning to read a score is really crucial, learning all the transpositions and being able to look at a score and immediately know what that’s meant to sound like, so that when things aren’t right, your ear picks them up and you can correct things quickly and efficiently. Which is another useful skill for a conductor to have, your ears sharpened to the extent that, that you’re able to solve problems. Your early years should be spent learning, you know, learning what it is that you need to do as a conductor… Get in as much practical experience as you can. I did, sort of, at least a decade’s worth of conducting before I dared to stand in front of a professional orchestra, which was the single most terrifying experience of my life.

“I had a friend who was organizing concerts in London and had a concert series and I was invited to conduct… And I worked with the BBC, actually with the Concert Orchestra, as an arranger, and they asked me to conduct one of their recording sessions, a couple of CDs [John’s first 2 recordings, both of Eric Coates, which were released when he was 25 and 26], and so they showed faith in me, and I was grateful for the opportunity… And I guess I was interested in areas of music that didn’t have many champions, so I got a bit of a head start on that front… Um, and happily I’ve never stopped working since. Now the only challenge (laughs) is to keep on working…

“But there are lots of different routes into becoming a conductor. As Barbirolli said, ‘Conductors are born and not made.’ So if you want to do it badly enough I think you’ll get through.”


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A Reading Note Just for My Beloved John Wilson, Conductor: The Truest Rendering of My Feelings for You in The Black Prince by Iris Murdoch

From 2022: Hope you’re feeing better, mi vida, and that you’re up and getting ready for Sheffield. Given that my feelings for you lie somewhere between a Larry Hart lyric and an Iris Murdoch story, I want to share with you 1) one of most beautiful Rodgers+Hart songs; and 2) an early passage from my second favorite comic novelist’s 15th novel, The Black Prince* (Viking, 1973) before everybody goes to hell and—well, I won’t give it away:

…[I]t is one of the peculiarities, perhaps one of the blessings, of this planet that anyone can experience this transformation of the world. Also, anyone can be its object. … The foreverness of real love is one of the reasons why even unrequited love is a source of joy. The human soul craves for the eternal of which, apart from rare mysteries of religion, only love and art can give a glimpse. … Love brings with it also a vision of selflessness. How right Plato was to think that, embracing a lovely boy, he was on the road to the Good. I say a vision of selflessness, because our mixed nature readily degrades the purity of any aspiration. But such insight, even intermittent, even momentary, is a privilege and can be of permanent value because of the intensity with which it visits us. Ah, even once, to will another rather than oneself! Why could we not make of this revelation a lever by which to lift the world? Why cannot this release from self provide a foothold in a new place which we can then colonize and enlarge until at last we will all that is not ourselves? That was Plato’s dream. It is not impossible.

*The Black Prince is lust. Figured that out myself.

Above John’s adorable face: Jane Frohman sings the song I’d make a fool of myself singing on the streets of Southwark below his window, “With a Song in My Heart”.


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“Leopold! Leopold!”

Here’s Stokowski, international maestro (and, like my beloved John Wilson, a graduate of the Royal College of Music) in my second favorite Deanna Durbin movie: 100 Men and a Girl. Directed by Henry Koster. Universal, 1937. Andre Previn‘s great-uncle Charles Previn, musical director, arranger, composer and conductor at Universal, won an Oscar for his score for 100 Men and a Girl. While at Universal, Previn accumulated over 225 films to his credit, including most of Deanna Durbin’s films.

The bass-baritone in the Bugs Bunny classic “Long-Haired Hare” (Warner Bros 1949), where the title of this posting comes from, is voiced by bass-baritone SF native (and, like my son, a former pupil at Mission High School) Nicolai Shutorev.



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My First Music: Friday Night Is Music Night with the BBC Concert Orchestra, Conducted by the Oh-So-Kissable John Wilson, August 2005

At around the same time of life the oh-so-kissable John Wilson was a wee bairn in Gateshead falling out of his high chair in excitement over the brand-new BBC news theme, I was in my playpen in the living room of the old one-bedroom apartment in South Minneapolis jumping up and down in excitement to the theme of Captain Kangaroo on TV.

Now here we are with my darling 33-year-old (in 2005) lad on the podium in the first televised broadcast of this longtime radio fixture, and I get to find out the titles of all those excerpts and show themes I’ve heard on the Beeb for years. The sign-in music, incidentally, is Charles Williams‘s “High Adventure.”

A Little Light MusicI will never understand the English tradition of drag. Now, the American tradition of drag, like future husband Mister Grumble doing his Twiggy impersonation at a gay revue in Dallas back in 1964—THAT’s hot. Above John and his admirer: Audio of the entire Friday Night Is Music Night program, “A Little Light Music”.


The program: “The Devil’s Galop” (Dick Barton Special Agent, Monty Python) / Charles Williams; “Portrait of a Flirt” / Robert Farnon; “The Lion and Albert” (comic verse) / Marriott Edgar; March from “Little Suite” (Dr Finlay’s Casebook) / Trevor Duncan; “Barwick Green” (The Archers) / Arthur Wood; “The Typewriter” (The News Quiz) / Leroy Anderson; “Roses of Picardy” / Haydn Wood; “Calling All Workers” (Music While You Work) / Eric Coates; “By the Sleepy Lagoon” (Desert Island Discs) / Eric Coates; “A Canadian in Mayfair” / Angela Morley; “In a Party Mood” / Jack Strachey; “Sailing By” (The Shipping Forecast) / Ronald Binge; “Charmaine” (Monty Python) / Erno Rapee; “Puffin’ Billy” (Captain Kangaroo!!!) at 47:00 / Edward White; “Birdsongs at Eventide” / Eric Coates; “The Dam Busters” March (from the 1954 film) / Eric Coates. Janis Kelly, soprano. Roy Hudd, host.


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John Wilson and The John Wilson Orchestra at the BBC Proms, the Royal Albert Hall, 27 August 2012: The Complete Concert of The Broadway Sound Including “Slaughter On Tenth Avenue”

Before I go into more of my bonny’s musical missteps that have done their part to perturb me to no end, I think it’s only fair to first share the best clips available of John Wilson’s own 24-year-old orchestra—cannily named, as I have mentioned, The John Wilson Orchestra—which, out of over 200(!) on YT in ten years, come down to really only about 4, maybe 5 of these “best clips” between 2009-2019.

This is from their 2012 show The Broadway Sound (@43:50) at the BBC Proms in the Royal Albert Hall in London, which seats 5200, with standing room for 1300 on the ground floor (tickets for which go for only 6L and for which people camp out overnight at the box office like it was Winterland). This is pertinent, because it seems like The JWO only does its best work when it can blast the roof off a barn.

John in FlamesJohn my love, if conducting this incredibly hot number (audio here; video on my YT channel here) didn’t get you laid that night, I worry about your generation. Above John: The audio recording of the complete show, The Broadway Sound.


The entire 2012 BBC Proms concert The Broadway Sound with The John Wilson Orchestra is available here


I had the old Ben Bagley recording and the 1983 Broadway revival recording (conducted by John Mauceri) of the Rodgers & Hart show On Your Toes—which of course includes the climactic ballet “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue”—but both producer Bagley as well as musical theater preservationist Mauceri put on disc the 1936 Robert Russell Bennett orchestration rather than the 1954 one by Don Walker. Our John, being John (I’m starting to get into his “ear”), chose the Walker score to play in the Royal Albertwhich of course makes the most of those two “false” endingsand for once he was entirely correct.


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Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, Performed by the London Symphony Orchestra and Conducted by Leonard Bernstein, Telecast on BBC1 22 January 1967

Performed at the 1800-seat Fairfield Halls in Croydon. If you look fast you’ll notice 2nd violins leader Sir Neville Marriner (at the time former professor at the Royal College of Music, recent founder of the chamber orchestra St Martin in the Fields, and to-be music director of the Minnesota Orchestra). Note that touching moment at the end when the members of the LSO refuse to rise, at Bernstein’s insistence, for the applause of the audience, instead remaining seated and applauding Bernstein themselves. Now that’s respect.

bernstein-stravinsky


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