Classical Brass, Brubeck jazz, Pink Floyd rarities and more Quarantine Karaoke
Welcome back to Interlude, a fresh batch of online arts, entertainment and cultural enrichment options curated by the Center and delivered to your inbox twice a week!
Though we had to postpone a big run of Center Presents concerts this weekend, we’ve found some great material to enjoy as we continue to reschedule those dates. And how much do you know about Meredith Willson, the musical man behind The Music Man?
American Brass Quintet - Printing Partners Classical Series
Classical Series Sponsor
Considered the best of its kind, the American Brass Quintet had been scheduled to grace the Palladium stage Friday.
Fortunately for us, some great performances are available digitally and free of charge, including:
Performance Sponsor
This 90-minute full concert from February 2019 at the Church of the Ascension in NYC, and
This fun appearance from the Joplin (Mo.) Globe newspaper’s Newsroom Concerts series, which presents “great performances in the terrible lighting of our wonderful newsroom.”
The Company Men - Katz, Sapper & Miller Pop/Rock Series
Pop/Rock Series Sponsor
Performance Sponsor
From Motown to more recent boy bands, The Company Men draw from a long tradition of pop vocal ensembles in crafting their mashups of hits from artists as diverse as Katy Perry, The Weeknd, Prince and the Eagles. Their Palladium show, originally set for Saturday, is now rescheduled for Feb. 27, 2021, and tickets are available here.
Brubeck Brothers Quartet - Drewry Simmons Vornehm Jazz Series
Rather than this coming Sunday, jazz scions Chris and Dan Brubeck have chosen a new date, Nov. 1, to bring us the Dave Brubeck Centennial Celebration, a tribute to their late, legendary pianist-composer father. Tickets are still available on the Center’s website.
Jazz Series Sponsor
Until then, you fans of cool, swinging grooves in unconventional time signatures might enjoy these tasty tidbits:
A full set of “Brubecks Play Brubeck,” recorded in March at the venerable Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club in London. (The 90-minute performance starts around 7:00.)
A vintage TV dance performance set to Dave Brubeck’s “Unsquare Dance,” which has been featured in AMC’s Better Call Saul and on the soundtracks of Baby Driver and Silver Linings Playbook.
Explore the Songbook Archives with America's "Music Man"
From the British Museum in London to the Guggenheim in New York City, museums have been making their exhibits and collections available virtually during this new age of social distancing. And guess what: A key element of the Great American Songbook Foundation’s mission – even before most of us knew the word “coronavirus” – has been to digitize and make available the rare historical materials maintained in its Songbook Archives & Library.
Among the 700,000-plus items documenting the history of American popular music are the personal papers of Meredith Willson, best known as the composer of the classic musical The Music Man. The collection includes early drafts of The Music Man, personal letters from Walt Disney and Presidents Nixon and Kennedy, and even Willson’s passport, and it’s available at your fingertips right here! You can learn more about the Songbook Archives here.
While we can neither confirm nor deny that Pink Floyd played our office Christmas party last year, we can tell you that the British prog-rock giants have begun streaming classic concert footage from their archives every Friday, including rare and previously unseen material. Tune in to their YouTube channel at noon tomorrow to catch the next one.
Here's the first release, a restored and redited version of the band’s 1995 concert film Pulse, which includes a full performance of their mega-selling 1973 breakthough album, Dark Side of the Moon.
