Alioop's EZ Quiz .
I'm into ice hockey and Gustav Mahler...and if that sounds like an oxymoron, welcome to my world -- where the crayons can't be too old and the music can't be too colorful.
I've loved classical music since I was five, when, as a prodigy, I conducted my first "Carmen." Okay, it was in my living room, and Fritz Reiner didn't really need my help, but I conducted all the same. I also saw a production from the rafters of the old Met at that age and thought I was gonna topple right onto the stage. I can still picture a moment from that production. Listen to Mahler's 2nd or 8th, and maybe you'll understand why Carnegie Hall is my temple, and why hearing Mahler's 2nd some years ago was the first time I ever realized I might actually have a soul. I work in the arts, and although music has always been my passion I've been in the dance world on and off since 1980. Now work with and for "the greatest choreographer in the world"; it's sorta like working for Puccini or Seurat. On my own time I love to see flamenco dancers in a small club. Can you identify the movie this music was used in? Hint: one of the waltzers was not named Matilda.
My favorite music -- other than Mahler, Strauss, Puccini, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Glass, and Torke -- is Baroque: Vivaldi, Bach, Albinoni and Zelenka. I love "B" composers like Martinu and Villa Lobos; Strauss (Richard, not Johann) considered himself a "B". I have a pretty good working knowledge of music although I can't read a note besides FACE. I pride myself on being able to identify nationality and era of anything I hear on the radio, and more often than not the composer, and once in a blue moon the conductor! Example: I once heard a piece and kept vacillating between Frank Bridge and Benjamin Britten, and the announcer came on and said it was Britten's "Variations on a Theme by Bridge"! I nearly drove off the road. 'Nother one: I was at the dentist and he challenged me to identify the piece, which was easy -- Mozart's 35th -- but I also nailed it as Bruno Walter conducting! Can you take one more? I was in the car -- again -- and by process of elimination, pegged a piece as Tchaikovsky's Manfred Symphony. I did that with Strauss's Alpine as well, but that was a slam dunk; I defy anyone to hear that and NOT think it's somebody's, anybody's, Alpine Symphony!!! I now have 30 recordings of the Strauss, which, not coincidentally, contains a tribute to his acquaintance, Mahler! If you want to hear a GREAT tenor, check out Jussi Bjoerling. Also a fan of Bruce, James Blunt and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. And Broadway, especially Sondheim and the classic musicals.
Big movie fan -- Kubrick, Altman, Truffaut. Big fan of English movies, Ralph Fiennes and Kristin Scott Thomas. My hockey team is the Devils; baseball, the Dodgers. But hockey is my great love. I have eight canaries, and that's a lot of birdseed.
You can see some of my copywriting and creative direction at www.ConceptsToCopy.com. Catchy, huh. I've been lucky enough to interview some of the great artists of our time, including Paul Taylor, Bettie de Jong, Erik Bruhn, Cynthia Gregory, Kevin McKenzie, Martine van Hamel, Susan Jaffe, Victor Barbee, Guillaume Graffin, John Adams, Meredith Monk, Shulamit Ran, Edgar Meyer, Fred Sherry, David Shifrin, Milan Turkovic, Joseph Silverstein, Cho-Liang Lin, Anne-Marie McDermott, Paul Neubauer, Ani and Ida Kavafian, the Orion Quartet, Anthony Quayle, Bello Nock and Grandma.
