ALICE IS NOW 107 YEARS OLD. She is the world’s oldest Holocaust survivor. A concert pianist and lifelong musician, she lives everyday to the fullest, imparting her optimism and wisdom on all those around her.
"Alice Dancing Under The Gallows" is a new documentary short that will take you on an emotional and inspirational journey reliving the life of this amazing woman.
For more information about the film, go to: http://www.nickreedent.com.
Directed by Oscar winning director Malcolm Clarke
Produced by Nick Reed, Malcolm Clarke, Chris Branch, Larry Abramson, Jasmine Daghighian
Showing posts with label music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label music. Show all posts
Saturday, November 27, 2010
Friday, November 19, 2010
BETTER THAN LOVE: Hurts, a love of ballet, Romania, Romanian girls and subtext.
This post is dedicated to a very special friend that I am sure will remember the love romance with my country :)
I am completely fascinated by the concept behind Hurts, this "post-Renaissance" duo from Manchester, UK. They have a kind of visual music with a mix of influences that makes my inner teenager scream out loud of joy: a strange brew of Depeche Mode, a glimpse of Bros, even a sparking Pet Shop Boys energy , fashion , cinema and "heavy, emotional, and atmospheric love songs" ...
Their videos are lessons of cinematography and style. If they will continue in the same direction, soon I will watch an entire Hurts music film.
And being a romanian this is "everything I ever dreamed of, and nothing like I expected." :)
~Enigmatic duo Hurts have shed some mystery by revealing what they call a "pistol crack" of a debut single. Better Than Love is the first release by the duo, who have been called 'Tears For Fears, as shot by Anton Corbijn'. The track has a lush video which singer Theo says was born out of "a love of ballet, Romania, Romanian girls and, most importantly, subtext."
He added that the beautifully shot film was "everything we ever dreamed of, and nothing like we expected."~ BBC
FADER
A new video from Hurts, the post-Renaissance duo who look like dapper thugs, a gang based on love, and sound similar, as though they wander the streets despondent, singing aggressive love songs, blaspheming false pop deities. Their words on their elegant new video are below, as they are infinitely better than any attempt of our own
Their videos are lessons of cinematography and style. If they will continue in the same direction, soon I will watch an entire Hurts music film.
And being a romanian this is "everything I ever dreamed of, and nothing like I expected." :)
~Enigmatic duo Hurts have shed some mystery by revealing what they call a "pistol crack" of a debut single. Better Than Love is the first release by the duo, who have been called 'Tears For Fears, as shot by Anton Corbijn'. The track has a lush video which singer Theo says was born out of "a love of ballet, Romania, Romanian girls and, most importantly, subtext."
He added that the beautifully shot film was "everything we ever dreamed of, and nothing like we expected."~ BBC
FADER
A new video from Hurts, the post-Renaissance duo who look like dapper thugs, a gang based on love, and sound similar, as though they wander the streets despondent, singing aggressive love songs, blaspheming false pop deities. Their words on their elegant new video are below, as they are infinitely better than any attempt of our own
And so,
Here we are.
We travelled from Manchester in England to Bucharest in Romania in 3 Trabants.
We visited sporting outlets, bars and casinos.
We toured the city, stroked dogs and forgot to sleep.
We hired lots of specifically Romanian models and made a video.
We shaved heads, waltzed with mirror images and faced many rhetorical romantic questions.
We didn’t leave Romania for a very long time.
And eventually, we present for you, Better Than Love.
Buna Scumpo!
Enjoy.
PS And because eventually everything connects, I've just noticed that in the theatrical trailer is Laura, a beautiful actress that I discovered years ago when I was casting in Bucharest.
Monday, October 18, 2010
Limit To Your Love
No limits. Love it.
Video for James Blake's track 'Limit To Your Love'. Directed by Martin de Thurah
Released on 8 November
James Blake - Limit To Your Love from James Blake on Vimeo.
Video for James Blake's track 'Limit To Your Love'. Directed by Martin de Thurah
Released on 8 November
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
U2 & NASA , Touring the Space
NASA and U2 have released a commemorative video clip - highlighting a year's worth of collaboration both in space and the U2 360 Tour.
U2 approached NASA with an idea to include a dialogue between themselves and the crew of the International Space Station in the U2 360 show. NASA astronauts spoke with U2 several times before recording a video segment that U2 incorporated into their concert.
U2 approached NASA with an idea to include a dialogue between themselves and the crew of the International Space Station in the U2 360 show. NASA astronauts spoke with U2 several times before recording a video segment that U2 incorporated into their concert.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
SWING KIDS - Nonsense
I love this track . It makes me happy now when I am nervous. In few minutes we start to film.
Friday, February 5, 2010
Music And The Romanian Soul
by Constantin Noica (1909-1987)
None of the great men of 1848 – a Romanian scholar noticed once – had a particular understanding of music. The boyar sons from a hundred years ago assimilated everything regarding the arts that they encountered abroad, but not music. Not even today, perhaps, do we have enough understanding in this respect. Because music demands not only intelligence…
I interrupt here the flow of ideas that Professor Sextil Puşcariu developed in such a suggestive manner in an older History of Romanian Literature. Isn’t there something to learn from them? The cultured Romanian soul (the popular one is another story) doesn’t have all the dimensions. Not that it could have all of them at once. There took place, inside it, a worthy development, in the luminous areas of the spiritual life, but, in the areas that the ray of intelligence doesn’t reach, the growth was delayed. Will it delay any longer?
But this is precisely what our time brings over: a musical understanding of things; a troubling triumph of music. There are, for instance, souls and nations which know how to “orchestrate”, while the others don’t. Why doesn’t some nation win battles? Because, maybe, it didn’t have a great musician – this came to me one day. It doesn’t orchestrate; it doesn’t think like in a symphony; it doesn’t really sing. And our time, as any time in which the “elements” tend to individualize themselves, needs unity and music. In the cultured Romanian soul, cut too much at the edges, sometimes, separated from things and from itself by the merciless censorship of intelligence, our time comes to pour harmony and the sense of the whole. There is something material in music, not only a simple poetic idea, and it is matter that a soul needs, that was too much challenged by the theoretic and by theory., as this intelligent cultured Romanian soul is.
Only from music – unless you know it directly – do you learn what growth and becoming are. Symphony alone shows you how the matter of the sounds grows into meaning. Music familiarises you with that chaos of what isn’t there yet, which you will find later everywhere where life is: in you, if there is life in you; in history, where you seem to find too much of it. If we need today to familiarise ourselves with matter, to understand mess, chaos, then the spirit of music can give us a key. Of this key, most of our great ancestors were deprived. Titu Maiorescu left outraged the performance with Lohengrin. But it isn’t necessary to write this on the effigy that will soon be cast in his memory…
That’s why the deepest cultural phenomenon, maybe, that has been happening for a few years in Romania, is the growth in interest for the great music. When you see these full concert halls, when you listen to the celebrating radio programs, you can hope that our cultured soul will know more, will understand more, tomorrow. It is true there are a lot of snobs: it is also true that many enjoy only the voluptuousness of music. But if art isn’t a superior form of cuisine, then what is happening today has a cultural meaning. Our times send us through music a refined message – to understand their darkness and lights.
Excerpted from Vremea, 1942
George Enescu "Romanian Rhapsody" conducted by Sergiu Celibidache in a unique and magnificent style
None of the great men of 1848 – a Romanian scholar noticed once – had a particular understanding of music. The boyar sons from a hundred years ago assimilated everything regarding the arts that they encountered abroad, but not music. Not even today, perhaps, do we have enough understanding in this respect. Because music demands not only intelligence…
I interrupt here the flow of ideas that Professor Sextil Puşcariu developed in such a suggestive manner in an older History of Romanian Literature. Isn’t there something to learn from them? The cultured Romanian soul (the popular one is another story) doesn’t have all the dimensions. Not that it could have all of them at once. There took place, inside it, a worthy development, in the luminous areas of the spiritual life, but, in the areas that the ray of intelligence doesn’t reach, the growth was delayed. Will it delay any longer?
But this is precisely what our time brings over: a musical understanding of things; a troubling triumph of music. There are, for instance, souls and nations which know how to “orchestrate”, while the others don’t. Why doesn’t some nation win battles? Because, maybe, it didn’t have a great musician – this came to me one day. It doesn’t orchestrate; it doesn’t think like in a symphony; it doesn’t really sing. And our time, as any time in which the “elements” tend to individualize themselves, needs unity and music. In the cultured Romanian soul, cut too much at the edges, sometimes, separated from things and from itself by the merciless censorship of intelligence, our time comes to pour harmony and the sense of the whole. There is something material in music, not only a simple poetic idea, and it is matter that a soul needs, that was too much challenged by the theoretic and by theory., as this intelligent cultured Romanian soul is.
Only from music – unless you know it directly – do you learn what growth and becoming are. Symphony alone shows you how the matter of the sounds grows into meaning. Music familiarises you with that chaos of what isn’t there yet, which you will find later everywhere where life is: in you, if there is life in you; in history, where you seem to find too much of it. If we need today to familiarise ourselves with matter, to understand mess, chaos, then the spirit of music can give us a key. Of this key, most of our great ancestors were deprived. Titu Maiorescu left outraged the performance with Lohengrin. But it isn’t necessary to write this on the effigy that will soon be cast in his memory…
That’s why the deepest cultural phenomenon, maybe, that has been happening for a few years in Romania, is the growth in interest for the great music. When you see these full concert halls, when you listen to the celebrating radio programs, you can hope that our cultured soul will know more, will understand more, tomorrow. It is true there are a lot of snobs: it is also true that many enjoy only the voluptuousness of music. But if art isn’t a superior form of cuisine, then what is happening today has a cultural meaning. Our times send us through music a refined message – to understand their darkness and lights.
Excerpted from Vremea, 1942
George Enescu "Romanian Rhapsody" conducted by Sergiu Celibidache in a unique and magnificent style
I kissed his hand and I left a letter for him on the table.
He was one of the greatest artists of the world. She was a divine singer.
Constantin Brancusi and Maria Tanase met in New York in 1939.
“I met Costache Brâncuşi in New York and I left him in the bed brought from his Paris studio. It was raining that day and he asked me to sing for him. Not to see him cry he propped his back against mine so that I could not spy his face. Later on, after many songs, he fell asleep. Not to wake him up, I put a pillow to support him instead of my back. I kissed his hand and I left a letter for him on the table. In an hour I had to leave for the country.”
Maria Tanase
The meeting was caught in a photo document. Seemingly, “the laments” of Maria Tănase did not enchant the sculptor, if we are to believe architect Octav Doicescu, since he preferred doinas and playful, merry tunes, with jocose lyrics. He favored spontaneous, direct, simple music. For this visionary artist of simplicity, the music of Wagner sounded “barbarian”, that of Beethoven “too dramatic”, whereas Mozart he deemed “gentle and sweet.” He compared J. S. Bach with a lion stepping majestically in the desert (V. G. Paleolog).
It is a fact though that music accompanied him along all his life, and the Romanian folk song soothed his longing after the country, comforting the immigrant to Paris until his death.
Brâncuşi And The World Of Music by Viorel Cosma (b. 1927)
Constantin Brancusi and Maria Tanase met in New York in 1939.
“I met Costache Brâncuşi in New York and I left him in the bed brought from his Paris studio. It was raining that day and he asked me to sing for him. Not to see him cry he propped his back against mine so that I could not spy his face. Later on, after many songs, he fell asleep. Not to wake him up, I put a pillow to support him instead of my back. I kissed his hand and I left a letter for him on the table. In an hour I had to leave for the country.”
Maria Tanase
The meeting was caught in a photo document. Seemingly, “the laments” of Maria Tănase did not enchant the sculptor, if we are to believe architect Octav Doicescu, since he preferred doinas and playful, merry tunes, with jocose lyrics. He favored spontaneous, direct, simple music. For this visionary artist of simplicity, the music of Wagner sounded “barbarian”, that of Beethoven “too dramatic”, whereas Mozart he deemed “gentle and sweet.” He compared J. S. Bach with a lion stepping majestically in the desert (V. G. Paleolog).
It is a fact though that music accompanied him along all his life, and the Romanian folk song soothed his longing after the country, comforting the immigrant to Paris until his death.
Brâncuşi And The World Of Music by Viorel Cosma (b. 1927)
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