Well, dear readers, two days ago I wrote the following opening to these here notes: “As I sit here like so much fish writing these notes in a hurry I must pause to sing the praises of a composer named Claus Ogerman, whose musical language and brilliant orchestrations speak to me in quite an emotional way.” I then waxed on about how much his music was a life changer for me. Whilst writing those notes I was listening to all the Claus Ogerman albums I had – his classical works, his Gate of Dreams, our Bay Cities album, and on and on and that music still had the power to move me emotionally and make me indescribably happy. I’d moved on to the Dave Brubeck box set, but yesterday afternoon I went back to a Danilo Perez album I’d uploaded, a beautiful album with stunning orchestrations by Mr. Ogerman. And a few hours later, the wonderful pianist Mike Lang (he’s played piano on mostly every famous soundtrack since the 80s) posted the news that Claus Ogerman had passed away . It must have been some kind of something going on that I wrote those notes two days ago and went back to his work yesterday. He lived a long and wonderful life and I’m sure he touched millions of people in the same we his music touched and taught me. He was a genius of sorts and unique but he leaves behind a treasure trove of incredible music. However, when I actually read the article Mike posted it said that Mr. Ogerman actually passed away in March of this year – why everyone (and I do mean everyone) is just hearing about it now is anyone’s guess.
As soon as I heard the news, I went digging around for our correspondence but it wasn’t in the two big boxes o’ stuff from the Bay Cities days on forward, so it’s somewhere in another box in the garage or in storage and I would have no idea where to even begin looking. But I’ll tell you something – going through the two boxes I went through made me get all emotional in a different way – the hundreds of notes from my close personal friend, Mr. Stephen Sondheim, dating all the way back to the late 1980s, tons of notes from Harvey Schmidt and John Kander and Tony Walton, and also lovely missives from Charles Strouse, Ira Levin, Mary Rodgers, Stephen Flaherty, Richard Adler, film composer James Bernard and on and on. I read a few and while I sit here today and occasionally think have I ever done anything really important I look at these letters and I have to believe the answer is yes.
Yesterday was a day. Thankfully there were no real irritants and I’m praying I can get through the rest of the week without any rearing their ugly head. I set the alarm for ten, but it didn’t go off. I got up around ten-fifteen, though, because the telephonic device rang. I got up, did the usual morning of stuff of answering e-mails, deleting hundreds of spams, printing out a few orders, and then suddenly the alarm went off at ten-forty. I think Ye Olde iPad is perhaps suffering from Ye Olde Age – it’s a first generation iPad. I did some work on the computer, then went to Jerry’s Deli and actually ordered something I’ve never had before – a California Melt, which is chicken, avocado, bacon, jack cheese, on sourdough bread. I quite liked it and I had no onion rings for fries with it, so that was good.
Then I came home and buckled down, Winsocki, and finished the commentary for the November Kritzerland. I chose to repeat a show because I needed something that was built and written but being me I ended up changing so much of it and also because the original commentary was only the fifth I’d written (I’d yet to find my commentary style and voice – that would happen around show nine or ten), I ended up basically writing an all new commentary. Go know. Happily, because we’ve done certain songs in other more recent shows, I was able to cut and paste the history stuff and that helped move things along. Whilst I was doing that for two hours, I listened to music – three of my favorite symphonies, and I made an interesting discovery about said symphonies. Three favorites that all happen to be second symphonies – Hanson’s Second Symphony, Rachmaninov’s Second Symphony, and Sibelius’ Second Symphony. Isn’t that interesting? But the interest doesn’t stop there – all three of these second symphonies have had their most famous movements used in either film or pop music. Isn’t that interesting? The Rachmaninov second symphony’s third movement has been “borrowed” by quite a lot of folks, and when I say “borrowed” I mean note for note borrowed – Eric Carmen’s Never Gonna Fall in Love Again, Barry Manilow’s If I Should Love Again, and Don Sebesky’s orchestral piece You Can’t Go Home Again, and there are others, too. The Hanson second symphony was used, much to Jerry Goldsmith’s chagrin, for the end titles to the film Alien. And it was the temp track for E.T.’s final twenty minutes and John Williams captures its essence in what he wrote for that twenty minutes. And the Sibelius second symphony’s second movement was “borrowed” by Michael Kamen for the main title of The Dead Zone. So, there you have three seconds that are not only popular with the populace, but which have had major borrowings.
After I finished writing the commentary, I did a two-and-a-half mile jog, booked a dinner with Richard and Elizabeth Sherman for Thursday night, and had some other telephonic calls. The helper picked up the CD boxes and got the few CDs she wasn’t able to ship on Friday on their merry way. In fact, a couple of people already got theirs and the comments on Facebook were very lovely. I wasn’t really in a movie mode, so I listened to the Danilo Perez/Claus Ogerman CD, then finished up listening to the Brubeck box – I’ve now heard all nineteen of those amazing studio albums. I spent the rest of the evening listening to other music, including Air Power by Norman Dello Joio – the soundtrack to a TV documentary, it’s just a wonderful score by a great American classical composer – we issued a few things by him on Bay Cities. I also finally cleaned up the CD closet so that I can actually walk in there. As I looked at the four or five thousand CDs in there, I began to think I should just get rid of a lot of it, stuff I’ll never play again. I wouldn’t even know how to go about that, as I certainly would not take ANY of it to Amoeba, which means it would either be Amazon or eBay. I’d have to hire someone to do it. But I have a few incredibly rare soundtracks, including the unreleased but pressed Blood In, Blood Out Varese CD by Bill Conti. Maybe I’ll put that one up on Amazon and see what happens. I actually had about eight copies of it and never sold one for less than four hundred bucks. In fact, let’s just see if there’s one up on Amazon right now. There is exactly one copy available at $500.
Then I got an e-mail from Kay Cole who is really sick, so she’s asking to postpone this weekend’s session. It means the earliest we can do it is the weekend of November 12, because of my schedule. I have no idea what Boswell’s schedule is or my engineer’s schedule. She may have to pay something to Capitol for cancelling this close to the session. But none of that has anything to do with me so she’ll do whatever she needs to.
Today, I will do some liner notes writing, I’ll eat something amusing, I’ll jog, I’ll hopefully pick up some packages, and at some point I’ll relax.
Tomorrow I’ll be auditioning students at Calabasas High, Thursday’s work session with Kay is obviously off, so I have one with Richard Allen instead – we’ll go over all The Brain music. Then the Shermans will come and we’ll go have a lovelier than lovely Eyetalian dinner and he’ll do the five signed musical quotes. Friday and the weekend are now unknown to me, although I do have a lot of Brain work to do.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, write, eat, jog, hopefully pick up packages, and at some point, relax. Today’s topic of discussion: When you were growing up or a young adult, what music that you heard was life changing in some way? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, wishing Happy Trails to Mr. Ogerman and happy to have realized the similarities of the three seconds.