Composers Archives - Page 2 of 2

What? Yet Another Up-and-Coming Young America Composer in Our Concert?

January 4, 2024October 2, 2017 by debisimons

Note: this post was originally written about a concert in Oct. 2017 that my own choir performed.

Well my goodness! So far I’ve written about the music in our concert from Anne Kilstofte, Dan Forrest, and Daniel Elder. All three are young and American, actively engaged in composing, arranging, teaching, conducting . . . you name it. To that list I now add Victor C. Johnson, the composer of our lovely opening piece, “Music in the Night.” I had looked up the author of the lyrics, Harriet Prescott Spofford, and found her life story to be quite interesting. She’s a good example of what was called a “lady writer” back in the late 1800’s-early 1900’s, turning out short stories, poems and novels to make money when her father’s business failed.

A Charming Fable that Deserves More Fame

December 11, 2020March 16, 2016 by debisimons

Statue of Apollo

The secular cantata A God in Disguise by the Swedish composer Lars-Erik Larsson with lyrics by the poet Hjalmar Gullberg is a fabulous work that is far too little known here in America. There are two ideas about its background that I’d like to discuss in this post: the actual story behind the lyrics and world events that were unfolding at the time of its composition.

How does this whole commissioning process work?

January 3, 2022January 31, 2016 by debisimons

Note to readers: This post was originally written in connection with a March 2016 concert by my own choir. I have left it as is, since it contains quite a bit of information about how commissions work and therefore should be of general interest.

So I started out by saying that we (that is, the Cherry Creek Chorale in the Denver area) had a number of commissioned pieces on our program for this concert, which raised the question above. So how does it all work?

Well, it depends. If I were to commission a wall hanging by a local artist to put in the stairwell of my home, that original physical item would belong to me. Beyond that ownership, though, there could be a number of permutations. I would have to spell out what other rights I wanted to purchase along with the item itself: Would I own the rights to the image or design? Could I make prints or copies of it and sell them? Would I have to give credit to the artist any time that a picture of my home was published that included the stairwell? Etc. It’s a very interesting and complicated issue.

A Choral Commission

December 11, 2020April 30, 2015 by debisimons

Have you ever noticed the words “commissioned by” or “in honor of” at the top of a song or other musical composition? My own choir has actually commissioned several works over its history. I wrote this piece about a new one, and our relationship to both the commissioner and the commissionee was pretty special.

What three strands produced our selection “Friendship” by K. Lee Scott?

Who Says, “Play It Again, Sam” in the Movie “Casablanca”?

February 3, 2021March 9, 2015 by debisimons

Black-and-white film screenshot of a man and woman as seen from the shoulders up. The two are close to each other as if about to kiss. — image accessed via Wikipedia

And the answer is: nobody. That line isn’t in the movie. We get the full scoop from the website The Phrase Finder:

This is well-known as one of the most widely misquoted lines from films. The actual line in the film is ‘Play it, Sam’. Something approaching ‘Play it again, Sam’ is first said in the film by Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman) in an exchange with the piano player ‘Sam’ (Dooley Wilson):

Was the gal from Kalamazoo really from Kalamazoo?

December 10, 2020February 21, 2015 by debisimons

Once again I’ve proven that there’s no limit to the time you can spend looking up arcane knowledge on the Internet, even for what I thought was a pretty simple question. But while I had the lyrics to the song itself and easily found the plot summary for the 1942 film in which it appeared, Orchestra Wives, I couldn’t seem to find out if the “small-town girl” who marries the trumpeter in Glenn Miller’s band really was from Kalamazoo. I watched most of the movie but could never find any mention of the town’s name where Connie, our heroine, lives. However, I did a little detective work via Googlemaps and put that knowledge together with the plot. Here’s how the story goes: Connie is first seen in the soda shop putting a nickel in the jukebox to listen to “Gene Morrison’s” band, professing especial admiration for the trumpeter, Bill Abbott. The soda jerk (played by a very young Harry Morgan of TV M*A*S*H fame) tells her that the band is playing in “Dixon” that very night and that he’ll be glad to take her. There’s a Dixon, Indiana, located a little over two hours from Kalamazoo, a doable trip. Connie and Bill fall for each other at that concert, so she decides to catch another performance the next night, this time in “Elgin.”