Summary: Singer-songwriter Andrew Bird is a virtual one-man band - along with his vocal talents, he plays the violin, guitar, xylophone, and glockenspiel. The celebrated musician winds his instrumental techniques together with sophisticated electronic looping. Add in his uncanny ability to whistle anything, and he becomes not just a band but an orchestra. This TED presentation by Bird offers an ideal...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: Using Mozart's lively operatic piece, this program illustrates how composers weave together musical ideas to bring contrast and texture to their music. Abrupt pizzicatos, resounding fanfares, and languid melodies presented as a series of quick edits illustrate the point, along with an uninterrupted playback of a portion of the Overture.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
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Summary: How do musicians find the inspiration to create? Do most songwriters come up with lyrics first, or music? What does it mean to be a composer in today's high-tech world? This program addresses questions young people may have about embarking on a career in music or musical composition. Focusing on current styles like rock, techno, and hip-hop, the video includes interviews with a classically...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
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Summary: Here's a place where your students can turn their creativity into a career. This program looks at opportunities to design, produce, exhibit, perform, write, or publish in a variety of media, including theater, film, textiles, newspapers, radio, and television. Real-world insights into this cluster are provided through interviews with a cable TV broadcast engineer, newspaper reporter,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: How do three talented individuals translate their unique artistic sensibilities into action? This program explains. Section one focuses attention on Jacques d'Amboise, one of the world's finest classical dancers and founder of the National Dance Institute, which exposes thousands of inner-city school children to the magic and discipline of dance. Section two introduces viewers to Andre Andreev...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: Aida was acclaimed at its first performance in 1871 and has grown in stature ever since to become one of the best-loved and most-performed grand operas of all time. Filmed at the Royal Opera House, Elijah Moshinsky's 1994 production of Giuseppe Verdi's extravagant and magnificent Egyptian opera features Cheryl Studer in the title role and a cast that includes Dennis O'Neill and Luciana...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 1994
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Summary: One of Debussy's impressionistic Estampes, La soiree dans Grenade vividly recalls the landscapes and architecture of Spain and the Far East. Virtuoso pianist Martino Tirimo directs a thrilling master class in this program-enabling the diverse group of students gathered at London's Royal Academy of Music to achieve the atmospheric tonality that Debussy intended. Artists from the United States,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: Inspired by Paganini's dedication to a soloist instrument, the violin, Chopin decided early in his career to write only for piano. This beautifully produced program presents a biography of the Polish-born child prodigy and composer who blended Slavic influences into his works. Sketches, paintings, and cinematic treatments of Chopin and his times complement the music. Archival footage includes...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
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Summary: This modern retelling of Humperdinck's fairy tale opera - described by Richard Strauss as "a masterpiece of the highest quality" - combines Romanticism, lyricism, and exuberant playfulness in a rich orchestration. Director Laurent Pelly places the siblings in a cardboard shack, and the iconic gingerbread house has been re-envisioned as shelves of child-enticing junk food. This popular...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
View online at AVOD
Summary: This program discusses the development of this ethereal instrument in 8th-century Ireland. We see how Irish monks introduced the harp to Europe, and follow its growth from a small, hand-held instrument into the standard 75-pound, 46-string instrument played today. Works by Handel, Mozart, Liszt, and Debussy, as well as music from Ireland and Switzerland, illustrate the harp's use through time.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
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Summary: A close look at such rarities as the dulcimer and the hurdy-gurdy, as well as better-known instruments like the organ, harpsichord, and kettledrums.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
View online at AVOD
Summary: Between the two of them, Wynton Marsalis and B.B. King have jazz, classical music, and the blues covered. What are these towering composer/musicians like as writers and performers-and as people? This NewsHour program shares a few moments of their lives to look deeper. Episodes include. * Wynton Marsalis-Jazzing the Pulitzer: Charlayne Hunter-Gault and a 35-year-old Wynton Marsalis talk...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
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Summary: In what many believe to be the finest production of Verdi's Otello in modern times, Plácido Domingo and Kiri Te Kanawa lead a world-class cast under the forceful and sensitive musical direction of Sir Georg Solti. This is an outstanding performance of the first of the composer's two late Shakespearean operas, widely regarded as masterpieces of the form. The production is helmed by Elijah...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 1992
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Summary: In 1701, Bartolomeo Christofori, a musician employed by the Medicis, invented the first piano by modifying a harpsichord. This program discusses how this popular instrument has changed over the years (except for its hammers), and how its flexibility and expressiveness have inspired composers such as Beethoven, Schumann, Liszt, and Bartok.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: Two groups of instruments use strings as the primary source of sound: those in which plucking sets the strings in vibration, and the bowed strings. This program shows how the demand for more powerful sounds was met, and examines the instruments of Stradivari to determine what science can and cannot reveal about their magic. It also examines the ways in which scientific methods complement the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: This program discusses the history and evolution of electronic music. The synthesizer's roots are traced from the 1920s to the invention of the "Trautonium"-a prototype of the modern synthesizer. Its acceptance in European music circles is discussed. Performances that include the synthesizer show how the development of the modern Moog synthesizer in the 1970s revolutionized contemporary music...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: When Tanja Liedtke, the new artistic director of Sydney Dance Company, died in an accident, Rafael Bonachela and two other internationally renowned choreographers were quickly engaged to temporarily fill that void by creating one work each during 2008 - from, as it were, a blank canvas. Bonachela subsequently applied for and won the artistic director position, and this program maps out the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
View online at AVOD
Summary: In the 11th century, European musicians tried to make their instruments sound like the human voice. Instead of plucking the strings, they began drawing a piece of wood or bone across them to sustain the tone. By Elizabethan times, the viol was the aristocrat of bowed instruments, while the violin was considered fit only for pubs and parties. This program shows how fashions as well as musical...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
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Summary: The Rhapsody in B Minor requires a range of sensibilities, from lightheartedness to a propensity for shock value. In this program, virtuoso pianist Martino Tirimo leads an engaging master class at London's Royal Academy of Music-pushing his students to find the essence of the Brahms piece, while encouraging each performer to craft his or her individual approach. Artists from the United States,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: Eric Clapton headlines a festival featuring some of the world's greatest guitar players including Jeff Beck, B.B. King, Vince Gill, Buddy Guy, and more.
Format: moving image
Publisher / Publication Date: 2007
Copies Available at Fife Lake
1 available in Digital Video Disc, Call number: DVD CROCopies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Music DVDs, Call number: DVD MUSIC ERISummary: The guitar is the national instrument of Spain, so it is appropriate that this program begins with the playing of the traditional vihuela. The story of the instrument's development over the next 400 years includes its replacement of that universal Renaissance instrument, the lute, in both Spain and Italy. Both guitar solo performances and guitar performances with voice appear throughout the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: This is a performance of the Messiah in the original scoring, performed as Handel intended it, with much smaller resources than we have become accustomed to and, therefore, a perfect balance between a small chorus and orchestra. Roger Norrington conducts the London Baroque Players (comprising leading specialists in 17th- and 18th-century instrumental practice), the Cardiff (Wales) Polyphonic...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: The Royal Opera House has been staging La Bohème - one of the most frequently performed operas in the world - for more than 30 years. This production marks the return of veteran director John Copley to Covent Garden to oversee the 23rd revival of Puccini's classic work, in which the carefree attitude of youth and the harsh realities of life are contrasted through the affair of Mimì and Rodolfo....
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: In this program, the orchestra uses lighthearted cafe music from the Milhaud ballet set in a Paris nightclub to illustrate how the use of various keys adds color to the musical landscape. Different instruments, performing the pieces in major and minor keys, give listeners a firsthand glimpse into how key changes add interest to music.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006