Michael Jackson and the end of other things…

Ok, so as a musician I have to give a goodbye wave to the King of Pop.  I may not have liked him or all of his music, but many songs were simply Thrillers.  (And you thought you would get out of this without a pun.  Silly you.)  Of course the extra stray hit by using his name won’t hurt this blog anyway.  So sue me.

Anyway, this week is the last week of my “research” phase in the traditional sense.  I will be finishing up my study of the three big cultural styles and making my final preparations for writing the final product.  Exciting, isn’t it…

But Wait!  There’s More!  (That was tribut to Billy Mays who also died this week.):

I figure it is high time to finally introduce the work that sparked my interest in multicultural syntheses of music.  I would like to introduce you to one of my favorite composers: Yasuhida Ito.  He wrote a composition entitled “Gloriosa” which marries traditional Japanese musical styles and chord structures with Gregorian Chanting from the Middle Ages.  If you went “Huh?” then your reaction was no different from my original reaction.  But it is that beautifully stunning and gorgeous marriage that got my little brain a-thinkin’ about how I might combine the elements of music that I so dearly love.  So, the following link has a bit of info about Ito and the composition “Gloriosa.”  It also has a link to a recording of the piece.  I encourage you to make time for all three movements.  They are certainly worth the ~20 minutes they take.  I have also added links to the three movements as found on Youtube.  There you will have visuals.  The youtube videos are pretty good.

http://www.philharmonicwinds.org/composer_ito.htm

And as a final farewell to Michael, I feel the following video is a great tribute:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPR2IqqRqpQ>

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