Paul Desmond Take Ten (Full Album)

André Rieu - Love theme from Romeo and Juliet

André Rieu - And The Waltz Goes On (composed by: Anthony Hopkins)

Simon & Garfunkel - The Sound of Silence

Hello darkness, my old friend
I've come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence

In restless dreams I walked alone
Narrow streets of cobblestone
'Neath the halo of a street lamp
I turned my collar to the cold and damp
When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence

And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more
People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening
People writing songs that voices never share
And no one dared
Disturb the sound of silence

"Fools", said I, "You do not know
Silence like a cancer grows
Hear my words that I might teach you
Take my arms that I might reach you"
But my words, like silent raindrops fell
And echoed
In the wells of silence

And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made
And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming
And the sign said, "The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls"
And whispered in the sounds of silence

Paul Simon began working on the song some time after the Kennedy assassination. He had made progress on the music but had yet to get down the lyrics. On 19 February 1964, the lyrics coalesced, as Simon recalled: "The main thing about playing the guitar, though, was that I was able to sit by myself and play and dream. And I was always happy doing that. I used to go off in the bathroom, because the bathroom had tiles, so it was a slight echo chamber. I'd turn on the faucet so that water would run — I like that sound, it's very soothing to me — and I'd play. In the dark. 'Hello darkness, my old friend / I've come to talk with you again'."^[5]
Simon showed the new composition to Garfunkel the same day, and shortly afterward, the duo began to perform it at folk clubs in New York. In the liner notes of their debut album, Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M., Garfunkel claims, "'The Sound of Silence' is a major work. We were looking for a song on a larger scale, but this is more than either of us expected."^[6]

Offenbach - Barcarolle , from 'The Tales of Hoffmann'

You're likely to be reading a lot about the Titanic this week if you haven't already, and you're likely to read more about it on this site before the week is over. But for today, a curious tie-in between the Titanic and Opera Wednesday.

The Titanic's orchestra has long since entered the realm of history for playing throughout the sinking, until the ship itself went under. Much of the discussion surrounds what the band actually played at the end, which is another story altogether. But music holds a strong power of identification in human memory, and it is enough for a few bars of a tune to be played to bring back instantly all the feelings, hopes and fears of a single moment of time. And so it was with the final piece that the orchestra played in their concert in the first class reception room that night. It was the last piece that anyone would hear until the Titanic's encounter with the iceberg, and for Noël Leslie, the Countess of Rothes, it created a memory she would never forget.

That night the orchestra played the Bacarolle from Offenbach's Tales of Hoffmann. It is a haunting piece of music, and when viewed in context of the opera it carries its own watery images, set as it is in Venice with its canals and boats. For the rest of her life, until her death in 1956, whenever she heard the Bacarolle the Countess would immediately feel the horror of that night, the bone-chilling cold of the North Atlantic, and the terror of seeing the great ship go down. It was that immediate, and that total. And here is the Bacarolle, one of the most popular pieces in opera, innocuous in its beauty, complete in the depth of feeling it could reproduce. ◙

Kristin Korb - Live In Vienna (Full Concert)

Wayne Shorter JUJU (Full Album)

1. JuJu
2. Deluge
3. House of Jade
4. Mahjong
5. Yes or No
6. Twelve More Bars to Go

Wayne Shorter - tenor saxophone
McCoy Tyner - piano