1. Nature isn't always majestic and ennobling. Have some bird pictures of the other sort... because we all can use a laugh :)


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12. Favourite spiritual weapon

I'm a sucker for magical music, so Wei Wuxian's and Lan Xichen's flutes, and the Lans' (and even Jin Guangyao's) guqins make me enormously happy.


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2. A song you like with a number in the title

One Better Day, by Madness. Gentle, bittersweet and sensitive song about homeless people falling in love, with its undercurrent of understated empathy for the lives and feelings of those at the edge of society. Even in their more serious songs, the band didn't go in for grand social commentaries but ( Read more... )

... which was, by the way, a female troubadour, and a new word that I love to pieces already)

For International Women's Day, ABC's Classics FM devoted their their playlist to pieces by female composers old and (yes, predictably mostly) new... and while there are several already in my list of dearly beloved music, there were quite a fascinating ( Read more... )

... so let's have a piece I love in celebration :)



Concerto for violin, strings, and basso continuo in A minor, "L'estro Armonico"

Sorry sorry, real life got rather busily real for the last week. While it gets less real and/or busy... here's a rather fabulous piece of spooky music from the TV series The Living and The Dead....

... Who remembers the one that got it that year? The Mission - the last and yes, I have saved the best for last - is generally accepted as probably his absolute masterpiece and one of the hanful of greatest scores ever written for any movie ever (some of you may recall my virtual bouncing when, in the ABC Classics Top 100 Movie Music some time back ( Read more... )

Yes, he did TV themes too :) for series I'll never see, like Secrets of the Sahara, and he re-used Chi Mai from a 1970s film (I forget the name - it must be said that a lot of the films he did are now only remembered, if at all, for their musical composer :) for The Life and Times of David Lloyd George. But my favourite is the superb score to the ( Read more... )

... And apparently was disqualified on a technicality. But oh god, those panpipes...



(I have a weakness for panpipes... so sue me. I melt over Picnic at Hanging Rock too... and, embarrassing though it probably is to admit, Zamfir's version of The Floral Dance :)

The whole soundtrack is brilliant... very very Morricone, in the best possible way ( Read more... )

... the film did, though, Best Foreign Language film. This isn't as well known as the others I've been posting, but I just like the theme so much, it's tricky, clever, fun and really quite dark all at the same time (that that bouncy spring noise!:)