by Peter Cates Christmas music recommendations Some Christmas music recommendations: 1. Perry Como Sings Merry Christmas Music; RCA Victor, 20-1968-71, four 10 inch 78s, recorded mid-40s. With Russ Case’s very soft toned arrangements for chorus and orchestra, Mr. C’s own delivery of That Christmas Feeling, I’ll Be Home for Christmas and Little Town of Bethlehem, […]
by Peter Cates E. B. White Some time ago, I wrote about Brooklin Maine’s most famous resident E.B. White (1899-1985). When his Collected Letters and Essays was published during the mid-’70s, Mississippi’s grand lady of literature Eudora Welty (1909-2001) reviewed one of them for the New York Times and commented that one could see and […]
by Peter Cates Giacomo Puccini On Saturday, November 22, a Metropolitan Opera production of Giacomo Puccini’s La Boheme, originally presented live on November 8 at other cinemas and venues worldwide, was replayed at Downtown Waterville’s Maine Film Center. Since La Boheme is currently my favorite opera and the shelves in my house are bulging with […]
by Peter Cates Sandy Posey Sandy Posey – Looking at You; MGM SE-4525, stereo lp, recorded 1967. Sandy Posey (1944-2024) did a lot of studio work in Nashville as part of the backup chorus for such singers as Tommy Roe and Bobby Goldsboro. She scored some top 20 hits but by 1967 when Looking at […]
by Peter Cates You Belong to Me A 1941 film, You Belong to Me, is thematically a romantic comedy in the old-fashioned, very marketable Hollywood tradition and stars two of its even then very marketable cinematic presences, Henry Fonda (1905-1982) and Barbara Stanwyck (1907-1990). The plot consists of Fonda’s spoiled rich Peter who is skiing […]
by Peter Cates Sir Colin Davis The first Boston Symphony concert I ever attended at its Symphony Hall, on Massachusetts Avenue, presented its then Principal Guest Conductor Sir Colin Davis (1927-2013), and no relation to last week’s Sir Andrew Davis, in a program consisting of Haydn’s 84th Symphony, Stravinsky’s Danses Concertante, for a much smaller […]
by Peter Cates Sir Andrew Davis William Walton: Belshazzar’s Feast; Ralph Vaughan Williams: Tallis Fantasia. Sir Andrew Davis conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus. BBC Music Magazine BBC MM83, CD, recorded 1998-1999. The late Sir Andrew Davis (1944-2024) first came to my attention just over 50 years ago with a really good record of […]
by Peter Cates Between July1973, and August 1980, I attended a number of captivating concerts in Boston, New York, Washington D.C. and Portland. In October 1973, the touring Leningrad Philharmonic under the direction of Gennady Rozhdestvensky (1931-2018) appeared at Symphony Hall, the program consisting of the 15th Symphony, completed just two years earlier by then-still […]
by Peter Cates I recently watched the 1942 film Big Street starring Henry Fonda (1905-1982) and Lucille Ball (1911-1989), both in dramatic roles. Fonda’s Pinks, a very shy waiter in a Broadway night club, is infatuated by Lucy’s torch singer Gloria who has a regular evening gig and who happens to be the girlfriend of […]
by Peter Cates (See Part 4 here.) Continuing with memories – the heat of very early morning during July 1973, in Boston, Massachusetts, was at bestial blast furnace levels. I remember walking from 23 Wyatt Street, in Somerville, at least a mile down to Central Squar, in Cambridge, to catch the Red Line air-conditioned subway […]