Jeff

Portrait of swimmer (and John Williams fan) Jeff Commings, with whom I've had the pleasure of hosting three episodes of The Baton podcast, available here:

https://thebatonpodcast.podbean.com/e/episode-24-story-of-a-woman/

https://thebatonpodcast.podbean.com/e/episode-62-the-witches-of-eastwick/

https://thebatonpodcast.podbean.com/e/episode-77-sabrina/

I really look up to Jeff: besides being a professional athlete (which is already commenadble for the discipline and dedication required, let alone the stamina) and a teacher, he's incredibly polite, articulated, intelligent, brave and entreprising.

Recommended reading:

Odd Man Out: An Autobiography

The Baton Podcast - Story of a Woman

By now the readers of this blog should have a sense of my love for John Williams' music. That is why I was thrilled when 


Jeff Commings of The Baton podcast asked me to co-host an episode of his show.

When Jeff embarked for the worthy endeavour of covering the entire filmography of composer John Williams one film at a time, I got in touch with him and immediately suggested that he reached out for co-hosts, since I believe that talk radio is at its best when there is some back and forth between people.

He took the advice, announced he would accept submissions and there you go, I was allowed to join the show in occasion of the "Story of a Woman" episode.

Being the film an obscure USA/Italy co-production and a prime example of BAD movie, it was an ideal fit for me (albeit the movie fails even at being entertainingly bad).

But the score is really worth a listen.

You can download the episode here

but I warmly suggest that you listen to the whole series.

Reflections: Growing Up With Music

A personal view about the music of John Williams and its role in my upbringing

This is a piece I wrote for the website thelegacyofjohnwilliams.com, curated by my brother Maurizio, who is doing  a remarkable job in "building a platform to celebrate and promote the cultural and aesthetic importance that the music of John Williams had (and it’s still having) on many people around the world".
I'm honored to having contributed the illustration for the header of the website, you can see here below.
Thanks to Maurizio for allowing me to me share my thoughts on his website.

As I am typing this, the sound of my son practicing scales on the piano resonates through the house.

I think back to my short-lived affair with the instrument.

I was about seven years old and I wanted to learn how to play piano from one of my older brothers, but he had just left to study in Rome. I was put under the tutelage of another teacher; whose lessons were tedious and devoid of the kind of fun I used to have around my brother. I quit after six months, a decision I still regret. But I wasn’t left without musical mentors.

Thinking of my older brother, a recent conversation we had springs to my mind about the different music teaching methods. He was telling me a funny anecdote involving an acquaintance of his, who wanted to educate his son outside of the western tonal system, to spare him from the conditioning imposed by our musical tradition, which puts certain intervallic relationships (like the tonic-dominant) above other possible modes. Ironically, this person’s efforts were made vain by the many nursery rhymes that the kid learned at school—nothing stick to our brains like simple, diatonic major melodies.

What’s the point of this story? Well not so much to discuss the pros and cons of equal temperament, but rather to point out how glad I am to be able to participate in the conversation. Because despite having given up on piano (or any other instrument for that matter) I’m not musically illiterate.

And for that I must thank John Williams.

Make no mistakes: I admit that the reason I gravitated towards Mr. Williams’ music were the movies he scored. Like many kids in the 1980s, I was utterly captivated by movies like Star Wars, Superman or E.T. They were perfectly executed pieces of fiction easy to fall in love with. Listening to those scores was a pathway to that sense of wonderment and excitement those movies provided.

But on repeated listening, the richness of these scores started to intrigue me. The dramatic drive of the pieces made the narrative clear, so I could tell at which point of the story I was listening to. The melodic writing made every moment memorable and singable. The rich instrumentation and length of the cues sustained my interest. So much that, as a teen ager, it took a long time to adjust my ears to the pop-music I was “supposed” to listen in the 1990s, to keep at pace with my schoolmates, who were into grunge, indie rock or Britpop.

But no matter how important John Williams music was to ignite my interest in music, you need teachers in flesh and blood to make the seed blossom.


Luckily, I had at least one: Umberto Bombardelli, a composer himself, who taught music at my middle school. He could have come right out of movies like Mr. Holland’s Opus or Goodbye, Mr. Chips—he even looked like Peter O’ Toole in that 1969 movie (with music adapted and conducted by John Williams, by the way).

At the time, music was a mandatory subject in Italy for students in middle school between the age of 11 and 14, but it was easily disregarded as an extra or a commodity, certainly not the subject that would make or break your graduation. However, Mr. Bombardelli taught passionately, with patience and humor, becoming soon known by his pupils as “the good teacher”.

He did a lot more than just make us play the recorder or put on Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf. He made us listen to various type of music (from Palestrina to Demetrio Stratos and Luciano Berio), teaching us about the different musical periods and styles. He even showed us movies and made us pay attention to the music (The Blues Brothers, Walt Disney’s Fantasia and also the Williams-scored The Cowboys). To this day, I owe him for laying the foundations of any musical knowledge I may have.

As I grew up, I gravitated towards Romantic or Post-Romantic composers, whose works shared a lot of common traits with the type of film music me and my brother Maurizio learned to love, from John Williams to Jerry Goldsmith, Alan Silvestri and Danny Elfman. The two pieces that encouraged me to explore the very rich catalog of classical music were the symphonic suite from George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess (the great London Symphony Orchestra recording conducted by the late great André Previn) and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade as recorded by Fritz Reiner with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for RCA (this one kindly recommended by my brother Alessandro).

We used to have a public radio station that aired classical music nonstop 24/7 (the so-called filodiffusione, which is now part of the bouquet of radio channels managed by the Italian national broadcasting service, a.k.a. RAI) and I was listening to it at every possible moment—I once spent two hours pretending to pay attention during a class in high school while I was listening to Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No.3 through an earpiece hidden in my hand (true story).


From there it has been a fantastic voyage through multi-colored soundscapes. A journey I still enjoy every day. Today I do not have to rely on a fortuitous encounter with a dedicated teacher or on state-owned radio stations, the internet made it possible to discover and share gems very easily.

But it all started thanks to John Williams. And his music still works magnificently as gateway to musical appreciation.

In the meantime, the sound of scales has been swapped for more familiar tunes, as my son now plays the “Flying Theme” from E.T. and then “The Imperial March”, and then the Theme from Schindler’s List. I hear him stumble or hitting a wrong note here and there, but the pleasure he has in playing the music is palpable. Since I showed him Richard Donner’s Superman: The Movie, he became a big fan, so much so that he asked for the sheet music as present for Christmas. Even my wife, who does not care much about film music (but who has, unlike me, stuck to her piano lessons and CAN actually play the thing) is starting to warm up to Williams’s infectious tunes.

My mind wanders again: I now think of a painting one of my art teachers once did. It was called Music, a gift from heaven. It depicts a mandolin and a dove, against puffy clouds.

It was well drawn, but incredibly cheesy. But I do share the feeling.

And whether this gift comes from gods, from heaven or from nature, I will forever be grateful to Mr. Williams for delivering it to me.

---

The video here below, put together by composer Austin Wintory reflects many of the same feelings.

The Star Wars Music Podcast Resource

Although I try to keep this blog about illustration and comics, I don't mind adding off-topic posts from time to time.
And honestly, I believe this topic has a lot to do with my elected area of interest.

Art isn't created in a vacuum.

Drawing can be an intense mental and physical activity, one that requires time and a certain state of mind.
Many artists I know reach that state of mind by listening to music or talk radio.
An awful lot of artists are addicted to podcasts and I'm no different.
With this post I hope to provide some food for hungry ears.

--

My last post was a dry list of artists I like to call "the impeccables", people whom I regard almost above criticism.
But not all the artists I look up in admiration for the quality of their output are visual artists.

If I had to name the greatest artists working today in any field, composer John Williams would certainly be one of them, probably at the top, certainly in the top three.

This is not a post about him (there is plenty of resources to discover, explore and examine his impressive body of works), but about PODCASTS on John Williams, and more specifically about his seminal scores for the Star Wars movies.



If any reader out there shares my fascination with the music of John Williams, the following links will provide many hours of entertaining education (I didn't do the math, but all these podcasts together clock around sixty hours!!)

A good place to start, is

Classical Classroom

Hosting the program is Dacia Clay, self-admittedly out of her element when it comes to classical music. Her "ignorance" (for lack of a better term) is actually one of the show's assets: musicians, musicologists and other experts engage in a conversation with Dacia acting as teachers to her student and explain a particular piece of music or another well-defined musical topic.

This predicament allows the less musically educated listeners to be taken by the hand and discover the world of classical music together with the host.

She dedicated two episodes to the music of Star Wars.

Classical Classroom - Leitmotifs (or Leitmotiven) in Star Wars

Classical Classroom - The Force Awakens

A somewhat similar format was that of

Star Wars Oxygen

A show that ran on the Rebel Force Radio site for about 40 episodes.

The hosting duo is composed of radio host Jimmy “Mac” McInerney and musician/actor/sound designer David W. Collins, who assumes the role of the lecturer, but the similarities with the former podcast stop pretty much there.

Both hosts are big Star Wars fans and the show is featured in a Star Wars fan site. This perspective is an important element in the make of the show. David Collins does his best to explain and clarify a lot of the information that could be lost to the more casual listener, but fan discussions these are and, at times, proudly so.

I must also say that Jimmy Mac, albeit not contributing with intellectual insights, is a good host too, with an appreciation for behind-the-scenes Star Wars lore. The only complaint I have is that his growling, sympathetic voice is not matched by an equally diverse vocabulary.


On the positive side: this is the only show who managed to cover SW episodes I to VII, plus a number of side projects.

Here below are the links to the first episodes:

http://www.rebelforceradio.com/shows/2015/10/1/star-wars-oxygen-vol-1

http://www.rebelforceradio.com/shows/2015/10/1/star-wars-oxygen-vol-2

http://www.rebelforceradio.com/shows/2015/10/1/star-wars-oxygen-vol-3

http://www.rebelforceradio.com/shows/2015/10/1/star-wars-oxygen-vol-4

http://www.rebelforceradio.com/shows/2015/10/1/star-wars-oxygen-vol-5

For the remainder of the series, check the following link:

http://www.rebelforceradio.com/shows/?category=SW%3A+Oxygen

Star Wars Oxygen has stopped in 2016, but host David Collins has returned in 2018 with a new podcast, this time hosting solo, called The Soundtrack Show.

In this podcast Collins expands his focus to the whole repertoire of film, television and video games music, not just Star Wars.
But as a massive John Williams fan, he could not let go the opportunity to cover once again the original 1977 film, which received a lush 6-episodes treatment.

The podcasts are beautifully produced.

https://www.soundtrackpodcast.com/podcasts/star-wars-lucas-and-williams-an-introduction.htm

https://www.soundtrackpodcast.com/podcasts/star-wars-the-music-part-i.htm

https://www.soundtrackpodcast.com/podcasts/star-wars-the-music-part-ii.htm

https://www.soundtrackpodcast.com/podcasts/star-wars-the-music-part-iii.htm

https://www.soundtrackpodcast.com/podcasts/bonus-star-wars-a-musical-movie-commentary-part-i.htm

https://www.soundtrackpodcast.com/podcasts/bonus-star-wars-a-musical-movie-commentary-part-ii.htm

Equally well produced, are the podcasts from

Art of the Score

The show is hosted by Andrew Pogson, Dan Golding and Nicholas Buc, three aussies linked to the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. Albeit the panel consists entirely of professional musicians, the discussions aren't hard to follow at all for the uneducated listeners. The trio keeps a light and enthusiastic tone, cracking a joke every now and then.

The show covered both the 1977 classic Star Wars

http://www.artofthescore.com.au/podcast/2017/5/24/episode-7-star-wars-part-1

http://www.artofthescore.com.au/podcast/2017/6/9/episode-8-star-wars-part-2

http://www.artofthescore.com.au/podcast/2017/7/4/episode-9-star-wars-part-3

as well as 2015's The Force Awakens.

http://www.artofthescore.com.au/podcast/2018/4/3/episode-15-the-force-awakens-part-1

http://www.artofthescore.com.au/podcast/2018/5/11/episode-16-the-force-awakens-part-2

But even if the quality of Art of the Score is pretty high, in my book the very best podcasts on Star Wars have been the episodes from the show

Underscore

hosted by the brothers Marty and William Brueggeman.



Their podcast is extremely good, albeit on the nerdy side as the two musician-composer brothers really enjoy getting into the nitty-gritty of music theory with their in-depth analysis.

But they provide a lot of material, cueing in lots of bare piano examples to explain things like melody and harmony, lots of soundbites from interviews, or from the movies they analyze.
The other podcasts do that too, but here we are on another level.

They also covered the score to the original 1977 Star Wars in seven lengthy episodes, which I've already listened countless times. I'd place them up there with Howard Goodall's or Leonard Bernstein's TV programs on music.

http://underscorepodcast.blogspot.com/2018/06/prologue-long-time-ago.html

http://underscorepodcast.blogspot.com/2018/06/7m1-star-wars-main-title.html

http://underscorepodcast.blogspot.com/2018/07/7m2-themes-of-star-wars.html

http://underscorepodcast.blogspot.com/2018/07/7m3a-sw-spotting-session-part-i.html

http://underscorepodcast.blogspot.com/2018/07/interlude-princess-leias-theme.html

http://underscorepodcast.blogspot.com/2018/07/7m3b-spotting-session-for-star-wars.html

http://underscorepodcast.blogspot.com/2018/08/7m4-star-wars-commentary.html

Happy listening (and learning)!