All
my life my mind has been like a sponge soaking up information about
music, musicians, musical instruments, in fact, anything having to do
with music.
As a child I started absorbing music from my father and mother. He, being Latin, was into the many rhythms from the Latin countries
in Europe and South America as well as the jazz of the thirties and
forties. She, with her Greek background, loved varied and vibrant
Mediterranean music, classical music as well as jazz from that period as
well. I heard it all from the day I was born.
When
I started school, I took music classes, of course, and I was fortunate
to have had some amazing teachers. At the time I didn't realize how important that was; it was Tom White who years later made me aware of how teachers can determine the course of a person's life.
In junior high school Miss Dubinski gave me
the love of performing with instruments, in collage Mr. Morton taught me
the history of music and at UC Berkeley Professor John Swackhammer
taught me music theory. I remember them all with fondness and deep
gratitude. After school a major source of my new music information was movies and art films.
My new source of music information is YouTube;
times do change and you're lost if you don't change with them. I've
written about some of these movies here on the
Viewfinder. This is a companion piece to Music & Mayhem also on the Viewfinder (link below). Enjoy them both.
Antonín Dvořák ~ New World Symphony (Goin' Home)
Ferde Grofé ~ Rocketship X-M
Bernard Herrmann ~ The Day the Earth Stood Still
Robert Leroy Johnson ~ Pact with the devil
Kismet & Alexander Porfirievich Borodin The Residents ~ Not Available
Miklós Rózsa ~ The Lost Weekend & Ray Milland
Viewfinder links:
Net links:
Styrous® ~ Monday, May 11, 2026
