Music
Reading Time: 7 minutesCONCERT REVIEW: THE BEACH BOYS – ENDLESS SUMMER GOLD Last night, The Beach Boys came to Colorado Springs as part of their 2024 Endless Summer Gold tour. The tour kicked off in February in Honolulu and will wrap up in December in New York. They appeared at the new Ford Amphitheater. More on the venue…
Reading Time: 4 minutesHISTORY OF AMAZING GRACE, part 2: William Wilberforce As I mentioned in my first article on the History of Amazing Grace, this is the story of the lives of two men and that one song. In the first part, we discussed the life of the song’s author, John Newton. However, the 2007 film “Amazing Grace”…
Reading Time: 3 minutesHISTORY OF AMAZING GRACE, part 1 On February 23, 1807, the British parliament passed a bill banning the nation’s slave trade. In these two articles, we’ll explore the lives of two men and one song that played a significant role in that effort. John Newton‘s devoted Christian mother dreamed that her only son would grow…
Reading Time: 2 minutesHISTORY OF A SACRED ORATORIO The genteel reception accorded the original debut performance stood in marked contrast to the savage hostility that greeted the work less than a year later in the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden, London. The English aristocracy and churchmen began an unrelenting campaign against the work and its creator. They…
Reading Time: 3 minutesHISTORY OF CHRISTMAS MUSIC Music early became a marked feature of the Christmas season. But the first chants, litanies, and hymns were in Latin and deemed too theological for popular use. Under Francis of Assisi‘s influence in the 13th century, we began to see the rise of the carol written in the vernacular. The word carol comes…
Reading Time: 2 minutesHISTORY OF A SACRED ORATORIO The genteel reception accorded the original debut performance stood in marked contrast to the savage hostility which greeted the work less than a year later in the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden, London. The English aristocracy and churchmen began an unrelenting campaign against the work and its creator. They…
Reading Time: 6 minutesCONCERT REVIEW: THE WHO HITS BACK AT DENVER’S BALL ARENA “The Who Hits Back,” last night at Ball Arena in Denver, is the rescheduling of a concert that was to occur over two years ago but was postponed. I’ve been asked: “Aren’t they mostly dead?” No, I answered, that’s the Grateful Dead, who, ironically, I…
Reading Time: 6 minutesConcert Review: James Taylor at the Broadmoor World Arena, Colorado Springs I’ve seen James Taylor perform perhaps a dozen times over the last 43 years in venues large and small. While I’ve previously seen him at the Broadmoor World Arena, it was back when it was just the World Arena, an ice rink in Colorado…
Reading Time: 4 minutesHISTORY OF THE SUMMER OF LOVE — 1967: DRUGS When I was a Resident Assistant at U.C. Berkeley in the early ’70s, a local police officer I knew gave me a tour down nearby Telegraph Avenue. He told me: “All the major drug deals on the West Coast go down within a two block stretch…
Reading Time: 4 minutesHISTORY OF THE SUMMER OF LOVE — 1967: SEX, DRUGS, AND ROCK & ROLL The Summer of Love was fifty-five years ago, the Summer of 1967, with its epicenter in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury neighborhood. It was a summer of sex, drugs, and rock & roll. Both San Francisco and Liverpool celebrated 30-year anniversaries in 1997. While…
Reading Time: 2 minutesHISTORY OF BEETHOVEN: 250TH ANNIVERSARY — 5 THINGS YOU DIDN’T KNOW The renowned German composer and virtuoso pianist Ludwig van Beethoven celebrates his 250th anniversary today. Anniversary of what? Here are 5 things you may not have known about the famous composer who came to fame between the Classical and Romantic periods of European music. …
Reading Time: 4 minutesHISTORY OF HAMILTON – THE MUSICAL Part of the series on America 250, the US Semiquincentennial Hamilton – The Musical is based on the 2004 biography of Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow, but does Hamilton – The Musical compare favorably to the actual history? How historically accurate is the recent Broadway blockbuster?