Game of Thrones Theme by Ramin Djawadi

We all know that every music genre has a special fan circle, people who stick to what they like and follow the recent music novelties and offers. Even though you may like a couple of genres it’s not that you would often get attracted by very contrasting genres. And of course, it’s quite rare that a music piece would leave the borders of its genre and travel throughout others.

I’ll explain better what I mean on the example of music from the popular HBO channel TV series “Game of Thrones”. Its theme was composed by Grammy-nominated Mr. Djawadi who’s also a protégé of the no less known Hans Zimmer. Ramin Djawadi wrote music to the entire series and it’s not at all his first tangibly significant music work (Djawadi wrote music for Prison Break, Batman, Pirates of the Caribbean, and others).

The theme keeps you in a certain kind of tension, just like the unpredictable and intriguing series’ plot. The work got so popular that at some point it became a cross-genre kind of thing. The consequence – numerous covers from various genres artists ( Lindsey Stirling , Roger Lima, Jason Yang, and so on and so forth). I like Game of Thrones though I’m not its ardent fan. What I like even more is the extensive quality music work behind this TV production.

Do You Want to Build a Snowman?

I’ve always loved Disney’s works and I don’t think there has been at least one film that didn’t break my heart open. I’m no longer a 10-year-old kid but these animated movies are something I can always watch like a bewildered child.

Anna

If earlier in childhood I loved them mostly for the magic that Disney manages to create in every film work, now that I grew up to focus on things beyond that, I started making other points for being in love with Disney. And the greatest compliment a musician could make is adoring the music behind the films and longing to perform it yourself. Disney does know how to make good music.

One of the recent animated films by Disney is the popular “Frozen” that has already drawn a lot of attention due to the awesome animation, the great music and the star voicing staff. Some works have become very popular out of the cartoon’s context and I’m not surprised about that. Thus, one of my favorite pieces is the “Do You Want to Build a Snowman?” song performed by Anna in the film. The drawn kid is adorable but the live image of Anna depicted by Kristen Bell is even more adorable. The talented actress managed to act as and sing for all the three Annas at different stages of her life (3, 9 and 15). Beautiful melody, lovely acting and flexible voice of Kristen, enjoy:

10 Favourite Opera Arias

Sometimes you don’t feel like listening to the entire opera but you want to “taste” it first, in case you haven’t heard it yet. Or, if you have, you may just need to refresh your memories and remember the brightest part of the opera. The best way to do it is to listen to one of the most spectacular arias of the opera and you will re-/live the whole music experience.

Aria, from Italian ‘air’, is actually an independent music work for solo voice with or without orchestral accompaniment. It can be a part of opera, cantata or oratorio but at the same time it’s a very self-contained music work and you can enjoy it even out of the music context.

I compiled a short ‘play-list’ of my favourite arias. It’s not about selecting the most famous of them but just about my own music preferences in there. Enjoy, if you like them, or add some to the list of your music likes, or grab the score and play along! Let’s go:

1 The aria of Dalila "Mon Coeur" (Fr. ‘My Heart’) from opera “Samson and Dalila” (composer Camille Saint-Saëns)
Love this performance of Elīna Garanča in Vienna Opera Ball:

2 Aria “Che gelida manina”(from Italian ‘What a cold little hand’) from the opera by Giacomo Puccini “La Bohème”
Pavaroti’s version is of course beyond competition but I like Jonas Kaufmann’s performance too:

3 Aria “Au fond du temple saint” (French ‘In the depths of the temple’) from Bizet’s “The Pearl Fishers”
Duet of Andrea Bocelli & Bryn Terfel in Ney York Philarmonic:

4 “Vesti la Giubba” (It. ‘Put on the costume’) from “Pagliacci” by Ruggero Leoncavallo
Performance of Luciano Pavarotti:

5 "Vilja Lied" from “The Merry Widow” (Franz Lehár)
Renée Fleming’s performance:

6 "Seguidille" aria from “Carmen” (G. Bizet)
Again the charming Elīna Garanča (Baden-Baden, Germany):

7 “Una furtiva lacrima” (‘A furtive tear’) from “The Elixir of Love” by Gaetano Donizetti
Rolando Villazon performing the aria in Vienna:

8 "Ach so fromm" from Friedrich von Flotow’s opera “Martha”
An old recording of Nicolai Gedda’s performance (1953):

9 "Vissi d'arte" (‘I lived for art’) from “Tosca” by Puccini
The gorgeous Angela Gheorghiu:

10 "Una voce poco fa" from “The Barber of Seville” by Rossini
Performed by Joyce DiDonato:

Hope you liked my short playlist and would enrich yours!

Latin Jazz from Fabio Gianni

Jazz and Latin music – both passionate and rhythmic but in a slightly different way. I believe that this simultaneous similarity-and-different makes them so good in a combination. I personally love mixed forms of art, especially when it comes to music. And that’s why coming across some new artists who can do it skillfully is every time a little treasure to me. My latest finding is of Italian origin – pianist, composer and arranger Fabio Gianni. It’s one of those cases when you are not too likely to meet the musician’s work at every corner of the Internet, because Fabio doesn’t seem to be too crazy about online promotion preferring real-life word-spread to it (at least I got such an impression trying to find some more info about him in the world network – too scarce).

Fabio began to play salsa music about 15 years ago and apparently loved it so much that decided to make it his passion. That’s how the idea of the “Latin Sound Machine” project was born, where the Latin was mixed up with some pop, jazz, soul and a bit of rock. The Italian pianist stuck to that direction and was composer for different bands playing Latin music, like “IGUAZU” trio. He also made salsa-jazzy duets with popular musicians like Cano Estremera, Tony Vega, Maelo Ruiz, Paquito Guzman and others, as well as creating a long list of own solo works for piano.

The first composition I heard was “Tell You How I'm Feeling” and I recommend it for your first listen too. Just lovely. And there’s the music score to it, for piano, if you wanna play it yourself. Oh, and sheet music to some other works by Gianni - here. If you like salsa as much as I do – enjoy!

If Claude Debussy painted on canvas

He would of course be an impressionist. However, Debussy himself strongly disliked being called an impressionist composer. Despite that, impressionism is the first thing that may come to mind when you are listening to, say, “Reverie”. No need to say that Claude Debussy is the prominent master of creating dreamy music for piano, taking inspiration from then-popular movement symbolism.

Madame Monet and Child,  Claude Monet

Indeed, when the piece is playing, you are gradually descending into the calm world of daydreaming, and the repetitive sounds in the first part make you delve into it even deeper. “Reverie” is one of the earliest works by Debussy – composed in 1890 – that’s the time when he was still trying to decide which way to take as far as composing style. No recognizable tricks like explosions in style and texture yet, just lovely meditation music. As it turned out later, Reverie is also among the first works that had a tangible impact on the musicians’ world and earned its author a sign of impressive potential.

Here’s an ‘impressionist video’of Reverie and the score of arrangement for string quintet. Enjoy!