It’s ‘Noirvember’ on Kanopy

Ready for cynical heroes, intricate plots, and underlying existentialism? Sounds like you’re ready to get moody with Kanopy’s Noirvember collection.

Following the end of World War Two, French publishing house Gallimard started publishing translations of American crime novels through its Série noire imprint: including authors such as Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain and David Goodis. The following year, French critic Nino Frank wrote the earliest essays identifying a new departure in American film making, the ‘film noir’- though the term itself did not come into ‘official’ use until the publication of Raymond Borde & Etienne Chaumeton’s study ‘Panarama du film noir americain’ in 1955, and wasn’t widely adopted in America until the 1970’s. According to Borde and Chaumeton, the ‘noir’ cycle officially begins with John Houston’s The Maltese Falcon (1941) and ends with Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly (1955) – though the style can be traced back as far as Fritz Lang’s M (1931), and forward to films like Memento (2000).

Characterised by fear, mistrust, bleakness, paranoia, fatalism, disillusionment, existential plots and confessional voiceovers, they provided a distinctly pessimistic view of post-war America. However, while the view was American, the ‘feel’ was distinctly European with shadowy expressionistic lighting, stark and skewered camera angles, jarring editing and deep shadows. Due to this style, the best noirs are in black and white – with key European directors such as Fritz Lang, Robert Siodmak, and Jacques Tourneur. Noir protagonists were typically anti-heroes: crooked cops, down and out private eyes, war veterans, petty criminals, gamblers and killers; while the women were often unloving, mysterious, duplicitous and manipulative – but always gorgeous.

While the style dropped out of favour after the late 1950’s, its elements were present in several standout films of the 1960’s, from The Manchurian Candidate (1962) to Point Blank (1967). It made a resurgence in the 1970’s, and an even stronger one in the 1990’s. Films from this period on are referred to as ‘neo-noir’ and, while some are merely an affected stylism, enough original ‘noir’ runs through them to satisfy purists. Since then, these influential cinematic works have grown in popularity as modern filmmakers use similar aesthetics.

Whether you’re looking to dive into the dark world of the classic genre, or want to see what updates have been made to keep the concept fresh, you can explore Kanopy’s well-rounded collection here.

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50 Years of Darkness

2023 marks 50 years since the release of Pink Floyd’s classic Dark Side of the Moon.  The group’s eighth studio album, Dark Side of the Moon is a conceptual work dealing with mental illness and how the pressures of modern life (particularly the life of a rock band…) can exacerbate it. As with much of Pink Floyd’s work, the shadow of founder Syd Barrett, by then a recluse due to mental illness and drug abuse, hangs over the album.

Sessions took place at EMI Studios in London with the album being released on 1 March 1973. Although the music was written by all four band members, bassist Roger Waters was by this point responsible for all the lyrics. As well as its musical strengths the album also showcased another Floyd trademark via its extensive use of sound effects.

Dark Side of the Moon would top the album charts on both sides of the Atlantic and has at the time of writing sold in the neighbourhood of 45 million copies. It spent an astonishing 741 non-consecutive weeks on the Billboard Top 200, only finally slipping off on 8 October 1988. The two singles from the album, “Money” and “Time” are among Floyd’s most well-known songs and remain staples of classic rock radio.

The iconic sleeve was designed by Storm Thorgerson, an English graphic designer who would go on to design similarly distinctive covers for several other Pink Floyd albums (showcased in Mind over matter : the images of Pink Floyd / Thorgerson, Storm).

Since its release, Floyd have frequently returned to the album and several acts have paid tribute to it, the following is what’s available at Wellington City Libraries.

The dark side of the moon [remaster] / Pink Floyd
The original masterpiece is available in several different cd and vinyl versions, the most recent in the collection being the 2011 remastering on vinyl.

 

 

The dark side of the moon : live at Wembley, London, 1974 / Pink Floyd
Recently released as park of a 50th anniversary package, this captures a widely bootlegged concert at Wembley Arena where the newly released album was performed in its entirety.

 

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Red Moon: Inner Visions of Berg’s Wozzeck

Saturday 11 November 2023 sees the finale of Orchestra Wellington’s ‘Inner Visions’ season with a concert performance of Alban Berg’s opera Wozzeck. This will be the first performance of Berg’s complete work in New Zealand, nearly a full century after its premiere in Berlin in December 1925. Orchestra Wellington and Music Director Marc Taddei will be joined by a constellation of outstanding singers in the principal roles, as well as the Scholar Cantorum of St Mark’s School, and the Tudor Consort.

This blog will explore some of the background to Wozzeck and highlight some of the books and audiovisual materials in the Wellington City Library that will offer still more context for and analysis of Berg’s opera. Whether you are interested in the history of Wozzeck, Berg’s creative process and the structure of the work, atonality, Expressionism, or the early-nineteenth century play Woyzeck that provided Berg with his source and inspiration, there will be something here for you: Roger Parker, Carolyn Abbate, Theodore Adorno, and several other authors have all written perceptively and revealingly about Wozzeck.

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New Classical CDs: Concertos for Piano, Horn, Violin & Clarinet

October has brought us a gleaming array of new classical CDs that include well-known pieces, and music by composers who should be better-known. This blog looks at several new recordings of concertos for piano, clarinet, horn, and violin. Of particular interest are two new recordings of music by Florence Price (1887-1953), including Randall Goosby’s interpretation of Price’s violin concertos with the Philadelphia Orchestra, and Jeneba Kanneh-Mason’s performance of Price’s Piano Concerto in One Movement, accompanied by the Chineke! Orchestra.

Although Florence Price’s music is, at last, becoming more widely performed, more about her life should also be known. Price was one of the USA’s foremost twentieth-century composers, producing music in a variety of genres including chamber and orchestral works, concerti, piano and organ pieces, and a significant body of art songs. Born in Little Rock, Arkansas, Price first learned music with her mother before moving to Boston where she studied piano, organ, and composition at the New England Conservatory, one of the only American conservatoires that would admit African-American students at that time. Price then held several prestigious teaching posts at colleges in Little Rock and Atlanta and married in 1912. 

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Inner Visions: Orchestra Wellington Presents ‘Pharaoh’

On Saturday 7 October, Orchestra Wellington presents ‘Pharaoh‘, the penultimate concert of its 2023 Inner Visions season. The programme brings together five works that each realise ‘inner visions’: from Gemma Peacocke’s response to the mysterious world of manta rays in the Hauraki Gulf in her new work Manta; there is a collision of archaism and ultra-modernism in Webern’s Passacaglia (1908). Briar Prastiti’s White, Red, Black envisions a folkloric world, through the symbolic qualities of these three colours in story-telling. John Psathas’s Planet Damnation, a concerto for timpani and orchestradraws us into a different time and landscape, taking its inspiration from the chapter in Robert Fisk’s The Great War for Civilisation that gives the author’s eyewitness account of catastrophic events in the Gulf War. To conclude the programme, Mozart’s music for the play Thamos, King of Egypt heightens the themes of treachery and death that pervade the drama by Tobias Philipp, Freiherr von Gebler (1726-1786). Joining Orchestra Wellington, conducted by Music Director Marc Taddei, will be the Arohanui Strings in Manta, percussionist Tomomi Ozaki, and the Orpheus Choir.

Today’s blog explores some of the books in the WCL collection about the two composers central to the First and Second Viennese Schools of composition, providing additional context to the music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791), and Anton von Webern (1883-1945).

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Strike the Viol! Renaissance and Baroque Music for Viola da Gamba

Strike the viol, touch the lute,
Wake the harp, inspire the flute.
Sing your patroness’s praise,
In cheerful and harmonious lays.

Treble viol by Alan Clayton. Picture © Alan Clayton. Picture reproduced with permission from Alan Clayton.
A treble violin by Alan Clayton

The viol — a bowed, fretted string instrument also known as a viola da gamba — rose to prominence in Europe at the end of the fifteenth century, and by the seventeenth century, it was one of the most popular ensemble and solo instruments. In Renaissance England, the viol consort, a group of viols of different sizes (treble, tenor, and bass), was one of the preeminent ensembles of the day, playing extraordinarily complex music; right through to the mid-eighteenth century, the viol remained an important solo instrument, especially for French and German composers. Eclipsed by the violoncello in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, the viol was relegated to the status of a quaint relic until the ‘early music revival’ of the twentieth century reignited interest in viols and their music. Today, different members of the viol family can be found in many ensembles — and not only those specialising in early music or historical performance. The sound of viols and the virtuosity of their players inspire increasing numbers of contemporary composers (Nico Muhly, Sally Beamish, James MacMillan, and New Zealand’s own Yvette Audain, and Ross Harris to name a few) to write music for solo and ensemble viols. 

Pardessus de viole in the workshop. Picture © Alan Clayton.Image reproduced with permission from Alan Clayton.
In the workshop: a pardessus de viole by Alan Clayton

Locally, Wellington is home to Aotearoa’s only viol consort, the Palliser Viols. While the repertoire of the group is predominantly that of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, they also demonstrate the versatility of the viol by commissioning and performing new works including Ross Harris’s Gaudete and Image of Melancholy, Dame Gillian Karawe Whitehead’s Douglas Lilburn, travelling on the Limited, regards the mountains in the moonlight and Colin Decio’s Lord have MercyAnd, perhaps more unexpectedly, there is a specialist maker of viols based in Wellington as well: Alan Clayton’s beautiful instruments — which he makes on commission from musicians here and overseas — can sometimes be seen at Alastair’s Music in Cuba Street. Today’s blog explores some of the recordings of music played by viols in different combinations and emerging from different countries and eras.

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