Indian sitar virtuoso and composer Ravi Shankar wrote the music of "O Aalok Putra Agyani" for the 1986 opening of the Baháʼí House of Worship in New Delhi, India. This was one of 10 Hindi songs the maestro wrote for the dedication. Years later, choral arranger Tom Price adapted the music to the sacred words of Bahá'u'lláh and The Báb. The result is the glistening "O My Servant!", performed on this video mashup by The Toronto Baháʼí Chorale.
LIKE ANY other social activity this year, Christmas meant new ways of connecting and celebrating. Our Zoom gathering last night was gripping for a big reason: this was the first time we all gathered together on Christmas since the mid-1990s. It might also have been the least expensive gathering ever! My nephews and nieces showed up to surprise us; two of them even sang and played the guitar. We exchanged our usual jokes that never got stale. It was a day (or night in my case) that was incredibly merry and bright.
Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night!
The Night Before Christmas, 2006
The Night Before Christmas, 2007
The Night Before Christmas, 2008
The Day Before Christmas, 2009
LUWIG VAN Beethoven was born on or around this day 250 years ago in Bonn. As we end the year, we remember the Ode to Joy—a paean to the humanity's triumph against war and desperation—from his Ninth Symphony as a fitting deliverance from this ravaging year.
MY YOUTUBE channel, Paul Ancheta, has just hit the 1,000-subscriber mark! I can't thank each one of them enough.
FACT AND fiction collide in Seth Grahame-Smith's otherworldy novel, causing hilarious sparks of adventure and horrifying flashes of gore. The collision is delicious and so difficult to avoid. The Last American Vampire (along with Mr. Grahame-Smith's first book, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter) will entrance those who love Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian. This is not at all for fans of vampire romance and other supernatural light fare.
JUST WHEN the pandemic is changing everything we do, here's Moschino presenting a new opportunity: a more sophisticated use of couture and craftsmanship. At the ongoing Milan Fashion Week, the brand presented its Spring-Summer 2021 collection with no guests . . . and no models.
MUSIC HAS always helped in blocking out work distractions. Working from home has one big perk: playing music the way you want it, without having to worry about distracting your officemates. Spotify is my music service preference: Pandora isn't available in India, and YouTube Music's dashboard is too clumsy to use on my gadgets. Back in the office days, I listened to Spotify through earphones. Now, at home, I have Spotify filling the room with its gloriousness through my sound system.
2020 marks 60 years since Barbra Streisand sang live for the first time. Since then, her stage performances in clubs, concerts, television shows, and fund-raisers have become unparalleled channels for showcasing her bounty of grace and warmth, her dedication to excellence, her passion for truth, and her gift of song.
FOLLOWING UP on my earlier post about Jim Chappell's Acadia, I must share another piece that has always stayed with me. Mr. Chappell's Spotify playlist is on permanent playback during the lockdown, and topping it is the magnificent "Field Day" from 1990's Saturday's Rhapsody. No other song on Mr. Chappell's 1990s catalog exemplifies the breezy Chappell melodiousness better than this track.
THE AMERICAN composer and pianist Jim Chappell is quite famous in the Philippines, where several of his albums received heavy airplay on smooth jazz radio stations in the late eighties and nineties. The poignant song "Gone", from his sophomore album Dusk, became a huge hit in Manila in the aftermath of Mount Pinatubo's cataclysmic eruption in 1991. Afterwards, the Chappell sensibility never left the country. He held a series of sold-out concerts in Manila in the summer of 1993, and released a contemporary jazz album with the quartet HearSay titled Manila Nights in 1994.
ONE OF the joys of video-on-demand services is the immediate access to must-see movies that flew under the radar. Kingsman: The Secret Service has been on my shortlist since its release in 2015, but I never managed to view it. Netflix finally gave me that opportunity this weekend.
FORTY YEARS ago today, I fell in love with Barbra Streisand. I was watching the live telecast of the 1980 Grammy Awards, and suddenly I beheld an unannounced performance of "You Don't Bring Me Flowers" by Neil Diamond and her. It was the most romantic pairing of voices I had ever heard. It was pure. It was electric.
THE 2010s were an incredible decade for technology. As we welcome the 2020s, we look forward to how technology will continue to impact our communities and industries in positive ways. Speaking of technology, I can't believe it's been 20 years since the Y2K bug!
This year also marks the 60th year of Barbra Streisand in the entertainment industry. The passing decade was an era of Ms. Streisand giving back—to her fans and to the benificiaries of her many philantrophic contributions and advocacies. Here's a video of the decade's highlights.
Happy new year and new decade, everyone!
THE GRANDEST of Indian festivals is upon us. For those who celebrate it worldwide, Diwali means time for families to come together with gifts, light, and laughter. Today, and in the days around it, there is such positive energy brought about by fellowship filled with love.
ON 22 JUNE 1969, Judy Garland passed away, ending a lifetime of personal struggles and career crises. She has been called one of the greatest entertainers of all time, with a legacy influencing the artistry of several generations of performers. In remembrance of the 50th anniversary of Ms. Garland's passing, here is Barbra Streisand performing "Over the Rainbow".
INDIA'S FASTEST-GROWING eyewear brand has just opened its 500th store, which, at 5,000 square feet, also becomes the country's largest eyewear store. Lenskart.com's new concept store in Electronic City, Bengaluru, encourages shoppers to reach out and touch, try, learn, and feel good about the latest eyewear fashion and technology.
I FELL in love with Anne Rice's gothic fiction after seeing the film adaptation of her first novel, Interview With A Vampire, in 1994. Her writing was both sensuous and sensational, endowing her undead characters with nobility and munificence while plunging them into the insalubrious depths of horrifying and eventually tragic existence. I collected the first six volumes of The Vampire Chronicles, and stopped after moving to Israel in 2000. Physical bookstores eventually disappeared, making it tough to find the new volumes unless I went online. I never had the chance to go back to Ms. Rice.
THIS IS Michel Legrand at his purest cinematic self, back in the sixties when film music was in its most uninhibited. His youthful exuberance on the conductor's dais is matched with his vibrant training in jazz and film scores, with strings reaching up to gloriously stratospheric levels to deliver that signature Legrand sound.
WHEN MICHEL Legrand passed away late last month, he left a large body of music for film and television, raging from the avant-garde to the more commercial productions. His music was romantic but never banal, original but never inaccessible. His most memorable works begin low-key, almost like a whisper, and then intensify in rhythm before finally surprising us with an unexpected jump from minor to major chord. His deep-seated love for jazz buttresses the playful, rhythmic, and sophisticated qualities of his compositions.
DURING THE eighties and nineties--the latter days of his life--Papa would play classical music in his bedroom with the same passion that he had in his younger years. My brothers and I often wondered when our neighbors would finally show up complaining about the decibels. Thankfully, such moments never occurred.
