Music & Culture
Classical Music Posts
Variations on a Theme: Spark!
Music that sparkles! A musical pick-me-up to dazzle you.
Variations on a Theme: Summertime
Music for that free flow of summer, when adventure – or a nap – can happen at any moment. There’s music written by composers on Summer retreats, and music that evokes the sun-faded feeling.
Variations on a Theme: Juneteenth!
Uplifting and poignant, this playlist celebrates African-American composers for Juneteenth!
Reeder’s Movie Reviews: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
Welcome back to the Multiverse. If the most recent Academy Award winner for Best Picture, Everything Everywhere All at Once, stoked your interest in compelling alternate realities, then the latest installment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe merits your attention, too. This movie has intelligence, humor, relatable themes and dazzlingly crafted animation.
New guitar composition evokes formation of the Grand Coulee
The Channeled Scablands of Eastern Washington couldn’t be further away from waterfront property. But at the end of the last ice age, the area was, at times, underwater. Torrential flooding cascaded through the area and created the current landscape, including the Grand Coulee.
Some 15,000 years later, that geological gravitas has inspired a composition for guitars.
More Than Music: The Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival
The Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival (LHJF) is a jewel among the rolling Palouse hills. Held for 56 years at the University of Idaho in Moscow, this festival has gathered on stage such luminaries as Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, and the man of note, Lionel Hampton, who has the U of I School of Music named in his honor. This festival is a grand event that brings together jazz greats and students to create something unique.
