2016 July

Music for Work: Fever Forms by The Octopus Project

New series! Music for Work will showcase music with or without lyrics that might help you plow through your task list. The Octopus Project is an Austin-based indietronica group that blends upbeat indie pop with experimental electronic and analog sounds. The music is energetic, catchy, full of force, and at-times trance-like, creating effective tunnel vision for the work […]

The music of our national anthem was written by a British man for a London gentleman’s club called the Anacreontic Society for their “constitutional” song. The society was an 18th century gentleman’s club for amateur musicians. Their president, Ralph Tomlinson, created the lyrics to “To Anacreon in Heaven” and John Stafford Smith, the composer behind our national anthem, […]

4th of July Series – Rhapsody in Blue by George Gershwin

George Gershwin was a Pulitzer Prize winning American composer and pianist from Brooklyn, who, along with his lyricist brother, Ira Gershwin, created hallmarks and standards of the American musical repertoire in Broadway, cinema, and on the concert stage. His most popular work, which I wish to highlight here as music worth of your time, is Rhapsody in […]

4th of July Series: Impressions of America by Patrick Doyle

The most interesting thing about Impressions of America is that it is written by a Scotsman. Patrick Doyle is an immensely successful film score composer, with films like Brave, Thor, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and many of the Shakespearean adaptations. Being a Hollywood composer though exposed him to the United States and here we have an outsider’s […]