The night that word came through that Usher would be headlining the Super Bowl halftime show this year, you had a dream that you were trapped in a deserted warehouse pursued by a pink tank.…
Posts published by “David Yearsley”
Louis Armstrong’s trumpet sighs and pleads in counterpoint with the airport announcements. The melody is barely audible but still unmistakable above the thunderous whisper of a thousand four-wheeled suitcases rolling across granite floors, the centripetal…
Bainbridge Island, Washington. It was 1973. I was eight years old and Hollywood was into disaster movies. Somehow, I fibbed my way with a friend and his teenage, baby-sitting sister into a matinee screening of…
The essential trait shared by creators of movies and symphonies is vanity. Neither form of expression would exist without the unshakeable belief of the director or composer that the entire concert hall or cinema audience,…
Forget the Christmas tree and Saint Nic’s suit, it is music that marks Germany’s greatest contributions to the holiday. Aside from any number of carols, there is the ubiquitous Messiah, like Handel himself, to be…
The goal of baroque composers was to trigger the emotions. Yet many moderns enjoy this music because they hear it is unthreatening. To them, the sounds of cantatas, concertos, and suites are merely pleasing. There…
Like no other people before us, we live with the songs of the dead. In the car or at home, walking or e-biking, in the airplane or hospital waiting room, lying in bed or on…