Archive for the 'Favorite Composers' Category

Welcome the inau­gu­ra­tion of a new series of posts regard­ing my favorite com­posers! Expect more soon.

To begin with, I got chills watch­ing this excel­lent Dutch doc­u­men­tary from 2002 which, sim­ply put, is viewed like you might read a book:

Of course, this lay­out is a Real Talk shoutout from Uncle…

There is a lot of infor­ma­tion I’d like to share about why I adore Van Dyke Parks as much as I do, but Wikipedia explains it quite well. Pretty much, he’s the rad­dest dude ever. Film com­poser, col­lab­o­ra­tor extra­or­di­narie, sick lyri­cist, actor (!), com­poser, arranger…I mean come on! Here’s the short list of awe­some peo­ple he’s worked with: The Beach Boys and Brian Wilson (also: to top it off, a new one this year), Randy Newman, Joanna Newsom, Jon Cale, Loudon Wainwright III. Know those guys but think you’ve never heard his stuff? Well Zac Pennington reminds us that “his first pay­ing job was arrang­ing ‘The Bear Necessities’ for Disney’s the Jungle Book, and work with Harper’s Bizzare”. God damn. A lucky duck, Zac also shares this rad story: “I met him about a month ago. Really nice guy. He said when he was nine, his boy choir per­formed for an audi­ence that included Albert Einstein. Van Dyke was the only kid who knew the German words to “Silent Night,” so he sang it for Einstein, who left, got his vio­lin, and came back to accom­pany the boy. How ridicu­lously cool is that?”

I end with a secret.