Word: ballads
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...with sextet and chorus, presented the first performance of a new Liturgy of the Holy Spirit, with words by Poet William Robert Miller. Based vaguely on a Christian service described by the 2nd century theologian Hippolytus, the eclectic 14-part liturgy included jazz anthems in fairly conventional "cool" style, ballad-like congregational hymns reminiscent of Kurt Weill, choral passages as modal as a 14th century Mass. Florida-born Ed Summerlin began writing jazz for use in churches six years ago, when he poured out his grief at the loss of his nine-month-old daughter in a Requiem for Mary...
...routine scarcely varies from crooner to crooner. After the bouncy, wake-up opening number and the tender love ballad, he takes his portable microphone on a teaser tour of the stageside tables, establishing the all-important "eye contact" with the ladies. Highlight of the mingle-with-the-matrons sequence is when he takes the hand of a giggling patron, drops to one knee and breathes Come to Me, Bend to Me, always climaxed by a buss on the cheek. This gives way to cozy time, in which the crooner mounts a stool to sing a round of songs categorized either...
Murder Most Foul. "A bunch of the boys were whooping it up . . ." begins Margaret Rutherford, auditioning for a provincial repertory company with a daffy, definitive recitation of Robert Service's Yukon ballad, The Shooting of Dan McGrew. She has no sooner finished than an actor drops dead at her feet. Though the plot has it that the poor chap was done in by poison, it appears more likely that he died of envy, for an act like Rutherford's is hard to follow...
JOHN JACOB NILES: FOLK BALLADEER (RCA Victor). Niles started learning the folk music of his native Kentucky as a boy, collected more than 1,000 songs by the time of his extensive concert tours in the '30s and '40s, when these ballads (including Mary Hamilton, The Ballad of Barberry Ellen) were recorded. Niles weaves a strange, anachronistic spell as he sings them in a high, sweet voice, strumming a homemade dulcimer...
When, at the end, the narrator takes over completely, the film very nearly dissolves into fantasy. After scenes of Ireland's pleasant countryside, there are pictures of Kennedy's family; the austere background music of the first hour is replaced by a twinkling Irish ballad. There is the inevitable comparison with Lincoln (he alone "sits unmoved" as the procession passes by) and there are shots of the eternal flame ("the torch has been passed"). As the curtain closes, the narrator says that "Kennedy is invisible, but so is peace, and so are love and dreams...