Here it is: Peabody College Part Two, 1970-- the "Waxidermy Record"

Waxidermy:

Peabody College and Vanderbilt University – The Contemporary College Wind Ensemble
Added November 2, 2008 by cracker.

This was one of the first school band records I ever bought. I’d heard *of* Vanderbilt University, but never realized it was in Nashville. Hmm, Nashville… strange then to find this tantalizing blurb on the back:

“This album is a new departure in wind ensemble programming. Leading Nashville composers and arrangers have bridged many musical styles and periods to produce a kaleidoscopic survey of the possibilities of wind instrumentation. From Carmina Burana to MacArthur Park, from conventional sounds to the complex multi-ensemble (with moog synthesizer) of Irving Kane’s Fourth Stream, this performance demonstrates the expressive possibilities inherent in the wind ensemble. The instrumentation of the group featured on this recording is that of the traditional wind, jazz and rock ensembles together with harpsichord and electronic tape.”

Tucked inside the sleeve there was a program for “CENTURIES of SOUND from BACH to ROCK” dated Tuesday, April 28, 1970, and this record contains excerpts from the night’s performances. I was kinda bummed that some of the titles listed on the program didn’t make it onto the record… namely an electronic work from Gilbert Trythall, and a BLOOD SWEAT AND TEARS cover!

Fortunately the other interesting sounding piece made it onto the record, FOURTH STREAM by Irving Kane. As it turns out, Irving Kane was a local Nashville studio musician and composer. He describes the piece in the program, “Pop music, “serious music, (quotes indicate dissatisfaction with terminology)– the dichotomy preoccupies me; how to love and do both. This piece seems to be an attempt to explicate a dilemma.”

Fourth Stream takes up most of one side of the LP, so I’ve included two 5 minute excerpts of the entire 15 minute performance. Enjoy!

Enjoy Indeed!  For today you can listen to the entire record...

I won't bother to analyze the famous Fourth Stream track, suffice it to say it's really a remarkably adept composition mixing classical and jazz, absolutely stuffed full with great ideas in both genres.

Some information:

A1 Carmina Burana by Carl Orff but arranged by--?

O Fortune, Variable as the World

Fortune, Empress of the World
A2 Fourth Stream by Irving Kane

B1 Jim Webb Songs for Instruments by Jay Dawson

B2 This is All I Ask by Gordon Jenkins, arranged by Ned Battista.

Incidentally George Benson did an inimitable, unforgettably amazing version of that last song (as he did with so many others), and you can hear it here (youtube).  Pay attention to the lyrics-- the old man is leering at a young female, after playing in a park with a stranger's children, and today, of course, we get arrested if we foolishly attempt such things...
oh the innocence of bygone days! the wisdom of ours!

It ends:

But let the music play, for as long as there's a song to sing, 

I will stay younger than spring...

And that just about says it all for us here doesn't it?


Again form the back blurb:

“Pop music, 'serious music,' (quotes indicate dissatisfaction with terminology)– the dichotomy preoccupies me; how to love and do both. This piece seems to be an attempt to explicate a dilemma.”

How to love and do both...

Peabody College Wind Ensemble in 1969 (not the waxidermy item, but related)

On Waxidermy a great deal of excitement was generated over a college track called Fourth Stream by a Nashville composer and session musician called Irving Kane.  I got this related record, from 1969, the year before the former, since it also had a composition by him, called Suite for Band.  Unfortunately that composition was a bit too straightforward, almost music univ. essay-like.  Instead the highlight here is the last track, called Jazz Tangents:






If you look at the database for this record,  and check the liner notes and scans, it seems the band, from Peabody College and Vanderbilt Univesity, is almost the same, but they do have different names.  The first side is given over to a rendition of my favourite composer Stravinsky's Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments, and a completely ridiculous musique concrete piece by (also from Nashville) Gil Trythall called Surfaces Opus 19.  Neither myself nor 99.99 percent of humans, or I should say animals, would describe this as music.