Entente Cordiale

April 9, 2025   Programming

Today we are pleased to present a selec­tion of clas­si­cal music from Britain and France.

In fact the empha­sis is some­what more on the French, but we’ll be hear­ing from a num­ber of British com­posers such as Elgar, Vaugh­an Williams and of course Fred­er­ic Delius, who, while born in Eng­land, spent the lat­ter part of his life across the Channel.

From the French side we will be fea­tur­ing Poulenc, Fau­ré, Chopin (who was Pol­ish born but became a French cit­i­zen) Debussy, Rav­el and Berlioz, with per­for­mances both tra­di­tion­al and not so.

We also have a selec­tion of “cross-chan­nel” pieces in a some­what lighter vein.

Also today, don’t miss “Engines of Our Inge­nu­ity” — pre­sent­ed by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Hous­ton: the series about the machines that make our civ­i­liza­tion run and the peo­ple whose inge­nu­ity cre­at­ed them. The pro­gramme is broad­cast every 4 hours from 4am Pacific.

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Madonna In A Green Velvet Chair

April 4, 2025   Programming

Tune in on Fri­day for the lat­est episode of our excit­ing 5‑part radio ser­i­al from our friends at ZBS Foun­da­tion: “Madon­na In A Green Vel­vet Chair” - at noon or 4pm Pacific/SLT every Fri­day! In which the Madon­na Vampyra — of The Fourth Tow­er of Inver­ness — is trans­port­ed by a mys­te­ri­ous piece of furniture…

Now read on…

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Celtic Moods

April 2, 2025   Programming

Today’s pro­gramme takes a look at the expan­sion of Celtic music and themes into sev­er­al dif­fer­ent gen­res of music.

Here we are fea­tur­ing musi­cians and music that start from the Celtic tra­di­tion and take it for­ward into oth­er realms, from Joanie Mad­den to Mendelssohn to Ger­al­do and his Orches­tra; from thun­der­ous­ly spec­tac­u­lar orches­tral arrange­ments (you’ll hear sev­er­al of those today) in the wake of River­dance, to inspir­ing music for a small Celtic ensem­ble and organ, played in the largest Goth­ic space in the world.

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The Early Music Show

March 5, 2025   Programming

Tune in to Vir­tu­al Com­mu­ni­ty Radio today for a pro­gramme of Ear­ly Music – fea­tur­ing music of the High Renais­sance, with con­tri­bu­tions from France, Spain, Eng­land and Ger­many. There are also some mod­ern inter­pre­ta­tions thrown in for good measure.

Don’t miss Engines of Our Inge­nu­ity every four hours from mid­day UK time / 4am Pacific.

“Where Have You Been?” — our series on things to do and places to vis­it across the Sec­ond Life Grid, is cur­rent­ly on hia­tus and returns shortly.

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Hits In Hi-Fi

March 1, 2025   Programming

Today we’ll take a nos­tal­gic jour­ney back to the 1960s and beyond, when music was on vinyl and home stereo was new and excit­ing­ly futur­is­tic… with Hits In Hi-Fi.

In the ear­ly days of stereo, a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of albums were released that were designed espe­cial­ly to show off the won­ders of this new way of pre­sent­ing musi­cal enter­tain­ment. Sounds “ping-ponged” across the stereo sound­stage; instru­ments appeared hard on one side and then hard on the oth­er… and there were a lot of space ref­er­ences, bloops and bleeps start­ing and end­ing the pieces — and once the Moog Syn­the­sis­er became avail­able, that was includ­ed in the mix too.

A selec­tion of these albums forms the core of our music today. Often the tracks con­sist of instru­men­tal arrange­ments of pop­u­lar songs, but there are also plen­ty of orig­i­nal tunes too.

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Modern Classical Music

February 26, 2025   Programming

Wednes­day, 26th Feb­ru­ary: Today’s Fea­tured Music is “Mod­ern Clas­si­cal Music” — but what does that mean, exact­ly? It’s not sim­ply “mod­ern orches­tral music”: most peo­ple’s expo­sure to orches­tral music is via movie sound­tracks, and they have their own show.

Well, in the con­text of today’s pro­gramme, we’re talk­ing about pieces of music writ­ten between around the mid-20th Cen­tu­ry until the present day, that aren’t exact­ly “pop music” (though they may tip a hat to it from time to time).

This is a tricky def­i­n­i­tion, how­ev­er. Mike Batt (some of whose work is in the playlist for today: there’s a lot more to his com­po­si­tions than the Wombles! ) has remarked that there is no such dis­tinc­tion as “pop­u­lar music” and “seri­ous music” — there’s sim­ply “pop­u­lar” and “unpop­u­lar”, so the def­i­n­i­tion rather falls at the first fence.

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Saturday At The Movies

February 22, 2025   Programming

Today, join us for a pro­gramme of music from movie and TV sound­tracks — and now we’re includ­ing some com­put­er game sound­tracks, which have become as sophis­ti­cat­ed as movie scores in recent years and include some of the same composers.

Movies are where most peo­ple hear orches­tral music these days, and there will be plen­ty of that in this pro­gramme. But movie music is a much broad­er field than that, and today you’ll hear music from the movies of many dif­fer­ent kinds, from the very start of the genre (with Camille Saint-Saens) to the lat­est block­busters; from orches­tral music to rock, to Fifties songs. There is a slight bias towards fan­ta­sy and SF movies, but nev­er mind, we all need a bit of an escape these days.…

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Jack Flanders in League of the Green Velvet Chairs

January 24, 2025   Programming

Tune in on Fri­day for the lat­est episode of our excit­ing 10-part radio ser­i­al from our friends at ZBS Foun­da­tion: “League of the Green Vel­vet Chairs” - at noon or 4pm Pacific/SLT every Fri­day! In which Jack and his friends are trans­port­ed by a mys­te­ri­ous piece of furniture…

Now read on…

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Where Have You Been? S04E14: MadPea Unlimited

January 4, 2025   Programming

We’re pleased to present the final episode in the fourth sea­son of our orig­i­nal series, “Where Have You Been?”, where we dis­cuss things to do and places to vis­it across the Sec­ond Life Grid.

Episodes are broad­cast on Wednes­days and Sat­ur­days at 12 noon and 4pm SLT/Pacific Time.

This time we look at an amaz­ing deal that gives SL res­i­dents six-month priv­i­leged free access to a wealth of games and expe­ri­ences — at “Mad­Pea Unlim­it­ed”.

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Christmas on the Musical Theater Stage

December 21, 2024   Programming

Sat­ur­day, Decem­ber 21st sees the repeat of a sea­son­al episode of our orig­i­nal series, “The Mag­ic Of The Musi­cal” with your host Cale­do­nia Sky­tow­er, at 2pm Pacif­ic Time/SLT.

This month the theme is “Christ­mas on the Musi­cal The­ater Stage” and Cale­do­nia’s spe­cial guest is Chris Ser­face, Man­ag­ing Artis­tic Direc­tor of Taco­ma Lit­tle The­atre and Past Pres­i­dent of the Amer­i­can Asso­ci­a­tion of Com­mu­ni­ty The­atre.

Fea­tured music for the day con­sists of a touch of nos­tal­gia with an inter­leav­ing of sea­son­al tunes, and the lat­est edi­tion of our Sec­ond Life explo­ration show goes out at noon and 4pm SLT.

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