Monthly Archives: May 2021

Celtic Moods

Today’s pro­gramme takes anoth­er 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.

The 100 Word Stories Podcast “Sweet Sixteen”

Tune in to Vir­tu­al Com­mu­ni­ty Radio, on Mon­day May 31st at 2pm Pacif­ic / 10pm UK time, for a very spe­cial programme.

Long ago, R. Dis­man­tled swore an oath to write a 100 word sto­ry every day until the day he died. He’s not dead yet.

The Black Mass: The Outsider by H P Lovecraft

Join us on Fri­day at a lit­tle after 12 noon or 4pm Pacif­ic time, 8pm or mid­night in the UK , for anoth­er episode in the land­mark radio dra­ma series The Black Mass, cre­at­ed by the late Erik Bauers­feld and his col­leagues at the Paci­fi­ca radio sta­tion KPFA in Berke­ley, Cal­i­for­nia, over fifty years ago. In 30 chill­ing tales of mys­tery, imag­i­na­tion and the human mind, The Black Mass brings you some of literature’s most haunt­ing sto­ries, by mas­ters of the craft — many of whom are best-known in oth­er fields.

Note that the pro­gramme will not begin until the track play­ing at the top of the hour has fin­ished, so the actu­al start time of the episode will be a few min­utes after the hour.

Today: The Outsider by H P Lovecraft

The Out­sider” is a short sto­ry that Love­craft wrote between March and August 1921, it was first pub­lished in Weird Tales, April 1926. In this work, a mys­te­ri­ous indi­vid­ual who has been liv­ing alone in a cas­tle for as long as he can remem­ber decides to break free in search of human con­tact and light. “The Out­sider” is one of Love­craft’s most com­mon­ly reprint­ed works and is also one of the most pop­u­lar sto­ries ever to be pub­lished in Weird Tales.

“The Out­sider” com­bines hor­ror, fan­ta­sy, and goth­ic fic­tion to cre­ate a night­mar­ish sto­ry, con­tain­ing themes of lone­li­ness, the abhu­man, and the after­life. Its epi­graph is from John Keats’ 1819 poem “The Eve of St. Agnes”.

Tarot @ Teatime — Episode 7

It’s Thurs­day May 27 and time for a brand new episode in our twice-month­ly series on the Tarot, Tarot @ Teatime, with Hon­ey Heart and Wil­low Moon­fire. The show airs on Thurs­days and Sun­days at 12 noon and 4pm Pacif­ic Time (8pm and mid­night in the UK), and a new episode pre­mieres every two weeks.

Episode 7 cov­ers the Court Cards of the Minor Arcana.  We dis­cuss the sig­nif­i­cance and func­tion of the Court Cards in the four suits and dif­fer­ent ways of think­ing about them.

The pri­ma­ry resource men­tioned is the Rid­er Waite Smith Tarot deck.  It is avail­able from the pub­lish­er, US Games Sys­tems, Inc. and numer­ous book­stores and online book sellers.

Where’ve You Been 9: Sau Motors

Wednes­day, May 26th marks the pre­miere of a brand new episode in our series “Where’ve You Been?”, where we look at things to do and places to see in and around the Sec­ond Life Grid.

In Episode 9 we vis­it the Sau Motors Demo Track.

Easy to Remember: The Great American Songwriters And Their Songs

Today we are fea­tur­ing music from the “Great Amer­i­can Song­book” — with music by writ­ers includ­ing Gersh­win, Arlen, Berlin, Kern, Carmichael, Porter and many more, in a pro­gramme inspired by William Zinsser’s book on the music of the mid-20th Cen­tu­ry, Easy To Remem­ber.

New Episodes on Mixcloud

If you missed the lat­est episodes of our two pop­u­lar series, “Tarot @ Teatime” Episode 6 and “Where’ve You Been?” Episode 8, you can now catch them on Mix­Cloud. You can pause play­back at any point, or go back over some­thing you need to hear again — ide­al with pro­gram­ming like our Tarot series where there’s quite a lot of detail.
Mean­while, the new episode of “Where’ve You Been” pre­mieres on Wednes­day 26th May and “Tarot @ Teatime” the fol­low­ing day: noon or 4pm Pacific/8pm or mid­night in the UK.

Saturday At The Movies

Today, join us for a pro­gramme of music from the movies.

Movies are where most peo­ple today hear orches­tral music, and there will be plen­ty of that today. 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.…

Today we’ll be fea­tur­ing Andrea Far­ri’s evoca­tive music from  Le Château du Tarot — a short film that unveiled the Dior Haute-Cou­ture Spring-Sum­mer 2021 col­lec­tion by Maria Grazia Chiuri.

The Black Mass: The Judgment by Franz Kafka

Join us on Fri­day at a lit­tle after 12 noon or 4pm Pacif­ic time, 8pm or mid­night in the UK , for anoth­er episode in the land­mark radio dra­ma series The Black Mass, cre­at­ed by the late Erik Bauers­feld and his col­leagues at the Paci­fi­ca radio sta­tion KPFA in Berke­ley, Cal­i­for­nia, over fifty years ago. In 30 chill­ing tales of mys­tery, imag­i­na­tion and the human mind, The Black Mass brings you some of literature’s most haunt­ing sto­ries, by mas­ters of the craft — many of whom are best-known in oth­er fields.

Note that the pro­gramme will not begin until the track play­ing at the top of the hour has fin­ished, so the actu­al start time of the episode will be a few min­utes after the hour.

Today: The Judg­ment by Franz Kafka

The Judg­ment” (“Das Urteil”), also trans­lat­ed “The Ver­dict”, is a short sto­ry writ­ten by Franz Kaf­ka in 1912, con­cern­ing the rela­tion­ship between a man and his father. Kaf­ka wrote “The Judg­ment” in a sin­gle sit­ting on Sep­tem­ber 22, 1912. In lat­er writ­ings, he described the cre­ative out­burst of “The Judg­ment” as “the total open­ing of body and soul,” say­ing that “the sto­ry evolved as a true birth, cov­ered with filth and slime.” Kaf­ka viewed the work as “one of his most suc­cess­ful and per­fect lit­er­ary cre­ations” which he was able to write in a “semi-uncon­scious state of mind.”

Music from the Time of Austen & Gainsborough

Today’s pro­gramme takes us back to the the 18th and the begin­ning of the 19th cen­turies, with music from the time of nov­el­ist Jane Austen (1775–1817) and the painter (Thomas) Gains­bor­ough (1728–1788) — in oth­er words, music that takes us from the late Baroque to the ear­ly Clas­si­cal period.