Monthly Archives: January 2023

Tarot @ Teatime 10 — The Major Arcana

Here’s anoth­er chance to hear Episode 10 of our orig­i­nal series, “Tarot @ Teatime”, with Hon­ey Heart and Wil­low Moon­fire, explor­ing the his­to­ry of the cards and how they may be read. Tune in to http://main.vcradio.org at noon or 4pm Pacif­ic / 8pm or mid­night UK time. This episode will repeat on Sun­day Jan­u­ary 29th and Thurs­day Feb­ru­ary 2nd.

Episode Ten
This cov­ers the Major Arcana and var­i­ous way of think­ing about these twen­ty-two cards as a group. We dis­cuss the notion of The Fool’s Jour­ney, Jun­gian Arche­types, and the Major Arcana as a depic­tion of the inter­play between order and chaos.

The Light Programme

Sat­ur­day Jan­u­ary 28th, and today we make a for­ay into the world of Light Music, one of our sta­ple gen­res here on VCRadio.

We can think of Light Music as fill­ing a gap between out-and-out clas­si­cal music, and the excep­tion­al qual­i­ty music pro­duc­tion library and film music of the 1940s-50s — the lat­ter also fea­tur­ing from time to time on The Light Pro­gramme. It’s a con­tin­u­um with per­haps Sul­li­van at one end, and maybe Coates at the oth­er – though it’s dif­fi­cult to define bound­aries. In between are com­posers like Addin­sell, Alwyn, Ketel­bey, Tom­lin­son, Binge, Lane and oth­ers, and it’s their music that we’ll be fea­tur­ing today. What these pieces and com­posers have in com­mon, is a “clas­si­cal” approach to melod­ic music. Their work is full of great tunes, and it utilis­es orches­tral forces with as much aplomb as any clas­si­cal com­pos­er. But in gen­er­al (though not always), the music is a lit­tle lighter in tone and feel.

Music of Scotland and A Burns Supper

Today, 25th Jan­u­ary, is the anniver­sary of the birth of Robert Burns, and today we’re bring­ing you a pro­gramme of tra­di­tion­al and mod­ern music from Scot­land (with plen­ty of bag­pipes of course), and then, at 2pm Pacif­ic Time/SLT (10pm GMT) we are pre­sent­ing a com­plete Burns Sup­per, cour­tesy of the late-lament­ed Scots Inde­pen­dent News­pa­per (a role these days tak­en by The Nation­al).

In addi­tion, today sees a repeat of the Elven For­est edi­tion of our orig­i­nal series, “Where Have You Been?”, where we dis­cuss things to do and places to see around the Sec­ond Life Grid, at 12 noon and 4pm Pacific/SLT, 8pm and mid­night in the UK. Plus, “Engines of Our Inge­nu­ity“every four hours from 4am Pacific.

We’re Moving to Willow Grove

As we write, we’re mov­ing into our third year, and we’re in the process of mov­ing our head­quar­ters to a new loca­tion on the Wil­low Grove region. The SLURL is http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Willow%20Grove/192/31/2801

All our Spon­sors, Friends and Patrons’ rental pan­els are now in the back room at the new HQ. There should­n’t be any inter­rup­tion in these services.

Over the com­ing year, you can expect a con­tin­u­a­tion of our unique pro­gram­ming, includ­ing new episodes of our orig­i­nal series, some of which are cur­rent­ly on hia­tus. “The Mag­ic of The Musi­cal” will start a new sea­son in April, and until then we’ll be run­ning some favourite episodes in the Sat­ur­day 2pm SLT slot. And when the series returns in the Spring, it’ll be broad­cast live from a brand new loca­tion. Sim­i­lar­ly, there will be new episodes of “Where Have You Been?”, where we vis­it places of inter­est around the Grid,  begin­ning next month — and until then we’ll be re-run­ning some shows cov­er­ing still-cur­rent SL loca­tions and activities.

Keep an eye on the web site here for the lat­est details.

The Magic of The Musical: “With Cat-Like Tread”

Tune in on Sat­ur­day Jan­u­ary 21st at 2pm pacific/slt for anoth­er chance to hear a show in our orig­i­nal series, “The Mag­ic of The Musi­cal”! The series con­tin­ues with brand new episodes from April, but until then we are repeat­ing a few of our favourite episodes in the third Sat­ur­day of the month slot.

In this edi­tion, “With Cat-Like Tread” focus­es on the influ­ence of the dis­tinc­tive operettas of W.S. Gilbert & Arthur Sul­li­van on Amer­i­can musi­cal theater’s evo­lu­tion years lat­er in the 20th C.  Host Cale­do­nia Sky­tow­er is joined by guest Elrik Mer­lin as they com­pare and con­trast with views from both sides of “the pond.”

At the height of the Vic­to­ri­an era in Eng­land, a part­ner­ship devel­oped between drama­tist W.S. Gilbert and com­pos­er Arthur Sul­li­van that result­ed in a form of operetta so unique that it is reg­u­lar­ly referred to as its own genre: “G&S” – Gilbert and Sul­li­van.  Their dozen musi­cal shows direct­ly influ­enced musi­cal the­ater in the 20th C, intro­duc­ing inno­va­tions in con­tent and form that are still part of the lan­guage of musi­cals today. They’ve stood the tests of time, pol­i­tics, and par­o­dy – often­times encour­ag­ing the lat­ter. Their shows are still wide­ly per­formed in the Eng­lish speak­ing world, and Gilbert and Sul­li­van soci­eties abound in North America.

The Mag­ic of The Musi­cal explores the blend­ing of music and dra­ma — fea­tur­ing the songs, his­to­ry, and lore that make up the musi­cal the­ater canon. Learn more about some of your favorite shows and com­posers as we cue the orches­tra, and the over­ture begins.

Also Today … 

NOTE: The actor men­tioned in this episode who por­trayed the Police Con­sta­ble in the 1980 New York Pub­lic The­ater pro­duc­tion was actu­al­ly Tony Azi­to, not Tony Ansel­mo. Azi­to was an Amer­i­can eccen­tric dancer and char­ac­ter actor.  Ansel­mo is an Amer­i­can voice actor, best known as the voice of Don­ald Duck.

Classics On The Keys

Today, Wednes­day Jan­u­ary 18, we present a wealth of key­board pieces — pri­mar­i­ly on piano, harp­si­chord and organ, but you’ll hear some oth­er tra­di­tion­al key­board instru­ments too — both solo and with oth­er musi­cal forces back­ing them.

The main spread of the pro­gramme encom­pass­es the Baroque and Clas­si­cal peri­ods, but you’ll also hear some more mod­ern pieces includ­ing treat­ments of clas­si­cal pieces, and some engag­ing lit­tle 19th cen­tu­ry pieces that are less well-known. Most of the time, there is a clas­si­cal or baroque link in there some­where, even if it’s not imme­di­ate­ly obvious.

Classical Landscapes

Sat­ur­day, Jan­u­ary 14th: Today’s pro­gramme, “Clas­si­cal Land­scapes”, con­sists of music from some of the Great Mas­ters of Clas­si­cal and Roman­tic music (and a few from the Baroque), includ­ing Mozart, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky and many more.

Sit back and enjoy some of the great­est music ever writ­ten, per­formed by the lead­ing orches­tras and solo per­form­ers of the world.

“Where Have You Been?”, where we sug­gest things to do and places to vis­it around the Sec­ond Life Grid, will be back for a new series in March. In the mean­time we’ll be re-broad­cast­ing a few pro­grammes from Series 2, start­ing with Seren­i­ty Val­ley (S02E08). While “WYB” includes quite a few time-relat­ed items like gallery exhi­bi­tions and places based around the time of year, there are some places we’ve vis­it­ed which are longer-term in scope and we’ll be revis­it­ing a few of them in the show’s reg­u­lar times­lots of 12 noon and 4pm Pacific/SLT, on Wednes­days and Saturdays.

You can also hear “Engines of Our Inge­nu­ity” at the usu­al time, every 4 hours from 4am Pacific.

“Orches­tra” by foil­man is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

Tarot @ Teatime Episode 9 — Agency, Function & Context

Tune in for  anoth­er chance to hear Episode 9 of our pop­u­lar series, “Tarot @ Teatime”, with Hon­ey Heart and Wil­low Moon­fire, explor­ing the his­to­ry of the cards and how they may be read. Tune in to http://main.vcradio.org at noon or 4pm Pacif­ic / SLT, 8pm or mid­night UK time. This episode will be broad­cast on Jan­u­ary 8, 12, 15 and 19.

In this episode, Wil­low and Hon­ey dis­cuss how agency, func­tion, and con­text influ­ence the inter­pre­ta­tion of cards in a read­ing.  A spread of three cards is read to address two dif­fer­ent issues to demon­strate the impor­tance of context.

If you’ve missed any episodes of this series, remem­ber you can catch pre­vi­ous episodes on demand at Mix­cloud.

Dreams of Sumatra- A Travels With Jack Adventure

Tune in on Fri­day for the next episode of anoth­er excit­ing radio ser­i­al from our friends at ZBS Foun­da­tion: Dreams of Suma­tra - anoth­er adven­ture from the Trav­els with Jack series.

This adven­ture con­sists  of four half-hour episodes, broad­cast at noon and 4pm Pacific/SLT on Fri­day Jan­u­ary 6, 13, 20 and 27.

 

DREAMS OF SUMATRA:
A TRAVELS WITH JACK  ADVENTURE

Another chance to hear…

Wel­come to 2023 and we wish all our lis­ten­ers, friends and spon­sors a very Hap­py New Year.

Two of our orig­i­nal series will be on hia­tus for a while:

“Where Have You Been?”, where we sug­gest things to do and places to vis­it around the Sec­ond Life Grid, will be back for a new series in late Feb­ru­ary. In the mean­time we’ll be re-broad­cast­ing a few pro­grammes from Series 2, start­ing with Seren­i­ty Val­ley (S02E08). While “WYB” includes quite a few time-relat­ed items like gallery exhi­bi­tions and places based around the time of year, there are some places we’ve vis­it­ed which are longer-term in scope and we’ll be revis­it­ing a few of them in the show’s reg­u­lar times­lots of 12 noon and 4pm Pacific/SLT, on Wednes­days and Saturdays.

“The Mag­ic of The Musi­cal”, our month­ly series on musi­cal the­ater, will return with a new series — and a new venue! — in the Spring, and until then we’ll be run­ning some past shows in the show’s 2pm Pacif­ic, third Sat­ur­day in the month slot.