Monthly Archives: April 2024
Vocal Magic
In today’s programme, we present a selection of music featuring the human voice, from Mediæval times to the present.
Both secular and a little sacred music is included, so today’s show will be quite varied, ranging between troubadour songs, Renaissance choral works, traditional English folk-songs sung by artists like the King’s Singers and Coope Boyes & Simpson, and modern works such as those of Karl Jenkins, Libera, The Swingle Singers, The Carpenters, and Donna McKevitt’s haunting settings of Derek Jarman’s poetry.
The programme focuses primarily on lesser-known works and on smaller vocal ensembles, rather than either solo or large-scale performances, but examples of both are also included.
Then later today, join us at noon or 4pm SLT/Pacific for Where Have You Been?, our series on places to visit and things to see around the Second Life Grid, plus Engines of Our Ingenuity from the University of Houston, every 4 hours from 4am Pacific/SLT.
“Petersfield Chamber Choir 004” by dom archer is licensed under CC BY 2.0
The Magic of The Musical: Season 3 Begins!
We’re pleased to announce the start of the third season of our original series of The Magic of The Musical, where your host Caledonia Skytower takes a monthly look at the world of musical theatre with songs, stories and lore surrounding some of our most popular musicals.
Saturday, April 20 @ 2pm SLT/Pacific Time sees the first show of the season: Unexpected Broadway. This show is now available on Mixcloud.
This episode features performances by actors and actresses that you would not have expected to find in a Broadway musical, but they were! In some cases we’ll feature the production, and in some the performance. Who knew that a quirky film actor started out as a dancer for Liza Minelli? Or that “the boy who lived” would appear in the Broadway Revival of a 1961 Frank Loesser musical?
Join our live audience at Ceiluiradh Glen on Saturday at 2pm SLT — slurl: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Nowhereville/196/131/21 or tune in to Virtual Community Radio here on the web site, plug this URL into a network player: http://main.vcradio.org — or ask your smart speaker to “Play Virtual Community Radio!”
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Related Videos (some mentioned in this episode)
Christopher Walken Dances: “Weapon of Choice” Fatboy Slim
Christopher Walken Dances: “Let’s Misbehave” from Pennies from Heaven
1776 (Roundabout 1997) featuring Brent Spiner as John Adams
Jack Flanders in Do Angels Really Have Wings?
Tune in on Friday for the next episode of another exciting radio serial from our friends at ZBS Foundation: “Do Angels Really Have Wings?” - in which Jack Flanders explores Heaven — and Hell!
The complete adventure consists of six short five to ten-minute episodes, broadcast at noon and 4pm Pacific/SLT on Fridays.
Now read on…
Tarot @ Teatime: The Rider Waite-Smith Deck
We’re pleased to introduce the new season of our original series, Tarot @ Teatime, which airs every Sunday and Thursday at 12 noon and 4pm SLT/Pacific.
In this new season, your host Honey Heart, PhD* progresses through the Waite-Smith deck — the most popular of all Tarot decks — one card at a time.
For each, she discusses a number of features of the card: the Cardinal Direction associated with the card, its Numerological symbolism, the Astrological influences, the Elemental connections, and the relationship with Jungian archetypes. She even relates the card to Shakespearian characters. Heart then casts and interprets a demonstration 3‑card reading featuring the card and provides hints and tips to help you gain your own understanding of the cards.
The Waite-Smith deck is the most popular Tarot deck available, and features the artwork of Pamela Colman Smith (illustrated, from an image in The Craftsman magazine). Honey Heart’s commentary includes a discussion of the features of the card illustrations, and it may assist you in catching the subtle nuances of these classic illustrations to have today’s card in front of you. If you don’t own a RWS Tarot deck, you can find the card illustrations here.
Smith’s illustrations were influenced by many sources, notably the Sola Busca tarot, the earliest known complete Tarot deck.
In 1907, the Busca-Serbelloni family donated black-and-white photographs of all 78 cards to the British Museum (see Queen of Batons, right), where they were likely seen by A. E. Waite and Pamela Colman Smith, inspiring their own tarot deck (1909 example Temperance, left).
The similarities between the artwork of the Minor Arcana of the Waite-Smith deck and Sola-Busca’s plain suits has led some scholars to suggest that Colman Smith drew inspiration from the earlier work. Smith created the art for her deck two years after the acquisition of photographs of the Sola-Busca deck by the British Museum, and likely saw the cards on display there. Notable similarities include the Three of Swords card and the Ten of Wands card in the Rider deck, which is very similar to the Ten of Swords card in the Sola-Busca deck.
*Honey Heart in first life has a doctorate in transpersonal counseling, with her dissertation written on a phenomenon observed in Tarot.
We’re now available in AAC
We are pleased to let you know that in addition to our existing mp3 audio stream, we can now be heard in AAC, which may offer improved quality including better stereo and a cleaner sound, particularly as we improve other parts of our broadcast chain to match.
Perhaps more importantly, listeners will experience lower data usage as the AAC stream runs at 64kbps rather than the 128kbps that is used by the mp3 stream. We are currently upgrading our mobile apps to play the AAC stream — watch this space! The 128kbps mp3 stream is unaffected.
To tune in to the AAC stream, set your player to https://streaming.live365.com/a93871_2 Some network players (Winamp for example) won’t decode the AAC stream over an https path, so in that case use http://streaming.live365.com/a93871_2 An alternative is to use the short-cut http://aac.vcradio.org — but note that this does not work with all players (VLC works fine)
NOTE: AAC is not available in Second Life. Listeners in Second Life and other virtual environments that rely on the FMOD audio libraries should continue to use the existing mp3 stream as AAC is not supported by this library (and apparently never will be). You can, of course, run an ordinary network player while you’re in-world.
