Author Archive: vcradio-admin

The Black Mass 28: Disillusionment by Thomas Mann

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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. Our thanks as always to John Whit­ing, pro­duc­er of many of these record­ings, and of course to Erik Bauers­feld him­self.

Note that the episode will not start 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.

27 August: Disillusionment by Thomas MannContinue reading→

Sounding Brass

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Today’s pro­gramme focus­es on brass instru­ments, with gen­res that range from Ear­ly Music to con­tem­po­rary pieces.

Thus the gen­res range from ancient and ear­ly music, through Baroque and clas­si­cal, to Vic­to­ri­an brass bands, to rag­time, trad jazz, a touch of big band, right up to mod­ern works includ­ing a mar­vel­lous suite of pieces for wind band inspired by the works of Shake­speare.

This will all lead to some remark­able jux­ta­po­si­tions — and a few sur­pris­es.
Con­tin­ue read­ing→

Classic Electronica

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Today we are leav­ing our tra­di­tion­al gen­res for a while with a pro­gramme of music pro­duced with the aid of elec­tron­ic devices, stretch­ing right back to the ear­ly days of the genre, with tape manip­u­la­tion and “found sounds” and the use of dig­i­tal to ana­logue con­vert­ers attached direct­ly to main­frame com­put­ers, as in the land­mark album “Music From Math­e­mat­ics”.

We take a lis­ten to ear­ly uses of the Moog and oth­er syn­the­sis­ers and albums that mixed musique con­crete with synths for a light-heart­ed melod­ic sound — from the likes of Per­rey & Kings­ley.

Mov­ing for­ward you’ll hear clas­sic albums like “Switched-On Bach” and oth­er record­ings by pio­neer syn­the­sist Wendy Car­los, and oth­er quite dif­fer­ent clas­sic albums from the “Berlin School” of syn­the­sis­er music.

You’ll hear Ton­to’s Expand­ing Head Band. Jean-Michel Jarre. Jean-Phillippe Rykiel. Tan­ger­ine Dream. Tom Dis­sevelt and Kid Bal­tan. Tomi­ta. And many more. All in all, plen­ty to get your teeth into.

Then don’t miss anoth­er chance to hear the lat­est episode of our Sec­ond Life trav­el­ogue, “Where’ve You Been?”, where we look at cool places to vis­it and things to do around the Sec­ond Life grid. This time we vis­it an impec­ca­bly-built Haunt­ed Man­sion trib­ute. 12 noon or 4pm Pacif­ic / 8pm or mid­night in the UK.

“HDR Mod­u­lar Syn­the­siz­er Macro” by Peter Gorges is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

The Black Mass 27: A Country Doctor by Franz Kafka

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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. Our thanks as always to John Whit­ing, pro­duc­er of many of these record­ings, and of course to Erik Bauers­feld him­self.

Note that the episode will not start 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.

20 August: A Country Doctor by Franz KafkaContinue reading→

Tarot @ Teatime 13 — Studying the Major Arcana

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Thurs­day 19 August debuts the first broad­cast of Episode 13 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 / 8pm or mid­night UK time. This episode will repeat on Sun­day.

In Episode 13 we talk about meth­ods for study­ing the Major Arcana of the Tarot, and then explain how to find your Per­son­al­i­ty card and Soul card.

Ref­er­ences: Mary K. Greer, Tarot For Your­self, Weis­er Books, Sep­tem­ber 2019. ISBN-13: 978–1578636792

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

New Shows on Mixcloud: Tarot @ Teatime 12 and Where’ve You Been 13

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We’re pleased to announce the addi­tion of two new pro­grammes to our Mix­cloud “Lis­ten Again” facil­i­ty. Lis­ten to them now at https://www.mixcloud.com/virtualcommunityradio/

“Where’ve You Been” Episode 13 fea­tures The SLEA Bridge Project, a two region con­nec­tive stretch between the SLEA home region (with its per­form­ing arts cen­tre, Machin­i­ma­land, and edu­ca­tion spaces, etc) and the quar­ter region small project area.

And in “Tarot @ Teatime” Episode 12, Hon­ey and Wil­low explore the his­to­ry behind the Rid­er Waite Smith tarot deck.

Con­tin­ue read­ing→

Celtic Moods

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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.Con­tin­ue read­ing→

British Composers

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Today’s pro­gramme fea­tures music from British com­posers old and new, pri­mar­i­ly focus­ing on clas­si­cal styles. The playlist includes Edward Ger­man, Richard Har­vey, Ger­ald Finzi, Sir Arthur Bliss, Jon Lord, Christo­pher Gun­ning, Vaugh­an Williams and many more.

Then tune in at 12 noon or 4pm Pacif­ic Time / 8pm or mid­night in the UK, for anoth­er chance to hear the lat­est episode of “Where’ve You Been?”, where we vis­it The Bridge Project at the Sec­ond Life Endow­ment for the Arts,  and don’t miss the lat­est episode of “Engines of Our Inge­nu­ity” from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Hous­ton, every four hours from 4am Pacif­ic.

Image, “bal­loon — british coun­try­side” by Mikee Show­biz is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0  

The Black Mass 26: Shiddah & Kuziba by Isaac B. Singer

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Join us on Fri­day at a lit­tle after 12 noon or 4pm Pacif­ic time 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. Our thanks as always to John Whit­ing, pro­duc­er of many of these record­ings, and of course to Erik Bauers­feld him­self.

Note that the episode will not start 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.

13 August: Shiddah & Kuziba by Isaac B. SingerContinue reading→