Category Archives: Programming

Music for Beltane — and more!

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Today we present a pro­gramme of a wide vari­ety of music inspired by, but not lim­it­ed to, Beltane.

Beltane or Beltain is the Gael­ic May Day fes­ti­val. Most com­mon­ly it is held on 1 May, or about halfway between the spring equinox and sum­mer sol­stice. His­tor­i­cal­ly, it was wide­ly observed through­out Ire­land, Scot­land, and the Isle of Man. In Irish the name for the fes­ti­val day is Lá Beal­taine, in Scot­tish Gael­ic Là Beall­tainn and in Manx Gael­ic Laa Boaltinn/Boaldyn. It is one of the four Gael­ic sea­son­al fes­ti­vals — along with Samhain, Imbolc and Lugh­nasadh — and is sim­i­lar to the Welsh Calan Mai.

And don’t for­get, the lat­est edi­tion of our reg­u­lar fea­ture, Where Have You Been? — where we take a look at events and places around the Sec­ond Life grid. 12 noon and 4pm Pacif­ic Time, 8pm and mid­night in the UK. Find out more about our vis­it to a “hid­den gem” here. Plus Engines of Our Inge­nu­ity — every four hours from 4am Pacif­ic.

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The Magic of The Musical — The Playlist

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The Mag­ic of The Musi­cal is the month­ly series, host­ed by Cale­do­nia Sky­tow­er with spe­cial guests, which looks at the his­to­ry, lore and songs of the musi­cal the­atre. It’s broad­cast from the Gold Hall at Angel Manor in Sec­ond Life before a live audi­ence at 2pm SLT/Pacific Time, on the third Sat­ur­day in the month.

After the show has aired, we post it on our “Lis­ten Again” ser­vice at Mix­cloud, so you can catch any shows you missed, or to hear them again.

From now on, that’s even eas­i­er to do, as we’ve pre­pared a Mix­cloud Playlist con­tain­ing all the Mag­ic of the Musi­cal shows that are avail­able on Mix­cloud (for tech­ni­cal rea­sons, the odd show may be miss­ing — but S01E07, “Every­thing Addams”, is now avail­able where pre­vi­ous­ly it was omit­ted). Just fol­low the link or go to our Mix­cloud Pro­file at https://www.mixcloud.com/virtualcommunityradio/ and choose the Playlist link, then select The Mag­ic of The Musi­cal.

La Musique Classique Française

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Join us today for a pro­gramme of French clas­si­cal music from a wide vari­ety of com­posers, pri­mar­i­ly from the 18th and 19th cen­turies, includ­ing a nice col­lec­tion of the works of Erik Satie that goes well beyond the Gymnopédies.

Most of the com­posers today are pret­ty well-known, but keep your ears open for things like the Euro­vi­sion theme — actu­al­ly Extrait du Te Deum by Char­p­en­tier — and oth­er good­ies. There is some gor­geous music in today’s pro­gramme and we do hope you enjoy it.
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The Magic of The Musical: Series 2 Episode 1 now on Mixcloud

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MUSICAL THEATER FANS:  Our sec­ond sea­son of month­ly shows, live from Angel Manor, began on April 15… but if you missed it, here’s your chance to catch up: Lis­ten again on Mix­cloud!

THIS EPISODE:
“Musi­cals with­in Musi­cals”

Every­thing is “meta” these days, but just a few cul­tur­al rev­o­lu­tions ago a young and devel­op­ing Amer­i­can musi­cal the­ater dis­cov­ered the val­ue of self-ref­er­en­tial sto­ry­telling. This episode looks at musi­cals which “break the fourth wall” by acknowl­edg­ing the audi­ence — and even include their own musi­cals!

Lis­ten again on Mix­cloud!

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A Sense Of Place

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Sat­ur­day, April 22nd: Today’s pro­gramme con­cerns itself with the “sense of place” or genius locii, as the Romans called it, that has informed much of West­ern art through the cen­turies. We’ll be attempt­ing to cap­ture the feel­ing of pres­ence that char­ac­teris­es many loca­tions, and to do so we’ll be vis­it­ing sites, cities and spots around the world.

So you’ll hear pieces from Respighi’s Foun­tains of Rome to Mitchel­l’s Stat­ue of Zeus at Olympia; Fin­gal’s Cave from Mendelssohn to Gersh­win’s An Amer­i­can In Paris, Hol­st’s The Plan­ets, Elgar­’s Cock­aigne (In Lon­don Town), and many more. Most of the music is in a clas­si­cal vein, but we’ll also be play­ing more recent com­po­si­tions, for exam­ple music by Sheri­dan Tongue for Pro­fes­sor Bri­an Cox’s BBC tele­vi­sion series Won­ders of the Uni­verse. Immerse your­self in the music and trav­el with us on our own, rather exten­sive and a lit­tle unusu­al, Grand Tour.

Join us at noon or 4pm Pacif­ic, 8pm or mid­night in the UK, for the lat­est episode in our Sec­ond Life trav­el­ogue series, “Where Have You Been?”, where we fea­ture a beau­ti­ful “Hid­den Gem” on the Sec­ond Life Grid — details here. And catch “The Engines of Our Inge­nu­ity” — a radio pro­gram that tells the sto­ry of how our cul­ture is formed by human cre­ativ­i­ty, writ­ten and host­ed by John Lien­hard and oth­er con­trib­u­tors, every four hours from 4am Pacif­ic.

“The Sphinx and the Great Pyra­mid of Giza” by Sam and Ian is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

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→

Where Have You Been?: A Hidden Gem

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Often on “Where Have You Been?” we fea­ture large-scale loca­tions — art gal­leries, nature regions and so on. But in addi­tion from time to time we’ve fea­tured small­er, more inti­mate venues ide­al for a qui­et chat with a friend or a date night.  “Where Have You Been?” is in a good posi­tion to fea­ture des­ti­na­tions like these. So we are start­ing a spe­cial occa­sion­al series to focus on small des­ti­na­tions, in addi­tion to con­tin­u­ing our cov­er­age of larg­er venues, art shows, and events: “Hid­den Gems — for date nights and spe­cial occa­sions.” And this episode is the first offi­cial Hid­den Gems episode.

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Music of the Baroque

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Wednes­day April 12th, and today we’re fea­tur­ing music of the Baroque era, with a par­tic­u­lar­ly exten­sive col­lec­tion of music by J S Bach.

Plus it’s your last chance to hear the cur­rent episode of “Where Have You Been?”, where we report on inter­est­ing things to see and do across the Sec­ond Life Grid, at noon and 4pm Pacific/SLT, where we vis­it Arm­strong Park in a vir­tu­al New Orleans; and don’t miss “Engines of Our Inge­nu­ity” from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Hous­ton, every four hours from 4am Pacif­ic.

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