Category: Music & Concert Specials
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Music Album Review: ‘Billy Joel – 2000 Years: The Millennium Concert’
Billy Joel â 2000 Years: The Millennium Concert Label: Sony Legacy Genre: Pop Rock Year of Release: 2000 Billy Joelâs 2000 Years: The Millennium Concert may not be his most polished live album, but itâs one of his most emotionally honest. Recorded on New Yearâs Eve 1999 at Madison Square Garden, this two-disc set captures…
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Music Album Review: ‘Platoon and Songs from the Era: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack’
Platoon and Songs from the Era: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack Year of Release: 1986 Record Label: Atlantic, Warner Records (International) Genre: Film Score (Classical/Pop/Rock) Oliver Stoneâs Platoon (1986) remains, nearly four decades later, one of the most searing and authentic portrayals of the Vietnam War ever committed to film. Drawing from Stoneâs own harrowing experiences…
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Music Album Review: ‘Holst: The Planets’
Holst â The Planets: Chicago Symphony Orchestra/James Levine Label: Deutsche Grammophon Released: 1991 Genre: Classical/Symphonic Review: Holstâs The Planets â A Celestial Tapestry in Seven Movements Two years before Pluto was demoted to dwarf planet status (not that Pluto minds, I suspect), I wrote an earlier version of this reflection on Gustav Holstâs The Planets,…
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Writing Intimacy with Reverence: A Scene from ‘Comings and Goings’
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in Alex Diaz-Granados, Amazon, Amazon Spain (Amazon.es), Billy Joel, Comings and Goings (Short Story), Comings and Goings: The Art of Being Seen, Creative Writing, Kindle, Kindle Create (Publishing App), Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), Love, Sex, & Relationships, Music, Reunion Duology, Reunion: A Story, Reunion: Codađïž Writing Intimacy with Reverence: A Scene from Comings and Goings Thereâs a scene in Comings and Goings that still lingers with meânot because itâs dramatic, but because itâs quiet. Itâs Jim Garraty, nineteen, sitting in Kellyâs apartment in Mission Hill, letting the world slow down long enough to feel something real. Itâs a moment…
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Music Album Review: ‘Great Performances: Rodrigo: Concierto de Aranjuez/Fantasia para un gentilhombre’
đŒ Echoes of Spain: A Journey Through Rodrigo and AlbĂ©niz with John Williams Thereâs something quietly transcendent about hearing the guitar sing in the hands of John Williams. Not the film composer, but the Australian virtuoso whose fingers seem to coax memory itself from the strings. In Great Performances: Rodrigo: Concierto de Aranjuez/Fantasia para un…
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Music Appreciation: My First Encounter with Berlioz’s ‘Symphonie Fantastique’
đŒ A Fever Dream in Five Movements: Remembering My First Encounter with Berliozâs Symphonie Fantastique One of the most memorable experiences from my college yearsânow four decades agoâtook place on a rare cool afternoon in South Florida. I was sitting in my Humanities class at Miami-Dade Community College, where Professor Jay Brown, a talented musician…
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Music Album Review: ‘Billy Joel – 52nd Street’
52nd Street Revisited: Billy Joel and the Art of Returning Thereâs something hauntingly familiar about the first album that makes you feel seen. For me, it was 52nd Streetâacquired through teenage negotiation, a bulky eight-track cassette wrested from my sister when she moved out. At the time, âMy Lifeâ felt like rebellionâs anthem, its defiance…
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Music Album Review: ‘Billy Joel Greatest Hits, Volume III’ (1997)
Billy Joelâs Greatest Hits, Volume III: A Late Discovery Worth the Wait Iâll admit it â I nearly passed this one by. When Greatest Hits: Volume III dropped in 1997, I hesitated. Joelâs post-An Innocent Man output hadnât exactly lit up my radar, and with my classical collection growing, I wasnât keen on spending limited…
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âThis Nightâ: Music, Memory, and the Moments That Define Us
Thereâs something about music that stays long after the moment has passed. A lyric looping quietly in the back of your mind. A piano chord that stirs a memory you hadnât meant to revisit. In Comings and Goings â The Art of Being Seen, one such song plays softly in the backgroundâBilly Joelâs âThis Night.â…
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On Soft Light and Honest Songs: A Note to the Reader
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in Alex Diaz-Granados, Amazon, Billy Joel, Books, Comings and Goings (Short Story), Comings and Goings: The Art of Being Seen, Creative Writing, Garratyverse, Kindle, Kindle Create (Publishing App), Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), Love and Sex, Melodies and Memories: Music, Songs, and Singers, Movies, Reunion Duology, Reunion: A Story, Reunion: CodaEvery story in the Garratyverse carries its own rhythm. Some sweep across decades, reckoning with inherited grief, generational wounds, and the long arc of forgiveness. Comings and Goings: The Art of Being Seen isnât that kind of story. Itâs smaller. Quieter. But no less true. This one lives in the hush between songs, the half-step…
A Certain Point of View, Too 