Category: Music
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Music Album Review: ‘Great Performances: Rodrigo: Concierto de Aranjuez/Fantasia para un gentilhombre’
🎼 Echoes of Spain: A Journey Through Rodrigo and Albéniz with John Williams There’s 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’
🎼 A Fever Dream in Five Movements: Remembering My First Encounter with Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique One of the most memorable experiences from my college years—now four decades ago—took 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 There’s something hauntingly familiar about the first album that makes you feel seen. For me, it was 52nd Street—acquired through teenage negotiation, a bulky eight-track cassette wrested from my sister when she moved out. At the time, “My Life” felt like rebellion’s anthem, its defiance…
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Music Album Review: ‘Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire’ (1996)
🎬 Rediscovering Shadows of the Empire: When Star Wars Became More Than a Movie Back in 1996, as fans braced for the re-release of the original trilogy and whispers of Episode I grew louder, Lucasfilm ventured into bold territory. “Everything but the movie”—that was their creative mantra. The result? A multimedia narrative tapestry called Star…
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Music Album Review: ‘Superman: The Movie – Original Sound Track (1987 CD Edition)
💫 Superman: The Movie (1987 CD Soundtrack Review & Reflection) Before Rhino Records unveiled its deluxe 2-CD edition 25 years ago, the 1987 Warner Bros. release was the lone CD version of John Williams’ score for Superman: The Movie. Conducted by Williams and performed by the mighty London Symphony Orchestra, this abridged album still captures…
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Music Album Review: ‘Billy Joel Greatest Hits, Volume III’ (1997)
Billy Joel’s Greatest Hits, Volume III: A Late Discovery Worth the Wait I’ll admit it — I nearly passed this one by. When Greatest Hits: Volume III dropped in 1997, I hesitated. Joel’s post-An Innocent Man output hadn’t exactly lit up my radar, and with my classical collection growing, I wasn’t keen on spending limited…
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Music Album Review: ‘Amadeus: Original Soundtrack Recording’ (1984)
Amadeus: Original Soundtrack Recording Artist(s): Sir Neville Marriner, Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields Label: Fantasy Records Year Released: 1984 Amadeus and Me: A Soundtrack That Never Stops Echoing I first met Mozart on the silver screen. Milos Forman’s Amadeus didn’t just introduce me to the genius of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart—it gave me an emotional blueprint. The…
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Writing, Storytelling, and Music: ‘Comings and Goings’ – The Playlist
+🎵 “You Were Here”: Source Music, Intimacy, and the Mixtape Mind of Comings and Goings Some stories unfold over weeks, with characters shaped by seasons and seismic shifts. Others happen in a night. A moment. A mixtape. Comings and Goings – The Art of Being Seen takes place over one Boston evening in 1984—a quiet…
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The Sixth of June…Now, Then, and Again…
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in Alex Diaz-Granados, Amazon, D-Day (June 6, 1944), Kindle, Kindle Create (Publishing App), Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), Life in Florida, Life in Madison (NH), Life in Miami (1972-2016), Life in Miami….Again, Life in New Hampshire (December 2023 – October 2024), Life in South Florida, Life in the Tampa Bay area, Life in the United States, Music, Reunion Duology, Reunion: Coda, Summer 2024, Summer 2025, Summer in Florida, The D-Day DarlingsMidday/Early Afternoon, Friday, June 6, 2025, Miami, Florida The weather system that brought that rainy opening to meteorological summer earlier this week has moved on, and the Florida Travel Bureau can rest easy because it’s sunny, clear, and hot enough to go to the beach. (Ah, bikini weather!) I’d argue, though, that – climate change…
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Where Time’s Winds Blow: The Scene That Started It All
Every story has a beginning. Sometimes, that beginning is clear and deliberate—a spark of inspiration that feels undeniable. Other times, it sneaks up on you, a seemingly small moment that quietly takes root, only revealing its true significance years later. For Reunion: A Story, that moment came in the late 1980s when I was a…
A Certain Point of View, Too 