Les Miserables 1952

Entertainment Calendar – July 21, 2011

The Sharp Memorial Summer Concert Series is offering free concerts in Poway 5:30 – 7 p.m. Sundays at Lake Poway , 14644 Lake Poway Road, or Old Poway Park , 14314 Midland Road. The Corvettes perform Sunday, July 24 at Lake Poway. Country and western swing band Dave Dekker & Swing West Band performs Sunday, July 31 at Old Poway Park. Jimmy Buffett tribute band CoastRiders performs Sunday, Aug. 7 at Lake Poway. The Pomerado Community Band performs Sunday, Aug. 14 at Old Poway Park. For more information on Lake Poway concerts, call 858-668-4772, and for Old Poway Park concerts, call 858-688-4576.

The Sandy Devito Combo and special guest, local vocalist and bandleader DeAnna Manley , are performing 7 – 10 p.m. Friday, July 22, and with special guest, local star saxophonist and Berklee School of Music student Chris Burgess 7 -10 p.m. Friday, Aug. 5 at the Rancho Bernardo Courtyard by Marriott. A dance floor will be available. No cover charge, but there is a $15 minimum for food and beverages.

Join the Rancho Bernardo Community Band from 7:30 to 9 p.m. every Thursday at Rancho Bernardo High School, 13010 Paseo Lucido. All ages, proficiency levels and instruments welcome. For more information, send an email to rbcommunityband@yahoo.com or contact Hope at 858-382-3763.

The Carmel Mountain Ranch/Sabre Springs Recreation Center is offering free summer concerts 6-8 p.m. Saturday, July 30 with The Corvettes , and Saturday, Aug. 13, with JD and the Blues Busters . Hamburgers, hot dogs and corn on the cob will be sold. The Aug. 13 concert will feature a prize drawing that benefits park improvements. Bring a lawn chair or blanket. The recreation center is located at 10152 Rancho Carmel Drive.

Internationally renowned concertina player Noel Hill is performing a concert of traditional Irish music 8 p.m. Aug. 19 at Templar’s Hall, 14134 Midland Road, Poway. The concert will open with local musicians and will be followed by an open Irish music session. Only 100 seats available. Tickets are $20. For more information or to purchase tickets, call 858-748-0181 or contact noelhillconcert@gmail.com.

The Music Behind the Screen: Alex North: The Complex

School.  Upon studying the Russian composers, he traveled to Moscow as a telegrapher and studied composition at the Moscow Conservatory from 1932-1935.  In 1936 he returned to America and studied with Ernest Toch and Aaron Copland (both composed classical and film music).  In this time, he composed and arranged music for Martha Graham and her dance company.  He also wrote incidental music to plays and became music director for Anna Sokolow’s dance company.  While on tour in Mexico with Sokolow, North studied with Silvestre Revueltas (another classical composer who wrote several film scores in the 1930s). Rhapsody for Piano and Orchestra (1941), Symphony # 1 (1947) and his Revue for Clarinet and Orchestra (1947) which was premiered by Benny Goodman.  He also continued his underscoring of plays, but one is particularly of note – 1949’s Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller and directed by Elia Kazan.  Their relationship continued in the 1950s as North scored Kazan’s version of A Streetcar Named Desire in 1951.  This is one of the first jazz-inspired scores possibly his most acclaimed scores.  In 1951 he also composed the music to the film adaptation of Death of a Salesman .  His entry into film music started with a bang, using a jazz sound unheard in most movie scores.  He continued to write modern sounding scores compared to the average romantic sounding scores.  He worked again with Kazan on Viva Zapata! in 1952, but they didn’t work together after that, perhaps because of Kazan’s HUAC testimony.  He also scored movies like Les Miserables (1952), The Rose Tattoo (1955), The Rainmaker (1956), Hot Spell (1958) and The Sound and the Fury (1959). The 1960s brought North bigger budgeted films, and none of the films sound the same.  Films from this time include Spartacus (1960), The Misfits (1961), The Children’s Hour (1961), Cleopatra (1963), The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965) and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966).  In many instances, North connected to the character problems, just as he had done in the theater.  North employed many different techniques into his film scores which weren’t used often, such as jarring dissonance and exotic instruments.  Spartacus and Cleopatra remain his most popular works.

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