David Garland

This year's Academy Award nominees for Best Original Score are an odd assortment of obvious choices, reasonable contenders, and surprises, writes WQXR's David Garland.

The Royal Wind Music of today is based in Amsterdam, and is comprised of 13 young players from around the world. They are, in a sense, a recorder orchestra. Hear them tonight at 9 pm.

Joshua Rifkin studied with Babbitt and Stockhausen, recorded with a jug band, and created arrangements for Judy Collins. This Sunday at 9 pm, he talks with David Garland about J.S. Bach.

The list of Elizabeth Taylor's films includes daring, challenging stories, and they were scored with exceptional music. Here are a few of host David Garland's favorites.

What touch! Pianist Garrick Ohlsson had an eloquent dialogue tonight with his instrument, with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and with all of us listening to his Carnegie Hall performance of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4. Ohlsson's fingers on the keyboard managed precise intricacies, each note articulated clearly, but I was so impressed with the way all notes integrated into a vivid, thrilling whole.

Last weekend I had the pleasure of recording an in-studio performance by composer Van Dyke Parks, which will broadcast on my WNYC show Spinning On Air this Sunday evening at 8 pm. My first exposure to Parks's work was when I heard The Beach Boys song “Heroes and Villains” on the radio while a kid back in the 1960s. Parks wrote the lyrics for that song, and subsequently worked on The Beach Boys’ “Smile” and his own 1968 album “Song Cycle,” and many projects since. Back when I first heard his music I knew it was new, exciting, and different, but I probably didn’t recognize that it was such an effective, natural blend of folk, pop, and classical influences.

Although I work in the non-visual medium of radio, by training I'm a visual artist. I graduated from art school, and worked for ten years as a graphic designer and illustrator before moving to radio via my lifelong love of music. I think that radio actually is a visual medium, it's just that the associated images are conjured in the imagination of the listener, rather than on paper or on canvas.

Last week's Movies on the Radio featured music from the TV show "Star Trek," and was illustrated with a photo of actors William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy as their iconic Star Trek characters Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock. It's been corrected since, but at first our caption for the photo identified them as "Captain Kirk and Dr. Spock."

This week at a dinner party I met Pam, who left the get-together early. I'm a night owl myself (on the air weekend evenings, after all), but Pam told us that she regularly gets up at 4 am each day. She feels that rising early lets her "own the day," and gives her invaluable time to think and get things done.

Computers both isolate and connect us. Here's a strange, spooky, but pretty-sounding example of this contemporary condition.

David Garland welcomes baroque orchestra Juilliard415 to the WQXR Studio and speaks with Music Director Monica Huggett about Juilliard's new Historical Performance program, from which Juilliard415 draws its musicians.

This Sunday at 4:05 pm, you'll hear the baroque orchestra Juilliard415 join me in the WQXR Studio to perform and chat. Juilliard415 features graduate-level students from The Juilliard School's new Historical Performance program. So these are young people performing on very old-style instruments.