Artist	Song
Academy of St. Martin In The Fields cond. Neville Mariner	Bach's Brandenburg Concerto #1 in F, 1. Allegro: Pt. 1
2:14
John Coltrane & Johnny Hartman	My One And Only Love (instrumental section)
2:18
Miles Davis	Black Satin
5:16
abangaku	Albatrossing
2:22
Tom Waits	Everything You Can Think
3:12
Anne-Christine Biel, Maya Boog & Kerstin Avemo	Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice Act II, Scene 2. a. Ballo
1:11
Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir & Tallinn Chamber Orchestra cond. Tõnu Kaljuste	Arvo Pärt's Magnificat
6:37
John Coltrane	Naima
4:21
John Coltrane & Johnny Hartman	My One And Only Love (song section)
2:51
Academy of St. Martin In The Fields cond. Neville Mariner	Bach's Brandenburg Concerto #1 in F, 1. Allegro: Pt. 2
2:05

Comment:

Well, here's a different kind of mix for y'all.... Coming in at a slim 32:27, this's the shortest mix I've posted by a mile, probably due to the fact I wasn't really responsible for the track selection: beyond a couple of recommendations (thanks, slipperyhangdoglook!) and the decision to break up the Bach and Coltrane/Hartman pieces into two parts each, this was all picked out and sequenced by my Mother, who created a dance, for the second-grade class she teaches, based on the Greek-mythological figure of Orpheus. I volunteered my own Craft (?) at constructing the album... here's what came out. (Unfortunately as may be, the song section of "My One And Only Love" was deemed "not appropriate for second-graders". For the actual dance, then, the first couple of tracks are going to be reprised verbatim.) Here's the narrative:


1. We're introduced to our hero, Orpheus: purveyor of the greatest music in the world, he has the power to make rocks and trees weep. I guess nothing says "beautiful music" more than Bach.

2. Apparently, Orpheus doesn't go in for the whole Greg Lake model of being a music-boy lover-man. If the brilliant Sarah Ruhl play I saw some months ago off-Broadway can be believed, Orpheus's match, the spunky Eurydice, was plenty passionate about life. Damn that funky, funky situational irony....

3. So, get this: on the very day Orpheus and Eurydice are getting married, one of his boob friends chases her away with his dong out (I suppose this is also "not appropriate for second-graders") into the wilderness, where a snake bites her. The good Trane giveth, and the good Miles taketh away.

4. Clearly, the thing you do if you're, you know, the most successful musician in the world when your bride dies is to *go into the underworld* and rely on the power of *music* to return her to the surface (eat that, Robert Fripp!) and start necrophilia rumors from here to Boeotia. "Albatrossing" is, um, my piece. I wrote it and recorded it and multitracked it into my laptop, and my Mother, being my Mother, decided it was a perfect soundtrack for crossing the River Styx.

5. Cerberus, the three-headed guard dog of the underworld, is a perfect Threshold Guardian figure. He barks like Tom Waits, he stands at the gate of a new world like Tom Waits, but inside he's a softy enough at heart to be put to sleep by Orpheus's strumming, just like, um, Tom Waits.

6. Choosing to ignore the questionable legitimacy of using a dance number (remix *this*, motherfuckers) from Gluck's Orpheus-and-Eurydice-themed opera for this reconstruction, Orpheus traipses through the underworld, Jeff Buckley-ing his way through hordes of nasty monstrosities including, apparently, the Realm of the Blessed Spirits (who have their own ballet, or something).

7. By the time Orpheus gets to the king of the underworld, Hades knows enough to strike a bargain: we'll give you Eurydice if you promise not to look back at her on the way up, and make sure you weren't just punked. "Magnificat" is the axis of this mix, I find: the long, slow, wretched climb out of the house of Hades.

8. Silly Orpheus: Hades ain't no punkmeister. He looks back, and the really, truly Eurydice fades off into the distance. Orpheus reaches the surface and wails his tenor sax into the green, green grass.

9. There are plenty of stories about what happened to Orpheus after he got back: one of the more interesting ones says that, after Eurydice was lost to him, he started preaching homosexuality. A bunch of mad women decide they're in danger of becoming even more irrelevant to Greek society than they already were, and tear him to pieces. But the joke's on them: Orpheus finally finds some sweet love with Eurydice back in the underworld, thereby becoming the hero of generations of neocons everywhere.

10. Also, his music lives on, too. He may, some scientists hypothesize, have been reincarnated as Bach.

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