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Author Archives: dannyashkenasi
DEATH VALLEY
A Day in Death Valley Intense Heat and Awe-Inspiring Desert Beauty Our first stop in Death Valley, after driving two hours west from Las Vegas, was Zabriskie Point. A million years of volcanic emissions, lake-bed sediments, seismic activity, … Continue reading
Posted in Arts-a-Poppin', Two-fisted Touristing
Tagged Artist's Drive, Artist's Palette, Badwater Basin, borax, crystalized salts, Dante's View, Death Valley, Devil's Cornfield, Devil's Golf Course, dragonfly, Dry Waterfall, Furnace Creek, Golden Canyon, Mesquite, Natural Bridge, salt creek, salt flats, sand dunes, Stovepipe Wells, Zabriskie Point
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VALLEY OF FIRE
East of Las Vegas. West of Lake Mead. North of the Hoover Dam. A Day in Valley of Fire State Park. We start our tour of the Valley of Fire in and amongst the Beehives, wonderfully fabulous … Continue reading
Posted in Arts-a-Poppin', Melodies Linger On, Two-fisted Touristing
Tagged ABBA, Beehives, Big Horn Sheep, chuckwalla, erosion, Fire Canyon, Geography, Kisses of Fire, lizard, Mouse's Tank, Nevada, petrified log, petroglyphs, photography, Red Rock, Star Trek:TNG, State Park, Valley of Fire, White Domes
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RED ROCK CANYON
A Scenic Drive West of Las Vegas Ed and I flew into Las Vegas last weekend. It’ll be our base for a week (more on that later) as we plan a tour of the Great American West, or as … Continue reading
TELL-TALE RINGTONE
Dial M for Macabre Todd Maki, the sound engineer on our short film “The Tell-Tale Heart – a musicabre” surprised me this morning with an email with no subject heading and merely “just for fun” written in the body … Continue reading
Posted in Cinema Scope, Musicabilia
Tagged Edgar Allan Poe, macabre, musicabre, ringtone, short film, sound, The Tell-Tale Heart, Todd Maki
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The Sound of Recovery Music
Not your childhood van Trapps… The same friend who treated us to the SCA benefit performance “Snow White and the Seven Hos” invited us to see that show’s impresario Michael Roth’s latest romp “The Sound of Recovery Music”. Once … Continue reading
Posted in Cinema Scope, LGBTQ Alphabet Soup, Live! On Stage
Tagged 12 steps, AA, addition, drag, Gay, LGBTQ, Maria, Michael Roth, parody, promises, Recovery, SCA, Seven Hos, Snow White, sobriety, The Sound of Music, triggering
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Oh How I Love Our Japanese Red Maple In The Sunshine
Includes the “Red” music quiz All answers, as ever here at Notes from a Composer, are tucked inside the tags below. Red Music Query #1: We all remember Prince’s “Purple Rain”. Which pop/rock legend sings “Red … Continue reading
Posted in Arts-a-Poppin', Melodies Linger On
Tagged Andra Day, Blondie, Contact in Red Square, Emeric Pressburger, Fellowship of the Ring, Hans Christian Anderson, Hobbits, If You Don't Know Me By Now, Japanese maple, John Corigliano, Kate Bush, leaves, Michael Powell, nature, Peter Gabriel, photography, RED, Red Flag, Red Rain, Simply Red, The Lord of the Rings, The Red Shoes, The Red Violin
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Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor
The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, With conquering limbs astride from land to land; Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch, … Continue reading
50TH PRIDE NYC
11 Hours of Pride NYC – Watching and Marching – a Photo Diary 11:30am – Ed and I perched ourselves at 17th Street and 5th avenue to await the start of the 50th NYC Pride march … Continue reading
Posted in LGBTQ Alphabet Soup, Notes in the News
Tagged 50th, anniversary, Bears, Big Apple Corps, Bill de Blasio, bisexual, cartwheels, Chirlane McCray, drag queens, Dykes with Bikes, Empire State Building, Flatiron, Gay Liberation Front, Gay Rights, LGBTQ, March, New York City, Pence, photography, Pose, Pride, puppets, Quaker, Rainbow, Sage, Stilt walkers, Stonewall, Trevor Project, Trump, World Trade Center
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WALLPAPER FROM HELL – Tell-Tale Shoot Diary #5
Spoiler alert! This post may give away some Tell-Tale movie musicabre design secrets! Why suddenly a spoiler alert? I have been blabbing about the main plot points of “The Tell-Tale Heart – a musicabre” in several posts already, why … Continue reading
Posted in Cinema Scope, Musicabilia
Tagged cameo, Edgar Allan Poe, Harry Walker, hell, Hitchcock, Ja'rel Ivory, Jason Chua, musicabre, Nicholas Callais, set design, short film, The Tell-Tale Heart, wallpaper
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PRIDE MONTH DAILY MOVIE PLAYLIST
And so the daily LGBTQ movie shout out commences: Call that blog post by its name here. That Queer Movie blog post is its own country here.
Posted in Cinema Scope, LGBTQ Alphabet Soup
Tagged 3, Alison Bechdel, Andrew Haigh, Ang Lee, Big Eden, Booksmart, Bound, Brokeback Mountain, Call Me By Your Name, Carol, Cinema, Cloud Atlas, Gay, Gentleman Jack, Go Fish, God's Own Country, Guys and Balls, In the Family, Jane Austen, LGBTQ, Looking, Moonlight, movies, Paris 05:59: Theo and Hugo, Parting Glances, Playlist, Pose, Pride, Pride Month, Queer as Folk, Rebecca Cantrell, Rocketman, Sam Smith, Sense8, Short Bus, The Broken Hearts Club, The Cakemaker, The Celluloid Closet, The Handmaiden, The Happy Prince, The L Word, The Wedding Banquet, Three of Hearts, threesome, Tom Tykwer, Touch of Pink, TV, Walk on Water, Warchowski, Weekend
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TIGER LILIES MUSIC QUIZ
Lily Song Query 1: Who is the classic Hollywood star here singing about Lily Marlene? (As ever with these quizzes, the answers can be found tucked in the tags below) Tiger Song Query 1: Name the boxing movie that … Continue reading
Posted in Arts-a-Poppin', Melodies Linger On
Tagged Alexandre Desplat, Ang Lee, Carnival, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Deathly Hallows Part 2, Eye of the Tiger, flowers, Harry Potter, Kate Bush, Life of Pi, Lily, Lily Allen, Lily James, Lily Marlene, Mamma Mia - Here We Go Again", Marlene Dietrich, Mychael Danna, Nathalie Merchant, photography, Rocky 3, Tan Dun, The Red Shoes, tiger, tiger lily
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WE WILL SURVIVE – again and again
A Pride Month Special Look at “I Will Survive” and Some of its Many Covers with particular ruminations on what we will survive, or not The Original – Gloria Gaynor If one were to choose one song … Continue reading
Posted in LGBTQ Alphabet Soup, Melodies Linger On, Notes in the News
Tagged Andrews Sisters, Anthem, Aretha Franklin, Bishop Torbin, Blu Holliday, cake, climate change, Destiny's Child, Diana Ross, disco, diva, Funky Nashville, Gay Rights, Gladys Knight, Gloria Gaynor, Guys and Balls, I Will Survive, I'm a Survivor, J2, LGBTQ, Madonna, Männer Wie Wir, Postmodern Jukebox, Pride, Puppini Sisters, Remix, Sara Niemitz, Scott Bradlee, Shirley Bassey, Trump, Vogue
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The Belligerent Homophobe Who Ruined Rocketman For Us
The three or four loud sneezes that erupted behind us during the 20 minutes of previews were a warning shot that all would not turn out alright for us during this screening of “Rocketman” in midtown Manhattan. But the … Continue reading
Posted in Beginnings, Cinema Scope, LGBTQ Alphabet Soup, Notes in the News
Tagged 2016 election, Arrival, Ben Wishaw, bigot, Braveheart, Cloud Atlas, Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me, Ed Elder, Elton John, Gay, homophobia, James D'Arcy, LGBTQ, love scene, MAGA, movie, Pride, Rocketman, Taran Egerton, Trump, Trumpian
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The Knight Marries the Prince
A Kindergarten Original Blesses a Quaker Wedding Friday morning I heard a wedding song I realized I would have to sing that night at an actual wedding. Class K-1 at the Brooklyn Children’s School was the third kindergarten … Continue reading
CHERRY BLOSSOMS AND TAIKO DRUMS
Pink Splendor and Banging Dramatics on the Esplanade The end of April the Brooklyn Botanic Garden holds the Sakura Matsuri Festival, scheduled to coincide with the spectacular blossoming of the cherry trees on the Garden’s Esplanade. Nature holding … Continue reading
Posted in Arts-a-Poppin', Live! On Stage, Two-fisted Touristing
Tagged blossoms, botanic garden, brooklyn, Catherine Gayer, cherry, drum, Edward Elder, Esplanade, festival, Sakura Matsuri, Taiko, Taiko Masala
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