An Ox Dancing a Tango on the Roof
Evening Music | May 6, 2010
What does an ox dancing a tango on the roof sound like? Take a listen as the Lyon Opera Orchestra under Kent Nagano performs Milhaud’s “Le boeuf sur le toit.”
Milhaud named his entertaining “Le boeuf sur le toit” after the title of a Brazilian popular song he admired. Soon after the premiere of the Jean Cocteau’s ballet for which the music was composed, a bar much frequented by Cocteau and Les Six (a group of French renegade composers, including Milhaud) moved to larger premises, re-naming itself after this work. You can still go there and raise a glass to those wacky French artistes!
Jacques Loussier, French jazz pianist, composer, and founder of his own eponymously named trio, was born in Angers 71 years ago. His love of Bach and jazz coincided famously, and we hear the result of that love affair as Guher and Suher Pekinel, the piano-playing Turkish sisters join his trio in a jazz-inflected version of Bach’s Concerto for Two Harpsichords, BWV 1061. A bit later, we hear how Loussier reworked Debussy’s “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun,” finding ways for piano, bass, and drums to successfully reinterpret the orchestral colors of the original.
Milhaud named his entertaining “Le boeuf sur le toit” after the title of a Brazilian popular song he admired. Soon after the premiere of the Jean Cocteau’s ballet for which the music was composed, a bar much frequented by Cocteau and Les Six (a group of French renegade composers, including Milhaud) moved to larger premises, re-naming itself after this work. You can still go there and raise a glass to those wacky French artistes!
Jacques Loussier, French jazz pianist, composer, and founder of his own eponymously named trio, was born in Angers 71 years ago. His love of Bach and jazz coincided famously, and we hear the result of that love affair as Guher and Suher Pekinel, the piano-playing Turkish sisters join his trio in a jazz-inflected version of Bach’s Concerto for Two Harpsichords, BWV 1061. A bit later, we hear how Loussier reworked Debussy’s “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun,” finding ways for piano, bass, and drums to successfully reinterpret the orchestral colors of the original.
