Mozart Day

Thursday, 1/27

What an interesting and powerful day this is for people like me - and perhaps for you, too:

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born 250 years ago today ... and all day our classical music airwaves are being packed with his immortal sounds .... including remotes, originating in Austria.

You can't imagine how much I envy the hundreds of broadcast people from the various classical stations, like LA's KMZT ("K-Mozart") and New York's WQXR, who've been sent to Austria for today's concerts, massive church bell ringing (between 10 & 10:30 AM, the moment of Mozart's emergence from his mom's womb), etc. (KMZT in Los Angeles is running Mozart music 24 hours today)

I grew up to (NYC's) WQXR's programming (including its New York Times news) and now - up to this very moment, as I sit here typing: KMZT ... which just ran Beethoven's 5th (yea, Beethoven was pretty good, too...ha-ha) which I've heard hundreds - perhaps thousands - of times throughout my life and which still sends shudders and thrills through this aging, tho reasonably well-preserved body.

Those magnificent Mozart operas: Le Nozze di Figaro .... The Magic Flute ... Don Giovanni ... more than 500 compositions ! ... and all that from a very short life (only 35 when he died).

One of the many things I'm ashamed of: that, during the 60's,70's, into the 80's, I didn't take Michelle and Daryle to classical concerts, although we lived in cities that had some of the greatest orchestras in the world: New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Cleveland ... in all of which I had excellent journalistic contacts to the orchestra's PR offices ... stupid, stupid, stupid.

Anyway, enjoy this day ... and if you have a moment, switch your radios to your local classical music station (as you may already have done, and without my obnoxious pushing) ... or, even better, pick up a disk or two, and get the kids to listen to some Mozart. They might even get to like it and clamor for more.
- - -
These are pretty heavy news days ... and there are massive changes a'comin' ... the SCOTUS turning sharply to the right ... today's dramatic political change in Palestine ... the dreary casualty reports from Iraq ... the awfulness of the physical giants/mental midgets, who populate the pro baskeball world ... the Washington situation ... the inevitable and ongoing disintegration of Hollywood and its output of theatrical films ... I give a maximum of three - maybe five - years to the remaining life of your neighborhood movie theater chain ...and then there's the rise and increase of awful TV programming, designed for the stupid and uneducated ...

Now aren't you glad you permitted me to cheer you up like this ?

Happy Mozart Day ...

Gary S. Franklin