Music notes

One recent morning I was listening to Savage Garden (Affirmation) on my discman while walking down Massachusetts Avenue to the Metro, and discovered that “The Animal Song,” while making little lyrical sense, does have a perfect fashion-runway-walk tempo. Faster than a saunter, but slow enough for you to nonchalantly, yet purposefully swing your hips a bit. Honestly, I had to stop myself from doing little pivot-turns when I got to the streetcorners.

At the moment I’m listening to “Alma redemptoris mater” off Chanticleer’s wonderful twenty-fifth anniversary compilation (A Portrait), which I bought last week. Absolutely beautiful. (No, not runway material. Hm, unless you mixed it with a techno beat. Now that would be interesting. That reminds me, at Apex on Friday night, I heard a remix of the Flower Duet (“Sous le dôme épais”) from Delibes’ opera Lakmé, which you may remember from those British Airways commercials from a while back.)

Anyway, you must see and hear Chanticleer in person. These guys are amazing, virtuosic. Grr, their holiday concerts at the Met are already sold out. Ooh, but they’ll be at GMU just before then. I’m all over that.