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Parlando - Where Music and Words Meet

Poetry has been defined as “words that want to break into song.” Musicians who make music seek to “say something”. Parlando will put spoken words (often, but not always, poetry) and music (different kinds, limited only by the abilities of the performing participants) together. The resulting performances will be short, 2 to 10 minutes in length. The podcast will present them un-adorned. How much variety can we find in this combination? Listen to a few episodes and see. Hear the sound and sense convey other people's stories here at Parlando - Where Music and Words Meet At least at first, the two readers will be a pair of Minnesota poets and musicians: Frank Hudson and Dave Moore who have performed as The LYL Band since the late 70s. Influences include: Patti Smith, Jack Kerouac (and many other “beat poets”), Frank Zappa, Carl Sandburg, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Don Van Vliet (Captain Beefheart), William Blake, Alan Moore, The Fugs (Ed Sanders, Tuli Kupferberg), Leo Kottke, Ken Nordine (Word Jazz), Bob Dylan, Steve Reich, and most of the Velvet Underground (Lou Reed, John Cale, Nico).
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Parlando - Where Music and Words Meet
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Now displaying: December, 2023
Dec 31, 2023

Robert Frost included this rural winter poem in his first collection A Boy's Will.  Concise it may be, and it works by tiny increments, but I think it's as harrowing as Dylan's "Hollis Brown" or Springsteen's Nebraska.  So, I set it to original music and performed it.

That's an example of what the Parlando Project does: we take other people's words, usually literary poetry, and set them to various kinds of original music. You can find over 700 examples of that at our blog and archives located at frankhudson.org

Dec 29, 2023

Sara Teasdale praises life while facing death in her poem I've now performed with music. 

For more than 700 other combinations of various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in various styles, visit our blog and archives at frankhudson.org

Dec 23, 2023

Here's a musical performance of my setting of Thomas Hardy's deft poem about Christmas miracles. 

For more about this and more than 700 other combinations of various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music in various styles visit our blog and archives at frankhudson.org

Dec 16, 2023

Russian poet Akhmatova's poem portrays a skeptical and experienced view of falling in love. I made a new English translation of this last summer, but its cold winter view of love convinced me to put off arranging a song-version of it until December.

For more than 700 other combinations of various words (mostly literary poetry) with music in various styles, visit our blog and archives at frankhudson.org

Dec 13, 2023

Margaret Widdemer was an early 20th century American poet and novelist, once somewhat popular, now mostly forgotten.  "The Dark Cavalier" may be her most remembered work, and it's a dark gothic ballad sung by Death. Death is disturbing in their seductiveness in this piece You've been warned. 

For more than 700 other combinations of various words (mostly literary poetry) with various kinds of original music we create for this Project, visit our blog and archives at frankhudson.org

Dec 1, 2023

A performance of a somber, gothic, ghost poem written by Australian poet Kenneth Slessor and performed with a haunting musical setting in our Parlando style. 

For more about Slessor, and for more than 700 other examples of various words (mostly literary poetry) with original music we compose and perform, visit our blog and archive at frankhudson.org

 

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