Happy New Year to you and your families. I hope this year is better than the last.
Marandos Restaurant Review – We went to this Mexican Restaurant at 11420 E. Sprague (Sprague and Bowdish) last Friday and ate great food and listened to great live music. First of all, each plate was enough to feed three people, so be prepared to ask for a doggy bag. Secondly, the food was delicious. Thirdly, the music featured Latin Jazz by Orlando Sanchez' band, a Latin percussion player who has performed with Stevie Wonder and several other famous stars. On Friday nights you can dance to this salsa and jazz band from 7 to 11 pm and then a DJ spins out dance tunes.
Orland Sanchez CD –Speaking of Orlando Sanchez, we met about a year ago and started hanging out and going to jam sessions. For example, on Tuesday nights you can generally find us at the RoxieTavern in Hillyard listening and playing most genres of music from 7 to 10 pm. There’s a lot of very good talent and you never know who is going to show up. Orlando and I have been working on a music CD with a blend of Latin, Jazz and Puerto Rican Taino Indian musical elements. We have outlined eight songs so far. The plan is that Orlando will take our melodic outlines to Orlando, Florida in April 2019 and with other great musicians blend the music into a final music CD, still untitled.
Roma Movie Review – We watched this film on Netlix even though it was just released. It is a beautiful movie about the daily ups and downs in the life of a maid in an upper middle class family in Mexico. I thought it was an old movie because it is in black and white. Another interesting film technique is that they only use one camera in each scene and it follows the action of each scene in a single shot, which is a nice break from multiple cameras used in most contemporary films that cut to a different camera every three seconds or so. The dialogue is in Spanish with English subtitles.
Apocalypto Review –This movie was co-produced and co-written by Mel Gibson. The dialogue is in an approximation of the Mayan language with English sub-titles. It starts off showing a jungle tribe hunting and having fun, joking about the lack of procreation success of one of the hunters, who takes it in stride. But the movie quickly turns dark, violent and bloody as Aztec Invaders attack the peaceful villagers and murder many and carry off several captives into slavery. I don’t want to spoil the rest of the movie, but this one is also worth seeing to get a feeling for what life was like before the Spanish conquistadores arrived.
Qualchan Opera Update – Here is a recent classified ad I wrote for Opera Magazine, an international music magazine based in London. Graduate of Indiana University School of Music seeking theater company to produce new Qualchan Opera about the bravest warrior of the Yakama Nation who is in love with Whist-alks but their romance is threatened by encroaching settlers and Army. There is a condensed version at Eastern Washington University on April 5th, 2019 at 7 pm at the school of music.
EdwardsMusicSite.com gedward@roadrunner.com
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Yours,
Gary A. Edwards