by Warren M. Sherk
In the process of compiling the Dimitri Tiomkin Anthology, some 200 songs were found to have been written by Dimitri Tiomkin, of which forty-eight were selected for the published songbook. A number of these songs will be performed on the program, “The Dimitri Tiomkin Songbook,” in the LSO Discovery Friday lunchtime concert series. The free concert is on Friday, October 14, at 12:30 p.m., at Jerwood Hall, LSO St Luke’s, Old Street, London.
In the spotlight will be singers Andrew Playfoot and Whitney Claire Kaufman. Richard Kaufman will be on hand to conduct London Symphony Orchestra players, Guildhall School musicians, and visiting soloists. The presenter is Rachel Leach.
See the program.
The eponymous title song from Wild Is the Wind is among the classic film songs on tap. Jazz singer and bassist Esperanza Spalding, the surprise Best New Artist at the 53rd annual Grammy Awards, recorded “Wild Is the Wind” for her debut album, “Chamber Music Society,” which combines a jazz rhythm section with string trio and voice. L. Pierce Carson, writing for the Napa Valley Register, called Spalding, “a breath of fresh air in a world of music that easily turns stale with imitation and repitition.” Check out Esperanza’s live performance of “Wild Is the Wind” in San Sebastian, Spain as posted on YouTube (the vocal arrives after a three-minute instrumental).
Other classic Tiomkin songs on the LSO Discovery Friday lunchtime concert at St Luke’s will be “Do Not Forsake Me” from High Noon, “Thee I Love” from Friendly Persuasion, the “Rawhide” theme from the television show of the same name, and both “There’s Never Been Anyone Else But You” and “This Then Is Texas” from Giant.
Among the newly discovered gems to be performed are two songs from unproduced stage musicals. “Sweet Surrender” was written during a slowdown in film production at the outset of World War II. The peppy show tune, “Rockette Song,” was penned for The Big Time Revue, with its memorable lyric, “five shows a day, six days a week, I’m the eightieth girl from the right.”
The concert will include several songs slated for future Anthology volumes, including “Not As a Stranger,” “You Mean So Much to Me,” and the delightful “Why Can’t Oranges.”
Don’t miss the pre-concert slideshow featuring personal photographs of Tiomkin at work, on film sets, and more. The concert will include excerpts from a filmed interview with Tiomkin discussing the music for Giant.
Full symphonic renditions of four of the songs on this concert can be heard on the program, “Symphonic Hollywood: The Music of Dimitri Tiomkin,” at the Barbican Hall in London on Thursday, October 27, at 7:30 p.m.