The Proms are over for another year and it is time once again to tip our hats to the BBC: this is perhaps the world’s greatest music festival. And in the form of live television broadcasts – with video to follow – it is more available than ever to millions of people. Every night during the summer months the Proms fill the Royal Albert Hall and bring in world class artists in a vast repertoire of the familiar and the all but unknown.
This past summer one of the quirky highlights was music from the Tom and Jerry cartoons. Not great music? Perhaps, but as played by the John Wilson Orchestra this music by Scott Bradley was enormously entertaining. Remember that there was hardly any dialogue in these cartoons. That meant that there was continuous music and it had to not only underscore the action but also be consistently imaginative. Bradley had a gift for this kind of thing as you will see in the video – even without the pictures! A touch of Spike Jones in the proceedings? Sure. But for me that is a good thing.
Thanks to my friend Stephen Aechternacht for bringing this delightful stuff to my attention.
Paul E. Robinson
