Jeremiah Brown

Award-winning composer, H. Scott Salinas has contributed towards an impressive variety of notable projects including the Academy Award nominated documentary film The Square, HBO and Aaron Sorkin’s smash hit The Newsroom, TNT’s dark thriller Murder In The First, and Academy Award nominated documentary film, Cartel Land. In 2002, Scott became the youngest Grand Prize recipient of the Turner Classic Movies Young Film Composers Competition and along with accolades such as the prestigious Cannes Lion, Clio, and BMI awards, Scott’s accomplishments have earned him esteem and recognition as a highly versatile yet specialized talent. From composing the brooding hybrid orchestral score to the Darren Aronofsky produced Zipper, to his original song Jamie Smiles written for the cult comedy classic Just Friends to acting as the instrumental mouthpiece behind the Old Spice whistle, Scott’s ability to create a meaningful impact for a wide spectrum is showcased through his work.

Interior designer and television host Jeremiah Brent explores the emotional meaning of home in this warm and inviting book that illuminates what make peoples' spaces so personally significant.

As urban America of the nineteenth century grew and prospered, it became anxious to show itself civilized and "cultured" along the lines of established European culture. And so it was that the music of America's founders – the untutored but vigorous religious music of Colonial America, and the rugged, folk-derived spiritual song of the countryside – was more or less banished from polite society. The middle classes preferred (or were told to prefer) major-key hymns in "correct" four-part harmony. Funny stereopticon slides were published showing country yokels at an old-fashioned "singing school," presumably caterwauling some anthem by a disgraced eighteenth century like Billings or Read. Standard American music history texts, some even in use today, wrote off these repertoires, dismissing them in a few lines, or even ignoring them entirely.

As urban America of the nineteenth century grew and prospered, it became anxious to show itself civilized and "cultured" along the lines of established European culture. And so it was that the music of America's founders – the untutored but vigorous religious music of Colonial America, and the rugged, folk-derived spiritual song of the countryside – was more or less banished from polite society. The middle classes preferred (or were told to prefer) major-key hymns in "correct" four-part harmony. Funny stereopticon slides were published showing country yokels at an old-fashioned "singing school," presumably caterwauling some anthem by a disgraced eighteenth century like Billings or Read. Standard American music history texts, some even in use today, wrote off these repertoires, dismissing them in a few lines, or even ignoring them entirely.

This album presents the songs from The Threepenny Opera in a new French translation by Alexandre Pateau. The recording was made at the 2023 Festival d'Aix-en-Provence during the run of the new production of the legendary work by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill in collaboration with Elisabeth Hauptmann, which features the troupe of the Comedie-Francaise and the musicians of Le Balcon, conducted by Maxime Pascal with Thomas Ostermeier as stage director. In this parody of an opera, the songs are the driving force behind the action and the characters ape the bourgeois lifestyle of the audience, the better to denounce the period of moral confusion they are going through. With Maxime Pascal at the helm of a dozen multi-instrumentalists from Le Balcon, we hear a version based on that of the first performance - hard-hitting and as close as possible to the tremendous creative energy deployed by the two creators of the work in the summer of 1928 - acted and sung by the troupe of the Comedie-Francaise, who rise to all its challenges with brio. Other special features of this album are a previously unrecorded song on a text by Yvette Guilbert and the linking texts between the songs read in French by Ostermeier himself. As Diapason wrote of this production, 'Almost a century after its premiere, The Threepenny Opera has lost none of its subversive power.'

This album presents the songs from The Threepenny Opera in a new French translation by Alexandre Pateau. The recording was made at the 2023 Festival d'Aix-en-Provence during the run of the new production of the legendary work by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill in collaboration with Elisabeth Hauptmann, which features the troupe of the Comedie-Francaise and the musicians of Le Balcon, conducted by Maxime Pascal with Thomas Ostermeier as stage director. In this parody of an opera, the songs are the driving force behind the action and the characters ape the bourgeois lifestyle of the audience, the better to denounce the period of moral confusion they are going through. With Maxime Pascal at the helm of a dozen multi-instrumentalists from Le Balcon, we hear a version based on that of the first performance - hard-hitting and as close as possible to the tremendous creative energy deployed by the two creators of the work in the summer of 1928 - acted and sung by the troupe of the Comedie-Francaise, who rise to all its challenges with brio. Other special features of this album are a previously unrecorded song on a text by Yvette Guilbert and the linking texts between the songs read in French by Ostermeier himself. As Diapason wrote of this production, 'Almost a century after its premiere, The Threepenny Opera has lost none of its subversive power.'