If you looked down, you would see "the greatest pianist of this or any other century," as one of his students called him. Known for hundreds of years now, he is still looked up to as one unlike anything else we've ever seen. Merely looking at him strikes fear into the hearts of pianists (but apparently not music researchers). So, this time only, I hope you have never played a piano, or this will remind you of your inferiority to him all over again.
(I do have a recording. I just moved it down so viewers on my home page will have to click the button first.)
Listen to the song here (Can't see an audio player? It might not work if you're viewing this in an email client. If you are on teawithliya.blogspot.ca, you may need to try a different browser.)
Welcome back to Tea with Liya! I feel like 2023 is sort of an "odd" number -- not just in the sense of not being divisible by 2, but rather "different" or "unexpected." Does that mean this is a good time to add a song by Thelonious Monk, a jazz pianist known for being distinctly unlike any others? I think it's the right time. Today I will be playing for you "Round Midnight," a jazz standard that Monk composed in the late 1930s or early 1940s, and published in 1943. I hope you like it!
Listen to the song here (Can't see an audio player? It might not work if you're viewing this in an email client. If you are on teawithliya.blogspot.ca, you may need to try a different browser.)
Welcome back to Tea with Liya! To finish 2022, I'm playing a ballad called "When I Fall in Love," composed by Victor Young and Edward Heyman. This one has been around for 70 years now, but you might know it because of the famous version by Nat King Cole. I hope you like it!
Listen to the song here (Can't see an audio player? It might not work if you're viewing this in an email client. If you are on teawithliya.blogspot.ca, you may need to try a different browser.)
Welcome back to Tea with Liya! On this Christmas morning, I'm playing an Advent hymn called "Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus." The lyrics were written by Charles Wesley in 1744, but they have been sung to several different melodies. The melody I'm playing here is a Welsh hymn tune called "Hyfrydol," composed by Rowland Prichard. I hope you like it!
Listen to the song here (Can't see an audio player? It might not work if you're viewing this in an email client. If you are on teawithliya.blogspot.ca, you may need to try a different browser.)
Why are you seeing this post today? There's two reasons why. First of all, I've kept coming back to the thought that I haven't added anything here since Together Forever in.... when was it? Probably August. I didn't want any of you to think that I had permanently gotten stuck in 1987 after posting that.
Secondly, I've heard reports that one can never tell when this sonata is going to end -- it seems like it's "going on forever." Since I'm the one who learned all the different parts, I have to know in my head where the end of the song is, so I'm not really the best person to comment on that. I want to know what you think, as the listener.
Third of all, we're coming up to the day when Tea with Liya will have been open for 5 years (since November 8, 2017). In fact, I thought at first that the 5-year mark was going to be November 15th or 16th, but then I realized it was coming up on Tuesday! So it's a good thing that I'm adding this song now. It wouldn't be right for me, out of all people, to miss the 5-year mark, right?
Listen to the song here (Can't see an audio player? It might not work if you're viewing this in an email client. If you are on teawithliya.blogspot.ca, you may need to try a different browser.)
If you've been around in the last few months, you don't even have to ask what's happening today - you know the rules and so do I. In fact, I don't even have to put a single R in this sentence to make you know what's happening today.
"Huh," one of you is saying. "You just quoted the lyrics for Never Gonna Give You Up instead of Together Forever. You should really stay quiet, since you're another one of those people who can't even tell the difference between two songs." Well, I'm about to prove that the two songs you're thinking about are pretty well connected.
Together Forever often gets referred to as "the other Rick Astley song." Of course, I've been around long enough to know that musicians generally don't make 2 songs and then disappear. What these commenters mean to say, most likely, is the other song that he became famous for around the same time. After all, it was 1988, and Rick had just been broadcasted around (quite literally) the entire world. Listeners had quite a reason to be excited when the radios announced that he had a brand-new song.
Listen to the song here (Can't see an audio player? It might not work if you're viewing this in an email client. If you are on teawithliya.blogspot.ca, you may need to try a different browser.)
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