For Gus­tav Mahler’s birth­day this week, we have Michael Tilson Thomas, direc­tor of the San Fran­cis­co Sym­pho­ny … and the YouTube Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra, revis­it­ing the pro­found impres­sion Mahler’s music made on his own per­son­al devel­op­ment. He recalls being intro­duced to Das Lied Von Der Erde when he was 13, and it marked an epiphanal divid­ing point in his life. There was life before Mahler, and a new life after. In this relat­ed clip, Leonard Bern­stein, Amer­i­ca’s great com­pos­er, offers a per­son­al intro­duc­tion to Das Lied Von Der Erde. You can find more inter­views with renowned orches­tra con­duc­tors here.

A big thanks to Zoran in Greece for send­ing these clips our way.

The wheels of jus­tice turn slow­ly…

Jim­my Page per­formed “Dazed and Con­fused” with The Yard­birds back in 1968, then immor­tal­ized the song with his next band, Led Zep­pelin, while also giv­ing him­self full writ­ing cred­it. For almost 42 years, this has­n’t sat par­tic­u­lar­ly well with Jake Holmes, an Amer­i­can folk singer, who first wrote and record­ed “Dazed and Con­fused” in 1967. Now he has filed suit (see PDF of com­plaint here) and wants Page to make amends. Some mon­ey and half a writ­ing cred­it. You can watch the vin­tage Led Zep­pelin ver­sion above and lis­ten to Holmes’ orig­i­nal ver­sion below. The Led Zep ver­sion was cer­tain­ly changed in ways, but the sim­i­lar­i­ties are assured­ly there…

In 2005, Paul McCart­ney returned to Stu­dio 2 at Abbey Road, the famous (and recent­ly endan­gered) site where the The Bea­t­les record­ed their won­drous albums. (Watch some orig­i­nal footage here.) As part of the BBC pro­duc­tion, Chaos & Cre­ation at Abbey Road, McCart­ney intro­duces view­ers to vin­tage instru­ments used by the band and an assort­ment of record­ing tech­niques. And, above, we have Sir Paul recount­ing the very first moments when he and John Lennon met, then break­ing into a ver­sion of “Twen­ty Flight Rock,” the Eddie Cochran song he played to audi­tion for The Quar­ry Men (lat­er to become The Bea­t­les). You can watch the full pro­gram above.

Yes­ter­day, Pres­i­dent Oba­ma award­ed the Gersh­win Prize For Pop­u­lar Song to Sir Paul McCart­ney. (Watch it here). Then, the good part. McCart­ney took to the stage and per­formed the Bea­t­les clas­sic Michelle (the ref­er­ence is obvi­ous), Eleanor Rig­by, and Hey Jude, dur­ing which he was joined by Jack White, Ste­vie Won­der, Dave Grohl and oth­ers. You can watch a small clip of that per­for­mance above. PBS will air the com­plete per­for­mance on July 28.

Relat­ed: 13,500 Sing “Hey Jude” in Trafal­gar Square

via Fuse­blog

You have to like the ambi­tion of this project. Roger Greenawalt and David Bar­ratt start­ed record­ing all 185 orig­i­nal Bea­t­les com­po­si­tions on the ukulele. They’re mak­ing a new song avail­able every week until July 31, 2012, the eve of the Lon­don Olympics. And, in each instance, they’re work­ing with dif­fer­ent accom­pa­ny­ing artists. As you’ll see, the styles and approach­es can vary wide­ly, and the ukulele sounds can be more or less pro­nounced. Just com­pare Black­bird and She Said She Said (two of my Bea­t­le faves) and you will see what I mean. To down­load the tracks, vis­it Roger and Dav­e’s web site, or load this feed to iTunes or your RSS read­er.

via metafil­ter