A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

(C) 2013 Signum Classics Records One of the (many) benefits of being an Amazon Prime member is that, in addition to getting free shipping on most of my Amazon orders, I also have access to Amazon Prime Video and Amazon Prime Music, two streaming services that allow me to watch or listen to many movies, Amazon Original Television shows (such as Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan ), and a wide selection of music albums, free of charge. Obviously, not everything on Amazon's video or music catalog is offered gratis, but I've been lucky enough to add some really cool albums to my Amazon Music queue thanks to my $119-a-year Prime membership. One of my more recent musical discoveries is Signum Classics' 2013 2-disc set The King's Singers: Great American Songbook, a 2-disc, 25-track collection of songs written between the 1920s and early 1960s by songwriters such as Cole Porter, George & Ira Gershwin, Harold Arlen & Ted Koehler, Mack Gordon & Harry Warren, Richard Rod...

Many years ago, my hometown of Miami (Florida) had a classical music station, WTMI-FM. Its location on the FM dial was 93.1, and although it did not have as many listeners as stations that played other formats (rock, adult contemporary pop, urban hip hop, oldies, country, or Spanish-language music), it had a loyal base of listeners. I ought to know; from the first time that I tuned in in the early 1980s to December 31, 2001, the sad day when it signed off the air to become Party 93.1, I was a member of that loyal base of listeners. In that two-decade span when I listened to South Florida's "classy and jazzy" radio station, I heard a wide array of compositions, composers, orchestras, and even some awesome solo acts that encompassed many musical genres. Most of the music I listened to was symphonic/instrumental, but every so often I'd come across singers such as Sarah Brightman, Andrea Bocelli, Audra McDonald, and, of course, Luciano Pavarotti (either as a solois...