Music on Monday
Summer 2024 - caring for our world
Summer 2024
22nd April
Joni Mitchell
“Big Yellow Taxi” by Canadian- American singer/song writer Joni Mitchell is an environmentalist anthem which criticises the destruction of our planet. The line “Don’t it always seem to go, That you don’t know what you’ve got ‘till it’s gone” makes us stop and think about the way we treat our planet before it’s too late.
“I wrote ‘Big Yellow Taxi’ on my first trip to Hawaii,” Mitchell explained in 1996. “I took a taxi to the hotel and when I woke up the next morning, I threw back the curtains and saw these beautiful green mountains in the distance. Then, I looked down and there was a parking lot as far as the eye could see, and it broke my heart… this blight on paradise. That’s when I sat down and wrote the song.”
This is a perfect song for us to listen to on 'Earth Day 2024'. Earth Day is marked on 22 April each year. The first Earth Day was held in the USA in 1970, in response to a spill from an oil tanker. It has since grown to become and global event, during which as many as 1 billion people around the world mark the need for action on the environment and living sustainably. It helps to raise awareness of the need to protect Earth's natural resources for future generations and allows us time to consider our contribution to this.
15th April
Hans Zimmer
Today most people first hear orchestral music in the cinema or online – and perhaps more than any other composer, trailblazer Hans Zimmer has helped to shape the sound of today’s film, TV and games music. He has written the music for over 150 films including The Lion King, Madagascar, The Simpsons Movie, Kung Fu Panda and TV series like Blue Planet II. Using driving rhythms, hypnotic chord patterns and electronic samples he has created unique and powerful soundtracks that have influenced a whole generation of musicians.
Hans Zimmer composed Earth especially for BBC Ten Pieces - a collection of classical music (there are in fact 40 pieces!) which have been selected to inspire and educate young musicians, broadening their cultural capital and introducing them to music they might not have otherwise listened to. This piece is his personal celebration of the planet we live on and the perfect piece to start off our Summer Term, where our focus is on caring for the environment. In this piece, Hans captures the majesty and beauty of our home, as if seen from space.
This piece has been written for live performance and Mrs Harper will be teaching it to some of our instrumentalists this term. Hans set every child a challenge when he wrote this piece - to take his piece and create something new from it. In his own words: "The piece of music I've written is just the beginning of the sentence. I want you guys to finish it!"