Blogfinger

From The  Revenant now streaming on Prime. Paul Goldfinger still image from the film.   Click once to enlarge. Paul Goldfinger still image from this amazing movie.

By Paul Goldfinger, Editor Blogfinger.net.  5/18/2026. Click once.

The Revenant is a powerful movie from 2015. It received 12 Academy nominations and won 3  Oscars including Best Actor. (Leonardo Di Caprio), Best Director Alejandro G. Inareitu. and Best Cinematography  Emmanuel  Lubezki.

It is the story of an epic adventure set in the wild and rugged plains of. winter America 1823 and loosely based on the  true story of a trapper who is roughing it with a number of  brave men who living in the frozen tundra , fight life- threatening attacks by Indians, and one of them, played by DiCaprio is nearly killed in a grotesque bear attack.

He then is left for dead, but he makes his way back to the nearest settlement.  He lives on roots and berries, and his survival is mesmerizing.  On the way he finds historic relics of old buildings such as a church indicating that humans had actually preceded them .

Watch this film, and you will never forget it.

PHILLIP GLASS.  “The Plant-Boy’s Song.”

Paul Goldfinger in Founders Park. 5/13/22   Click to enlarge.  Ted Bell would have liked this look back.  Blogfinger.net

CELTIC WOMAN   “You Raise Me Up.”

Eileen’s roses began to wilt as they dried up in her vase after about one week. But look at those colors now.   Paul Goldfinger photo.  5/17, 2026.

Eileen Goldfinger, Blogfinger editor, says that they are still beautiful.    So if someone gives you roses, let them evolve, and you will have an ongoing  treat from Mother Nature for at least two weeks.

PETER MARSHALL FROM BYE BYE BIRDIE:  “Rosie”

The Great Auditorium of Ocean Grove c. 2013. Saturday night crowd begins to assemble. By Paul Goldfinger ©

Paul Goldfinger, Editor Blogfinger.net 2013

When the Great Auditorium was built in 1894  (completed in 90 days by a crew of shipbuilders,)  there were 10,000 seats.  Some years later the seating chart was rearranged, and now the big room seats about 7,000 people.  It is rare to fill the place, upstairs and down, but I can recall a Choir Festival when there was a full house. The audience was silent as 1,000 voices and a full orchestra filled the hall.

It is a unique experience to attend an event there because the physical presence of the space is awesome.  Its history is remarkable, and you can read about it in the classical book on the subject by Grovers Bell, Bell and Dufresne. (The Great Auditorium. Ocean Grove’s Architectural Treasure)

In the past, the CMA could fill that space with massive crowds who attended Methodist services   The building is world famous.  From a musical point of view we have the amazing Hope-Jones organ  (11,561 pipes,) with its awe inspiring sound—-front and rear registers.

Now that the Saturday night programming will be changing,  I hope that any performances there will be done with little or no amplification, as it was early in the 20th century.  Whenever modern pop groups have shown up lately, they would bring their own sound equipment and personnel. They flood that magnificent wooden building with distorted, ear splitting noise, so severe that the words are drowned out and the timber of the instruments is  blurred into mush. Thank goodness Wolfgang himself is no longer around, because he would despair and even wind up deafened like his pal Beethoven.

I was in the audience when Ocean Grover and Metropolitan Opera star Ronald Naldi came out to sing the Star Spangled Banner prior to a Saturday night appearance by Tony Bennett.  Naldi’s magnificent unamplified tenor voice was effortlessly projected to  the far reaches of the hall. It was breathtaking. Ronald Naldi told us later that he could achieve that because of his years of special training which pop and jazz vocalists almost never receive.

Musicians say that playing in the GA is like making  music inside a giant cello—the acoustics are legendary, and I have heard musicians on that stage express how amazed they felt to be performing there.

Tony Bennett came out shaking his head. He was in awe of Naldi’s performance. He said that he too wanted to try performing unamplified, but he couldn’t do it.  So sometimes a performer needs a little help from his friends, but no one should be allowed to play the big room without sound technicians who are respectful of a place where first rate musicians come just to experience the acoustics and have been doing so since 1894.

How often does one get to hear live music inside a historic structure?  We should emulate, whenever possible, the practice of using unamplified sound as at the Vienna Opera House and La Scala.   The most they use is a form of subtle “acoustic enhancement.”  Is that possible inside the Great Auditorium? Now seems like a good time to take a look at that idea, although classical performers have already been respecting the natural approach (eg the Canadian and the Salvation Army Brass, Phil Smith, opera singers,  and symphonic orchestras.)   The GA could once again become a Mecca for music lovers.

Here is a performance from 1897 in the GA–unamplified.   Don’t they sound great?

GREATER NEW YORK QUARTETTE:   “Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep”  (How about that bass note at the end!!)  Recorded on wax cylinder in the GA in 1897.

American troops and tanks enter Germany after crossing the Rhine. 1945. Paul Goldfinger still image from documentary Netflix. Click once to enlarge.

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