Thursday, March 10, 2005

Karl Jenkins and the power of the internet (March 7)

Years ago, there was this "A Diamond is Forever" advertisement that had shadow images of people going through the different stages of life. I recall that ad very clearly because it had, for me, fantastic music (if you can appreciate classical music, that is) and everytime I saw that ad I'd watch it, or rather, listen to the music being played.

I bring this up because of an interesting series of events beginning last week (that culminated in me running into this song again, and being impressed once again with the power of the internet). On Monday, I sent an email out to the yahoogroups of my high school barkada saying how upset I was that Martin Scorcese didn't win best director (although Lia, a Scorcese fan, did say she watched MDB and felt that Clint deserved the directorship no) and that Hillary Swank won her second best actress trophy (that's more best actress Oscars than Glenn Close, Julianne Moore and Susan Sarandon combined!). Somehow that discussion led to the discussion of ordering rare books on Amazon, and over this weekend I decided to list down some of the things I would like to order on Amazon in the future ('pag nagkapera na ulit ako hehehe).

Now in one looong flight from Brussels to Manila a couple of years ago, I was listening to the classical music channel when I chanced upon that same song I mentioned above. There was no DJ saying who the artist was or what the song was titled, so I looked at the media guide and for some reason I was led to believe that this Diamond song was 'Aria' by Rolf Lovland. I left it in my list of things to order online and didn't pay attention to it again until last weekend.

When I decided to look it up again, I found that I couldn't spot any Rolf Lovland CDs that contained Aria in Amazon. So I did a search on Rolf Lovland and Aria in google. I ended up in a site that had samples from each song in his different CDs. However, I was surprised when I listened to the sample of Aria - that wasn't the song I was looking for! And neither were any of his other songs!

I obviously didn't have the media guide with me anymore so I couldn't search each of the songs listed in the classical channel =). So I do another google search, this time on +"a diamond is forever" +"de beers" +music. The third or fourth hit I got was a Karl Jenkins site. I take a look at it because it has promise, and lo and behold I read this line - "Karl Jenkins has composed the following music for commercials which have now become classics: De Beers Diamonds 'A Diamond Is Forever' - original 'Shadows' film, and all subsequent arrangements." Galing! I found what I was looking for!

This time, I check out Karl Jenkins in Amazon And I see a CD entitled "Diamond Music" which in fact has a shot of the "Shadows" ad as the cover. I can't wait 'til I get my summer bonus so that I can go buy this CD (so well I have some time to see if I can find the CD in a local Music shop. After all, I never looked for Karl Jenkins; all this time I was looking for Rolf Lovland =)).

You can hear a sample of the song I am talking about here - http://www.karljenkins.com/audio/21pallad.ram

You can read more about Karl Jenkins in http://www.karljenkins.com/

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