Uploaded June 2022 | Updated September 2026, 2 days ago
Randolph Pitts holds Summa Cum Laude degrees in Social Psychology and Egyptology from the University of California Berkeley, and a Masters Degree in Motion Picture Production and Entertainment Law from UCLA. He has also done advanced research for the Department of Psychology at UCLA, concentrating on couples and relationships dynamics. He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa and the American Philosophical Association, the organization of university professors of Philosophy. He is also an associate member of the Los Angeles County Bar Association. Randolph has been a top executive at several entertainment companies, including a ten year stint as Chief Executive Officer of the company that produced Leaving Las Vegas for which Nicolas Cage won the Academy Award as best actor. The first volume of his eagerly anticipated tetralogy of novels will be published during 2022. Pitts' spellbinding novels deal at an unrelenting fever pitch with eroticism, mysticism, terrorism and crime on a global scale. And also… with women and men falling in love. In a recent interview Randolph Pitts said, “Love is the main theme of my novels. Women and men, women and women, come together because they recognize and come to cherish each other’s uniqueness. They fall in love because they know that the objects of their love are their special people – woman or man. The people who will make life joyful and fulfilling for them. The people with whom they will find mutual fulfillment and enduring happiness.” He has a lifelong interest in the relationship between philosophy, psychology and history. He is the founder and host of the Explore Ecstatic Sensuality podcast, the number one sex and sensuality podcast in the world. Musical excerpts: Randolph Pitts, "Love" (for three orchestras, soloists and large organ, 2021, deciated to Anita DeFrancesco), and "Sonate pour Anita" (dedicated to Anita DeFrancesco)
Randolph Pitts holds Summa Cum Laude degrees in Social Psychology and Egyptology from the University of California Berkeley, and a Masters Degree in Motion Picture Production and Entertainment Law from UCLA. He has also done advanced research for the Department of Psychology at UCLA, concentrating on couples and relationships dynamics. He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa and the American Philosophical Association, the organization of university professors of Philosophy. He is also an associate member of the Los Angeles County Bar Association. Randolph has been a top executive at several entertainment companies, including a ten year stint as Chief Executive Officer of the company that produced Leaving Las Vegas for which Nicolas Cage won the Academy Award as best actor. The first volume of his eagerly anticipated tetralogy of novels will be published during 2022. Pitts' spellbinding novels deal at an unrelenting fever pitch with eroticism, mysticism, terrorism and crime on a global scale. And also… with women and men falling in love. In a recent interview Randolph Pitts said, “Love is the main theme of my novels. Women and men, women and women, come together because they recognize and come to cherish each other’s uniqueness. They fall in love because they know that the objects of their love are their special people – woman or man. The people who will make life joyful and fulfilling for them. The people with whom they will find mutual fulfillment and enduring happiness.” He has a lifelong interest in the relationship between philosophy, psychology and history. He is the founder and host of the Explore Ecstatic Sensuality podcast, the number one sex and sensuality podcast in the world. Musical excerpts: Randolph Pitts, "Love" (for three orchestras, soloists and large organ, 2021, deciated to Anita DeFrancesco), and "Sonate pour Anita" (dedicated to Anita DeFrancesco)



![Roberto Gerhard, Wind Quintet (1928), Part 2 of 2 (3rd & 4th movements)
Roberto Gerhard, born in Tarragona in 1896, was a pupil of Felipe Pedrell, and has never lost (or despised) his gift for that picturesque style which stresses Spanish folk characteristics. But his works can preserve a subtle national flavor even when employing the more sophisticated technical resources he acquired during his study with Schönberg in 1925-28. Thus the Wind Quintet, written at the end of that period and four years after Schönbergs weighty essay in the medium, opens with a bassoon phrase that has the nonchalant rhythm of a folksong yet also establishes a seven-note row that is of crucial (though not, as in Schönberg, exclusive) importance throughout the first two movements. In the first, set against its inversion (oboe and clarinet, after the reiterated tutti chords), it also forms the second subject of a sonata scheme, but in the Andante (aba;c;aba;coda) it is constantly played off against its images in contrapuntal textures of extreme lucidity. The new theme (flute) of the Allegro giocoso, though also subject to quasi-serial transformations, demands a more harmonic accompaniment, while the trio, with an evocative echo of Spanish folk-song (oboe), finally transplants this serenade from Schönbergian territory. In the scherzoso finale, the refrain (oboe) and horn-call accompaniment piquantly dispute, rather than deny, tonalities; the central episode and the presto coda explore, with contrasted results, the conjunction of the refrain shape with the two rows of the earlier movements.
The members of The London Wind Quintet were Gwydion Brooke (bassoon), Alan Civil (horn), Gareth Morris (flute), Sidney Sutcliffe (oboe), and Bernard Walton (clarinet).
[We apologize for the rather poor sound quality of this 1960s lp.] Roberto Gerhard, Wind Quintet (1928), Part 2 of 2 (3rd & 4th movements)](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/AXdLyvZVPJ4/mqdefault.jpg)


![Sometimes Like A River (Loving You), Joy of Cooking
Joy of Cooking were one of the earliest [some say THE earliest] female-led rock bands. Formed in Berkeley in 1967 by pianist and main songwriter Toni Brown, along with folk-singing guitarist Terry Garthwaite (also known as Ruby Green), their music was an ear-catching polyrhythmic amalgam of folk, rock, jazz, blues and gospel elements driven by the duos interweaving vocal verve atop a freewheeling, innovative three-man rhythms section. The rest of the band consisted of bass guitarist David Garthwaite (Terrys brother), drummer Fritz Kasten and percussion player Ron Wilson. Keyboard player Stevie Roseman replaced Toni Brown for a time and bass players Happy Smith and eventually Jeff Neighbor replaced David Garthwaite on bass guitar. The music was a mix of hippy(sic) sensibility on blues and folk roots, and the lyrics often reflected feminist or environmental themes.
Joy of Cooking recorded three albums with Capitol Records. Brown and Garthwaite had solo careers afterwards and also released albums as a duo, mostly notably Cross Country. The San Francisco Chronicles Jon Carroll described the band as a remarkable rock and roll band, half ballads and half boogie, with a driving rhythm section fronted by two swell women, Toni Brown (a smart, crafty songwriter who could evoke sentiment without sentimentality) and Terry Garthwaite (who sings like an angel with dirty wings.)
Rather unusually (especially for the time) the members of the band were all over thirty when they cut their first record. According to some, it is for this reason that they and Frank Sinatra veteran John Palladino to produce their first record.
Sometimes Like a River (Loving You) is perhaps The Joy of Cookings finest studio outing. The backup vocals by the guys in the group on this track strike is as being quite effective. We mention this because this is one of the very few Joy cuts where male backup vocals were employed.
If you like this cut, we strongly encourage you to buy The Joy of Cookings 2007 CD Back To Your Heart, and also the other Joy albums. To the best of our knowledge Toni and Terrys solo CD, and their very good duet effort Cross Country, have not been re-released, so we may try to follow up with a few cuts from these. This upload is from an LP with no further processing. That was the original sound, after all, occasional clicks and all.
Even though the lyrics of this song have nothing to do with us, we like it, for some reason. Sometimes Like A River (Loving You), Joy of Cooking](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/B0SX71abL_U/mqdefault.jpg)


![Barbara Pentland, Quintet for Piano & Strings (1983) - Part 2 of 2
Barbara Pentlands preferred brand of modernism drew on the textures and organizational principles of the Webern school but was suffused with a lyricism that was expressly individual. In the 1960s and 1970s, Pentland continued her explorations investigating such then current trends as microtones, found texts, directed improvisation, and tape. Pentland continued to refine and season. She incorporated quarter-tone inflections and a procedure for continuity she called aleatory zones (controlled-chance sections somewhat on the model of Lutoslawski). These devices are featured notably in the String Quartet No. 3, 4, and 5, in Mutations, and in Tellus. In Canadian terms she was analogous to Elisabeth Lutyens in the United Kingdom or Ruth Crawford Seeger in the United States; she shared their concerns not just about the struggle for the new, but the particular problems of a finding a place as a woman in the overwhelmingly male milieu of the international avant garde.
In 1982 Pentland said she treats 12-tone serialism as a governing principle rather than a straitjacket. Consistently with this, the opening passages of a later work such as the String Quartet No. 4 or Tellus reveal a clear 12-tone set but subsequent passages draw on this and its various transformations only in a free and selective fashion. The wide spectrum of instrumental effects in both these works, including ornamental quarter-tones, is striking. Their transparent, almost pointillistic, detail is a carry-over from her studies of Webern. In both, there are interesting extra-musical aspects as well. Unusually, Pentlands prefatory note in the score of the Quartet suggests particular associations: the work starts in a mood of quiet mystery - like dawn or life, and attention is drawn to suggestion[s] of bird sound and sounds of nature.
Aware that her work may have seemed austere, Pentland neither revised nor regretted it. She once remarked (Northern Review, 1950) that all audiences are more intelligent than they are brought up to be by the musicians who are responsible.
Pentland was fully at home with the abstract (or absolute) prototypes of Western music. In their biography of Pentland, Eastman and McGee list close to 100 instrumental pieces written by her 1930-80; of these approximately 60 per cent have classical genre-titles (Symphony, Ricercar) - a trait evidenced as late as the Canticum, Burlesca, and Finale for piano (1987). Non-classical titles are often equally abstract (Interplay, Phases), and evocative titles usually suggest a general mood or tone-painting quality (Vista, Arctica, Tides), short of any out-and-out impressionistic or programmatic approach. Overt extra-musical connections in her work exist mainly in incidental, dramatic, and vocal pieces. Her musical comments deal with some of the large moral issues of the age: war in general and the Vietnam War in particular (News); feminism (Disasters of the Sun); the rape of the environment (Tellus, Ice Age). Barbara Pentland, Quintet for Piano & Strings (1983) - Part 2 of 2](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/CWgO0p96f5U/mqdefault.jpg)
