Remembering Jack Horkheimer

Image Source: Robert Duyos / Sun-Sentinel.

Today, Jack Horkheimer would have turned 74. Happy Birthday to a dear and sadly departed man. From the mid-1970s to mid-2000s, he captured something of the best of that era, a hopeful, optimistic fascination with science, merged with the infinite possibilities of imagination (see, here, here, here and here). By contrast now, information is everywhere, but there is much less wonder.

Hearing the Future in the Past: Isao Tomita

Isao Tomita, the renowned Japanese synth composer, is known for his own pieces as well as his reorchestrations of classical works into new eletronic atmospheric pieces.  Tomita seems to be either loved or hated, provoking electronic music enthusiasts or classical music purists alike.  His redux of Gustav Holst's The Planets (1914-1916) so angered Holst's daughter Imogen that she successfully sued for a court order which kept this pop version of her father's suite banned.  Some 30,000 records were removed from stores.  Tomita's Planets (1976) was only re-released after her death in 1984.