ONCE SOUNDTRACK IN THE BERKSHIRES

Not only is ONCE now one of my all time favorite movies, but the CD of the music from the film is now one of my favorite recordings.

I’m up in the Berkshires, visiting my grown kids and grandkids with my nine-year-old, happy as I can be with all my progeny, as well as enjoying the incredibly lush natural beauty of the countryside (although I have to admit, I’ve always dug the country most through window views from houses or cars or trains, rather than actually being out in the woods looking out for bears and snakes and getting bitten by insects, possibly tics, etc.).

At any rate, my older son Miles, a bassist—and a really good one despite his modesty, in all kinds of bands since his teens—has been teaching himself the guitar, mastering some of the trickier Beatles tunes, and other songs, including the great opening duet, FALLING SLOWLY, on the ONCE soundtrack.

As he was working it out on the guitar one afternoon, I sat down at his “antique” 1960s electric piano—an instrument he has also taught himself to play—and I played along on its shortened keyboard to his guitar playing, as best I could. After the song ended, he taught me the chord changes and we played the song again, several times, getting it down better and better each time.

After one particularly good rendition, that moved me playing it almost as much as it did hearing and seeing it done in the film, I slipped into my usual cocktail jazz piano styling and we started jamming on the changes, turning it into our own, as Miles did some beautiful jazz chording, as well as melodic improvisations, that made me feel like we were a less masterfully unique, but no less intense, version of those old recordings of Bill Evans and Jim Hall!

Even if you don’t play an instrument, I think you’ll dig this soundtrack.