The heart of James Gandolfini
By Michael Schulder
Follow Michael at: www.wavemaker.me
Editor's Note:Â Listen to our full interview with director Geoffrey Fletcher, with whom Gandolfini recently worked.
(CNN) - Imagine James Gandolfini as a man who is weary of the world – resigned to the fact that his remaining days will be filled with regret and longing. And yet, despite the resignation to his unhappiness, he still has embers of his humanity burning. He is not passive. He is trying to make things right until the very end.
This is not the James Gandolfini of HBO's "The Sopranos." It is the James Gandolfini of the new movie, "Violet & Daisy," one of his last projects.
He plays a character with no name – who spends much of his time in a comfortable chair waiting to be killed. FULL POST
CNN Radio Music Notes: Movie composing's 'Man of Steel'
By Edgar Treiguts, CNN
Editor's Note:  Welcome to CNN Radio Music Notes – your backstage pass to all things music!  From intimate conversations with headliners to the latest scoop on your favorite Indie band, hang out with us to find out what's happening in the world of music.  Listen to the full story in our player above, and join the conversation in our comments section below.
(CNN) – The latest Superman movie, Man of Steel, is now in theatres. Its soundtrack music was scored by Hans Zimmer, one of the top movie composers in Hollywood. He's one of the busiest, honored, and well-known in the business. Zimmer has scored music for more than 100 movies. That list includes Inception, Gladiator, Crimson Tide, Pearl Harbor, The Lion King, and the three most recent Batman movies – two of which he co-composed with James Newton Howard. But it's not just the high-octane action movies – Zimmer's also written music for romantic comedies, like As Good As It Gets and Something's Gotta Give. .
Zimmer says before he starts a new movie, he has to fight through the same process:Â Â .
[3:14] "The blinding fear of the blank page. There was a lot of procrastination and re-evaluating one's self worth and all that." FULL POST
Geoffrey Fletcher's f-stop magic
Hosted by Michael Schulder
Follow Michael at: www.wavemaker.me
Editor's Note:Â Listen to the full interview in our player above, and join the conversation in our comments section below.
(CNN) -Â Dear Fellow Parents:
When Geoffrey Fletcher was about 13 years old his father sat down beside him to teach him about F-stops on a camera. F-stops help determine how much light gets through the lens.
That moment, of a father sharing a hobby with his son, came back to Geoffrey Fletcher during this CNN Profile and moved him, as it will most anyone who hears him recount it.
Fletcher’s dad died when Geoffrey was only 19. But a deep foundation of a secure, loving household for Geoffrey and his two brothers was well established.
That foundation must have helped Fletcher get through what was to come after he graduated from film school. FULL POST
CNN Radio Music Notes: A street-inspired symphony
By Edgar Treiguts, CNN
Editor's Note:  Welcome to CNN Radio Music Notes – your backstage pass to all things music!  From intimate conversations with headliners to the latest scoop on your favorite Indie band, hang out with us to find out what's happening in the world of music.  Listen to the full story in our player above, and join the conversation in our comments section below.
(CNN) – Michael Kurth lives in one of Atlanta's intown neighborhoods. On his way to work, he often builds time into his drive to pass through a particular street tunnel about 10 minutes away. He says the graffiti-laden walls of the Krog Street tunnel on Atlanta's eastside provide entertainment. But more than that, he says the artwork reflects an energy of the neighborhood and the city.
[1:06] "It's so active, it's so evolving. In almost everything you see painted there or plastered there or expressed there, you sense that these are people doing something for their community out of love."
Kurth is a musician with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. He's also a composer. From this tunnel and it's designs and slogans, he was moved to write a piece of music. One of those inspirations came from the spray-painted slogan 'We Have All the Time in the World', which fueled the closing movement of his three-part symphony:
[8:35] "To me that spoke of our hope as humans, as society, as individuals that we can create something that at least makes an impact on the space that we occupy in the time that we have."
Michael Kurth's ASO colleagues debuted his 12-minute symphony, "Everything Lasts Forever", last month. Kurth has composed other music, which can be heard online on Facebook at "Michael Kurth, Composer."
Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes or Stitcher. And listen to CNN Soundwaves on our SoundCloud page.
Radio's last stand
By Gavin Godfrey, CNN
Columbus, Ohio (CNN) - Columbus, Ohio's WWCD-FMÂ is a throwback. It's one of just a handful of independent, major-market commercial music stations left in America.
If the state of radio in the country seems bleak, that's not something you can sense when speaking to the staff at WWCD, dubbed, "The Alternative Station."
I traveled with CNN.com writer Todd Leopold for his story on the state of commercial music radio in the United States and we wanted to capture a day in the life of one the last truly unique stations left.
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