Recess! Media

Brief sound clip 

That’s Raymond Jones narrating the opening of William Steig’s picture book, Solomon the Rusty Nail, with the United States Air Force Heritage of America Band from Langley Air Force Base in Viriginia playing an original score for the story by Master Sargent Aldo Forte. It’s one of the delightful, beautifully crafted pieces on the Band’s CD, “Musical Storybook.” Here you’ll find their settings for Maurice Ravel’s “Ma Mere l’Oye” — his Mother Goose suite — with short spoken versions of such favorites as “Beauty and the Beast” and “Tom Thumb,” followed by Ravel’s evocative reveries, like the one that accompanies the story of “Sleeping Beauty”

The recording also includes a retelling of “Cinderella” with Rossini’s overture to “La Cenerentola”; several of the Ojibwa native American legends about the trickster hero Nanabozho, with Walter Buczynski’s dynamic music; and ten “Animal Ditties” based on the comic poems by Ogden Nash, with music by Anthony Plog and Kim Nazarian’s narration. Through its many concerts, one of the purposes of this remarkable Band to help enrich the lives of servicemen and women and their families at home. With this CD, the Band has given us all a very special gift.