Phillip LaRue, "On the Other Side"
Selected Composition
Phillip LaRue, "On the Other Side"
Program Notes
From a boy, I have been a fan of Sherlock Homes. I own the complete stories in two volumes, and I have read them over and over. The film and television adaptations have been, as these things generally are, disappointing—until now. We are living in a golden age of Sherlock Holmes. There are, among other things, two major television adaptations ongoing. Sherlock, from Britain, stars none other than Benedict Cumberbatch as Holmes, with Martin Freeman as Watson. It is very good. But the other, the American Elementary, is, to my mind, the finest Holmes ever produced. It stars Jonny Lee Miller as the autistic and addicted Holmes, with Lucy Liu as Joan Watson: yes, a woman as Watson—and it doesn't just work: it works brilliantly. The writing is week after week superb and entirely faithful to the spirit of the canon, if not the letter. I just finished rewatching all of the episodes of the first four seasons—and they were even more fun the second time through.
One of the many pleasures of Elementary are the closing scenes, which are often poignant, and sometimes tender. Songs appropriate to the moment play in the background, and that is how I found both Phillip LaRue and his song "On the Other Side." It is featured at the end of the episode "Up to Heaven and Down to Hell." It is a particularly moving moment. In the scene, Captain Gregson (played by Aidan Quinn) talks with Joan. He has been devastated by divorce, but has found someone to love again—she, however, has broken off their relationship because she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS). She felt it wasn't right to ask him to go through it with her. But he loves her, and he intends to ask her to give their relationship another chance. He researches the disease, and he asks Joan if there is anything he has missed about it (Joan is, of course, a doctor). She tells him that he hasn't, but that "the one thing the literature probably doesn't mention is that you're not going to go through this alone. Your friends are going to be there for you." LaRue's beautiful song plays as the captain walks across the street to surprise the woman he loves.
Here is a link to the song, posted on YouTube by Phillip LaRue:
And here is a link to the song on Amazon.com, in case you want to download it. It is from the 2015 album You:
Phillip LaRue, "On the Other Side"
I created "Not Thee, O Never Thee," the image above, in 2006. It is based on Mandelbrot Fractals. The title is from part 10 of Algernon Charles Swinburne's poem "Ave Atque Vale":
Not thee, O never thee, in all time's changes,
Not thee, but this the sound of thy sad soul,
The shadow of thy swift spirit, this shut scroll
I lay my hand on, and not death estranges
My spirit from communion of thy song —
These memories and these melodies that throng
Veiled porches of a Muse funereal —
These I salute, these touch, these clasp and fold
As though a hand were in my hand to hold,
Or through mine ears a mourning musical
Of many mourners rolled.
