Time Out Ten
A Nightingale Sang
In Berkeley Square
Niels Henning Ørsted-Pedersen and Ulf Wakenius
For this item you need to be able to stop for ten minutes.
We are often moving on to the next job, the next meeting, scrolling down social media, taking the next call ......'Time Out Ten' asks you to stop for ten minutes and listen to a particular piece of music; to find a time when you won't be interrupted, when you can put in/on your headphones and chill out. Ten minutes isn't long.
That certain night, The night we met
There was magic abroad in the air
There were angels dining at the Ritz
And a nightingale sang in Berkeley Square
Berkeley Square is a large leafy square in Mayfair, London, and the Ritz Hotel is just outside Mayfair, near Green Park. The song was actually written by Eric Maschwitz and Manning Sherwin in 1939 in a small French fishing village shortly before the outbreak of the second World War and it has inevitably retained links to that time. Glenn Miller recorded it in 1940 and it was sung in 2005 in central London to an audience of veterans and politicians as part of a programme A Nation Remembers.
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Quite aside from its origins, it has become a Standard and in this video by the legendary Danish bass player Niels Henning Ørsted-Pedersen (NHØP) and guitarist Ulf Wakenius bring sensitivity and beauty to the tune. This is a video of them playing, so you can either watch the performance or close your eyes and just listen.​
I may be right, I may be wrong
But I'm perfectly willing to swear
That when you turned and smiled at me
A nightingale sang in Berkeley Square
11.2024