A bunch of kids compete in a contest sponsored by a nonprofit to have a chance to play with the U.S. Marine Band, now cancelled. Not sure how this helps anyone, but nothing surprises me anymore. Everything has to be politicized, and the outcome always has to be bad.
Category: Daily Dispatch
-
Roberta Flack Classical Roots Revealed
Interesting to learn of Roberta Flack’s classical roots. Playing the organ, exposure to “Messiah,” the Bach “Christmas Oratorio,” the Mozart Requiem. At 9, she began to study classical piano. Her early ambition was to become a concert pianist.
From an article in The Oklahoman from 2004:
“Flack said her earliest musical influences came from church. Her mother, Irene Flack, played piano for a Methodist church, and her father, Laron Flack, was a self-taught jazz piano stylist. At home, Flack’s father repaired an old upright piano, and she began to pick out tunes while sitting on her mother’s lap. At age 9, Flack began taking piano lessons and also started to listen to a wide range of popular music, R&B, jazz, blues and pop.
“‘Everyone in my family did something, and I guess, in terms of who got the buzz among my siblings, it was me,’ she said. ‘I wanted to be a concert pianist for many years, and I worked hard at it. I was one of the most blessed young people in this country.’
“Flack cited teachers Alma Blackman, the late Hazel Harrison and Vivian Scott for providing her educational foundation in classical music.
“Blackman was a classical music teacher at Oakland College, a Seventh-Day Adventist College in Huntsville, Ala. Harrison, who taught at Howard University, was known as the ‘premiere black classical pianist’ for four decades and studied with Ferruccio Busoni and performed with the Berlin Philharmonic. Scott, a concert pianist, was a former student of Harrison and studied the Juilliard School of Music in New York and the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.”
FLACK STUDIED WITH A STUDENT OF FERRUCCIO BUSONI??? My head just exploded.
She talks more about her early musical experiences here:
Flack died yesterday at the age of 88. That piano is no mere prop (even if on “Killing Me Softly“ the instrument is electric).
Boy, this song sure does take me back…
-
Martinu A Quick Dive into the Composer
Sorry, no time for a substantial post today. I’m writing about Bohuslav Martinu!
-
Handel at 340: Still Fresh, Still Thrilling
George Frideric Handel was born 340 years ago, and he’s still as fresh as a rose. Fresher. Actually, come to think of it, there is a climbing rose named after him…
For one thing, the standard of Handel performance has gotten so much better in recent decades. I guess you really don’t hit your stride as a composer until after the first 300 years.
For as much as I hold a nostalgic affection for Hamilton Harty’s ponderous take on the “Water Music” – a concert staple for over half a century – a modern orchestra gives little indication of just how thrilling Handel can be. At its best, his vocal stuff, in particular, can be sublime.
I didn’t always feel this way. When I attended a performance of “Ariodante” in Philadelphia, back in the 1989, even with the dream pairing of Benita Valente and Tatiana Troyanos, I was afraid I was going to give up the ghost. When it really doesn’t connect, three or four hours of Baroque opera can easily start to feel like too much of a good thing. My girlfriend at the time wanted to leave after the second act, but I insisted we stick it out. I was eager to witness the climactic swordfight, described in the synopsis – which, in the end, amounted to a single, slow-motion riposte. The weak pay-off earned me an evil glare.
The experience had the effect of putting me off Handel opera in much the same way that downing a bottle of Inver House whiskey in my teens put me off Scotch. Just as I later discovered, to my surprise and delight, how much I truly appreciate a fine single malt, when I had occasion to reacquaint myself with “Ariodante” at the Princeton Festival in 2010, I was astonished to find that I actually liked Handel opera after all.
A few years ago, when I wandered into a library book sale, I discovered that someone had dumped their entire collection of Handel operas and oratorios. I don’t know how many there were to begin with, but I walked out with everything that was left. Who knows if I’ll ever get through all of them before I die, but I am very happy to have them.
That said, I do find Handel’s operas work best when encountered live, in performance – whether seen in person or on screen – which is the opposite of what I would say about most of the operas I prefer. The images that are formed in my mind by the music far surpass anything that can be realized on a stage. When attending opera, it is the experience of the orchestra, the voices, and the sense of “theater” I enjoy. But the visuals are too mundane for my grandiose vision.
I also tend to get annoyed at modern stagings, with concepts that too often seem forced and undercut the vitality of the music. Again, Handel is different. David McVicar’s production of “Agrippina” must be one of the best things in the Met’s current repertoire.
Of course, there is always the possibility that it is not so much Handel who has changed – despite a pronounced shift toward “authentic” performance practice over the past 40 years or so. It could be that even a paragon such as myself, sprung fully-formed from the head of Zeus, might have evolved. I’m reminded of the famous Twain observation that, when he was 14, his father was so ignorant he could hardly stand it; but when he was 21, he was astonished by how much the old man had learned.
I’ve come a long way since my friends and I spent an ouzo-soaked 24 hours celebrating Handel’s tercentenary back in 1985. I recollect even now the six-mile round-trip I made with one of them, on foot, on a cold February evening, from Temple University campus to Center City Philadelphia and back, with a bottle nestled in his bag to keep us warm for an in-town performance of “Judas Maccabaeus.”
Everything old is new again. Handel grows wiser with the years, but also more thrilling.
Happy birthday, G.F.H.
Amanda Forsythe and Apollo’s Fire, with an aria from “Giulio Cesare”
Danielle de Niese with the same aria, staged:
Of course, there’s always Thomas Beecham, bringing it old school, to prove me wrong:
-
William Grant Still’s “Afro-American Symphony”
It’s hard to believe I made the following observations as recently as 2019, prior to this show’s first airing. So much has changed since then. William Grant Still has gone from a neglected master to probably one of the most frequently programmed American symphonists of his generation. The change may have been propelled by social and political trends, but if ever anyone deserved more notice, it’s this composer.
As someone with an insatiable appetite for American symphonies composed during the first half of the 20th century, I try not to miss a performance or even a radio broadcast of music by Roy Harris, William Schuman, or Aaron Copland. But for as much as I adore these composers, the American symphonies that delight me the most, off the top of my head, are Charles Ives’ 2nd, Howard Hanson’s 2nd (the “Romantic”), and William Grant Still’s 1st (the “Afro-American”). I never get tired of listening to these, and they move me like few others.
I am only too happy to include Still’s symphony, then, as a kind of capstone to my four-part survey of the landmark Black Composer Series of the 1970s – reissued on Sony Classical as a 10-CD boxed set – this week on “The Lost Chord.”
The “Afro-American Symphony,” composed in 1930, is informed by African-American spirituals, the blues, and syncopated banjo-like riffs. Indeed, a banjo actually turns up in the work’s third movement.
To me, the symphony has always been a kind of “portrait of the artist as a young man.” (Still was born in Woodville, Mississippi, and grew up in Little Rock, Arkansas.) In this respect, it puts me in the mind somewhat of Virgil Thomson “Symphony on a Hymn Tune,” which similarly draws on hymns and folk songs of his boyhood in Kansas City, Missouri.
But Still’s music comes across as more personal, more sincere, and certainly less self-consciously “modernist.” It goes straight to my heart and then gets in my head so that it literally disturbs my sleep. It’s one of the great American symphonies. The concert suites from George Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess” remain popular, but some enterprising music director should give the “Afro-American Symphony” a shot, because I know audiences will love it. (NOTE: Again, since I wrote this, the work has gone on to be played by seemingly every major American orchestra.)
There is a solid Gershwin connection. Still quotes the melody of “I Got Rhythm” in the third movement of his symphony. And for good reason. It’s actually his! According to Eubie Blake, Gershwin was in the audience during one of Still’s performances in the pit band for Blake’s revue “Shuffle Along.” Still’s improvisation became the basis for Gershwin’s hit tune. (Blake was quick to add that the appropriation was probably inadvertent.)
The “Afro-American Symphony” is now the best-known piece in the Black Composers Series, which originally appeared on vinyl between 1974 and 1978. But at the time of the recording’s original release that was by no means definitively the case. The only previous recording of the work, made by Karl Krueger and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, was available only through mail-order subscription. Exposure to this gem of a symphony, then, was comparatively limited.
Thankfully, there have been a number of recordings since, but for me none match the commitment and loving attention to detail of the performance in this set, with Paul Freeman conducting the London Symphony Orchestra.
Also included on today’s program will be “Markings,” by Ulysses Kay, composed in 1966 to the memory of Dag Hammerskjöld, secretary general of the United Nations. Called “the greatest statesman of our century” by John F. Kennedy, Hammarskjöld was killed in a plane crash in Zambia en route to ceasefire negotiations during the Congo Crisis of 1961. Hammarskjöld was awarded a posthumous Nobel Peace Prize.
We’ll conclude on an “up” note, with the lively “Danse Nègre” from the “African Suite” of 1898, by Afro-English composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.
I hope you’ll join me for the grand finale of my month-long survey of highlights from CBS Records’ forward-looking Black Composers Series – that’s “Black to the Future, Part IV,” on “The Lost Chord,” now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!
Clip and save the start times for all three of my recorded shows:
PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday at 8:00 PM EST/5:00 PM PST
SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – ALL NEW! – Saturday at 11:00 AM EST/8:00 AM PST
THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday at 7:00 PM EST/4:00 PM PST
Stream them, wherever you are, at the link!
Tag Cloud
Aaron Copland (93) Beethoven (95) Composer (114) Film Music (124) Film Score (143) Film Scores (255) Halloween (94) John Williams (188) KWAX (229) Leonard Bernstein (101) Marlboro Music Festival (125) Movie Music (139) Opera (202) Philadelphia Orchestra (89) Picture Perfect (174) Princeton Symphony Orchestra (106) Radio (87) Ralph Vaughan Williams (85) Ross Amico (244) Roy's Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner (290) The Classical Network (101) The Lost Chord (268) Vaughan Williams (103) WPRB (396) WWFM (881)