Classic Ross Amico

Category: Daily Dispatch

Princeton Festival Highlights & Juneteenth Celebration

Are we having fun yet?

I hope you’ve managed to catch some of the live performances at this year’s The Princeton Festival.

So far, we’ve had opportunities to enjoy chamber and instrumental music, contemporary dance, an Aretha Franklin tribute, musical theater/improv (built around audience suggestions, yielding “Love Under the Washington Crossing Monument” ), and of course opera. This year, it’s Rossini’s lighthearted romp, “The Barber of Seville.”

The Princeton Festival enters its final week with an observance of Juneteenth. Grammy Award-winning Metropolitan Opera baritone Will Liverman will present a recital of songs by Black composers, with Kevin Miller at the piano – among them, works by Damien Sneed, Margaret Bonds, and Florence Price. Also featured will be a selection from Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” with which Liverman opened the Met’s 2021-22 season. This fall, Liverman will star in the Met production of Anthony Davis’ “X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X.”

Liverman’s recital will crown a day of Juneteenth-related events, including a flag-raising hosted by the Municipality of Princeton at 1 Monument Hall, at noon.

At 2:00, a talk by Arts Against Racism founder Rhinold Lamar Ponder will open a free exhibition, “Beyond Freedom,” at Morven Museum & Garden’s Stockton Education Center, located behind the Morven mansion at 55 Stockton Street (Route 206).

Of course, Morven is the nucleus of the Princeton Festival, the premier summer arts program of the Princeton Symphony Orchestra, with most of the events held under a massive, state-of-the-art performance pavilion erected on the premises. Arrive early to avail yourself of refreshments, the grounds’ ample picnicking opportunities, a garden stroll, or the simple enjoyment of a late-spring/early-summer evening.

Yet to come: the final madcap performance of “The Barber of Seville” (tomorrow), a “Mazel Tov Cocktail Party” with klezmer clarinetist David Krakauer and friends (Wednesday); Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons” performed by The Sebastians (Thursday, across the street at Trinity Church, Princeton); Andrew Lippa’s musical theater oratorio “I Am Harvey Milk” (Friday & Saturday); and a vaudeville-inspired family concert including “Peter and the Wolf” with Michael Boudewyns of Really Inventive Stuff (Sunday).

All performances begin at 7:00 p.m., EXCEPT the family concert, which will take place on Sunday at 4:00 p.m. Kid-friendly activities will be offered on the grounds prior to the last event.

On Friday at 4:00 p.m., acclaimed Broadway composer and lyricist Andrew Lippa (“Big Fish,” “The Addams Family”) will speak with young musicians about his process of writing the musical “I Am Harvey Milk” and the tools artists have at their disposal to create social change. The workshop, to be held at Morven’s Stockton Education Center, is free and open to the public.

The Princeton Festival continues through June 25. For complete listings and ticket information, visit princetonsymphony.org/festival.

Will Liverman’s opera, “The Factotum,” given its premiere in February, is now available for streaming at the Lyric Opera of Chicago’s website.

https://www.lyricopera.org/shows/upcoming/2022-23/the-factotum-film/

June 19, 2023
Avengers TV Spotting Clash of Titans Star

I can’t believe this! For the past months, I’ve been working my way through old episodes of “The Avengers,” with Patrick Macnee and Diana Rigg (as opposed to Iron Man and Captain America). While there have been many familiar faces that have popped up as guest stars over the course of the series, surely I deserve some kind of award for identifying Neil McCarthy – who played Calibos in “Clash of the Titans!”

Even I don’t know how I did that!

June 19, 2023
Clash of the Titans Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner

Since we did our show on “Clash of the Titans” (1981) on Friday, and it’s already Sunday, I guess I should get “Kraken” already and post a link to the video! Check it out for our hosannas to Harryhausen and our provocations against the gods, on Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner.

This Friday, it looks like we’ll be reaching for the low-hanging fruit, and doing some temple-robbing along the way, as we’ll have a free-form chat about Indiana Jones in advance of his latest adventure, “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” opening on June 30. Join us on our quest for fortune and glory, as we livestream on Facebook, YouTube, etc., this Friday evening at 7:30 EDT.

https://www.facebook.com/roystiedyescificorner

In addition, there will be significant bonuses next weekend in the guises of special guests Michael and Denise Okuda, so closely associated with “Star Trek” film and television productions. Michael and Denise will join Roy on Sunday night, 6/25, at 7:30 EDT.

https://www.facebook.com/roystiedyescificorner

And to hold you over, if you’re a sci-fi convention nut, Roy will reminisce with Todd Morton and Gordon Moriguchi about their experiences last weekend at Wonderfest, in Louisville, KY, on “Todd’s Corner,” this afternoon at 2:00 EDT.

https://www.youtube.com/@ToddsCornerScifiPropsShips

Roy compiled a ten-minute video souvenir of the event here:

Me? I’m not really a “Space: 1999” guy, so I’ll probably go for a walk and watch “Goliath and the Vampires.”

June 18, 2023
Korngold’s “Baby Serenade” for Father’s Day

Happy Father’s Day!

Proud papa Erich Wolfgang Korngold wrote his “Baby Serenade” after receiving news from his wife, Luzi, that she was expecting another child. This was in the spring of 1928. Korngold completed the work in time for the birth of his second son, Georg. It was good training for the composer, as there would certainly be plenty of firm deadlines in his future.

Korngold, of course, became one of the great composers of Hollywood’s Golden Age, fondly remembered especially for his scores for the films of Errol Flynn. But he was also an astounding prodigy who achieved international fame for his operas and concert works.

He came to the U.S. to assist theatrical impresario Max Reinhardt on a film adaptation of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” for Warner Bros. Warner Bros. understood a good thing when they had it and offered Korngold a very generous contract, allowing him to pick his own projects and even permitting him to coach the actors on-set to get performances that would suit his musical ideas.

It was while he was here scoring “The Adventures of Robin Hood” in 1938 that the Nazis marched into Austria and changed the course of Korngold’s life. For the safety of his family, he remained in California and became a U.S. citizen in 1943.

The “Baby Serenade” was composed years before Korngold’s American adventure. Still, there’s plenty in it to suggest the cinematic Korngold to come. Also, there are saxophones and some jazz-inflected passages that very much reflect the era in which it was written. It’s certainly a lighthearted work, with leaner texters than those of the rich orchestral utterances of his larger concert pieces.

Georg (whose family nickname was Schurli, but he went by George) repaid the favor years later, as a record producer who would help revive and preserve his father’s legacy.

The “Baby Serenade” falls into five movements:

I. Overture: Baby Comes Into the World

II. Song: It’s a Good Baby

III. Scherzino: It Has the Most Beautiful Toys

IV. Jazz: Baby Tells a Story

V. Epilogue: And Now It Sings Itself to Sleep

Listen to it here:

The arrival of Georg was one premiere which could not be postponed!

PHOTO: Korngold and family, with Georg front and center

June 18, 2023
Stravinsky’s Unexpected Sibelius Tribute

I’ve been dropping birthdays all over the place recently, and having to pass over some of them really bothers me, especially those of favorites like Carl Nielsen (June 9) and Edvard Grieg (June 15); but there are only so many hours in the day, and how much is one man expected to give, anyway?!!

That said, one can’t draw breath on June 17 and not pay respect to the great Igor Stravinsky, who here pays it forward to Jean Sibelius, of all people. Such radically different composers! I happen to adore Sibelius, so all the more respect to Stravinsky – who I don’t think in reality was all that fond of the Finnish master’s music.

However, Stravinsky’s amanuensis Robert Craft did recall an appreciative remark made during a visit to Helsinki in 1961, in which Stravinsky praised Sibelius’ “Canzonetta” from the incidental music to “Kuolema” (“Death”). You know, the play written by Sibelius’ brother-in-law, Arvid Järnefelt, that also yielded the ubiquitous “Valse triste.”

Stravinsky commented, “I like that kind of northern Italianate melodism – Tchaikovsky had it too – which was a part, and an attractive part, of St. Petersburg culture.”

Sibelius’ original is scored for strings. Stravinsky’s version is for two clarinets, four horns, harp, and double bass.

Stravinsky won the Wihuir-Sibelius Prize in 1963. His arrangement of the “Canzonetta” was premiered on March 22, 1964, by the Finnish Broadcast Company.

Happy birthday, Igor Stravinsky, from Sibelius’ No. 1 fan.

Stravinsky, “Canzonetta” after Sibelius’ Op. 62a.

Sibelius, as originally written

“Valse triste”

June 17, 2023

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