Classic Ross Amico

Category: Daily Dispatch

Charles’ Coronation Music Composers & Highlights

Anything catch your ear during Charles’ coronation? Here’s a user-friendly itemization of composers, compositions, commissions, and clips. However, to hear how it all actually came off, you will have to employ your Google skills. Good luck finding video without someone blathering over the music.

Performers include Bryn Terfel, Pretty Yende, Roderick Williams, John Eliot Gardiner, the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists, Antonio Pappano and musicians of the Philharmonia, Royal Philharmonic, and Royal Opera House Orchestras, and Royal Harpist Alis Huws.

New works by Patrick Doyle, Andrew Lloyd Webber, and Master of the King’s Music Judith Weir join old favorites by George Frideric Handel and William Walton. In all, twelve new works were commissioned for the ceremony.

According to the article, in a historic first, the complete coronation will be recorded and released as an album on the very day of the ceremony.

Tomorrow looks to be all pop pap for the populace. You can learn more about the longhair stuff here.

https://www.classicfm.com/discover-music/king-coronation-full-order-of-service/

May 6, 2023
Raritan River Music Festival Returns in May

Raritan River Music is rarin’ to go! The first of the warm-weather music festivals will beat the summer crush with four concerts held in historic venues in West-Central Jersey throughout the month of May.

Now in its 34th season, Raritan River Music is directed and curated by founders Michael Newman and Laura Oltman of the Newman & Oltman Guitar Duo. This year’s theme is “Tributes: The Legacy of Musical Traditions.”

The series will begin tomorrow at 7:30 p.m., with The Four Nations Ensemble performing at Clinton Presbyterian Church. “Les Grands: French Baroque Music from Court and Concert” will feature music by Francois Couperin and colleagues, who composed and performed at the Palace of Versailles and at salons and concert halls around Paris in the early 18th century. The concert will serve as a tribute to New Jersey’s Soclair Music Festival (1975-2005), founded by June and Ira Kapp, with Edward Brewer the founding music director.

Then Newman & Oltman will join the Bergamot Quartet on May 13 at 7:30 p.m. at Stanton Reformed Church for “Laments & Dances: Music from the Folk Traditions.” The musicians will mark the centenary of Philadelphia-born composer Arnold Black. Black, who suffered from cerebral palsy, earned degrees for violin and composition from the Juilliard School and went on to perform with the NBC Symphony and as assistant concertmaster of the Baltimore Symphony and National Symphony Orchestras. His “Laments & Dances” incorporates melodies by the 17th century blind Irish harper Turlough O’Carolan. If you take a fancy to it, Newman & Oltman made a recording of it, which is available on the Musical Heritage Society label. Also on the program will be new works inspired by traditional music as interpreted by Ledah Finck (Irish), Anna Roberts Gevalt (Appalachian), and Princeton’s own Dan Trueman (Norwegian).

On May 20 at 7:30 p.m. at Old Greenwich Presbyterian Church in Stewartsville, the Mohawk Trail Piano Trio will present “Musical Monuments: Masterpieces by Anton Arensky and Florence Price.” Price, whose music is only now being revived in a big way, was the first Black woman to have a symphony played by a major orchestra. Arensky studied with Rimsky-Korsakov and taught Rachmaninoff, but his primary influence as a composer was Tchaikovsky. Piano trios by both Price and Arensky will be performed by resident artists of western Massachusetts’ Mohawk Trail Concerts, founded by Arnold Black in 1970.

Another one of Black’s chamber works will lend its name to the concluding program on May 27 at 7:30 p.m. at Bethlehem Presbyterian Church in Pittstown. “Serenade for the Grand Canyon” was composed for the Grand Canyon Music Festival. It will be played by that festival’s founders (in 1983), flutist Clare Hofmann and harmonica virtuoso Robert Bonfiglio. Also performing will be electric violist/composer Martha Mooke.

In addition, Newman & Oltman will perform a newly commissioned work from Cuba’s venerable master of the guitar, Leo Brouwer. “Fairy Fantasy” was inspired by Brouwer’s “The Book of Imaginary Beings,” which also received its premiere on an earlier Raritan River Music season. Again, Newman & Oltman recorded “The Book of Imaginary Beings” as part of an all-Brouwer program, for the MusicMasters Classical label.

Rounding out the program will be a new work by Diné -American composer – and 2022 Pulitzer Prize winner – Raven Chacon, who was born within the Navajo Nation.

For further details, directions, and information about online streaming, visit raritanrivermusic.org.

May 5, 2023
Classical Radio Lives! Shows Find New Home

I may have lost my base camp for my specialty shows, “Picture Perfect” and “The Lost Chord” – which, with very little notice, were dropped from my friendly neighborhood classical music station (and employer of 28 years), WWFM The Classical Network – but I’ve still got a toehold in the Pacific Northwest.

It is a fact perhaps not widely circulated that the shows are syndicated. I’m not sure in how many markets. At one point there was a station in New York that was carrying them and, quite by chance, I discovered one on another station in North Carolina. It was never closely monitored, since the content was posted for free, and other stations would just pick them up to plug them into their schedules.

At present, all I know for certain is that both shows are still being broadcast on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon. “Picture Perfect” is on their Friday schedule at 5:00 pm PACIFIC TIME (which translates to 8:00 pm EASTERN TIME), and “The Lost Chord” is on their Saturday schedule at 4:00 pm PACIFIC TIME (or 7:00 pm EASTERN TIME).

Not bad for East Coast listeners. I’m in the process of ordering equipment for a home studio, so that I can continue to produce and – since I will be in a position to oversee everything and make my own decisions – aggressively promote and distribute the shows. So you can be sure I will keep you posted whenever they find another roost in your area.

In syndication, the shows always aired the week after they were heard on WWFM, so if you missed the final WWFM broadcasts of either program, you’ve got another chance today and tomorrow on KWAX.

KWAX is a great station that still honors the integrity of the music AND its listeners’ intelligence, with varied and rewarding programs that are presented with polish and professionalism. How refreshing to hear complete symphonies and concertos again, without all the vapid blather. This, folks, is the way classical radio used to be.

Give their streaming a shot now. It could very well change your life for the better.

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

As an added bonus – AND IT’S A BIG ONE – the program director is Peter Van de Graaff. Those of you who are longtime listeners of WWFM will recall Peter as the noon to 3:00 host, who also anchored the overnights. These segments were produced at WFMT in Chicago, as part of Peter’s Beethoven Satellite Network. This was foolishly thrown over by WWFM to accommodate the vastly inferior Classical 24 out of Minnesota, since C24 offers greater flexibility in terms of automation. Now, of course, on an average day, WWFM is a conduit for C24 for up to 20 hours of its broadcast day. So much for community!

In the interest of full disclosure, Peter Van De Graaff is my favorite classical music programmer of all time. And I’m not just saying that because KWAX is carrying my shows. I believe they picked them up before he started there anyway. I love Peter so much, I actually offered to come work for him in Chicago in 2012. There weren’t any openings at the time, and within three years he had moved to KWAX in Eugene.

My heart would still beat for PVdG, even if they wound up dropping my shows. Thank you, KWAX! And keep watching this space for further developments.

You can refresh your memory on the content of my shows for this weekend from these posts I wrote last week for their WWFM broadcast. Just note that the times and the station of origin have changed!

“Picture Perfect,” Fridays on KWAX at 5:00 PACIFIC TIME (8:00 PM EDT)

https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=1085977752321287&set=a.883855802533484

“The Lost Chord,” Saturdays on KWAX at 4:00 PACIFIC TIME (7:00 PM EDT)

https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=1086510718934657&set=a.883855802533484

PHOTO: Conan rides again on KWAX!

May 5, 2023
Stanley Silverman Interview WUSB Sting

Fresh off my unceremonious cancellation from WWFM – The Classical Network, I’ll be joining Phil Merkel this afternoon on WUSB for an interview with composer Stanley Silverman.

Silverman’s career has been so rich and diverse, embracing theater, film, television, classical music, and pop – he’s collaborated with artists as varied as Leonard Bernstein, Anthony Burgess, Arthur Miller, Mike Nichols, Joseph Papp, Arthur Penn, Paul Simon, Sting, James Taylor, and Michael Tilson Thomas – that it would be quixotic to believe we would even be able to scratch the surface in a 40-minute visit.

Be that as it may, Silverman will drop by to talk about his latest album, “In Celebration: The Piano Trios of Stanley Silverman,” on the Signum Classics label (Signum Records). The music is performed by the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio, with special guest artist Sting. Yes, THAT Sting.

The conversation will take place this afternoon in the 3:00 hour on Captain Phil’s Planet on WUSB, the radio station of Stony Brook University. I hope you’ll join us in welcoming Stanley Silverman!

http://www.wusb.fm

May 4, 2023
Star Wars: My Musical Inspiration

Without “Star Wars,” there would be no Classic Ross Amico. I owe a very great debt of gratitude to George Lucas and all the technicians that made the original “Star Wars” the experience it was. And most especially to John Williams for bringing the London Symphony Orchestra to the fore. I spent countless hours drawing, writing, and dreaming to the double-LP soundtrack album as a kid. And the post-modern approach to the music, with its many allusions to the Romantic and early 20th century classical repertoire, revealed new worlds, richer and more limitless than even those portrayed onscreen. My single-minded absorption in this score would determine my life’s path. This was music that was so hip, so in tune with Lucas’ homage-heavy film school chock-a-block, it took years for my developing mind to unpack everything. Pop music didn’t really grab me as a kid. I had no exposure to classical music, but I was always attracted to film music, thanks to old movies that mesmerized me from earliest childhood. I never missed a television broadcast of “King Kong” or “The Bride of Frankenstein” or “The Adventures of Robin Hood.” But experiencing “Star Wars” in the theater was something else entirely. For me, May 25th (the anniversary of the film’s opening in 1977) will always be Star Wars Day. However, for today, I’ll go with the pun everyone seems to love: May the 4th be with you!

May 4, 2023

Tag Cloud

RECENT POSTS