New Jersey Symphony Orchestra violinist Darryl Kubian demonstrates the theremin. At the very opening, you’ll hear a quotation from Miklós Rózsa’s score for Alfred Hitchcock’s “Spellbound.” Kubian plays a more extended selection as he talks about the role of the theremin in movie music, beginning just before the 12-minute mark.
I wrote about Kubian twice, as thereminist and composer, during my days at the Trenton Times.
The recipient of 4 Academy Awards, 20 Grammy Awards, 1 Golden Globe, and a posthumous Grammy for Lifetime Achievement. His arrangement of Nino Rota’s love theme from “Romeo and Juliet” spent two weeks at the top of the rock-dominated Billboard charts in 1969.
The Princeton Festival is one of the many local arts organizations that’s begun to share musical material from its archive, as we all continue to figure out ways to navigate a world plagued by coronavirus.
Unavoidably, this June’s festival has been cancelled, with an optimistic projection that some of the events could be rescheduled for the fall.
In the meantime, the festival is making available podcasts and music files for our delectation, with further, digital content promised, including online educational workshops, poetry readings, and Princeton Festival performances.
This week, PF highlights Michelle Djokic, cellist and artistic director of Concordia Chamber Players. Concordia has long been a festival staple, but also presents a regular chamber music series, right across the Delaware River, at its home in the New Hope vicinity of Bucks County.
Hear a conversation with Michelle Djokic here:
Then enjoy Concordia performances of works by Mendelssohn and Kodály as part of the Princeton Festival’s growing archive of online music files.
Be it known that on this day, the fifteenth of April in the year of our Lord 2020, Robert Moran has once again been banned from Facebook. Mister Moran’s name has been inscribed on a brass plaque in the Facebook penalty box.
Our regular Wednesday feature, “Music from Marlboro,” may be on hiatus from WWFM – The Classical Network, as we all continue to do our part to Flatten the Curve, but here’s a little something hopefully to keep you smiling. Only two genii of silent comedy could send up chamber music performance in pantomime like this. It’s the only time the pair would ever appear together on film.
