Classic Ross Amico

Category: Daily Dispatch

  • Picture Perfect Webcasts Now Online!

    Picture Perfect Webcasts Now Online!

    I spent my afternoon air shift, when not on microphone, uploading all my past-due “Picture Perfect” webcasts – going all the way back to the spring! Clearly, I have been less than perfect about following through.

    At any rate, they should all be up there now, on the station website, available for your listening edification. All except the Brian De Palma show that aired on October 11. I still have to locate the audio for that one… Also, last year’s Oscar party, a three-hour extravaganza, broadcast on February 22, was done live. There is no recording.

    You can scroll through everything when you follow the link below. You’ll find the “Listen” button when you click on the individual shows.

    Please let me know if you encounter any difficulties. Thank you for your patience, my long-suffering fans and fellow admirers of film music! I hope to get the past-due files for “The Lost Chord” up tomorrow.

    https://www.wwfm.org/programs/picture-perfect-ross-amico

  • MLK’s Message on WWFM

    MLK’s Message on WWFM

    I hope you’ll join me for my annual broadcast of “New Morning for the World: Daybreak of Freedom,” by Pulitzer Prize winner Joseph Schwantner. The work incorporates texts by Martin Luther King, Jr. I’ll be airing the out-of-print LP, with Willie Stargell the narrator, among my featured works, between 4 and 7 pm. EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

    “Everybody longs for meaning. Everybody needs to love and be loved. Everybody needs to clap hands and be happy. Everybody longs for faith. In music… there is a stepping stone towards all of these.”

    – Martin Luther King, Jr.

  • MLK Day on The Classical Network

    MLK Day on The Classical Network

    We celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day this afternoon on The Classical Network.

    The much-anticipated centerpiece of today’s program, for me anyway, will be “New Morning for the World: Daybreak of Freedom,” by Pulitzer Prize winner Joseph Schwantner. It’s an inspiring piece, built on texts drawn from King’s speeches, and I look forward to sharing it with my listeners every year.

    So far there have been three recordings of the work. I have cycled through all of them, but the one that remains my favorite is its first, featuring narration by former Pittsburgh Pirate Willie Stargell. It’s hard to believe that Stargell, beloved by so many, was himself subjected to discrimination and harassment over the course of his career. It makes you realize how short history is. And if we follow the news, it’s evident the struggle for peace, tolerance and equality is not over.

    Stargell appears with the Eastman Philharmonia as he did at the world premiere, which took place at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. on January 15, 1983 (King’s birthday).

    Sadly, the recording has never been issued on compact disc, but we’ll hear it today, provided the turntable is in good working order. (If not, I’ll have a back-up ready to go, just in case).

    We’ll also hear “Epitaph for a Man Who Dreamed,” by Adolphus Hailstork – whose knockout oratorio, “Done Made My Vow,” was the featured work on last night’s edition of “The Lost Chord” – and selections from Dashon Burton, Bass-Baritone’s album, “Songs of Struggle & Redemption: We Shall Overcome.”

    In addition, as time allows, we’ll mark the anniversary of the births of as many of the following as we can: Johann Hermann Schein, Joseph Hector Fiocco, Ernest Chausson, Guillaume Lekeu, Mischa Elman, Walter Piston, Alexander Tcherepnin, Yvonne Loriod, and Ivan Fischer.

    We judge a man not by the color of his skin, but by the content of his music, from 4 to 7 p.m. EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

    By the way, if you have off from work today, consider taking a break from your community service to support kids from thirteen Trenton schools. Young musicians of Trenton Music Makers will convene at Princeton University’s Lewis Center for the Arts, 122 Alexander St., this afternoon at 5:30 p.m., for its annual Martin Luther King Day Jr. Day concert. You can learn more and register for this free event at trentonmusicmakers.org.

  • Ashkenazy Retires Suddenly at 82

    Ashkenazy Retires Suddenly at 82

    Vladimir Ashkenazy, one of the foremost pianists of the past half century, has abruptly announced his retirement. Curiously, this was done with no advance notice. There will be no farewell tour. All engagements have been cancelled for 2020, effective immediately. It’s unclear whether or not this will extend to his conducting. Hopefully illness is not a factor. Ashkenazy is 82 years-old.

  • Adolphus Hailstork MLK Tribute on WWFM

    Adolphus Hailstork MLK Tribute on WWFM

    I’ve been a fan of Adolphus Hailstork since the 1980s. That’s when I first heard “Done Made My Vow,” as part of a concert broadcast over the radio.

    “Done Made My Vow” (1985), often described as a gospel oratorio, was inspired in part by speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. So uplifting was the marriage of words and music, I hoped for years that it would be recorded. Then one day I stumbled across a copy in the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra gift shop.

    On the eve of MLK Day, I hope you’ll join me for this extraordinary piece, scored for speaker, chorus and orchestra. It’s my featured highlight this Sunday night on “The Lost Chord.”

    Hailstork has been part of the fabric of American music since at least the 1970s. Born in Rochester, New York, in 1941, he earned his BA from Howard University, his MA from the Manhattan School of Music – where his teachers included with Vittorio Giannini and David Diamond – and his doctorate from Michigan State, where his studied with H. Owen Reed. Then he was off, like so many of his great American forebears, to study at Fontainebleau with Nadia Boulanger. Hailstork is now composer-in-residence at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia.

    He is perhaps best known for his choral music, though it was the wistful slow movement of his Symphony No. 1, composed for a summer music festival in Ocean Grove, New Jersey, that next caught my ear.

    His brief but boisterous curtain-raiser “Celebration!” was included in Paul Freeman’s legendary “Black Composers Series,” recorded for Columbia Records back in the 1970s. Freeman remained a champion of Hailstork’s work for the rest of his career. I particularly recommend his recording of “Sonata da Chiesa,” a multi-movement work for string orchestra, inspired by Hailstork’s impressions as a boy chorister singing at the Cathedral of All Saints in Albany.

    As preamble to the oratorio, we’ll also enjoy his rhythmically exciting “Variations for Trumpet” (1981).

    The music is hale, but the sentiments are King. I hope you’ll join me for “Done Made My Vow.” That’s “All Hail Hailstork,” this Sunday night at 10:00 EST, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

    “Sonata da Chiesa” (1992):

    Symphony No. 1 (1988): Mov’t II, Lento ma non troppo:

    “Motherless Child” (2002):

    “Celebration!” (1974):

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