• Princeton Choral Concerts This Weekend

    Princeton Choral Concerts This Weekend

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    Three concerts by local choral groups will make this coming weekend something to sing about.

    Tonight at 7:30, the Westminster Community Chorus will present “Joy Around the World” at Westminster Choir College’s Bristol Chapel. The program will include Franz Josef Haydn’s “Missa Sancti Nicolai” (“Saint Nicholas Mass”), alongside arrangements of Spanish, Latin and Hebrew songs.

    Also contributing to the atmosphere of diversity will be the New Jersey Gay Men’s Chorus – NJGMC, now celebrating a quarter century of existence. The group will present its 25th anniversary concert tomorrow at 8 p.m. at Princeton United Methodist Church. The special event will include guest appearances by former artistic directors. In addition, Carolyn Montgomery-Forant and Jeff Cubeta will present their original choral piece, “Rise,” as part of “The Rise Tour,” one of 24 stops on a national circuit to raise money for the Matthew Shepard Foundation.

    Rounding out the weekend, Princeton Pro Musica will introduce a piece inspired by Native American poetry as part of its season finale, “American Voices,” on Sunday at 4 p.m., at Princeton University’s Richardson Auditorium. The concert will include a Princeton Pro Musica co-commission through Chorus America from composer René Clausen, “Now Talking God,” on a Navajo text, alongside works by Samuel Barber, Aaron Copland, John Corigliano and Alice Parker. The choral works will be counterbalanced by an orchestral performance of “Appalachian Spring.”

    Spring into choral music with my article in today’s Trenton Times:

    http://www.nj.com/times-entertainment/index.ssf/2016/05/classical_music_westminster_co.html


    PHOTO: “Night Chant Gods with Four Yei and Talking God” by Harrison Begay, also known as Haskay Yahne Yah (1914-2012)

    More about the artist here:

    http://www.adobegallery.com/artist/Harrison_Begay1637300


  • Spring Music Playlist on WPRB

    Spring Music Playlist on WPRB

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    Right now we’re listening to Claude Debussy’s “Printemps,” our latest offering on a playlist designed to appease the elements and bring stability to wildly mercurial spring. Yet to come this morning, music by Jean Sibelius, Lodewijk Mortelmans, Joachim Raff, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, and Joseph Marx. If the timings are right, that is. I’m as flighty as a cuckoo, drunk on too much pollen. We’re celebrating spring until 11:00 EDT, on WPRB 103.3 FM and at wprb.com.


  • Spring’s Short Stay WPRB Radio Show

    Spring’s Short Stay WPRB Radio Show

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    Programming a radio show around the weather is always a tricky proposition. Yesterday, I made the assertion that spring needs our help! Then what followed was a glorious day in the Philadelphia-Princeton area. It has been a crazy season so far, and though the temperatures seem to be moderating for the next several days, we’ll be back down into the 60s (with rain) for Saturday, before sling-shotting into the upper 80s by the end of next week. Is it my imagination, or is “spring” getting shorter in this region? We seem to flip from winter, virtually into full summer, with a few, sporadic lovely days in between. Let’s face it, there are so few completely bearable days in a year. It’s amazing that man ever made it this far.

    But I digress. I had better have some more caffeine before I pursue that line of thought any further, or I will never make it through the day.

    Join me, won’t you, as we attempt to stabilize matters, with musical evocations of the season by Sir Arnold Bax, Wilhelm Peterson-Berger, Frank Bridge, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Claude Debussy, Zdeněk Fibich, Josef Bohuslav Foerster, Alexander Glazunov, Hermann Goetz, Joseph Marx, Darius Milhaud, Lodewijk Mortelmans, Joachim Raff, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, and Jean Sibelius, or as many of those as we can get to.

    I can’t promise you won’t need a sweater or an umbrella, but I can promise you some truly gorgeous music. In particular, I hope you will stick around for a stunning performance of Robert Schumann’s Symphony No. 1 (a.k.a. the “Spring Symphony”). It’s by a no-name orchestra (the Klassische Philharmonie Düsseldorf) – and a student one at that – but it’s a real corker! The timpanist sounds like he should be auditioning for “The Rite of Spring.”

    In any case, the weather is always the same in my bunker deep beneath Bloomberg Hall on the campus of Princeton University. I hope you’ll join me, from 6 to 11 EDT, on WPRB 103.3 FM and at wprb.com. Every morning starts out steamy with an 80 percent chance of chaos, on Classic Ross Amico.


  • Spring Music to the Rescue on WPRB

    Spring Music to the Rescue on WPRB

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    Spring needs our help! A good part of the season so far has been cloaked, in the Philadelphia-Princeton area, in temperatures in the 50s and 60s. I’d have no complaints, except for the fact that a month from now, you know it is going to be 90 degrees!

    This Thursday morning on WPRB, we’ll stop short of human sacrifice, but we will try to breathe life into the season with music of a vernal inclination. Among possible candidates for the playlist are “Enter Spring” by Frank Bridge, the cantata “The Romance of Spring” by Zdeněk Fibich, “The Myth of Spring” by Lodewijk Mortelmans, “A Spell for Green Corn” by the late Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Joachim Raff’s “Ode to Spring,” and the most thrilling performance of Robert Schumann’s “Spring Symphony” you have never heard.

    Failing that, we’ll start locking people in the Wicker Man, tomorrow morning from 6 to 11 EDT, on WPRB 103.3 FM and at wprb.com. One way or another we’ll be lolling in the daffodils, on Classic Ross Amico.


  • SF Burger King Uses Classical Music to Curb Crowds

    SF Burger King Uses Classical Music to Curb Crowds

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    This San Francisco Burger King takes a page from the London Underground and blasts classical music to keep vagrants off the premises. Can there be a better endorsement for Haydn and Mozart? Apparently a good symphony is more reliable than mosquito repellent.

    http://abc7news.com/news/classical-music-blaring-from-sf-burger-king-aims-to-curb-crowds/1334346/


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