I bought me a cat!
Aaron Copland shares a candid moment with a lounging, four-legged friend.
Happy birthday to America’s great composer!
Tag: American Music
-
George Crumb Turns 86 American Original
Today is the 86th birthday of George Crumb. Crumb is another one of our great American originals, perhaps the reigning Grand Old Man of American Music. He produces works with an economy and elegance that seem to contradict and yet, somehow, paradoxically, to reinforce an Ivesian tendency to suggest greater vistas beyond their seemingly modest means.
On a more visceral level, sometimes he can be downright scary. Which is especially amusing, since by all accounts – as well as on the perhaps five or six occasions I have met him – he has been unfailingly approachable, modest and even cheerful.
It’s fortuitous indeed that his birthday falls so close to Hallowe’en. It’s not for nothing that his work for electric string quartet, “Black Angels,” was used in “The Exorcist.”
In the last 15 years or so, Crumb has been enjoying a productive Indian summer, mining the hymns and folk songs of his West Virginia boyhood, lending them a unique resonance through his imaginative and colorful use of percussion.
Happy birthday, George Crumb!
“Black Angels”:
From his “American Songbook,” “All the Pretty Horses”:
And “Poor Wayfaring Stranger”:
PHOTOS: George Crumb (left) with The Exorcist’s Pazuzu
-
American Music for Independence Day on WPRB
I’ve been following Marvin Rosen’s Classical Discoveries playlist with particular interest this morning, since I too plan to play all American music tomorrow, in anticipation of the Independence Day holiday.
Marvin is a much better planner than I, but at this point I can say with relative certainty that we MAY hear music by George Antheil, Paul Bowles, Romeo Cascarino, John Corigliano, Daniel Dorff, Irving Fine, Lou Harrison, Bernard Herrmann, Jennifer Higdon, Ruth Crawford Seeger, Peter Schickele, Caroline Shaw, Michael Torke, George Walker and many others.
Jerry Rife, for 30 years conductor of The Blawenburg Band, will join me around 9:00 to tell us just a little bit about the band’s upcoming concerts at Princeton Shopping Center (tomorrow at 7 p.m.), Yardley Community Centre in Yardley, Pa. (July 4 at 4 p.m.), and Hopewell Train Station (July 6 at 7:30 p.m.).
Tune in, wrap yourself in the flag, and feel the cool grass between your toes, as we celebrate America’s independence this week. Keep it classy with Classic Ross Amico, tomorrow morning from 6 to 11 a.m. ET, on WPRB 103.3 FM or online at wprb.com.
-
Unusual Composers on WPRB This Week
If you wake up this morning with an appetite for unusual and neglected repertoire, here are some of the composers whose music you can expect to hear between 6 and 11 a.m. ET, when you set your dial to WPRB 103.3 FM, or listen online at wprb.com: Walter Leigh, Lalo Schifrin, George Walker, Henry Holden Huss, Pavel Haas, Kurt Schwertsik, Harry Partch and Terry Riley, all of whom had or have birthday anniversaries this week. We’ll also do a make-good on retired Princeton professor Paul Lansky, whom I am ashamed to say I missed last week. The late Gunther Schuller and James Horner will also be remembered.
Daniel Spalding, music director of the New Jersey Capital Philharmonic Orchestra, will drop by around 10:00 to talk a bit about his orchestra and its appearance in a free concert at Mercer County Park Pavilion, Sunday at 7:30 p.m., as part of this year’s Freedom Fest. I’ll also be bringing some of Dan’s recordings of American music with the Philadelphia Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra.
Be there, or be… zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
PHOTO: Slappin’ the roosters awake with Classic Ross Amico
-
Harry T. Burleigh Spirituals & Dvořák
Harry T. Burleigh is one of the great unsung figures in American music – which is ironic, since it was his singing that changed the course of history.
Burleigh was a student at the National Conservatory of Music in New York, where he studied with, among others, Rubin Goldmark, the conservative pedagogue who later gave lessons to Copland and Gershwin. It just so happens that his attendance there coincided with the tenure of Antonin Dvořák as the conservatory’s director. Dvořák overheard young Burleigh singing African American spirituals and was transfixed. Burleigh frequently sang spirituals for Dvořák and worked for him as a copyist beginning in 1893.
Spirituals, of course, became an important part of the “New World” Symphony’s DNA. Since Dvořák’s masterwork was intended, in part, as instructional, leading American composers by example to a distinctively national sound, the significance of Burleigh’s influence becomes inescapable.
Burleigh also served as a double-bassist and timpanist in the school’s orchestra, which Dvořák conducted. He was born in Stamford, CT, on this date in 1866.
More about Burleigh:
Goin’ Home:
Wade in de Water:
Happy Birthday, Harry!
Tag Cloud
Aaron Copland (93) Beethoven (95) Composer (114) Film Music (143) Film Score (143) Film Scores (255) Halloween (94) John Williams (195) KWAX (229) Leonard Bernstein (104) Marlboro Music Festival (125) Movie Music (158) Mozart (90) Opera (212) Philadelphia Orchestra (89) Picture Perfect (174) Princeton Symphony Orchestra (108) Radio (88) Ross Amico (244) Roy's Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner (290) The Classical Network (101) The Lost Chord (269) Vaughan Williams (105) WPRB (397) WWFM (881)