At last, the truth can be told: from the back of this year’s lavish Bard program book. The sleeping giant of Czech music stirs! ALL HAIL MARTINU.
Tag: Bard College
-
T-Shirt Style at Fisher Center Bard
I’m not really a t-shirt guy, but today I’m stylin.’
Fisher Center at Bard
-
Joan Tower Celebrates 85th Birthday
Joan Tower is 85 today!
I saw her at intermission during one of the concerts at the Bard Music Festival devoted to Ralph Vaughan Williams, but I didn’t ask her for a picture, because I’d never interviewed her or worked with her in any way, and I didn’t want to come across as a trophy hunter!
And now, well, here we are.
Tower, widely regarded as one of America’s foremost living composers, is also one of the most successful women in the field. I have to say, she looks great for 85. I wouldn’t have guessed it.
Treat yourself to a Tower of power. Happy birthday, J.T.!
“Petroushskates” (1980), combining Tower’s loves of Stravinsky – and figure skating! Either start or end with this one, because it’s a treat.
“Made in America” (2004), a musical appreciation of the United States by a composer who spent many of her formative years in Bolivia (where her father managed the tin mines). Listen to how she weaves “America the Beautiful” into the orchestral fabric.
“Island Prelude” (1988), an atmospheric landscape employing solo oboe
“Fifth Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman” (1993). The first five in this loose collection of fanfares were composed between 1986 and 1993. A sixth followed two decades later. The works were conceived as tributes to “women who are adventurous and take risks.”
Tower speaks on the importance of new music. She’s been refining some of these observations for at least the past three decades. There has been some improvement in terms of the development of new music groups, powered by some preternaturally talented young musicians. Still, a lot of the points remain pertinent and many of them sadly unaddressed.
An earlier expression of these concerns in an interview conducted by Bruce Duffie in 1987
http://www.bruceduffie.com/tower.html
Tower has been on the faculty of Bard College since 1972.
-
Vaughan Williams at the Bard Music Festival
When Byron Adams caught sight of me during intermission at the opening concert of this year’s Bard Music Festival, he took my hand and said, “Well, we finally did it!” – suggesting we had been co-conspirators. Which in a sense is true. I knew immediately what he meant, as we had both been lobbying for Vaughan Williams to be the focus of the festival for years.
For his part, Byron, a longtime scholar of English music, had the ear of his colleague, festival co-artistic director Leon Botstein. For my part, I made it a point to suggest the composer whenever I happened to see or interview Botstein.
Byron paid me a terrific compliment when he told me that it was I that had made this year’s Bard Music Festival possible. I asked him why, and he said it was because of an email I had written. However, when I inquired if my name specifically had been mentioned, he confessed it had not – but it was because of people like me, who presumably pushed for it, that Vaughan Williams was made the subject of this year’s festival. Well, okay, I’ll take that, even if it’s manufactured glory. It will give me my moment to humble brag about it on Facebook.
Byron, emeritus professor of musicology at University of California, Riverside – as well as scholar in residence and regular advisor at the Bard Music Festival – is co-editor (with Daniel M. Grimley of Oxford University) of this year’s tie-in book of essays, “Vaughan Williams and His World,” published by University of Chicago Press.
Last week, Byron was interviewed about the festival for WAMC Northeast Public Radio. He beautifully encapsulates who Vaughan Williams was, and the composer’s significance, and manages to give a concise overview of the festival in only 11 minutes! Kudos also to host Sarah LaDuke for this intelligent conversation:
The Bard Music Festival will resume this weekend at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, with a couple of special supplementary events taking place at Church of the Messiah in Rhinebeck on Thursday evening and Friday afternoon. Some of the concerts will be livestreamed. The complete schedule is posted here:
https://fishercenter.bard.edu/whats-on/programs/bard-music-festival/
Fisher Center at Bard
-
Bard Music Festival Friends & Vaughan Williams
Always an unexpected pleasure of attending the Bard Music Festival: chance encounters with old, likeminded friends.
Here I am, between concerts on Saturday, with two of my former WWFM colleagues: Marjorie Herman, creator of “Sounds Choral” and music director of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Princeton, and Israel “Buzz” Herman, creator of “On the Wind” and music director of the Bloomfield Symphony Orchestra. Note that they are wearing the official t-shirt of last year’s festival, “Rachmaninoff and His World.” By Sunday, they had switched to the official Vaughan Williams T, with its lark ascending.
“Vaughan Williams and His World” will resume this weekend at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, with a couple of special supplementary events taking place at Church of the Messiah in Rhinebeck on Thursday evening and Friday afternoon. Some of the concerts will be livestreamed. See the complete schedule here:
https://fishercenter.bard.edu/whats-on/programs/bard-music-festival/
Fisher Center at Bard
Tag Cloud
Aaron Copland (92) Beethoven (95) Composer (114) Film Music (123) Film Score (143) Film Scores (255) Halloween (94) John Williams (187) KWAX (229) Leonard Bernstein (101) Marlboro Music Festival (125) Movie Music (138) Opera (202) Philadelphia Orchestra (89) Picture Perfect (174) Princeton Symphony Orchestra (106) Radio (87) Ralph Vaughan Williams (85) Ross Amico (244) Roy's Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner (290) The Classical Network (101) The Lost Chord (268) Vaughan Williams (103) WPRB (396) WWFM (881)