Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Clipper Erickson

Autumn Music with Clipper Erickson on WPRB

Autumn is in the air!

Well, maybe not, but it will certainly be ON the air, this morning on WPRB, as we drag Jack Frost kicking and screaming back from his vacation in the Bahamas, with a playlist evocative of changing, falling, and/or decaying leaves. Sure, it’s supposed to hit 75 degrees, but why deprive ourselves of the bittersweet pleasures of crisp apples, November woods, and wild geese?

Clipper Erickson, piano, will swing by the studio around 9:00 to talk about his upcoming concert, which will take place at Salem United Church of Christ in Doylestown, on Sunday at 3 p.m. The program will include Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition.” Clipper, who is on the faculties of Westminster Conservatory of Music and Temple University, is hot off a recital at the Steinway Salon at New York’s Symphony Space. He is always up to something (he’ll be appearing on another concert at 1867 Sanctuary at Ewing in a little over a week), so I’m sure there will be lots to talk about and plenty of music to enjoy.

Bundle up and grab a rake; we disdain all leaf-blowers, from 6 to 11 EDT, on WPRB 103.3 FM and at wprb.com. We make like a tree and leave, on Classic Ross Amico.

MAKE AMERICA RAKE AGAIN: America’s composer, Aaron Copland, in tune with nature’s rhythms

November 3, 2016
MLK Day Eve Music by Black Composers

Coming up in the 9:00 hour, we’ll hear Adolphus Hailstork’s cantata, “Done Made My Vow,” on texts steeped in African American history and the writings and speeches of figures such as Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Then at 10:00, Clipper Erickson, piano of Westminster Conservatory of Music will drop by to talk a bit about R. Nathaniel Dett, the grandson of fugitive slaves, who went on to become an important voice in American music. We’ll sample from Erickson’s album of Dett’s complete piano works, “My Cup Runneth Over,” recently issued on the Navona Records label.

On the eve of MLK’s birthday, it’s all music by composers of African descent until 11 ET, on WPRB 103.3 FM and at wprb.com.

PHOTOS: All hail Hailstork (left), with a debt to Dett

January 14, 2016
MLK Day: Celebrating Black Composers on WPRB

“You don’t have to see the whole staircase. Just take the first step.”

So said Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. On this, the eve of King’s birthday anniversary, we present a full morning of music by composers of African descent, much of it underrepresented at any time of the year. You’ll hear fine and shamefully neglected works by David Baker, Marion Bauer, Henry T. Burleigh, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Roque Cordero, William Levi Dawson, Duke Ellington, Adolphus Hailstork, Ulysses Kay, Tania León, the Chevalier J.J.O. de Meude-Monpas, Florence Price, William Grant Still, and George Walker, or as many of these as we can get to.

Clipper Erickson, piano of Westminster Conservatory of Music will drop by at around 10:00 to talk a bit about R. Nathaniel Dett, the grandson of fugitive slaves, who went on to become an important voice in American music. Erickson’s album of Dett’s complete piano works, “My Cup Runneth Over,” has recently been issued on the Navona Records label.

We’ll be there before sunrise to honor MLK’s vision of a daybreak of freedom and justice and equality, from 6 to 11 ET, on WPRB 103.3 FM and at wprb.com. We rise up with greater readiness, on Classic Ross Amico.

January 14, 2016
Music Color & Expectations

Does the color of one’s skin have any bearing on the kind of music one writes? Should a black composer be expected to incorporate jazz or spiritual inflections into his or her music?

Tune in tomorrow morning to have lazy expectations confounded. We’ll have representatives of the jazzy and spiritual schools, of course, but we’ll also hear works by a Pulitzer Prize winner who makes his home in New Jersey, an Afro-Cuban master of the guitar, a musketeer in the service of Louis XVI, and an Englishman infatuated with the works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Clipper Erickson, piano of Westminster Conservatory of Music will drop by at around 10:00 to talk a bit about R. Nathaniel Dett, the grandson of fugitive slaves, who went on to become an important voice in American music. Erickson’s album of Dett’s complete piano works, “My Cup Runneth Over,” has recently been issued on the Navona Records label.

In addition, we’ll hear recordings of the late conductor Paul Freeman, some spirituals sung by Marian Anderson, and the cantata “Done Made My Vow” by Adolphus Hailstork, in a recording made by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.

In advance of MLK Day, it’s an exploration of content, character and color, with music by composers of African descent, tomorrow morning from 6 to 11 ET, on WPRB 103.3 FM or at wprb.com. Music is King, on Classic Ross Amico.

January 13, 2016
Clipper Erickson Rediscovering Lost Piano Gems

While the rest of the world is looking ahead to a new year, Clipper Erickson, piano is on the look-out for new repertoire.

Erickson, who is on the faculty of Westminster Conservatory of Music, Rider University, in Princeton, and Boyer College of Music and Dance – Temple University, in Philadelphia, has two new releases of rediscovered works which have languished in obscurity for decades.

These include world premiere recordings of pieces by R. Nathaniel Dett, the grandson of fugitive slaves who became an important figure in American music, and Cyril Scott, in his day a frontrunner of the English avant-garde, whose reputation faded over the decades until he was remembered, if at all, as the composer of one or two innocuous miniatures in Grandma’s piano bench.

Interestingly, there was a creative exchange between the two by way of eccentric Australian pianist Percy Grainger, who championed works of both composers. You can read all about it in my article in today’s Trenton Times.

http://www.nj.com/times-entertainment/index.ssf/2015/12/classical_music_local_pianist.html

January 1, 2016

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