Classic Ross Amico

Tag: KWAX

Labor Day Road Trip American Music

Labor Day weekend. Road trip!

This week on “The Lost Chord,” I hope you’ll join me for summer’s last hurrah, as we burn rubber with an hour of quintessentially American music about travel by car.

Frederick Shepherd Converse’s “Flivver Ten Million” celebrates the Ford Motor Company’s affordable assembly line automobile, from its creation in a Detroit factory to the manifest destiny of America’s roadways.

John Adams’ “Road Movies” has nothing to do with Bob Hope and Bing Crosby, alas; what it is, however, is a violin sonata written firmly within the American tradition, with a special affinity at its core with Copland’s Violin Sonata.

Virgil Thomson’s “Filling Station,” written for Leon Kirstein’s Ballet Caravan, may have the distinction of being the only ballet set at a gas station. The work’s success gave Copland the confidence to follow through on a Caravan commission which resulted in “Billy the Kid.”

Finally, we’ll hear one of Michael Daughtery’s most performed works, the exuberant “Route 66,” inspired by the storied “Main Street of America.”

Put the pedal to the metal. American composers hit the road for Labor Day, on “The Last Roads of Summer,” on “The Lost Chord, now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

Clip and save the start times for all three of my recorded shows:

PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday at 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT

SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – ALL NEW! – Saturday at 11:00 AM EDT/8:00 AM PDT

THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday at 7:00 PM EDT/4:00 PM PDT

Stream them, wherever you are, at the link!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

August 31, 2024
Labor Day Music on Sweetness and Light

How laborious it was to put together this morning’s “Sweetness and Light!” Which I suppose is only appropriate, since today’s theme is music for Labor Day.

It’s not uncommon when producing a show that the running time can come up a little long. I try to avoid it, but when it happens, it’s usually remedied with a few snips. But this week I was a full 90 seconds over, which meant trimming my commentary to the bone. It can take a while to whittle it all down.

In the end, I was still 30 seconds over. The rock was high and Classic Amico was so small!

So I had to swap out Aaron Copland’s rarely-heard “John Henry” (at 4 minutes) for something decidedly more “Common” (at about 3:30). If you’re at all familiar with the composer and his output, I think you can deduce what that is.

Another casualty was my fine encapsulation of the essence of John Alden Carpenter’s construction worker ballet “Skyscrapers.” There’s an awful lot of color in that score to convey a few sentences!

“The scenario involves workers in overalls, who struggle to bring order to a confusion of girders and flashing red lights; all around them the hustle and bustle of the city. Eventually the whistle blows. There’s a diverting side-trip to a Coney Island-type amusement park, with its crowds and attractions and popular dance rhythms. Again the whistle blows, and the laborers return to work.”

The music is still there, but I wind up basically saying “here it is.”

Life is full of frustration, folks, but it still beats digging ditches.

I hope you’ll join me for a program that will also include works by George Frideric Handel, Nikolai Medtner, Michael Torke, and Eric Coates, with Princeton’s own Paul Robeson singing Earl Robinson’s labor classic “Joe Hill.” How that’s sweet OR light, I have no idea, but I’m playing it.

As always, I earn my bread by the sweat of my brow. Just in time for breakfast, I’ll be bringing home the bacon, on “Sweetness and Light,” this Saturday morning at 11:00 EDT/8:00 PDT, exclusively on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

Stream it wherever you are at the link:

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

IMAGE: One of ten dynamic panels from Thomas Hart Benton’s mural, “America Today” (1930-31). You can click through thumbnails of all of them here:

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/499559

August 31, 2024
Sweetness and Light Circus Radio Show

This week on “Sweetness and Light,” with summer winding down, we’re off to the circus.

Are there any circuses anymore? Beyond Cirque du Soleil, I mean? Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus gave their farewell tour back in 2017. We’re too enlightened now to tolerate closely caged or potentially abused exotic animals, and quite rightly so.

Still, for those of us of a certain age, there remains a certain nostalgia for the circus, with its parade, and its Big Top, and the noise and color and smells and scary clowns.

I’ll be presenting for your wonderment and enjoyment an electrifying musical menagerie. There will be circus marches galore, a waltz long associated with the trapeze, a suite of character pieces for piano, a selection from an Academy Award winning film, not one, but TWO ballets (one conceived for baby elephants), and a delightful song by Charles Ives. You’ll practically smell the popcorn and cotton candy and hay and elephant droppings!

I can’t say it will be the greatest show on earth, but it’s bound to stir some memories for a bygone era of American tent circus.

Ladies and gentlemen! Boys and girls! Children of all ages! Join me for me in the center ring for “Sweetness and Light.” I’ll be donning the telltale top hat and tailcoat, this Saturday morning at 11:00 EDT/8:00 PDT, exclusively on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

Stream it, wherever you are, at the link:

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

August 24, 2024
Mackerras Gilbert & Sullivan Delight

Sir Charles Mackerras excelled as an interpreter of a lot of different kinds of music. He was acclaimed as a Mozartian and recorded a celebrated set of the composer’s complete symphonies. He was also something of a specialist in Czech music, setting down most of Janeček’s operas, in particular.

But he was a lifelong enthusiast of the works of Gilbert & Sullivan, from the time he was a boy, in to old age. This week on “Sweetness and Light,” we’ll enjoy an hour of Mackerras’ delightful Gilbert & Sullivan recordings.

When the copyright expired on Sir Arthur Sullivan’s music in 1950, Mackerras arranged any number of the composer’s works, but most especially the stage successes conceived in collaboration with librettist W.S. Gilbert, into a ballet, “Pineapple Poll.” Employing a method similar to that of Manuel Rosenthal, when reimagining the works of Jacques Offenbach into the ballet “Gaîté Parisienne,” Mackerras cherry-picks from his harvested source material to mix and match and present the music in new and inventive ways. There are a lot of familiar tunes here for seasoned Savoyards, so feel free to hum along.

Mackerras was in his 70s, when he returned to the recording studio to set down more G&S, with a series of their operettas issued on single compact discs (shorn of the overtures and dialogue for time considerations) for the Telarc label in the 1990s. To round out the hour, we’ll sample from his late-career recording of “The Mikado.”

Oh joy unbounded! Oh rapture unexampled! Make way for Charles Mackerras and Gilbert & Sullivan on “Sweetness and Light,” this Saturday morning at 11:00 EDT/8:00 PDT, exclusively on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

Stream it, wherever you are, at the link:

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

BONUS! A 1959 broadcast of “Pineapple Poll,” with the Royal Ballet. The work was co-created by the production’s choreographer, John Cranko, and its arranger/conductor (Mackerras, of course).

August 17, 2024
Josef Suk’s Summer’s Tale Healing Through Nature

Josef Suk’s 30th year was a tragic one, marked by the deaths of both his young wife, Otilie, and her father, his former teacher, Antonín Dvořák. Not surprisingly, a sense of morbidity colors much of his mature output. The double-loss directly inspired Suk’s “Asrael Symphony,” named for the Angel of Death.

This week on “The Lost Chord,” for this, his sesquicentennial year (he was born on January 4, 1874), we’ll take a look at “A Summer’s Tale,” the next step in Suk’s emotional rehabilitation. The work is a five-movement symphonic poem, the second of a four-part cycle that contemplates death and the meaning of life. More affirmative than the grim “Asrael,” which is full of pain, loss, and grief, “A Summer’s Tale” explores the healing powers of nature, in a score that at times reflects the epic romanticism of Gustav Mahler and at others the impressionism of Claude Debussy. It was composed over the course of just six weeks in the summer of 1907. Further tinkering took place over the next year-and-a-half. The work received its premiere in January of 1909.

Suk later described the theme of the piece as “finding a soothing balm in nature.” I hope you’ll join me as we clear a path to “Healing by Nature” – Josef Suk’s “A Summer’s Tale” – on “The Lost Chord,” now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

Clip and save the start times for all three of my recorded shows:

PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday at 8:00 PM EDT/5:00 PM PDT

SWEETNESS AND LIGHT, the light music program – ALL NEW! – Saturday at 11:00 AM EDT/8:00 AM PDT

THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday at 7:00 PM EDT/4:00 PM PDT

Stream them, wherever you are, at the link!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

August 10, 2024

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