As we approach the Labor Day weekend, get ready for a real labor of love, this Thursday morning on WPRB. It will be an all-American program. Man-made and natural wonders will punctuate the show, with works like Tobias Picker’s “Keys to the City” (written to mark the 100th anniversary of the Brooklyn Bridge), Samuel Jones’ Symphony No. 3 (a musical response to Texas’ Palo Duro Canyon), and Joan Tower’s “Made in America.”
In addition, there will be lighter pieces about picnic foods and gazebo dances. I’ll also play a little musical ketchup – I mean catch-up – as I finally get around to airing at least two works promised on earlier shows that were bumped due to time constraints: Elie Siegmeister’s “Sunday in Brooklyn,” with its celebratory final movement inspired by Coney Island, and Ned Rorem’s Symphony No. 3, in a recording of its world premiere, with Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic.
As if all that weren’t enough, we’ll enjoy a recent recording of the Sonata for Piano by Jack Gallagher (composer), newly released by Centaur Records, Inc.
Put away your hard hat and lunch pail and join me for one final helping of baked beans and corn-on-the-cob, this Thursday morning from 6 to 11 EDT, on WPRB 103.3 FM and wprb.com. Next week it will be back to the mines with you, on Classic Ross Amico.
