Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Labor Day

Labor Day Concert: Music for Workers and Wonders

Sorry to be posting so late, but I had some computer woes this morning, so I am racing to ketchup – er, catch up, I mean. Not surprisingly, I am distracted by thoughts of Labor Day.

Get ready for a real labor of love, as we hear selections about work and the worker, punctuated by music inspired by man-made and natural wonders. On the roster is Tobias Picker’s “Keys to the City” (written to mark the 100th anniversary of the Brooklyn Bridge), John Alden Carpenter’s ballet “Skyscrapers,” Samuel Jones’ Symphony No. 3 (a musical response to Texas’ Palo Duro Canyon), and Jett Hitt, Composer’s “Yellowstone” for violin and orchestra. Hitt, who holds a doctorate in composition, conducts guided horseback tours at the national park!

In addition, there will be lighter pieces about picnic foods and gazebo dances.

I hope your Stanley thermos is full of iced coffee. Put away your hard hat and lunch pail and join me for one final helping of baked beans and corn-on-the-cob for Labor Day, this afternoon from 4 to 7 p.m. EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

PHOTOS: Bernstein, Gershwin, and Copland wring the last from their summer

September 3, 2018
Atlanta Symphony Celebrates Labor Day

On this eve of Labor Day, it’s an hour of American music courtesy of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.

The Philadelphia-based Pultizer Prize winner Jennifer Higdon composed “On a Wire” for the new music sextet known as Eighth Blackbird. A concerto grosso of sorts for six soloists, the piece begins with the musicians gathered around an open-lidded piano, most of them bowing the strings. The composer asks the listener to imagine six blackbirds sitting on a wire.

We’ll follow that with “Q.E.D.: Engaging Richard Feynman,” by Michael Gandolfi. Feynman, the noted physicist and Nobel laureate, was as renowned for his wit as for his inquisitive mind. Gandolfi’s piece does not focus on scientific inquiry. Rather it takes as its starting point two anecdotes shared by the physicist in interviews with the BBC, which the composer discovered on YouTube. In performance, the video clips were shown to the audience preceding the work’s two sections. Understandably, these have been omitted from the recording.

The sections themselves are settings of texts by various poets illustrating a specific theme. The first concerns a challenge put by an artist friend of Feynman suggesting that as a scientist he cannot truly appreciate the beauty of a flower. Feynman counters that scientific knowledge, a greater understanding of the flower, only adds to its beauty, rather than detracts.

The second grows out of an anecdote concerning Feynman’s boyhood ignorance of the name of a certain kind of bird, a brown-throated thrush, and his realization that a name tells one nothing about the bird, but rather something about the people of various cultures who named the bird. He concludes, “Now, let’s look at the bird.”

Part One is titled “On Waking,” and includes settings of Gertrude Stein, Emily Dickinson and the Irish Republican poet Joseph Campbell. Part II, “Song of the Universal,” includes settings of Walt Whitman, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Siegfried Sassoon.

The sung texts are mostly incomprehensible. However, it sure is nice to listen to.

Join me for an hour of Georgia peaches, with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, this Sunday night at 10:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

September 3, 2017
Labor Day American Music Celebration

Labor Day is many things to many people. Officially, it is a federal holiday, a celebration of the worker. Unofficially, it holds connotations of the end of summer, a last chance to hit the road and enjoy the beach, have family and friends over for a picnic, or simply kick back for three days and deny the impending, precipitous dash through the autumn and winter holidays. For us, it’s an excuse to flood the air waves with American music.

Join me this Thursday morning on WPRB, as we celebrate the American landscape, with music about natural and man-made wonders. We’ll conjure up the dungareed laborer, with the sounds of rivets and factory whistles. We’ll take a last dance around the firehouse and the gazebo. We’ll even enjoy some musical picnic foods. Plenty of the music will be wondrous in itself.

Put aside thoughts about punching the clock or punching your supervisor, this Thursday morning from 6 to 11 EDT, on WPRB 103.3 FM and wprb.com. Hard times come again no more, on Classic Ross Amico.

August 31, 2017
Labor Day Classical Music Tribute on WWFM

As Americans, we work hard, and frequently for too little compensation. This afternoon on WWFM, I’ll be playing selections to honor the integrity of the American worker for Labor Day. We’ll hear Aaron Copland’s “John Henry” and John Alden Carpenter’s construction worker ballet, “Skyscrapers.”

We’ll also have uplifting works in celebration of the American spirit, including Walter Piston’s Symphony No. 4 and Elie Siegmeister’s “American Sonata.” Picnics and the great outdoors will also be a recurring theme, with pieces like John Corigliano’s “Gazebo Dances” and A.J. Weidt’s “Sweet Corn.”

So go ahead, crack open a cool one and enjoy yourself. You’ve earned it. It’s back to the mines tomorrow. Hard times come again no more, from 4 to 7 p.m. EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and at wwfm.org.

September 5, 2016
Labor Day Movie Music on WWFM

Heigh ho! I’m pleased to announce that “Picture Perfect” will return to WWFM The Classical Network with music from movies appropriate for the Labor Day weekend. We’ll hear hard-working selections from “The Molly Maguires” (by Henry Mancini), “Modern Times” (by Charlie Chaplin and David Raksin), “Metropolis” (by Gottfried Huppertz) and “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” (Frank Churchill and Larry Morey). Tune in, as home from work you go, this Friday evening at 6 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network or at wwfm.org.

September 2, 2016

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