Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Osvaldo Golijov

Earth Day Music on WPRB

This Sunday morning on WPRB, I’ll be playing a lot of garbage. So what else is new? No, really. One of my featured works will be the “Garbage Concerto,” by Canadian composer Jan Järvlepp. The piece incorporates percussion instruments fashioned out of recyclable material. I thought it only appropriate, since tomorrow is Earth Day.

We’ll also hear two sizeable choral works in the form of the “Missa Gaia: Mass for the Earth,” by Libby Larsen, and “Hymn to the Earth,” by Edward Joseph Collins, in 1929 acting well ahead of the modern environmentalism curve.

Take a walk in the forest with a symphonic poem by Mikalojus Čiurlionis. View the earth from the International Space Station with a cello concerto by Osvaldo Golijov. Toot on a conch shell with Peter Sculthorpe.

Why on Earth would you want to miss it?

Every dog may have its day, but there’s only one Earth. Celebrate Earth Day, this Sunday morning from 7 to 10 EDT, on WPRB 103.3 FM and wprb.com. I’ll be nothing if not earthy, on Classic Ross Amico.

April 21, 2018
Princeton Symphony’s World Tour with Upshaw and Luo

Armchair travelers, rejoice! The Princeton Symphony Orchestra will offer a trip around the world this weekend. Book passage to Princeton University’s Richardson Auditorium this Sunday at 4 p.m., as the orchestra embarks for Hungary (by way of Zoltán Kodály), Spain, Eastern Europe, and Amherst, Massachusetts (by way of Osvaldo Golijov), China (by way of Jing Jing Luo), and Bohemia (by way of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart).

The PSO continues its season-long celebration of the creativity of women with not one, but two notable guest artists. Dawn Upshaw will be the soloist in Golijov’s “Three Songs for Soprano and Orchestra.” Singer and composer are frequent collaborators, with Upshaw frequently described as Golijov’s muse.

The PSO’s other notable guest is composer-in-residence Jing Jing Luo. Luo, a native of Beijing, is “a self-taught calligrapher in Chinese ink brush painting,” an art she says she has practiced since childhood.

The title of her work, “Tsao Shu,” alludes to “Chinese cursive writing, with ink brush, not with pen.” She elaborates, “The piece, it’s about the motion of the calligraphy with the ink brush, the motions of the stroke. Each stroke in calligraphy is reflected in music through the string section, percussion section, woodwind and brass.”

Luo will join PSO music director Rossen Milanov for a pre-concert talk on Sunday at 3 p.m. Milanov will conduct the program, which will also include Kodály’s “Dances of Galanta” and Mozart’s Symphony No. 38, the “Prague” Symphony.

On Saturday at 4 p.m., Luo will converse with composer and PSO board member Julian Grant about Chinese culture and its influence on her art and music. The discussion will take place at the Arts Council of Princeton’s Paul Robeson Center for the Arts. The Saturday event is free with ticketed reservations through the PSO website, princetonsymphony.org.

Read more about it in my article in today’s Trenton Times:

http://www.nj.com/times-entertainment/index.ssf/2016/01/classical_music_pso_performing.html

PHOTO: Upshaw armchair traveling with Golijov

January 29, 2016
Dawn Upshaw Song Cycles on The Lost Chord

Tonight, after you’ve put away the snow shovel, popped some Advil, and finished slathering on the Bengay, consider tuning in for a couple of contemporary song cycles performed by Dawn Upshaw.

Upshaw will be my guest this week on “The Lost Chord.” She will talk about her working relationship with composer Osvaldo Golijov, whose “Three Songs” she will sing on an upcoming concert of the Princeton Symphony Orchestra. We’ll also hear her astonishing recording of Golijov’s “Ayre,” a hypnotic synthesis of folk, pop and classical-inflected music on texts from Arabic, Hebrew, Sardinian and Sephardic sources.

Then she’ll melt our hearts by applying her distinctive timbre to selections from Maria Schneider’s “Winter Morning Walks.” Schneider is best known as a jazz artist, but, as is evident from her album “The Thompson Fields,” she possesses an extraordinarily ambitious compositional sense.

“Winter Morning Walks” was the recipient of three Grammy Awards in 2014, in the categories of Best Classical Contemporary Composition, Best Vocal Performance (for Dawn Upshaw), and Best Engineered Album, Classical. It was Upshaw’s fifth Grammy.

And lest you forget, Upshaw’s was the voice heard in the very moving recording of Henryk Gorecki’s Symphony No. 3, issued by Nonesuch Records in 1992, which sold over a million copies and became one of the best-selling classical music albums of all time.

Upshaw will appear at Princeton University’s Richardson Auditorium on January 31 at 4 p.m. Also on the program, PSO music director Rossen Milanov will conduct works by Mozart, Kodály, and Jing Jing Luo, the orchestra’s current composer-in-residence. For more information, visit princetonsymphony.org.

I hope you’ll join me for “The Knack of Dawn” – new music performed by Dawn Upshaw – this Sunday night at 10 ET, with a repeat Wednesday evening at 6; or that you’ll listen to it later as a webcast at wwfm.org.

January 24, 2016

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