Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Princeton Symphony Orchestra

Princeton Symphony Concert Tonight

In just a few minutes, I’ll be joined by Marc Uys, executive director of the Princeton Symphony Orchestra, who will drop by the studio around 9:00 to tell us about a special concert that will take place at Princeton University’s Richardson Auditorium tonight at 8 p.m.

Violinist Daniel Rowland will be soloist in and conductor of Astor Piazzolla’s “The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires,” which will be interleaved with the concertos of Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons.” Rowland has performed the program many times and has even made a very fine recording of it (from which we will sample). Then we’ll hear Piazzolla himself performing some of his own music on the bandoneon.

Also yet to come this morning, Benny Goodman plays Bartok and Keith Jarrett plays Barber, with an early work by famed film composer John Williams written for Stan Kenton, “Prelude and Fugue,” coming up in just a few minutes.

It’s classical music played by jazz artists, with perhaps just a hint of “Third Stream,” until 11 EDT, on WPRB 103.3 FM at wprb.com.

September 15, 2016
Jazz Meets Classical on WPRB

Do classical musicians sound too literal when playing jazz? Do jazz musicians sound stiff when interpreting classical? It is my hope that when you tune in tomorrow morning to WPRB you’ll put all such concerns aside. This will be no ordinary crossover program. Let’s face it; there are a lot of really awful crossover albums.

Rather, the playlist will be made up almost exclusively of straight classical music (with perhaps one or two examples of “Third Stream”), interpreted by the great jazz masters, including Paquito D’Rivera, Benny Goodman, Woody Herman, Keith Jarrett, Branford Marsalis, Wynton Marsalis, and Arturo Sandoval.

We’ll also hear from genre-defying performers who kept at least one foot in jazz, such as Paco de Lucia, John McLaughlin, and Astor Piazzolla.

Speaking of Piazzolla, the Princeton Symphony Orchestra will present a special concert of “The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires,” interleaved with Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons,” tomorrow night at 8 p.m. at Princeton University’s Richardson Auditorium. The violinist and conductor will be Daniel Rowland, who has performed the program many times and has even made a very fine recording of it.

The PSO’s executive director, Marc Uys, will drop by the studio tomorrow morning around 9:00 to tell us about the journey of Piazzolla’s work from bandoneon to violin. He’ll also tell us about some of the other highlights of the PSO season.

The remainder of the show will be as described. The beatniks meet the longhairs, tomorrow morning from 6 to 11 EDT, on WPRB 103.3 FM and at wprb.com. We’ll be dixie fried and slated for crashville, daddy-o. Focus your audio, on Classic Ross Amico.

September 14, 2016
NJ Classical Music Concerts 2016-2017 Season

With Labor Day weekend upon us, the whirring flywheels and pistons of the area’s cultural institutions are nearly up to speed.

In today’s Trenton Times, I take a look at some of the orchestral concerts poised to open the 2016-2017 season. Included are representative programs of the Princeton Symphony Orchestra, the New Jersey Capital Philharmonic Orchestra, the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, the Bravura Philharmonic Orchestra, the Westminster Community Orchestra, and Sinfonietta Nova.

http://www.nj.com/times-entertainment/index.ssf/2016/08/classical_music_2016-17_concer.html

There wasn’t room to mention additional orchestral concerts in New Brunswick, just a half an hour’s drive to the north, courtesy of the State Theatre New Jersey – which will host the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra (9/24, 10/9, 10/29/11/13, 11/27, 1/8, 1/15, 1/28, 2/12, 4/8, 4/23, 5/14), the Warsaw Philharmonic (10/23, including Mieczyslaw Weinberg’s Symphony No. 4!), the Bamberg Symphony (2/12), and the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine (2/19) – and the Rutgers Symphony Orchestra, which performs excellent and diverse programs under the direction of Kynan Johns.

The RSO’s opening concert will feature Mason Bates’ “Mothership” alongside Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” with pianist Michael Bulyachev-Okser, and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 (Nicholas Auditorium, Mason Gross School of the Arts, on 9/24). You can find the complete season schedule by clicking on the PDF file at the bottom of this page:

http://www.masongross.rutgers.edu/music/rutgers-symphony-orchestra

I was also remiss in not mentioning the Princeton University Orchestra (as I had intended to do), which begins its season on 10/22 & 10/23 with Samuel Barber’s “School for Scandal Overture,” scenes from Berlioz’s “Romeo and Juliet,” and Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No. 1. The complete schedule, including a springtime Mahler 5, can be found here:

Current Season

All in all, a well-orchestrated season.

PHOTO: Violinist Daniel Rowland will be soloist and conductor as the Princeton Symphony Orchestra opens its season with works by Antonio Vivaldi and Astor Piazzolla, at Princeton University’s Richardson Auditorium on 9/15 at 8 p.m.

September 2, 2016
Princeton Symphony Explores “Hiraeth”

“There isn’t a precise English translation, but loosely, it means homesickness tinged with longing for the lost or departed, or people that have passed on. It’s this idea of homesickness for a place you can no longer get back to.”

That is Princeton composer Sarah Kirkland Snider’s explanation of “Hiraeth,” from the Welsh, the title of her new piece, to be performed by the Princeton Symphony Orchestra this weekend.

The work, the product of a PSO co-commission with the North Carolina Symphony, is at the heart of a program, “Passion & Affection,” which will also include Tchaikovsky’s “Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture,” Johann Strauss II’s “Wine, Women and Song,” and a suite from Richard Strauss’ “Der Rosenkavalier.” PSO music director Rossen Milanov will conduct. The concert will take place at Richardson Auditorium on Sunday at 4 p.m.

Snider and Milanov will discuss their collaboration on “Hiraeth” in a PSO “Behind the Music” event at the Arts Council of Princeton’s Paul Robeson Center tomorrow at 4 p.m.

On Tuesday, May 17 at 7:30 p.m., musicians of the PSO will present Snider’s song cycle “Penelope,” on a special concert at the Princeton High School Performing Arts Center. Playwright Ellen McLaughlin provided the texts, which will be sung by Carla Kihlstedt. The performance will be led by PSO assistant conductor John Devlin. The concert is free and open to the public with ticketed reservations via the orchestra’s website, http://www.princetonsymphony.org.

Local lovers of orchestral music are spoiled for choice this weekend. The New Jersey Symphony Orchestra will also perform at Richardson Auditorium, tonight at 8 p.m. Augustin Hadelich will be the soloist in Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto, the centerpiece of a program that will include Mendelssohn’s “Hebrides Overture” and Brahms’ Serenade No. 1. Jérémie Rhorer will conduct.

Last but not least, the New Jersey Capital Philharmonic Orchestra will present a concert of “Cinematic Classics,” featuring music by Miklós Rózsa, Bernard Herrmann, Erich Wolfgang Korngold and William Walton, at the Trenton War Memorial tomorrow at 7:30 p.m. Odin Rathnam will be the soloist in Korngold’s Violin Concerto. Also on the program will be music from “El Cid,” “The Man Who Knew Too Much,” “Psycho,” “Vertigo,” and “Henry V.” Daniel Spalding will conduct.

The Trenton Times has been getting tighter with space in the print edition over the past few months, often resulting in some fairly hairpin edits to my articles. The chopped up versions run on Fridays. You can read my unexpurgated piece on the Princeton Symphony concerts here:

http://www.nj.com/times-entertainment/index.ssf/2016/05/classical_music_pso_performing_1.html

May 13, 2016
Greek Myths Music for Mother’s Day

Happy Mother’s Day!

This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll be listening to music inspired by familiar tales from the Greek myths, as viewed from a distinctly female perspective.

Our featured work will be a recent recording, on Cedille Records, of the “Mythology Symphony” by Stacy Garrop. Garrop earned her degrees in music composition at University of Michigan – Ann Arbor, University of Chicago, and Indiana University Bloomington. She is an associate professor in composition at the Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University. The symphony includes musical evocations of Medusa, The Sirens, The Fates, and Pandora.

Then we’ll have time for a few selections from the post-genre song cycle “Penelope” by Princeton composer Sarah Kirkland Snider. “Penelope” will be performed in its entirety by musicians of the Princeton Symphony Orchestra at Princeton High School Performing Arts Center, on Tuesday, May 17, at 7:30 p.m. Snider’s latest orchestral work, “Hiraeth,” a Princeton Symphony co-commission, will be performed by the orchestra at Princeton University’s Richardson Auditorium, on Sunday, May 15, at 4 p.m. For more information, visit princetonsymphony.org.

I hope you’ll join me for “Myth Conceptions” – fresh perspectives on familiar tales from Greek mythology – 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.

May 8, 2016

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