Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Princeton University

  • Princeton Reunions 2016: Music from Tiger Alumni

    Princeton Reunions 2016: Music from Tiger Alumni

    Lock up your daughters! 25,000 visitors are expected to converge on Princeton this weekend for Reunions 2016. This Thursday morning on WPRB, we acknowledge the impending influx of humanity and commensurate Tiger Pride with music composed and performed by Princeton University faculty and alumni.

    Composers may include Princeton professors Milton Babbitt, Earl Kim, Paul Lansky, Steven Mackey, Bohuslav Martinu and Roger Sessions, and students and alumni Peter Maxwell Davies, Caroline Shaw and Julia Wolfe.

    Performers may include Princeton University Chapel organist Eric Plutz, current ensemble-in-residence So Percussion, former ensemble-in-residence the Brentano String Quartet, performance faculty members Geoffrey Burleson and Laura Oltman, conductor alumnus Gilbert Levine, and William H. Scheide’s Bach Aria Group.

    As always, it depends on how much we are able to shoehorn in.

    We’ll have a special guest in the form of Fernando Malvar-Ruiz, Litton-Lodal Artistic Director of The American Boychoir. He’ll be by at around 7:45 to tell us about the organization’s upcoming benefit concert, to be held at Princeton University’s Richardson Auditorium on June 5 at 4 p.m.

    Reunions will commence even as I grace the airwaves, Thursday morning from 6 to 11 EDT, on WPRB 103.3 FM and online at wprb.com. Orange you glad you can stay home and enjoy the music, on Classic Ross Amico?

    More about Reunions 2016 at the Alumni Association of Princeton University’s website:

    http://alumni.princeton.edu/goinback/reunions/2016/

    #PrincetonReunions

  • Spring’s Short Stay WPRB Radio Show

    Spring’s Short Stay WPRB Radio Show

    Programming a radio show around the weather is always a tricky proposition. Yesterday, I made the assertion that spring needs our help! Then what followed was a glorious day in the Philadelphia-Princeton area. It has been a crazy season so far, and though the temperatures seem to be moderating for the next several days, we’ll be back down into the 60s (with rain) for Saturday, before sling-shotting into the upper 80s by the end of next week. Is it my imagination, or is “spring” getting shorter in this region? We seem to flip from winter, virtually into full summer, with a few, sporadic lovely days in between. Let’s face it, there are so few completely bearable days in a year. It’s amazing that man ever made it this far.

    But I digress. I had better have some more caffeine before I pursue that line of thought any further, or I will never make it through the day.

    Join me, won’t you, as we attempt to stabilize matters, with musical evocations of the season by Sir Arnold Bax, Wilhelm Peterson-Berger, Frank Bridge, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Claude Debussy, Zdeněk Fibich, Josef Bohuslav Foerster, Alexander Glazunov, Hermann Goetz, Joseph Marx, Darius Milhaud, Lodewijk Mortelmans, Joachim Raff, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, and Jean Sibelius, or as many of those as we can get to.

    I can’t promise you won’t need a sweater or an umbrella, but I can promise you some truly gorgeous music. In particular, I hope you will stick around for a stunning performance of Robert Schumann’s Symphony No. 1 (a.k.a. the “Spring Symphony”). It’s by a no-name orchestra (the Klassische Philharmonie Düsseldorf) – and a student one at that – but it’s a real corker! The timpanist sounds like he should be auditioning for “The Rite of Spring.”

    In any case, the weather is always the same in my bunker deep beneath Bloomberg Hall on the campus of Princeton University. I hope you’ll join me, from 6 to 11 EDT, on WPRB 103.3 FM and at wprb.com. Every morning starts out steamy with an 80 percent chance of chaos, on Classic Ross Amico.

  • Milton Babbitt A Centennial Celebration

    Milton Babbitt A Centennial Celebration

    Today is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Milton Babbitt. Babbitt, born in Philadelphia, was a staple at Princeton University for many years. It’s telling that he joined both the music and mathematics faculties there. Later, he was also on the faculty of the Juilliard School.

    Babbitt gained widespread notoriety for an essay he wrote, titled “Who Cares If You Listen?” It turns out the provocative stance was the result of an editorial decision, and that Babbitt’s original title had been “The Composer as Specialist” – not likely to generate nearly as much interest.

    While he frequently composed in a serial style, his music is usually pretty lucid, without undo congestion and with a minimum of soul-crushing dissonances. In fact, his language could often attain a paradoxical simplicity amidst the appearance of complexity.

    In the 1960s, Babbitt became interested in electronic music, apparently for its rhythmic precision, as opposed to any unusual timbral considerations. I find it endearing that he was also fond of jazz and musical theater. He himself was a saxophonist. In 1946, he penned a musical, “Fabulous Voyage,” a retelling of Homer’s “The Odyssey.”

    Babbitt was the recipient of an honorary Pulitzer Prize in 1982. He died in Princeton in 2011, at the age of 94.

    Listen here for “Penelope’s Night Song” from “Fabulous Voyage”:

    “Composition for Twelve Instruments” (1948):

    “Reflections” (1974) for piano and synthesized tape:

    Milton Babbitt on electronic music:

  • Beethoven’s Fidelio US Premiere Moved Due to Snow

    Beethoven’s Fidelio US Premiere Moved Due to Snow

    At the heart of Beethoven’s opera “Fidelio” is the struggle against tyranny and the triumph of liberty and justice. However, lofty ideals mean little in the face of an impending blizzard.

    With the threat of perhaps a foot and a half of snow falling over the weekend, the period instrument orchestra Grand Harmonie made a prudent decision late last night to move their Saturday performance to this evening. So the U.S. premiere of “Fidelio” on authentic instruments will take place TONIGHT at 7:30 p.m. at Princeton University’s Richardson Auditorium.

    One additional tidbit which may be of interest – the performance will be streamed live over YouTube. You can enjoy it in real time here:

    Everything else remains as stated in my article in today’s Trenton Times:

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

    More about Grand Harmonie at http://www.grandharmonie.org/.

    “…the
    Rain is no respecter of persons
    the snow doesn’t give a soft white
    damn Whom it touches”

    e.e. cummings

  • American Boychoir Spreads Holiday Cheer

    American Boychoir Spreads Holiday Cheer

    At the end of what has been a turbulent year, The American Boychoir is back, doing what it does best – spreading hope and good cheer through the purity of its sound.

    Princeton’s boychoir is America’s boychoir. I hope you’ll step up and support them this holiday season. The choir will present its “most important concert of the year” at Princeton University’s Richardson Auditorium, this Sunday at 4 p.m.

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

    http://www.nj.com/times-entertainment/index.ssf/2015/12/classical_music_american_boych.html

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