Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Ross Amico

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

May 25, 2016
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.

May 19, 2016
Spring Music to the Rescue on WPRB

Spring needs our help! A good part of the season so far has been cloaked, in the Philadelphia-Princeton area, in temperatures in the 50s and 60s. I’d have no complaints, except for the fact that a month from now, you know it is going to be 90 degrees!

This Thursday morning on WPRB, we’ll stop short of human sacrifice, but we will try to breathe life into the season with music of a vernal inclination. Among possible candidates for the playlist are “Enter Spring” by Frank Bridge, the cantata “The Romance of Spring” by Zdeněk Fibich, “The Myth of Spring” by Lodewijk Mortelmans, “A Spell for Green Corn” by the late Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Joachim Raff’s “Ode to Spring,” and the most thrilling performance of Robert Schumann’s “Spring Symphony” you have never heard.

Failing that, we’ll start locking people in the Wicker Man, tomorrow morning from 6 to 11 EDT, on WPRB 103.3 FM and at wprb.com. One way or another we’ll be lolling in the daffodils, on Classic Ross Amico.

May 18, 2016
Film Composers on WPRB Radio Today

This morning on WPRB, we get “reel.” It’s concert music by composers better known for their work in film, with examples of their music for the movies.

The playlist is still taking shape – a show is always a thing in progress – but the Box of Wonders contains enchantments by the likes of Elmer Bernstein, Bruce Broughton, Ernest Gold, Jerry Goldsmith, Bernard Herrmann, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Jerome Moross, Ennio Morricone, Rachel Portman, Nino Rota, Miklós Rózsa, Lalo Schifrin, Franz Waxman and John Williams.

Daniel Spalding will drop by at around 10:00. Spalding will conduct the New Jersey Capital Philharmonic Orchestra in a blockbuster program of “Cinematic Classics” this weekend, including works by Rózsa, Herrmann and William Walton, with Odin Rathnam the soloist in Korngold’s Violin Concerto. The concert will take place at the Trenton War Memorial on Saturday evening at 7:30.

Past WPRB guests, JoAnn Falletta and Mariusz Smolij, music director of the Riverside Symphonia in Lambertville, will be represented this morning in fine recordings of music by Moross and Rózsa, respectively.

The concert hall becomes a screening room, from 6 to 11 EDT, on WPRB 103.3 FM and at wprb.com. We’re ready for our close-up, on Classic Ross Amico.

May 12, 2016
Film Composers Go Classical on WPRB

It takes very little to get me going on a film music jag – especially classic film music. Tomorrow morning on WPRB, the program will be made up entirely of works by composers for the silver screen. However, the emphasis will be on their music for the concert hall. The way I figure, I will introduce each concert piece with an example of a composer’s film music, and then follow it up with a symphony, concerto, string quartet or aria from the same hand.

I don’t know how many of these we’ll actually be able to get to, but I’ve compiled a box full of music by Elmer Bernstein (composer of “The Magnificent Seven”), Bruce Broughton (“Silverado”), Ernest Gold (“Exodus”), Jerry Goldsmith (“The Omen”), Bernard Herrmann (“Psycho”), Lee Holdridge (“The Beastmaster”), James Horner (“Titanic”), Maurice Jarre (“Lawrence of Arabia”), Laurie Johnson (“Dr. Strangelove”), Erich Wolfgang Korngold (“The Adventures of Robin Hood”), Jerome Moross (“The Big Country”), Ennio Morricone (“The Good, the Bad and the Ugly”), Rachel Portman (“Emma”), Nino Rota (“The Godfather”), Miklós Rózsa (“Ben-Hur”), Lalo Schifrin (“Dirty Harry”), Franz Waxman (“The Bride of Frankenstein”), and John Williams (“Star Wars”).

This weekend, Daniel Spalding will conduct the New Jersey Capital Philharmonic Orchestra in a blockbuster program of “Cinematic Classics,” featuring works by Rózsa, Herrmann and William Walton, with Odin Rathnam the soloist in Korngold’s Violin Concerto. The concert will take place at the Trenton War Memorial on Saturday at 7:30 p.m. Spalding will be my guest tomorrow morning around 10:00.

It’ll be buttered popcorn and Sno-Caps for breakfast, tomorrow from 6 to 11 EDT, on WPRB 103.3 FM and at wprb.com. We’ll be shattering all box office records, on Classic Ross Amico.

May 11, 2016

Tag Cloud

RECENT POSTS