Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Shakespeare

Shakespeare Henry V Music & Trenton School Benefit

O for a Muse of Fire!

We’re celebrating Shakespeare this week – and over the next three Thursday mornings – on Classic Ross Amico. Stick around for an extended suite from the Laurence Olivier film of “Henry V,” with Christopher Plummer the narrator.

We’ll take a short break in the music around 9:00 for a worthy cause, as we are joined by representatives of the Foundation Academies Charter School in Trenton. Students of the Academy will join cellist Michelle Djokic, artistic director of Concordia Chamber Players, for a fundraising concert to acquire instruments for the students at Trenton City Museum at Ellarslie Mansion, this Saturday at 4 p.m.

Then on Sunday at 3 p.m., the students will attend Concordia’s next concert at Trinity Episcopal Church, Solebury, PA., that will feature works by Mozart, Brahms and Michael Daugherty. Hopefully you will consider being there, as well. We’ll hear more about it, plus the Foundation Academy’s “Stand Partners” program, during the course of their visit.

Then it’s back to music. Plenty of Shakespeare yet to come this morning, until 11 EDT, on WPRB 103.3 and at wprb.com

April 7, 2016
Shakespeare Month on Classic Ross Amico

April marks the 400th anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare. We’ll mark the occasion on Classic Ross Amico with a full month of programs inspired by his writings. That’s 20 hours worth of Shakespeare-related works – minus the weekly musician interviews, of course – as we enjoy overtures, incidental music, symphonic poems, art songs and choral works, all with a distinctive Bardic slant.

We’ll take a short break tomorrow in the 9:00 hour, as we are joined by representatives of Foundation Academies Charter School in Trenton. Students of the Academy will join cellist Michelle Djokic, artistic director of Concordia Chamber Players, for a fundraising concert at the Trenton City Museum at Ellarslie Mansion, this Saturday at 4 p.m.

Then on Sunday at 3 p.m., the students will attend Concordia’s next concert at Trinity Episcopal Church, Solebury, PA, that will feature works by Mozart, Brahms and Michael Daugherty. Hopefully you will consider being there, as well. We’ll hear more about it, plus the Foundation Academy’s “Stand Partners” program, during the course of their visit.

Then it’s back to the Bard! It’s all Shakespeare this month, every Thursday morning from 6 to 11 EDT, on WPRB 103.3 FM and at wprb.com. Where there’s a Will, there’s a way, on Classic Ross Amico.

#Shakespeare400

April 6, 2016
NJSO Shakespeare Festival Lacombe’s Finale

Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer, not by the son of York, but by the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra and its enterprising music director, Jacques Lacombe. For the second year in a row, Lacombe and the NJSO will present “Sounds of Shakespeare,” the sixth of the organization’s Winter Festivals to take place under his supervision.

Next weekend will bring a Berlioz double-bill, with the “Symphonie fantastique,” followed by its seldom-heard sequel, “Lélio.”

The program is “sort of ‘sideways inspired by Shakespeare,’” Lacombe says. “When Berlioz wrote ‘Symphonie fantastique,’ he was fascinated by a Shakespearean actress. At the end of the symphony, it’s sort of like his life is a total mess. The subtitle of ‘Lelio’ is ‘The Return to Life.’ The artist finds redemption in the creation of a fantasy on ‘The Tempest.’’”

The weekend after that, the NJSO will join with the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey to present “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” with Mendelssohn’s complete incidental music.

The performances will mark the final area appearances (in Princeton and New Brunswick) to feature Lacombe as NJSO music director. The orchestra will return under an assortment of guest conductors throughout the spring, but the remainder of Lacombe’s concerts this season will take place in the northern part of the state. He will be succeeded in the fall by Xian Zhang as the organization’s 14th music director.

Find out more, including much on Berlioz’s over-the-top romantic escapades, in my article in today’s Trenton Times.

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

January 15, 2016
Shakespeare Inspires Princeton’s Music Scene

After 400 years, the Bard continues to provide some great shakes. Two Shakespeare-related works will be served up in the Princeton area over the course of the next week.

Tonight at 8 p.m., the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra will unveil Darryl Kubian’s “O for a Muse of Fire” (which takes its title from the Prologue to “Henry V”), as part of a concert to be held at Princeton University’s Richardson Auditorium. Also on the program will be Rachmaninoff’s “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini,” with pianist Serhiy Savlov, and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 “Pathètique.”

Though written two hundred years after Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet,” Bellini’s opera, “I Capuleti e i Montecchi” (“The Capulets and the Monatgues”), had a kind of parallel genesis, bypassing the Bard to draw from the same Italian Renaissance sources. Westminster Opera Theatre will perform the work next Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m., at the Bart Luedeke Center, Rider University, in Lawrenceville.

Find out more in my article in today’s Trenton Times:

http://www.nj.com/times-entertainment/index.ssf/2015/03/classical_music_shakespeare_in.html

“Orpheus with his lute made trees,
And the mountain tops that freeze,
Bow themselves, when he did sing:
To his music plants and flowers
Ever sprung; as sun and showers
There had made a lasting spring.”

Henry VIII, Act III, Scene 1

March 20, 2015
Twelfth Night Confusion Christmas Day Count?

Okay, as a lover of all things Christmas, I’m confused. What day of Christmas is it anyway?

I know it’s Epiphany, but isn’t it supposed to be the Twelfth Day of Christmas, as well? Did I miss my Twelfth Night revel? Was I supposed to start counting on Christmas Day, or the day after? My certainty of Christmas lore is shaken.

According to what I glean from Wikipedia (which is never wrong), nobody quite knows the correct answer – or they think they do and that everyone else is full of s***.

I’d better put on my yellow stockings and cross garters just in case.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelfth_Night_(holiday)

Perhaps that explains the Shakespearean subtitle, “What You Will.”

January 6, 2015

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