Classic Ross Amico

Tag: WPRB

Winter Music on WPRB Radio Princeton NJ

If you’re a denizen of the Mid-Atlantic or Northeastern states, then chances are the impending winter storm is beginning to worm its way into your consciousness. This week on WPRB, we go with the flow, with a full morning of wintry music, including, if time allows, trips to the North and South Poles.

We’ll have two sets of visitors: one from the Princeton Symphony Orchestra, including composer Jing Jing Luo, whose work “Tsao Shu” will be heard on the orchestra’s next concert, which will take place at Richardson Auditorium, on January 31 at 4 p.m.; and the other from Grand Harmonie, which will present the U.S. authentic instrument premiere of Beethoven’s “Fidelio,” in a semi-staged performance, at Richardson this Saturday at 7:30 p.m.

We’ll also feature Dawn Upshaw’s Grammy Award-winning recording of Maria Schneider’s “Winter Morning Walks.” Upshaw will perform three songs by Osvaldo Golijov on the upcoming concert of the Princeton Symphony.

Pull on your boots and get in the mood for tomato soup and toasted cheese sandwiches, this Thursday morning from 6 to 11 ET, on WPRB 103.3 FM and at wprb.com. We’re industriously loading snowballs into the freezer, on Classic Ross Amico.

More entertaining squirrel photos by Vadim Trunov here:

http://vadim-trunov.wix.com/foto

January 20, 2016
MLK Day: Celebrating Black Composers on WPRB

“You don’t have to see the whole staircase. Just take the first step.”

So said Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. On this, the eve of King’s birthday anniversary, we present a full morning of music by composers of African descent, much of it underrepresented at any time of the year. You’ll hear fine and shamefully neglected works by David Baker, Marion Bauer, Henry T. Burleigh, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Roque Cordero, William Levi Dawson, Duke Ellington, Adolphus Hailstork, Ulysses Kay, Tania León, the Chevalier J.J.O. de Meude-Monpas, Florence Price, William Grant Still, and George Walker, or as many of these as we can get to.

Clipper Erickson, piano of Westminster Conservatory of Music will drop by at around 10:00 to talk a bit about R. Nathaniel Dett, the grandson of fugitive slaves, who went on to become an important voice in American music. Erickson’s album of Dett’s complete piano works, “My Cup Runneth Over,” has recently been issued on the Navona Records label.

We’ll be there before sunrise to honor MLK’s vision of a daybreak of freedom and justice and equality, from 6 to 11 ET, on WPRB 103.3 FM and at wprb.com. We rise up with greater readiness, on Classic Ross Amico.

January 14, 2016
MLK Day Eve Music by Black Composers

Coming up in the 9:00 hour, we’ll hear Adolphus Hailstork’s cantata, “Done Made My Vow,” on texts steeped in African American history and the writings and speeches of figures such as Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Then at 10:00, Clipper Erickson, piano of Westminster Conservatory of Music will drop by to talk a bit about R. Nathaniel Dett, the grandson of fugitive slaves, who went on to become an important voice in American music. We’ll sample from Erickson’s album of Dett’s complete piano works, “My Cup Runneth Over,” recently issued on the Navona Records label.

On the eve of MLK’s birthday, it’s all music by composers of African descent until 11 ET, on WPRB 103.3 FM and at wprb.com.

PHOTOS: All hail Hailstork (left), with a debt to Dett

January 14, 2016
Music Color & Expectations

Does the color of one’s skin have any bearing on the kind of music one writes? Should a black composer be expected to incorporate jazz or spiritual inflections into his or her music?

Tune in tomorrow morning to have lazy expectations confounded. We’ll have representatives of the jazzy and spiritual schools, of course, but we’ll also hear works by a Pulitzer Prize winner who makes his home in New Jersey, an Afro-Cuban master of the guitar, a musketeer in the service of Louis XVI, and an Englishman infatuated with the works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Clipper Erickson, piano of Westminster Conservatory of Music will drop by at around 10:00 to talk a bit about R. Nathaniel Dett, the grandson of fugitive slaves, who went on to become an important voice in American music. Erickson’s album of Dett’s complete piano works, “My Cup Runneth Over,” has recently been issued on the Navona Records label.

In addition, we’ll hear recordings of the late conductor Paul Freeman, some spirituals sung by Marian Anderson, and the cantata “Done Made My Vow” by Adolphus Hailstork, in a recording made by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.

In advance of MLK Day, it’s an exploration of content, character and color, with music by composers of African descent, tomorrow morning from 6 to 11 ET, on WPRB 103.3 FM or at wprb.com. Music is King, on Classic Ross Amico.

January 13, 2016
Pierre Boulez Radical Avant-Garde Composer

“Blow the opera houses up!”

“All the art of the past should be destroyed!”

“A musician who has not experienced… the necessity for the dodecaphonic language is USELESS!”

“From Schoenberg’s pen flows a stream of infuriating clichés!”

“The Paris opera is full of dust and crap! Operatic tourists make me want to vomit!”

Pierre Boulez could be provocative and full of contradictions. The gadfly of modern music died on Tuesday at the age of 90. I hope you’ll join me as we celebrate this radical figure of the avant-garde, who in his later years found value even in the music of Strauss and Bruckner.

It’s all Pierre Boulez this morning, from 6 to 11 ET, on WPRB 103.3 FM and at wprb.com. We “excite the curiosity of the snobs,” on Classic Ross Amico.

January 7, 2016

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