“In an ideal musical world,” says Joan Tower, “a composer should have a friendly, creative, and ongoing working relationship with performers for whom she writes.”
For Tower, who has emerged as one of the most successful American composers of her generation, a friendly, creative, and ongoing...Episode details...
On today’s date in 2004, the Utah Symphony and conductor Keith Lockhart premiered “Three Latin-American Dances” by the American composer Gabriela Lena Frank. Just a few days later, the same forces recorded Frank’s music for a compact disc release, to be sandwiched between Bernstein’s Symphony...Episode details...
Today is Earth Day—an annual event started in 1970 by then-Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin as an environmental teach-in.
Senator Nelson wasn’t the only one concerned back then, either: the Czech-born composer Karel Husa had noticed dead fish floating on a lake located near a power plant....Episode details...
OK -- say you were paid to listen to and promote hundreds of new classical recordings every month and travel the world to broker new deals for one of the largest recorded music companies of our day.
The question is, “What would you do in your spare time?”
Well, if you’re a composer, the answer...Episode details...
Religious music, like the religious experience itself, comes in all shapes, forms, moods, and colors.
On today’s date in the year 2002, for example, this setting of the Song of Isaiah had its premiere performance at the Milwaukee Art Museum during a concert by the Present Music ensemble. The...Episode details...
According to Webster’s Dictionary, a concerto is “a piece for one or more soloists and orchestra with three contrasting movements.” And if you ask the average Classical Music Lover to describe a Violin Concerto, it’s likely he or she will think of the big 19th century Romantic concertos by...Episode details...
It was on today’s date in 1944 that the Jerome Robbins-Leonard Bernstein ballet “Fancy Free” was first danced by the Ballet Theater at the old Metropolitan Opera House in New York City. It was a big hit. Bernstein himself conducted, and alongside Robbins and set designer Oliver Smith, took some...Episode details...
The British composer Gustav Holst lived and worked in a West London neighborhood called Hammersmith for many years—and in 1930, Holst gave that name to a work for wind band he wrote on commission from the BBC.
“Hammersmith” opens with a "Prelude" representing the river Thames, which, said Holst,...Episode details...
In the years following the end of World War II, the “baby boom” led to a dramatic rise in the number of high school and college music programs across the country. By the mid-1950s, a number of well-known American composers started receiving commissions from these schools for new works for wind...Episode details...
