Composers Datebook podcast

#Music #American Public Media

42:14

Episode Description: Jessica B. Harris may have been born and raised in New York City, but she has Tennessee roots through her father and has spent much of her life split between homes in the Northeast and the South – specifically New Orleans. For more than fifty years, she has been a college professor, a writer, and a lecturer, and her many books have earned her a reputation as an authority on food of the African Diaspora, as well as a lifetime achievement award from the James Beard Foundation. A few years back, Netflix adapted her book, High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey from Africa to America , into a 4 part docuseries. And I’m very proud to say that she’s a longtime contributor to Southern Living with a regular column called The Welcome Table. This episode was recorded in the Southern Living Birmingham studios, and Sid and Jessica talked about her mother’s signature mac and cheese, the cast-iron skillet she’d be sure to save if ever her house were on fire, and her dear friend, the late New Orleans chef Leah Chase. For more info visit: southernliving.com/biscuitsandjam Biscuits & Jam is produced by : Sid Evans - Editor-in-Chief, Southern Living Krissy Tiglias - GM, Southern Living Lottie Leymarie - Executive Producer Michael Onufrak - Audio Engineer/Producer Jeremiah McVay - Producer Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices…

Composers Datebook

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Composers Datebook™ is a daily two-minute program designed to inform, engage, and entertain listeners with timely information about composers of the past and present. Each program notes significant or intriguing musical events involving composers of the past and present, with appropriate and accessible music related to each.

101 episodes

Composers Datebook

23 subscribers

updated about 9 hours ago

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101 episodes

#Music #American Public Media

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Composers Datebook

1
Claudette Sorel and Tania León 2:00

9 hours ago2:00

2:00

Synopsis Claudette Sorel was a pianist, educator and passionate advocate for equal rights for women in music, especially composers and performers. In 1996, she founded the Sorel Organization to expand opportunities and stretch the boundaries for promising emerging female musicians through a variety of collaborations and scholarships, and to acknowledge notable masters in the field. On today’s date in 2022, for example, Cuban-born American composer Tania J. León was awarded the Organization’s Sorel Legacy Medallion for her life and work in music. While still in her 20s, León became a founding member and the first musical director of the Dance Theater of Harlem, establishing its music department, school, and orchestra. She has composed a number of both large scale and chamber works that have been performed here and abroad. In February 2020, the New York Philharmonic premiered her orchestral piece Stride and in 2021 that work was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music. León said, “ Stride was inspired by women’s rights pioneer Susan B. Anthony. She kept pushing and pushing and moving forward, walking with firm steps until she got [it] done. That is what Stride means. Something that is moving forward.” Music Played in Today's Program Tania León (b. 1943): Batá ; Louisville Orchestra; Lawrence Leighton Smith, conductor; Soundmark CD 48027…

Composers Datebook

1
Cowell in Paris 2:00

1 day ago2:00

2:00

Composers Datebook

1
Corigliano Dances 2:00

2 days ago2:00

2:00

Synopsis Merriam-Webster’s defines a gazebo as “a freestanding roofed structure usually open on the sides.” To most Americans, however, “gazebo” conjures up warm, summer days spent out-of-doors: If you imagine yourself inside a gazebo, you’re probably enjoying a cool beverage while gazing out at the greenery — or, if you fancy yourself outside one, you’re probably seated in a lawn chair, gazing at a group of gazebo-sheltered band musicians playing a pops concert for your entertainment. In the early 1970s, American composer John Corigliano wrote a series of whimsical four-hand piano dances he dedicated to certain of his pianist friends, and then later arranged these pieces for concert band, titling the resulting suite Gazebo Dances . “The title was suggested by the pavilions often seen on village greens in towns throughout the countryside, where public band concerts are given in the summer,” Corigliano explained. “The delights of that sort of entertainment are portrayed in this set of dances, which begins with a Rossini-like overture, followed by a rather peg-legged waltz, a long-lined adagio, and a bouncy tarantella.” The concert band version of Corigliano’s Gazebo Dances was first performed in Indiana on today’s date in 1973, by the University of Evansville Wind Ensemble, with Robert Bailey conducting. Music Played in Today's Program John Corigliano (b. 1938): Gazebo Dances ; University of Texas Wind Ensemble; Jerry Junkin, conductor; Naxos 8.559601…

Composers Datebook

1
Brahms rediscovered 2:00

3 days ago2:00

2:00

Synopsis In the summer of 1853 Johannes Brahms had just turned twenty and was touring as the piano accompanist of the Hungarian violinist Ede Reményi. On today’s date, they arrived in Gottingen, where they were hosted by Arnold Wehner, the Music Director of that city’s University. Wehner kept a guest book for visitors, and over time accumulated signatures from the most famous composers of his day, including Mendelssohn, Rossini, and Liszt. Now, in 1853, Brahms was not yet as famous as he would later become, but as a thank-you to his host, he filled a page of Wehner’s album with a short, original composition for piano. Fast forward over 150 years to 2011, when Herr Wehner’s guest book fetched over $158,000 at an auction house in New York City, and this previously unknown piano score by Brahms attracted attention for many reasons. First, few early Brahms manuscripts have survived. Brahms was notorious for burning his drafts and sketches, and second, the melody Brahms jotted down in 1853 showed up again in the second movement of his Horn Trio, published 12 years later. Finally, there’s a still-unresolved controversy about who had rediscovered the long-lost score: the auction house had the manuscript authenticated in 2011, but in 2012 British conductor Christopher Hogwood claimed he had stumbled across it while doing other research. Music Played in Today's Program Johannes Brahms (1833-1897): Albumblatt (1853); Sophie-Mayuko Vetter, piano; Hännsler 98048…

Composers Datebook

1
Dvorak's 'The Water Goblin' 2:00

4 days ago2:00

2:00

Synopsis In the late 19th Century, there were two rival musical camps: one favored “absolute music” like the symphonies, concertos, and chamber music of Brahms; the other the “music of the future,” namely the operas of Wagner and the tone poems of Liszt, works that told dramatic stories in music. Now, Dvořák’s mentor was Brahms, and Dvořák was famous for his symphonies, concertos and chamber music. But on today’s date in 1896, at a concert of the Prague Conservatory Orchestra, three tone poems by Dvořák premiered: The Water Goblin , The Noonday Witch , and The Golden Spinning Wheel , all three based on Czech folk legends — and rather lurid, even gruesome ones at that. Not surprisingly, the “absolute music” camp was shocked. Viennese critic Eduard Hanslick lamented: “It is strange that Dvořák now indulges in ugly, unnatural, and ghastly stories which correspond so little to his amiable character and to the true musician that he is. In The Water Goblin we are treated to a fiend who cuts off his own child’s head!” But another Czech composer, Leos Janacek, heard something quite different: “In all the orchestral tone poems that I have known, the ‘direct speech’ of the instruments, if I might describe it thus, has never sounded with such certainty, clarity and truthfulness within the wave of melodies, as it does in The Water Goblin .” Music Played in Today's Program Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904): The Water Goblin ; Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra; Nikolaus Harnoncourt, conductor; Teldec 25254…

Composers Datebook

1
Walton and the Royals 2:00

5 days ago2:00

2:00

Composers Datebook

1
Handel's Testament 2:00

6 days ago2:00

2:00

Composers Datebook

1
Peter Sellars and John Adams 2:00

7 days ago2:00

2:00

Synopsis For fans of British comedy, the name Peter Sellars conjures up an actor famous for his iconic role as the bumbling Chief Inspector Clouseau in Pink Panther movies. But for opera fans, the name refers to a completely different fellow: an American theater director born in 1957. The American Peter Sellars is notorious for staging classic operas as if they were set in present-day America. For example: Mozart’s Don Giovanni in a dangerous, drug-dealing neighborhood in New York City’s Spanish Harlem, or The Marriage of Figaro in a luxury penthouse in Trump Tower. Sellars is also the frequent partner of American composer John Adams in brand-new operas and concert projects. On today’s date 2012, a new oratorio by Adams and Sellars, The Gospel According to the Other Mary received its world premiere at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles with Gustavo Dudamel conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Los Angeles Master Chorale. The new work’s libretto, crafted by Sellars, tells the Biblical story of the passion and death of Jesus from the point of view of “the other Mary,” Mary Magdalene, alongside texts and scenes from contemporary American life, including a women’s shelter, labor and social justice protests, and the opioid crisis. If Jesus were alive today, Sellars and Adams seem to be saying, He would be ministering to the suffering margins of American society, not to the rich and powerful. Music Played in Today's Program John Adams (b. 1949): Chorus , from The Gospel According to the Other Mary ; Los Angeles Master Chorale & Los Angeles Philharmonic; Gustavo Dudamel, conductor; DG 0289 479 2243 8…

Composers Datebook

1
Britten's 'War Requiem' 2:00

8 days ago2:00

2:00

Synopsis On today’s date in 1962, Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem for soprano, tenor, baritone, chorus, and orchestra, had its premiere performance at Coventry Cathedral in England. The Cathedral had been virtually destroyed in World War II bombing, and Britten’s big choral work was commissioned to celebrate its restoration and reconsecration. Britten was a committed pacifist, and his War Requiem text combines poems by Wilfred Owen, who had been killed in World War I, with the traditional Latin text of the Mass for the Dead. For the premiere, Britten requested soloists representing nations who had fought during World War II. With Britten’s life-time partner, tenor Peter Pears, representing England, the plan was to have a German baritone, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, and a Russian soprano, Galina Vishnevskaya, for the 1962 premiere. As a young man, Fischer-Dieskau had been drafted into the German army, and had been a prisoner of war, but was eager to participate. Unfortunately, the Soviet authorities wouldn’t issue a visa for soprano Vishnevskaya to sing in the new Britten piece. “How can you, a Soviet woman, stand next to a German and an Englishman and perform such a political work,” they told her. British soprano Heather Harper substituted for her. For many, Britten’s War Requiem is his masterpiece, and shortly after its premiere, Britten wrote to his sister, “The idea did come off, I think … I hope it will make people think a bit.” Music Played in Today's Program Benjamin Britten (1913-1976): War Requiem ; soloists; choirs; BBC Scottish Symphony; Martyn Brabbins, conductor; Naxos 8.553558…

Composers Datebook

1
Stravinsky's 'Rite' at 100+ 2:00

9 days ago2:00

2:00

Composers Datebook

1
John Williams and Alfred Hitchcock 2:00

10 days ago2:00

2:00

Composers Datebook

1
Higdon's 'Rhythm Stand' 2:00

11 days ago2:00

2:00

Composers Datebook

1
Edward Collins premieres 2:00

12 days ago2:00

2:00

Synopsis In 1923, the Chicago North Shore Festival sponsored a competition for new orchestral works. Of the 47 scores submitted, five finalists were selected by a distinguished panel of judges that included two leading American composers of that day: George W. Chadwick and Henry Hadley. Two of the five works that made the final cut were by the same composer, 33-year-old Illinois native Edward Collins. On today’s date in 1923, conductor Frederick Stock and his Chicago Symphony played through the five finalists’ scores at a public event at Northwestern University, with Collins in attendance to hear his two contrasting pieces. The first was Mardi Gras , and, as you might expect, it was an upbeat work in a party mood. The second Collins piece was 1914 — a grim orchestral evocation of World War I that Collins later retitled Tragic Overture . It was that work that won the competition’s $1000 first prize, and so impressed conductor Stock that he performed the piece in New York and Chicago. Although Collins was famous in his day, after his death in 1951, his music was largely forgotten. Perhaps his unabashedly Romantic style seemed dated in the avant-garde 50s and 60s. After more than half a century after his death, a series of new recordings of Collins’ orchestral works made by the Concordia Orchestra under Marin Alsop have helped to reintroduce his music to a new generation. Music Played in Today's Program Edward Collins (1889-1951): Mardi Gras and Tragic Overture ; Concordia Orchestra; Marin Alsop, conductor; Albany 267…

Composers Datebook

1
Verdi, Wagner and Sousa for the Red Cross 2:00

13 days ago2:00

2:00

Synopsis When the United States entered World War I, American animosity against all things German resulted in a ban on German symphonic music and operas. During World War II however, musically speaking, things were different. With America at war with Germany and Italy, music by Wagner and Verdi, for example, continued to be performed in our concert halls and opera houses. In fact, just as the Nazis tried to appropriate German classical music for their propaganda purposes, the Allies adopted the opening notes of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 as a Morse Code “V” for Victory motive, and in our wartime propaganda, Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries , accompanied images of Allied bombers racing through the clouds to strike German cities. On May 25, 1944, the combined orchestras of the New York Philharmonic and the NBC Symphony presented a Red Cross Benefit concert at Madison Square Garden, with Arturo Toscanini conducting. The first half of the program was all-Wagner, the second half, all-Verdi. During the intermission, New York mayor Fiorello La Guardia auctioned off maestro Toscanini’s baton. As a grand finale, after the German and Italian music, Toscanini closed with a rousing all-American encore — his own arrangement of John Philip Sousa’s Stars and Stripes Forever . So, as Walter Cronkite would put it: “That’s the way it was, May 25, 1944.” Music Played in Today's Program Richard Wagner (1813-1883): Ride of the Valkyries , from Die Walküre ; New York Philharmonic and NBC Orchestra; Arturo Toscanini, conductor; Radio Years 71/72 John Philip Sousa (arr. Toscanini): Stars and Stripes Forever ; New York Philharmonic and NBC Orchestra; Arturo Toscanini, conductor; Radio Years 71/72…

Composers Datebook

1
Carter and Copland in dancing shoes 2:00

14 days ago2:00