BSO's Marin Alsop Challenges CLASSICAL WETA-FM's Sharon Percy Rockefeller To Reverse 'ENTARTETE MUSIC' Policy And To Program Banned Living Composers
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra: How are you showcasing these new Beethoven-influenced composers?
American Conductor and MacArthur Fellow Marin Alsop: We’re all very excited about this. Five of the 11 composers will be conducting their own works. And they’ll all be speaking directly to the audience to elaborate on the deep impact Beethoven had on their compositional style and process. I’ll be joining my friends for many of these discussions.
MAESTRA AlSOP’S THOUGHTS ABOUT THE ELEVEN BANNED LIVING COMPOSERS:
John Adams: He writes music inspired by the events of our time. Music that is kinetic, visceral and filled with life’s pulse. Music that can be fun as well as enormously thought-provoking, often urging each one of us to examine our personal role in this world.
Thomas Adès: He creates multi-dimensional music that must be peeled off one layer at a time until we get to the core. He is motivated by pure emotion.
John Corigliano: He is a composer who is able to bring the worlds of the past and present together. With an amazing grasp of the symphonic medium and its power to connect with listeners, he uses colors, instruments and unique stage design to create breathtaking new worlds of sound.
Tan Dun: He represents the ever-changing cultural world where East meets West, and has created a brand-new voice that reaches a diverse audience and breaks the boundaries of classical and non-classical music.
HK Gruber: His piece Frankenstein!! is unbelievably inventive and hilarious. Not only did he compose it, he will be conducting and narrating it! You will get to know him, his voice, his sense of humor and sense of story.
Aaron Jay Kernis: He takes inspiration from 20th-century events while exploring a lush sound landscape, filled with melody and color.
James MacMillan: A Scottish composer, he is a thoughtful, powerful creator with a major sense of conscience and responsibility. At the same time, he has a terrific sense of humor and a wonderful sense of his Scottish heritage. Somehow he weaves all of these qualities together to create music that is vital and happening.
Steven Mackey: Steve Mackey’s muscular rhythms, infectious grooves and melodic style are based on indigenous music from around the world, including rock.
Mark O’Connor: A fiddler in his own right, he comes to composing from a performer’s perspective. He understands our American heritage and portrays it evocatively and movingly in his music.
Christopher Rouse: He is unafraid to say the things we all feel. He can be violent, desolate and tender all in the same piece.
Joan Tower: She is the only female composer in our season and the most “athletic” of all. She favors highly rhythmic, percussion--based writing that is immediate and visceral.
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra 2007-08 Season Brochure
*
Winged Horseback Riding American Pianists Peter Kairoff and James Barbagallo, and the American [and all-female] Da Vinci String Quartet, help American music gain 15 minute foothold in today's Classical WETA-FM huckster computer-software generated Playlist for March 1, 2007.
8:28am: Congratulation
George Chadwick
Peter Kairoff (piano)
[Albany 745]
4:46pm: Piano Quintet: IV
Arthur Foote
James Barbagallo (piano)
Da Vinci Quartet
[Naxos 559.009]
Please write to Sharon Percy Rockefeller to protest the New Classical WETA-FM's treatment of American classical music and music of living composers as Entarte Music. Demand that huckster, computer-software-generated classical programming be banned at the publically-supported station; and that the highly-qualified staff members of the Music Division, Library of Congress and the National Gallery of Art, be tasked with developing American classical music content for inclusion [10 to 20 percent] on daily Classical WETA-FM playlists:
Sharon Percy Rockefeller
CEO & President
WETA
2775 South Quincy St.
Arlington, VA 22206
tel 703.998.2600
fax 703.998.3401
Music Division, Library of Congress
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. -- American Painting Galleries and Concert Programs Featuring European and American Classical Music
Unlike Classical WETA-FM, the National Gallery of Art and the Music Division of the Library of Congress are properly-administered American institutions operating in the American trust.
Martin Johnson Heade
Giant Magnolias on a Blue Velvet Cloth, c. 1890
Gift of The Circle of the National Gallery of Art in Commemoration of its 10th Anniversary
1996.14.1
Photo credit: National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. American Painting Galleries. With thanks.
American Conductor and MacArthur Fellow Marin Alsop: We’re all very excited about this. Five of the 11 composers will be conducting their own works. And they’ll all be speaking directly to the audience to elaborate on the deep impact Beethoven had on their compositional style and process. I’ll be joining my friends for many of these discussions.
MAESTRA AlSOP’S THOUGHTS ABOUT THE ELEVEN BANNED LIVING COMPOSERS:
John Adams: He writes music inspired by the events of our time. Music that is kinetic, visceral and filled with life’s pulse. Music that can be fun as well as enormously thought-provoking, often urging each one of us to examine our personal role in this world.
Thomas Adès: He creates multi-dimensional music that must be peeled off one layer at a time until we get to the core. He is motivated by pure emotion.
John Corigliano: He is a composer who is able to bring the worlds of the past and present together. With an amazing grasp of the symphonic medium and its power to connect with listeners, he uses colors, instruments and unique stage design to create breathtaking new worlds of sound.
Tan Dun: He represents the ever-changing cultural world where East meets West, and has created a brand-new voice that reaches a diverse audience and breaks the boundaries of classical and non-classical music.
HK Gruber: His piece Frankenstein!! is unbelievably inventive and hilarious. Not only did he compose it, he will be conducting and narrating it! You will get to know him, his voice, his sense of humor and sense of story.
Aaron Jay Kernis: He takes inspiration from 20th-century events while exploring a lush sound landscape, filled with melody and color.
James MacMillan: A Scottish composer, he is a thoughtful, powerful creator with a major sense of conscience and responsibility. At the same time, he has a terrific sense of humor and a wonderful sense of his Scottish heritage. Somehow he weaves all of these qualities together to create music that is vital and happening.
Steven Mackey: Steve Mackey’s muscular rhythms, infectious grooves and melodic style are based on indigenous music from around the world, including rock.
Mark O’Connor: A fiddler in his own right, he comes to composing from a performer’s perspective. He understands our American heritage and portrays it evocatively and movingly in his music.
Christopher Rouse: He is unafraid to say the things we all feel. He can be violent, desolate and tender all in the same piece.
Joan Tower: She is the only female composer in our season and the most “athletic” of all. She favors highly rhythmic, percussion--based writing that is immediate and visceral.
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra 2007-08 Season Brochure
*
Winged Horseback Riding American Pianists Peter Kairoff and James Barbagallo, and the American [and all-female] Da Vinci String Quartet, help American music gain 15 minute foothold in today's Classical WETA-FM huckster computer-software generated Playlist for March 1, 2007.
8:28am: Congratulation
George Chadwick
Peter Kairoff (piano)
[Albany 745]
4:46pm: Piano Quintet: IV
Arthur Foote
James Barbagallo (piano)
Da Vinci Quartet
[Naxos 559.009]
Please write to Sharon Percy Rockefeller to protest the New Classical WETA-FM's treatment of American classical music and music of living composers as Entarte Music. Demand that huckster, computer-software-generated classical programming be banned at the publically-supported station; and that the highly-qualified staff members of the Music Division, Library of Congress and the National Gallery of Art, be tasked with developing American classical music content for inclusion [10 to 20 percent] on daily Classical WETA-FM playlists:
Sharon Percy Rockefeller
CEO & President
WETA
2775 South Quincy St.
Arlington, VA 22206
tel 703.998.2600
fax 703.998.3401
Music Division, Library of Congress
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. -- American Painting Galleries and Concert Programs Featuring European and American Classical Music
Unlike Classical WETA-FM, the National Gallery of Art and the Music Division of the Library of Congress are properly-administered American institutions operating in the American trust.
Martin Johnson Heade
Giant Magnolias on a Blue Velvet Cloth, c. 1890
Gift of The Circle of the National Gallery of Art in Commemoration of its 10th Anniversary
1996.14.1
Photo credit: National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. American Painting Galleries. With thanks.
posted by Garth Trinkl at 5:57 AM
2 Comments:
Garth, you should know that for logistic reasons, not programmatic ones, WETA is currently operating of a reduced library (WGMS', actually) -- but will soon work off their combined library (50.000plus discs) when they have physically installed it and merged the databases. Programming will then become more diverse, again.
Jens, you mean that the WGMS library of 25,000 CDs only contained three CDs of American music -- one by Amy Beach, one by Louis Moreau Gottschalk, and one featuring the Overture to Candide by Leonard Bernstein?
[And thanks for noting the typo in the title which I had noticed but hadn't had time to correct.]
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