Thursday, June 11, 2009

Will Classical WETA-FM's Crack In The Ceiling Allowing For Broadcasts Of Works By Living American Composers Allow Nkeiru Okoye To Reach Ears Of WNO?





Last night, the ever mysterious Classical WETA-FM, in the Nation’s Capital, actually programmed music by living American classical composers John Harbison and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich:

American Music Month

9:01 pm
John Harbison
Piano Quintet
Gilbert Kalish (piano) | Boston Symphony Chamber Players
Nonesuch Records 79189

11:34 pm
Ellen Taaffe Zwilich
Concerto Grosso
New York Philharmonic | Zubin Mehta (conductor)
New World Records 372

Having just viewed Harriet Tubman’s home on the Eastern Shore of Maryland last week, I am hoping that Classical WETA-FM will perform Nkeiru Okoye’s Songs of Harriet Tubman, derived from her opera Harriet Tubman: When I Crossed That Line to Freedom before the station shuts the door on the living American Classical music tradition on July 5, 2009.

Washington National Opera -- performing one American opera each and every season.

*

[I unfortunately missed yesterday’s broadcast Classical WETA-FM’s single movement from Henry Hadley’s lush, romantic Symphony # 4 in D minor.

American Music Month

8:35 am
Henry Kimball Hadley
Symphony #4 in D Minor, Op. 64: III. South (Allegretto giocoso)
National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine | John McLaughlin Williams (conductor)
Naxos 559.064]

Mr. Williams was a previously unknown to Classical WETA-FM Grammy Award-winning American classical conductor from Washington, D.C.]

*

Photo credits; Wikipedia Commons. (c) Website of Nkeiru Okoye, Composer 2009.

*

American classical music on Classical WETA-FM, today June 11, 2009:

7:19 am: Anthony Louis Scarmolin: Dance from "The Caliph"

9:06 am: George Whitefield Chadwick: Thalia

11:10 am: John Alden Carpenter: Nocturne

1:03 pm: George Rochberg: Transcendental Variations

3:22 pm: Arthur Foote: Piano Quintet

4:46 pm: George Chadwick: Symphony #2 in B-flat Major, Op. 21: II. Allegretto scherzando

6:25 pm: Craig Russell: Middle Earth: #1. Frodo Leaves the Shire; #2. Grimli, the Dwarf; #3. Galadriel and Her Elvin Mirror

7:59 pm: Aaron Copland: Danzon Cubano

9:01 pm: George Rochberg: Violin Concerto

11:03 pm: George Templeton Strong: Chorale on a Theme of Leo Hassler

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home