MEMETERIA by Thomas May

Music & the Arts

January 6, 2024 • 11:08 pm Comments Off on PostClassical Ensemble Celebrates Jeffrey Mumford

PostClassical Ensemble Celebrates Jeffrey Mumford

PostClassical Ensemble begins the new year with Amazing Grace, a program centered around Jeffrey Mumford’s cello of radiances blossoming in expanding air in its Washington, D.C., premiere.  The concert, which music director Angel Gil-Ordóñez will conduct on 10 January 2024 at 7.30 pm at the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater,  presents Annie Jacobs-Perkins as the soloist and will also include music by John Newton, George Walker, Margaret Bonds, Gustav Mahler, Gabriel Fauré, and Luciano Berio. Mumford, who also serves as guest curator, will receive PCE’s American Roots Artist Award for his outstanding contributions to American music.

Amazing Grace: In Paradisum

Wednesday, January 10 2024, 7:30pm

Terrace Theater | The Kennedy Center | 2700 F St NW, Washington, DC

Presented without intermission

Jeffrey Mumford, guest curator

Annie Jacobs-Perkins, cello

Katerina Burton, soprano

CAAPA Chorale

Andre Leonard, piano

PostClassical Ensemble conducted by Angel Gil-Ordóñez

PROGRAM:

John Newton: Amazing Grace

George Walker: O Praise the Lord

George Walker: Stars  

George Walker: Lyric for Strings

Jeffery Mumford: of radiances blossoming in expanding air (DC premiere)

Gustav Mahler: 4th Symphony. 4th Movement, The Heavenly Life

Gabriel Fauré: In Paradisum from Requiem

Luciano Berio: O King

Margaret Bonds: Aria from Credo

Jeffrey Mumford Let Us Breathe

John Newton: Amazing Grace

       arr. Evelyn Simpson Curenton

Post-Concert Discussion

 

Filed under: music news, PostClassical Ensemble

November 14, 2023 • 10:23 pm Comments Off on PostClassical Ensemble: Music and Architecture

PostClassical Ensemble: Music and Architecture

PostClassical Ensemble (PCE) begins its 20th-anniversary season on 16 November at the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater with a concert titled Bouncing off the Walls: Music and Architecture. Exploring the complex relation between these two art forms, the program will juxtapose music written for particular buildings with early-20th-century Modernist efforts to reduce both forms to their elemental materials. Tickets here.

Beginning with Beethoven’s Consecration of the House Overture, written to celebrate a newly remodeled theater and opera house in Vienna, the concert includes music by Gabrieli composed for the Basilica of San Marco in Venice; the “palindrome” minuet from Haydn’s Symphony No. 47 in G from 1772, Anton Webern’s Five Pieces for Orchestra, and Rossini’s William Tell Overture “reassembled to maximize the acoustic possibilities of The Kennedy Center Terrace Theater.”

Projections of hand-drawn architectural sketches by Centennial Medal winner Hany Hassan FAIA will accompany the music, which PCE music director Angel Gil-Ordóñez will conduct. Guest curator and cultural critic Philip Kennicott will offer commentary on the relationship between music and architecture.

Here’s an excerpt from an interview between Gil-Ordóñez and Kennicott:

Philip, you’ve written about both music and architecture; can you talk about how you see the two as interrelated?

PK: I started with the vocabulary they share. Words like harmony and dissonance, form, structure and ornamentation, make sense to both musicians and architects. There’s been a long history of assuming that because music and architecture are both dependent on mathematics and ideas of proportion, and because they also share a language, that they must be fundamentally connected. Think of that famous line by Goethe everyone loves to quote: Architecture is frozen music. I love the poetry of that thought and it will be our starting point for the concert. But then we’re going to move on and try to look a little more deeply about both the similarities and the differences between these two realms of creativity. Consider this obvious difference: A badly constructed piece of music may be boring, or annoying or forgettable, but a badly built building can fall down and kill people. So, clearly, there are some distinctions to be made. 

Filed under: architecture, music news, PostClassical Ensemble, Washington Post

March 15, 2022 • 1:00 am Comments Off on Silvestre Revueltas and Social Justice Art

Silvestre Revueltas and Social Justice Art

Cultural historian Joseph Horowitz considers the case of the Mexican composer Silvestre Revueltas (1899-1939) in his latest piece for NPR. According to Horowitz, Revueltas was not only “Mexico’s greatest composer but the supreme political composer of concert music produced in our Western hemisphere.”

A related project of Horowitz’s PostClassical Ensemble endeavor is the world premiere recording of the complete soundtrack Revueltas wrote for the 1935 film Redes, conducted by Angel Gil-Ordonez.

Filed under: Mexican composers, PostClassical Ensemble

January 31, 2021 • 12:15 am Comments Off on Aaron Copland: American Populist

Aaron Copland: American Populist

This new film from PostClassical Ensemble’s More than Music Project explores Aaron Copland’s far left activism — including a rare performance of his prize-winning workers’ song “Into the Streets, May First,” with its call “Up with the sickle and the hammer!”

Notes Joseph Horowitz of PCE, “It’s all eerily pertinent today, this saga of an iconic American composer jostled by Populist currents on the far left, then the far right – and finally retreating from the fray.”

Among the film’s participants are the American historians: Michael Kazin (on populism) and Joseph McCartin (on the Red Scare). The soundtrack includes excerpts from PCE’s Naxos DVD of The City (1939), which Horowitz regards as “Copland’s highest achievement as a film composer, and the least-known consequential music that he composed.”

Aaron Copland, he concludes, “somewhat resembles ‘a cork in a stream,’ buffeted by political and social currents — a saga that raises many questions, including: What is the fate of the arts in the United States?”

An index to the 75-minute film:

10:14 – Copland on that Communist picnic

11:48 – Copland on workers’ songs

12:34 – “Into the Streets, May First” sung by Lisa Vroman and William Sharp

16:37 – Copland on Hollywood film music (with some Korngold to listen to)

20:00 – Excerpts from The City

39:20 – Joseph McCartin on the Red Scare

44:34 – Joe McCarthy and Roy Cohn grill Copland

58:25 – Music historian Beth Levy on Copland’s quest for musical identity

1:04:32 – Michael Kazin on Copland and the Popular Front

1:06:30 – Horowitz’s summing up — a “cork in a stream” – with comparisons to Charles Ives and George Gershwin: composers with deeper roots

1:12:54 – The last word goes to pianist Benjamin Pasternack, recalling an illuminating meeting with Aaron Copland at Tanglewood. 

Filed under: Aaron Copland, American music, PostClassical Ensemble

October 16, 2020 • 7:15 am Comments Off on Bernard Herrmann’s Whitman

Bernard Herrmann’s Whitman

aThe latest production from PostClassical Ensemble explores a side of Bernard Herrmann that is scarcely acknowledged today. Herrmann is best known for his chilling score to Psycho and six other Alfred Hitchcock films, as well as his collaborations with Orson Welles. But he started out as a conductor at CBS, becoming music director of the pioneering  Columbia Workshop.

As a significant contributor to the medium of radio drama, Herrmann in 1944 composed music for Whitman, a drama focusing on Leaves of Grass. The half-hour show was produced by Norman Corwin with a contemporary aim: to boost morale back at home during the Second World War. Those were the days when millions of Americans tuned in to radio drama — in this case, a drama about a poet, with a first-rate, fresh score as accompaniment.

Angel Gil-Ordonez conducts the ensemble and William Sharp as the poet in this newly restored version of Whitman released on Naxos. In conjunction with the release, PCE has also produced the documentary Beyond Psycho– The Musical Genius of Bernard Herrmann. The film features commentary by Joseph Horowitz (who regards Hermann as “the most underrated 20th-century American composer”), Gil-Ordonez, Karen Karbiener (a Whitman scholar), Murray Horwitz (an expert on radio drama), Dorothy Herrmann (the composer’s daughter), and Alex Ross. 

Filed under: American music, PostClassical Ensemble, radio drama

September 1, 2020 • 10:54 am Comments Off on The Artist and State: Political Art in Mexico and the US

The Artist and State: Political Art in Mexico and the US

UPDATE:

Excerpts from the Zoom chat:

This first clip includes commentary by: 
Lorenzo Candelaria – Dean, Blair School of Music, Vanderbilt University
Gregorio Luke – Lecturer and author, specialist in Mexican Art and Culture
Ana Lara – Composer, Mexico City
Ix-Nic Iruegas – Executive Director, Mexican Cultural Institute, Embassy of Mexico
(47 minutes)
 
This second clip provides the historical context of Mexican cultural by John Tutino – Historian, Georgetown University (11 minutes).
Additional resources related to this chat:
Film:
To purchase PCE’s acclaimed Naxos DVD of Redes, with Revueltas’s soundtrack newly recorded by PostClassical Ensemble, click here: https://Naxos.lnk.to/2110372ID
Books:
Ix-Nic Iruegas, Executive Director of the Mexican Cultural Institute,  recommended two books by one of Mexico’s most outstanding authors: Sergio Pitol: The Art of Flight (Deep Vellum Publishing, 2015); and The Magician from Vienna (Deep Vellum Publishing, 2017). 
 
For more on the Mexican Cultural Institute, visit: http://instituteofmexicodc.org

The latest installment in the PostClassical Ensemble’s (PCE) More than Music series takes up the issue of political art, with a focus on the landmark 1936 film Redes — and its powerful score by Silvestre Revueltas.

Some of the questions to be explored in PCE’s Zoom discussion on 2 September at 6.30pm EST: How did the Mexican Revolution galvanize political muralists and composers? Why was Mexico more hospitable to political art than the US? What’s the pertinence of political art today?

The Zoom-chat will feature Gregorio Luke’s presentations on Diego Rivera and the Mexican muralists, plus commentary by composer Ana Lara and by historians Roberto Kolb, John Tutino, and Lorenzo Candelaria, and Ix-Nic Iruegas Peon of the Mexican Cultural Institute. Registration is free: simply sign up here.

From Joseph Horowitz’s blog post “’Redes’ Lives! — The Iconic Film of the Mexican Revolution and What It Says to Us Today”:

“It’s a pity that Silvestre Revueltas is not at least as well known as Rivera. I would unhesitatingly call him the supreme political composer of concert and film music produced in the Americas. His music combines ideology with personal understanding…Revueltas’s peak achievements include his singularly arresting score for the film Redes (1936), in which impoverished Mexican fisherman unite to storm the bastions of power.”

More from Joe Horowitz:

On “The Artist and the State” in Mexico (where political art has greatly mattered) and the U.S. (where the artist remains an outsider):

Filed under: PostClassical Ensemble

July 3, 2020 • 6:11 pm Comments Off on When the Federal Government Was Serious about Arts Funding

When the Federal Government Was Serious about Arts Funding

UPDATE: Here’s a link to the Zoom panel talk referenced below.

The Great Depression has been repeatedly invoked of late as we try to gauge the enormous impact of the current pandemic and the related economic crisis. But in the 1930s, Americans had a government in place that recognized the importance of the arts through the Works Progress Administration. These programs employed massive numbers of artists, writers, musicians, actors, dancers, and photographers.

On 5 July, together with Naxos and The American Interest, PostClassical Ensemble (PCE) presents the next installment in its More than Music series: Behrouz Jamali’s documentary on The Plow that Broke the Plains (1936), which focuses on the Dust Bowl, and The River (1938), a modern ode to the role played by the Mississippi River. With scores by Virgil Thomson, both were the first-ever films created by the federal government for commercial release (i.e., not merely informational or educational films). Both champion a distinctly anti-Hollywood aesthetic.

There will be a follow-up Zoom chat on 9 July at 3pm EST. A panel will explore government funding for the arts during the pandemic: conductor Angel Gil-Ordóñez, PCE Executive Producer Joseph Horowitz, historian David Woolner, and film historians Neil Lerner and George Stoney. Also on the agenda is a discussion of how Roosevelt’s New Deal addressed issues of race in the era of Jim Crow. To register, click here.

See also Joseph Horowitz’s blog post “The New Deal, the Arts, and Race — and Today”.

Filed under: American music, history, PostClassical Ensemble, social justice

June 16, 2020 • 10:51 am Comments Off on Porgy and Bess Roundtable from PostClassical Ensemble

Porgy and Bess Roundtable from PostClassical Ensemble

Following up on my post from the beginning of the month, here’s a distillation of PostClassical Ensemble’s 10 June zoom chat titled “Porgy and Bess Roundtable: What’s It About and Who’s Singing It?”

The panelists include George Shirley, the first African-American tenor to sing lead roles at the Metropolitan Opera, the bass-baritone Kevin Deas, one of the leading Porgys on today’s scene, Conrad Osborne, an expert in opera in performance, will also join in, and PCE founder Joseph Horowitz, with Bill McGlaughlin hosting. They also sample some historic Porgy recordings.

For more on this topic, here is Horowitz’s recent post: “Porgy Takes a Knee — Porgy and Bess and the American Experience of Race“:

“It’s interesting that Gershwin chose as his protagonist a person who’s on his knees. ‘Taking a knee’ has never been more relevant.”

continue

Filed under: African-American musicians, American music, George Gershwin, PostClassical Ensemble

June 2, 2020 • 6:12 am Comments Off on PostClassical Ensemble’s More than Music Turns the Spotlight on Gershwin

PostClassical Ensemble’s More than Music Turns the Spotlight on Gershwin

PostClassical Ensemble — the “experimental orchestral laboratory” founded in 2003 by Joseph Horowitz and Angel Gil-Ordonez — has been reflecting on music’s role in society through a series called “More then Music,” which presents audio/video webcasts and associated zoom chats.

With the new challenges it poses to institutions we’ve taken for granted, the coronavirus pandemic has intensified the urgency of thinking about these issues of music and its social function — as opposed to abstracting the art into a “purely” aesthetic construct.

The latest edition of PCE’s More than Music series focuses on George Gershwin and a time of creative ferment that was tearing down conventional walls around self-described “serious” music.

PCE has just released the video linked above, The Russian Gershwin, featuring commentary by Joseph Horowitz (PCE Executive Producer) and Angel Gil-Ordóñez (PCE Music Director), with Bill McGlaughlin as the host.

There will be two follow-up zoom chats free and open to the public, both from 6 to 7pm EST. The first one, on 4 June, “A Gershwin Roundtable,” will be a discussion with Horowitz, Gil-Ordóñez, the pianist Genadi Zagor, and Mark Clague, director of the Gershwin Initiative at the University of Michigan. It will also include a live performance by the jazz artist Karrin Allyson.

The 10 June chat is titled “Porgy and Bess Roundtable: What’s It About and Who’s Singing It?” Along with Horowitz, Gil-Ordóñez, and Clague, special guests will include two pre-eminent singers who are authorities on Porgy and Bess: George Shirley, the first African-American tenor to sing lead roles at the Metropolitan Opera, and the bass-baritone Kevin Deas, one of the leading Porgys on today’s scene. Conrad L. Osborne, an expert in opera in performance, will also join in, and there will a discussion of historic Porgy recordings. Bill McGlaughlin hosts both zoom chats.

More details and sign-up links to the free zoom chats here.

Filed under: African-American musicians, George Gershwin, PostClassical Ensemble

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