WVSO principal flutist, Lindsey Goodman, returned to the WVPB studios this week to share with us her new album "Returning to Heights Unseen: New Music for…
WVSO principal flutist, Lindsey Goodman, returned to the WVPB studios this week to share with us her new album “Returning to Heights Unseen: New Music for Flute”. In our interview she tells us about her time recording the album at Tuff Sound Recording in Pittsburgh and her interactions with different composers. “Some composers were really hands on… and some of the composers, were like, after the first take–‘Great, we’re done!'”
She also performed tracks from her album live for us. One of them, Roger Zahab’s “suspicion of nakedness” was for solo flute. The other, David Stock’s “A Wedding Prayer” used a recorded flute while Goodman performed the other part live.
The album will be released on May 11th and will be available on iTunes, Amazon, and her website: www.lindseygoodman.com
All this week, Maestro André Raphel and the Wheeling Symphony Orchestra are hosting the East Meets West Festival and Concert in Wheeling. This includes…
All this week, Maestro André Raphel and the Wheeling Symphony Orchestra are hosting the East Meets West Festival and Concert in Wheeling. This includes events like “The Art and Tradition of Storytelling”, which took place on Wednesday (3/14); “A Musical Journey Through Chinese and Western Culture”, which will take place Thursday evening (3/15); and a WSO concert, which is happening Friday evening (3/16).
Thursday’s “Musical Journey” will feature violinist Jennifer Frautschi performing on violin and Lu-Han Li performing on Pipa, which is the Chinese equivalent of the Western Lute or Mandolin. It will take place at 6:30 PM at the Stifel Fine Arts Center in Wheeling.
On Friday, Maestro Raphel will be conducting a concert with the Wheeling Symphony which will include Tan Dun’s Symphonic Poem of 3 Notes, Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade. Jennifer Frautschi will be joining the orchestra for the iconic Beethoven Violin Concerto. During Tan Dun’s Symphonic Poem, Raphel says you’ll hear all sorts of interesting sounds including brake drum, stones, and symphonic rapping. Scheherazade is a piece where the Western style of Korsakov meets the Eastern influence of Arabia.
Listen to the full interview here:
You can find out more information on the East Meets West Festival and Concert here.
"I'm home again." That was a declaration by world-renowned Euphonium player, Steven Mead, following his 5-week journey across the world. Mead found…
“I’m home again.” That was a declaration by world-renowned Euphonium player, Steven Mead, following his 5-week journey across the world. Mead found himself performing in several different countries this summer including the Netherlands, Italy, Lithuania, South Korea, and China.
Mead does all his own booking, and joked, “As my wife says, ‘if someone else was organizing it, they wouldn’t make a schedule like that.'”
During the tour, he teamed up with all sorts of musicians including his wife Misa Mead and the brass ensemble, Palencia, from Spain. He also participated in many festivals including adjudicating the World Music Competition (sort of like the Olympic Games of music) in the Netherlands and directing the Jeju International Wind Ensemble Festival; and, he performed in a broadcast for all of Qingdao, China.
Steven Mead and Misa Mead performing on Euphonium for a TV show for Qingdao, China.
Along the way, Mead also experienced many cultures, met a plethora of new people, ate a variety of delicious foods, performed in a cave and even on a moving cable car. He even tricked his airlines into thinking he was bringing a cello along in the largest box available.
Steven Mead’s “Cello” in the largest box he could possibly find.
After all that, Mead tells us that when he finally got home he, “fell inside [his] front door…literally,” because he was so exhausted. He reflects, though, “It’s a small price to pay, really, for those experiences,” and that he “loved every minute of it.” Now, Mead is relaxing and practicing Euphonium at home before he goes on the road once again.
Check out or extensive interview with Euphonium extraordinaire, Steven Mead…
Celebrating the end of warm-ups in Trakai, Lithuania.
If you like Steven Mead’s playing, you can find more at his website euphonium.net.
“Keep on pickin'”– That’s one of the many mantras of legendary composer, conductor, and performer David Amram. He used that mantra when sending out his composition portfolio to job prospects. Several times that portfolio was returned to him unopened, so he simply changed the address on the package and sent it out again. In 1966, however, his portfolio caught the attention of another legendary composer and performer, Leonard Bernstein, and he received the position of composer-in-residence with the New York Philharmonic.
Before that, Amram had written lush and beautiful scores to films such as The Manchurian Candidate (1962) and Splendor in the Grass (1960), so it was no wonder that he would ascend to the lofty position of composer-in-residence.
Amram is also an incredible instrumentalist, being one of the first people to pioneer Jazz French Horn and an incredible piano player. Amram will show off his talents on the Mountain Stage Radio Show on Sunday, July 23rd at the Culture Center in Charleston. The show begins at 7 PM. Amram will perform songs such as Woody Guthrie’s “Pastures a plenty” and Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World” on piano with the Mountain Stage Band backing him.
“I think he’s been such a great spokesperson for the arts… and really for music in general… I think he’s really been someone who’s been able to help classical music progress past the traditional venues and audiences that one might normally expect,” says Wheeling Symphony conductor, André Raphel, about pianist and radio personality Christopher O’Riley.
The host of NPR’s From the Top will be performing Sergei Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto with the Wheeling Symphony on Friday, March 10th at 7:30 PM at the Capitol Theatre in Wheeling. Maestro Raphel is very complimentary of O’Riley’s abilities as a radio host of a show that features young performers. “He’s really great about engaging the kids, sometimes he plays alongside them. He’s really great about making them feel comfortable… I think it lets kids be kids, but at the same time it focuses on some of the great talent that really is out there,” says Raphel. He also lauded O’Riley’s skills as a pianist: “Knowing Christopher as I do, I’m sure he has great understanding and great feeling for [Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto].”
Raphel also plans on performing two works of French impressionist Maurice Ravel–La Valse and Bolero. Raphel says that Ravel, in La Valse, is poking of the traditional Viennese Waltz as it begins mysteriously and ends almost maniacally. This dance influence of the Viennese Waltz helped Raphel come up with the program title “Inspired by Dance” as well as the Bolero, which he claims has it’s basis in Spanish dance. To begin the program, Raphel programmed a lesser-known work of Igor Stravinsky called Scherzo à la Russe, which looks to be a short and fun piece.
"Francis Vincent Zappa" or legendary rock-star, Frank Zappa, was one of the biggest influences of the music of composer John Luther Adams. As were…
“Francis Vincent Zappa” or legendary rock-star, Frank Zappa, was one of the biggest influences of the music of composer John Luther Adams. As were composers Edgard Varèse and Henry Cowell, who wrote edgy, avante-guarde music that isn’t exactly melodic. “I couldn’t get enough of it,” Adams said thinking about how he dug through records of these independent-minded composers.
Adams, too, writes non-melodic music, but it is much more inviting than many of the composers he sought out as a young man. And his pieces are often inspired by nature. For instance, his Pulitzer-Prize winning composition, “Become Ocean” was written on the coast of Mexico in the Sonoran Desert.
Cover photo for the CD “Become Ocean”
This 42-minute piece is a sea of kaleidoscopic sound that entrances the listener from start to finish. As Adams explains in this episode of Composer’s Corner, the piece is “all about waves.” The shape of the piece is a sine wave made up of sine waves. The sound builds and diminishes in successive peaks and troughs just like a wave. Adams divides the orchestra into 3 choirs — woodwinds, brass and strings — and these choirs ebb and flow as parts of a whole, just like the earth’s oceans.
As for the explanation to the title, the composer leaves us with one clue on the inside cover of the score, “Life on this earth first emerged from the sea. As the polar ice melts and sea level rises, we humans find ourselves facing the prospect that once again we may quite literally become ocean.”
