American Masterworks Series
Street Scene, May 13
Elmer Rice
Kurt Weill
Langston Hughes
A companion to AfriClassical.com, a website on African Heritage in Classical Music.
Labels: Chicago Symphony, Mahler, Measha Brueggergosman, Sergio Mims
[Raymond Harvey, D.M.A., Music Director and Conductor, Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra]
Raymond Harvey, http://www.RaymondHarvey.net, is Music Director and Conductor of the Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra. He received B.A. and M.A. degrees from Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and graduated from the Yale School of Music with a Doctor of Musical Arts degree.
[Violin soloist Anne Akiko Meyers and Maestro James DePreist with the the Pasadena Symphony.]
John Malveaux of http://www.MusicUNTOLD.com sends AfriClassical this word of the Oct. 23 concert of the Pasadena Symphony: “I attended Pasadena Symphony season opener after attending special community chat with Maestro DePriest. Please see http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2010/10/pasadena-symphony-.html
LATimesBlogs
Culture Monster
October 24, 2010
“The conductor was James DePreist. Former long-time music director of the Portland Symphony, he is director of conducting studies at Juilliard, a post Mester once held. DePreist was born in 1936; Mester 1935. DePreist, who -- like Mester -- has a reputation as an orchestra builder, now serves as artistic advisor of the Pasadenans, but he will not return for the rest of its short season.
“DePreist, who contracted polio in 1962 and conducts from a wheelchair, showed great caution. His tempos were very slow.” “Anne Akiko Meyers was the soloist in Samuel Barber’s romantic, 1939 Violin Concerto. She played her 'Molitor' Stradivarius, which was believed to once have been owned by Napoleon and which she had purchased the previous week in auction for a record $3.6 million.”
“Meyers played aggressively, but might have been more rhapsodic had she not been carefully constrained by DePreist. Her encore, Gershwin’s 'Summertime,' was supple, jazzy and alluring.”
[AfriClassical.com profiles James DePreist (b. 1936). Maestro De Preist has published two volumes of poetry and has his own website, http://www.JamesDePreist.com.]
Labels: Anne Akiko Meyers, James DePreist, Pasadena Symphony
Aaron says that less than “1% of music performed by North American orchestras was composed by blacks or latinos, despite a rich repertoire.” The 41 Composers of African Descent who are featured at AfriClassical.com represent a tiny fraction of the thousands of composers of color who have enriched the classical repertoire over the centuries. Why do North American orchestras program so few of the distinguished compositions of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Adolphus Hailstork, Florence B. Price, Le Chevalier de Saint-Georges, William Grant Still and George Walker, to name just a few whose works are readily available?
Labels: Croydon, Fact Mag, London Suburb, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor
“I also recall Nokuthula Ngwenyama's first appearance at the Kennedy Center and have enjoyed watching her career blossom. I'm delighted to hear of her residency at the Taft Museum in Cincinnati. Cathy and I have spent many summers at the University of Cincinnati-College Conservatory of Music's Annual Classical Guitar Workshop. My most vivid memory of the Museum's artifacts was that of President Taft's cradle. As always, I deeply appreciate your continued dedication to this website. All best, Phyllis Fleming”