Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Marcus Thompson: Boston Chamber Music Society To Play William Grant Still in “Winter Festival”

[William Grant Still (1895-1978)]

Marcus Thompson came to our attention in December 2008 via a Myrtle Hart Society eNewsletter article: 'Marcus Thompson, viola and viola d'amore.' Today we present brief excerpts from a fascinating interview with him:

The Boston Musical Intelligencer
News & Features
September 28, 2009
Marcus Thompson Heads BCMS
by BMINT Staff

First, let me thank you for the opportunity to speak with you and to your readers. We are really excited about the possibilities that lie ahead for BCMS. Many artistic and organizational challenges have been on our minds since we undertook a self-study and started thinking about how we need to address our second quarter century. We are in a time of renewal. We want to build our audience in and around Boston, connect to the next generations, seek ways to fit better with local institutions – all while continuing to do some of the most exciting music making in Boston.”

With the support of a major grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and a match from the Boston Chamber Music Society Foundation, we are embarking on a three-week residency at MIT with a series of multi-media concerts at Kresge Auditorium next January that we are calling Winter Festival. These concerts were assembled around the subject of Time and are complemented by a series of free afternoon forums with scientists, artists, and scholars, discussing various aspects related to their work on Time and the music. In the course of the week, as part of this residency, during MIT’s Independent Activities Period, the rehearsals will be free and open to the public as well as the MIT community, and there will be opportunities to discuss the music with the BCMS performers.

The composers represented include Andrew Imbrie, Libby Larsen, George Crumb, Peter Child, Charles Martin Loeffler, William Grant Still and Lukas Foss. The practice of escorting the new with traditional will be reversed a bit with this American-made music escorting Ravel, Beethoven, Dvorak and Mozart.” [William Grant Still (1895-1978) is profiled at AfriClassical.com]






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