Pianist and Author Maria Thompson Corley Interviews Darryl Taylor (Finding Beauty) on YouTube (54:11)

Darryl Taylor

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVeWhI3Lb1Y

Published on Nov 3, 2017

Countertenor Darryl Taylor has performed all over the United States and the world, with concerts in Cuba, Shanghai, and Barcelona, to name a few. He is also a scholar, mentor, and the founder of the African American Art Song Alliance. More than that, he's my buddy.

Harlem Chamber Players: We wish you a Holiday Season and New Year full of Love, Joy, Peace, and Hope

Key to Change Founder and Director Dr. Quinton Morris is honored to be named one of Musical America’s 30 Movers and Shapers of 2017

Musical America is one of the world’s top music publications, distributed in over 95 countries around the globe. Their annual Movers and Shapers report highlights the work of people who are redefining and driving the future of classical music and the performing arts. Quinton was selected for his accomplishments as a performer and educator, and in particular for his work creating the Key to Change in South King County.
Through the Key to Change, Quinton strives to make classical music accessible to all students, regardless of their race or socioeconomic background. Congratulate Quinton and help Key to Change continue to make violin lessons accessible to all students in South King County with a gift to our Key to Change Scholarship Fund.
Join Quinton and the Key to Change as we work to diversify the field of classical music and inspire the next generation of young musicians!

Comment by email:

HI Bill:

Wow! Thanks for getting the word out about this. I really appreciate it!

Quinton [Quinton Morris]

John Malveaux: On Dec 17, 2017, Violinist Annelle Kazumi Gregory was the closing performer for the Georgia Laster Association of Musicians Inc.

John Malveaux of www.MusicUNTOLD.com writes:

On Dec 17, 2017,  Violinist Annelle Kazumi Gregory (2017 Summa Cum Laude from USC's Thornton School of Music and emerging international soloist) was the closing performer for the Georgia Laster Association of Musicians Inc. 20th annual Spotlight on Youth talent showcase.. . Annelle's participation demonstrated her appreciation to the organization that helped launch her meteoric career. Annelle is scheduled for 2018 multiple dates with the New Jersey Symphony. See bio of Annelle http://annelleviolin.com/about.html and pic with her mother Reiko.

Sinfo-Nia Youth Orchestra: Keisha Jackson's One Voice Entertainment Group featuring Sinfo-Nia Orchestra on YouTube (1:52)

Seasons Greetings!

Keisha Jackson's One Voice Entertainment Group featuring Sinfo-Nia Orchestra
 

Sinfo-Nia Youth Orchestra extends Holiday Greetings and an exclusive thanks for your support this year! Enjoy the video below of Keisha Jackson's One Voice Entertainment Group and Sinfo-Nia Orchestra performing "Bells Over Baghdad" to Outcast's tracks infused by DJ Swiff.

We resume classes on Saturday, January 6th, 2018, 9:00 a.m. - noon for student musicians at First Congregational Commons, 125 Ellis Street, downtown Atlanta 30303. 

Join us for Sinfo-Nia's 'One Love Jamaica II'  Summer Performance Tour taking place July 3 - 14, 2018!

For more information: info@sinfo-nia.com, 404.328.0840.

 

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPlWln_u3uQ&feature=youtu.be&mc_cid=3c6e82add2&mc_eid=335b1ad73c

 

Published on Dec 18, 2017

Keisha Jackson's One Voice Entertainment Group and Sinfo-Nia Orchestra performing "Bells Over Baghdad" to Outcast's tracks infused by DJ Swiff.

 

Chicago Sinfonietta: 30th Anniversary MLK Tribute Concert: Ask Your Mama 3 PM Sun. Jan. 14 Naperville & 7:30 PM Mon. Jan. 15 Symphony Hall, Chicago

Janai Brugger

 

Monday, January 15 at 7:30 pm

At Symphony Center

220 S. Michigan Ave.

With words penned in 1960 by Langston Hughes that still resonate as if written by a lyricist today, amplified by a cast including orchestra, opera, jazz vocals, spoken word and archival audio samples, composer Laura Karpman’s three-time Grammy nominated masterpiece Ask Your Mama is the single epic, multi-media jazz/symphonic composition that will mark Chicago Sinfonietta’s 30^th anniversary MLK Tribute concert. Special guest performances by renowned opera soprano Janai Brugger, six-time Grammy-nominated jazz vocalist Nnenna Freelon and Tony nominated de'Adre aziza.

Program: Karpman Ask Your Mama**

Mei-Ann Chen, conductor

Janai Brugger, soprano

Nnenna Freelon, jazz vocalist

De'Adre Aziza, vocalist

Young Chicago Authors Patricia Frazier and Kee Stein, spoken word   

 

** Chicago Premiere

This program will also be performed on Sunday, January 14 at 3 pm, Pfeiffer Concert Hall of North Central College, Naperville

Pianist and Author Maria Corley Interviews Composer H. Leslie Adams (Finding Beauty) on YouTube (36:02)

H. Leslie Adams  (b. 1932)
Composer, Pianist & Professor

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOM_MR6Ff2M&feature=youtu.be

Pianist and author Maria Thompson Corley interviews H. Leslie Adams:

Published on Dec 11, 2017

First, the music. The interview begins with Leslie Adams's "L'Extase d'Amour," performed by violist Lisa Whitfield and pianist, Dianna White Gould. Later on, "Sence You Went Away" is performed by Darryl Taylor, countertenor, with me at the piano. I also turn up performing Leslie's Etude in A minor for piano.

The composer of these wonderful pieces is unlike anyone else I know, because his belief in himself seems unshakable. His path to joy may not be for everyone, but his decision to embrace all people should be.

Festival Myrelingues Performs Works of Le Chevalier de Saint-Georges, Florence Price, Fela Sowande and Adolphus Hailstork

 Violin Concertos, Op. 5, Nos. 1 & 2; Op. 3, No. 1; Op. 8, No. 9
Bernard  Thomas Chamber Orchestra
Jean-Jacques Kantorow, Violin 
Arion 68093 (1990)

Festival Myrelingues writes from France:

It was difficult this year but we are very proud that in 2017 we met very nice artists and that we could give birth to very nice new music. It would be very nice if you could help us to communicate about this. Of course, we will send you infos about our 2018 projects as soon as we will fix all of them...

Best regards,

Bien cordialement

L'équipe, pour Myrelingues

2017 : another year of beautiful projects for Myrelingues (France) !

Since 2014, Myrelingues is a French project connecting Caraibs, Africa and Classical music. 2017 provided several highlights and among them :

Ø  New piece by Ali Osman organ transcription of Chevalier Saint Georges by the organist Frederic Champion (concert on april 2 in Lyon and internet broadcasting by LSH Radio)

Ø  Educational project and concert in Lyon (including works by Dupré, Florence Price, Fela Sowande and Alcée Chriss/ Art Tatum) by the recently awarded organist Alcée Chriss (November 2017)

Ø  At the end of the year, broadcasting of a new orchestral piece by Adolphus Hailstork commissioned by the festival (Ndemara for orchestra) : 1^st broadcasting on “radio Semnoz” the 23^rd of December 2017 of a concert performed the 31^st of August at La Chartreuse de Mélan (France).

Performing Arts Review: Superlative performances all, pianist Clipper Erickson has resurrected an American master. [R. Nathaniel Dett]

R. Nathaniel Dett is featured at AfriClassical.com

Performing Arts Review:

Pianist Clipper Erickson has devoted an enormous amount of thought, preparation time, energy, and virtuoso pianism crafting this remarkable 2 CD set (over two hours of fascinating music) comprising the complete piano works of Robert Nathaniel Dett (1882-1943). A member of the teaching and adjunct faculties at Westminster Conservatory in Princeton and Temple University in Philadelphia, Erickson’s beautifully packaged and superbly performed compilation, My Cup Runneth Over: The Complete Piano Works of R. Nathaniel Dett is offered by Navona Records (NV 6013), a PARMA Recordings company.

Exquisite sound engineering at Reitstadel, Neumarkt in Oberpfalz, Germany under the world-class recording supervision of Dirk Fischer ranks this set as arguably one of the most significant releases of neglected piano repertoire since the revelatory Nonesuch recordings in the 1970s of Scott Joplin’s piano music. Those releases thoroughly transformed performance practice regarding ragtime and other popular music of the turn of the last century. This recording of Nathaniel Dett’s piano music presents to the world for the first time, an important and essentially fresh portfolio of major piano works by a significant North American composer of African descent.

Nathaniel Dett is admired as the first American composer to incorporate Negro folk music into the European art music tradition. Born in Canada, the composer spent most of his life and career in the United States, graduating from the Oberlin Conservatory majoring in piano and composition in 1908. His education continued at Harvard with composer Arthur Foote (1920-21) and in Paris with Nadia Boulanger. He earned his Master of Music from the Eastman School of Music in 1932. Dett was a polymath; not only composer, choir leader, pianist, and teacher but recognized poet and writer. His, The Emancipation of Negro Music, won an important literary prize at Harvard in 1920 and his volume of poems, The Album of a Heart, conveys Dett’s transcendent message of human oneness – a notion revolutionary then, as now.

  

Unerring prescience and stunning technical prowess are Clipper Erickson’s interpretive tools as he unravels without fuss, the subtle mysteries of the composer’s deep and often melancholic musings. The evocative titles on these two discs offer a richly rewarding and audibly discernible progression through Dett’s intellectual, moral, and musical life over four decades, from the turn of the last century to the mid 1940s. His piano suites Magnolia (1912), In the Bottoms (1913), Enchantment (1922) Cinnamon Grove (1928), Tropic Winter (1938), Eight Bible Vignettes (1941-43) and his other descriptive musical snapshots After the Cakewalk (1900), Cave of the Winds (1902), Inspiration Waltzes (1903), and Nepenthe and the Muse (1922) are masterpieces of form and structure. Dett’s passionate but private world view, which he held tightly, is discreetly channeled through Erickson’s poignant interpretations.

The most moving and prophetic work on this one-of-a-kind collection was also Dett’s last. Eight Bible Vignettes [tracks 8-15 on disc two] composed over a span of three years before the composer’s death in 1943 is a masterful example of compositional maturity, conflating virtuoso writing in the tradition of Liszt or Brahms with 20th century harmony. Erickson’s performance of each Vignette glitters with finesse and erudition. Likewise, the pianist’s approach to a much earlier suite, In the Bottoms [tracks 6-10 on disc one]. Careful stylings and cheerful panache are brought to the keyboard by Erickson for the lighter pieces After the Cakewalk and Inspiration Waltzes but even these reveal a serious and thoughtful curation of Dett’s profound musical mind that will satisfy scholars for years to come. My Cup Runneth Over: The Complete Piano Works of R. Nathaniel Dett is a must own for those who love hearing the piano captured exquisitely on disc. More importantly, this thoroughly researched set (the program notes are fabulous) is an important reference resource for pianists and programmers alike. Superlative performances all, pianist Clipper Erickson has resurrected an American master.

 Daniel Kepl | Performing Arts Review

John Malveaux: Dec 16th is Beethoven's birthday. Beethoven's relationship with Afro-European violinist George Bridgetower is little known

George Bridgetower

John Malveaux of 

www.MusicUNTOLD.com  

writes:

Dec 16th is Beethoven's birthday. Beethoven's relationship with Afro-European violinist George Bridgetower is little known. See http://chevalierdesaintgeorges.homestead.com/bridge.html

Thanks

John