orchestra21

Bach – Music for Christmas
WCFSO – December 2011

Last weekend’s Bach celebration at the WCFSO featured such a fabulous array of music that it proved impossible to choose just one piece to share. So I made a mini-mixtape featuring excerpts from our performances of two Christmas cantatas and the Sixth Brandenburg. I led two of the pieces from the harpsichord; more details on soloists and movements are in the SoundCloud player:

This weekend the WCFSO Lollipops – our traveling, free concert series for toddlers and kids – celebrates thirty years of continuous performances. We’re marking the occassion with a special performance and all-day installation of our instrument petting zoo at the Waterloo Center for the Arts.

One of my deepest professional passions is bringing music to life for young people, so it has been a great honor and pleasure to provide Iowa kids with their earliest experiences of live music through my involvement in this invaluable community program. Now the feeling is personal as well: On Saturday my eighteen-month-old son Benjamin will be among the throng of excited kids helping the WCFSO kick off our next three decades of Lollipops.

[Image from a WCFSO performance for youth by Noah Henschied]

Earlier this week I spoke with Jacqueline Halbloom at Iowa Public Radio about tomorrow’s 9/11 remembrance program hosted by the Gallagher-Bluedorn Performing Arts Center. The concert, one of a series of memorial events taking place this week at the University of Northern Iowa, features the WCFSO, the Metropolitan Chorale, Red Cedar Chamber Ensemble and the UNI Department of Theater:

Interview with Jacqueline Halbloom – mp3
Iowa Public Radio – September 2011

[IPR will broadcast the performance live on Sunday evening at 7pm – here is the mp3 stream.]

Lewis Whittington, offering one very good answer to the questions raised in his recent Salon piece on the plight of symphony orchestras in this country. Whenever I have the chance – and especially on this blog – I promote the WCFSO [a sub-$1M organization in a metro community of 160,000] as an example of what a symphonic ensemble can be and do in the twenty-first century. I suppose things have had to get as bad as they are at many large orchestras now for the American classical music establishment to entertain the idea that lessons might actually be learned from those of us making strides beyond the bright city lights.

Copland – Billy the Kid, Introduction: The Open Prairie
WCFSO – February 2007

Each summer I give at least a few outdoor concerts, and rarely does at least one of those performances not include the iconic American music of Aaron Copland. This particular piece – with its big-sky setting and evocation of the western prairie – is one of my favorites for open-air programs. [The recording comes from an indoor concert as most of my outside shows aren’t taped.]

Incidentally William Henry McCarty, the iconic subject of Copland’s 1938 ballet and a host of other artworks, can be glimpsed in just one confirmed photograph:

[Image via the Guardian, which reports that this tintype photo sold at auction in Denver last month for over $2 million.]