For the last 10 years, I’ve spent nearly every waking hour thinking about early music, as the administrative director of Juilliard Historical Performance. So I could not let the opportunity to share songs with the erudite NYFOS audience pass by without at least one example of repertoire from whence it all started. This is a piece from the early days of sung drama by Giulio Caccini. It’s from a set of songs called Le nuove musiche (The New Music) that aimed to explore new possibilities of expression. Imagine being there for the first time this piece was ever heard!
Read MoreBack in the day, specialization in music was unheard of. To be a musician was to be a composer, performer, multi-instrumentalist (hello, Mozart), improviser, and/or impresario. If you played the oboe in a Baroque orchestra, for example, you probably also played the recorder, and you may have sung as well. Caroline Shaw is a modern-day incarnation of this ideal—a remarkably versatile musician who is expert at many things.
Read MoreEver fallen down the YouTube rabbit hole? You know, you innocently start looking for something and three hours later you look up from your iPad, having forsaken all social niceties (and biological necessities), and wonder what happened to the afternoon? I don’t know who has the time to load every video ever made in the history of media, but I for one am thankful that it’s all there.
Read MoreSchubert. So many songs, and yet so few of them are heard in performance. Here is one of my favorite lesser known gems sung by the amazing Nicolai Gedda. For me, he’s the perfect mix of bel canto ease and just plain class. And I, for one, don’t mind that the recording has not been airbrushed to perfection using all the gewgaws of modern-day recording technology. There are a few blemishes in pitch and tone that make it all the more human. And it’s a really hard song!
Read MoreArtist of the Month features British-American tenor Joshua Blue. A current Masters degree student at The Juilliard School, Joshua received the Ellen Lopin Blair award for First Place in the Lyndon Woodside Oratorio-Solo Competition held annual by the Oratorio Society of New York last spring, as well as an Emerging Artist Award in the 2017 Opera Index Competition in New York City. A NYFOS Emerging Artist program alum, Mr. Blue will return to NYFOS at the end of the month in our Protest program in NYC and Hudson, NY.
Read MoreThe question, “what should music do?” seems to always be in the air. And artists, critics, theorists and music lovers constantly provide new answers. Music should comfort. Music should challenge the powerful. Music should be beautiful. Music should bring people together. Truisms. Often we wrap our answers around our ideas around what we see as most needed in the world. These days I am interested more in what music does.
Read MoreFolk songs written by West Virginians born in the 1920s. Progressive, utopian even, they are visions of an American future. George Crumb, pioneer of sound and music, has become a prolific setter of American folk songs in the last few decades. From the songs he has set and the industrial-mystical hollow and full soundscapes he creates around them, it seems that Appalachia, and his home state of West Virginia specifically are on his mind.
Read MoreOne of the things I love about the Highlander Center, perched on a hill in eastern Tennessee overlooking the Smokey Mountains, is that it points to the history and continuing possibility of cultural appreciation and political alignment between rural and urban working class communities.
Read MoreSo, how do we get from the austere and atonal grandeur of Ruth Crawford’s lament “Sacco and Vanzetti,” to the uplifting hymn tune and civil rights anthem of “We Shall Overcome.” First, shout-out to composer Nate May for making the connection. In 1932 Ruth Crawford married fellow composer, musicologist, and political lefty Charles Seeger Jr, father of then thirteen-year-old Pete Seeger.
Read MoreThe process of making music with Steve Blier and NYFOS is always an exploration that demands equal parts intellectual and emotional integrity. I’ve been back in the studio with Steve this month as we gear up for the upcoming Protest concert at Merkin Hall, bridging the gap, or finding a union between, my activist and musical impulses. Inspired by that work, I’m going to take this week of posts to trace a line through progressive American song writing of the 20th century
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