Organist Paul Jacobs Appears on Pipedreams

By -

Spring Tour, 11-12 Dates Announced

Grammy Award-winning organist Paul Jacobs performed Bach's magisterial Clavier-Übung III in November 2010 as part of Lincoln Center's White Light Festival. The performance, which celebrated the reinstallation of the 1974 Kuhn pipe organ at Alice Tully Hall, can be heard during the current week on American Public Media's Pipedreams. Pipedreams is a weekly national program hosted by Michael Barone and broadcast by more than 150 radio stations with listeners numbering around 250,000 and more over its website. The program can also be heard in full here. The show includes the pre-concert discussion with Ara Guzelimian, in which Jacobs talks about his love of Bach, the historical context of the work, and what he thinks about Alice Tully Hall's newly refurbished organ.

Jacobs' recording of Messiaen’s Livre du Saint Sacrement was released by Naxos in September 2010 and received a Grammy Award in the category of Best Instrumental Soloist Performance (without an orchestra). This marks the first time in the history of the award that an organist has won this award. This newsworthy Grammy win comes on the heels of the release of Jacobs's third album, a recording of Copland's Organ Symphony with the San Francisco Symphony. The disc, which was released February 8, 2011 also includes Ives' A Concord Symphony. San Francisco Symphony music director Michael Tilson Thomas said of this rarely heard repertoire, "The Organ Symphony was the first time Aaron Copland heard his own orchestration for big orchestra. Its power surprised him, and power is the essence of this piece. There are quiet, brooding mysterious sections. But it also packs a real punch, both in the kind of jazzy jaggedness that it has and also in the sheer massiveness of sound. We knew that as a companion to the mighty Concord Symphony we had to have something that would measure up. The Organ Symphony certainly does that. And Paul Jacobs delivers an astonishing performance."

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Role of Music in Opera

By -
There are numerous books on the topic, and every composer, librettist, director, singer and audience member has their opinion as to what role the music should play in an opera. In a play without music, the words ought to support the meaning behind a character's actions. However, in the case of action movies, often times the action is what tells the story and there aren't words, just images to forward the plot. We might hear music to accompany action, build tension, but the action tells the story. Musicals tend to speak until the emotion of the moment just "has" to break out in song - unless it's something like "Mama Mia" where the dialog is the rails we travel on between songs; the songs themselves, written before the concept of the musical, are the focus of the production, while the story is secondary. Operas are a different beast. The music provides emotion to the words spoken, but it also plays the role of ambience when there is only action. In &quo
Read more

Episode 210b: Joyeuse le départ

By -
Image
Podcast:  Play in new window  |  Download Subscribe:  Apple Podcasts  |  Android  |  Google Play  |  Stitcher  |  TuneIn  |  RSS Provost Cunningham has Transmigrated, but to where! What is Dr Sage going to do with his body? And how can she bring home her friends, Abigail and Erasmus, without also bring home Cunningham? What are they going to say when they find the “skeleton” she’s hiding in her closet? Cast: Eddie Louise Clark  as Dr Sage Chip Clark  as Professor Savant Justin Bremer  as the Narrator Emily Riley Piatt  as Abigail Entwhistle, Calypso & Dean Stewart Written by  Eddie Louise Theme music by  Unwoman Sound Design by  Chip Michael
Read more

The Art of String Quartets by Brian Ferneyhough

By -
Image
When an artist sets paint to canvas, there are brush strokes used for different effects. Sometimes those strokes are subtle, imperceptible; they produce works of art like the Mona Lisa . Other times the very obvious nature of the stroke is the art, as in works by Van Gogh. With some composers of music, the notes on the page are their craft. How those notes translate into an aural experience is what defines some composers as great artists. Brian Ferneyhough has a masterful command of the techniques of putting notes on the page. These techniques are sometimes so subtle, even though written in black and white, they escape detection. Some of what he attempts with his music is just that, to escape detection, to bury the framework, diverting the ear away from the structure, so only the music is heard . The subtlety is so fine it is almost imperceptible. Even though he studied at several institutions, he is considered self-taught, studying scores from Boule
Read more