Michael Tilson Thomas featured in two PBS Great Performances on March 29 & 30

By -

CONDUCTOR MICHAEL TILSON THOMAS FEATURED IN TWO
PBS GREAT PERFORMANCES BROADCASTS TO AIR NATIONALLY ON MARCH 29 & 30

Conductor Michael Tilson Thomas (MTT), Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony and Artistic Director of the New World Symphony, will be featured in two new Great Performances presentations in March to be broadcast nationally on PBS. Both programs are productions of THIRTEEN for WNET , one of America’s most prolific and respected public media providers.

On Thursday, March 29 Great Performances will present The Thomashefskys: Music and Memories of a Life in the Yiddish Theater at 8:00PM (check local listings). Recorded in April 2011 at the Frank Gehry-designed New World Center in Miami Beach , the performance of The Thomashefskys is written and hosted by Michael Tilson Thomas and stars Judy Blazer as Bessie Thomashefsky and Shuler Hensley as Boris Thomashefsky. It also features Ronit Widmann-Levy and Eugene Brancoveanu and the New World Symphony, and is directed for television by Gary Halvorson.

Following the national broadcast on PBS Great Performances on March 29, The Thomashefskys: Music and Memories of a Life in the Yiddish Theater will be released on DVD by New Video (newvideo.com) on April 24 with extras including additional music performances, an interview with MTT about the Thomashefskys and a feature on the New World Symphony, America's Orchestra Academy. The New World Symphony was founded in 1987 by Michael Tilson Thomas and Ted Arison, and has launched the careers of over 800 musicians. Pre-orders for the DVD are currently being accepted at Amazon.com and at the San Francisco Symphony e-store at sfsymphony.org/store and will be shipped immediately following the April 24 release date. The program will also be available for digital download from iTunes, and for sale on the New World Symphony website at nws.edu/shop.

In September, the San Francisco Symphony and MTT launched the Orchestra’s milestone Centennial Season with a celebratory gala concert dubbed “Fanfare for a New Century” at Davies Symphony Hall. The gala concert will be presented as a two-hour special, San Francisco Symphony at 100, by Great Performances on PBS on Friday, March 30 at 9PM (check local listings). The broadcast is hosted by Bay Area author Amy Tan and directed for television by Gary Halvorson and features MTT conducting the Orchestra and two of the leading artists of our time, violinist Itzhak Perlman performing Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E minor and pianist Lang Lang performing Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in E-flat major. The concert opens with Aaron Copland’s vivid portrayal of American prairie life, the Billy the Kid Ballet Suite and concludes with Britten’s orchestral showpiece The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra of which the San Francisco Chronicle said: “…as Thomas led his colleagues, section by section and soloist by soloist… the listener could only marvel at the level of individual excellence and communal artistry on display.” Capping off the concert is an encore of Bay Area composer John Adams’ Short Ride in a Fast Machine featuring moving images of San Francisco projected throughout Davies Symphony Hall. (An audio recording of this performance of Short Ride in a Fast Machine, a work commissioned by MTT in 1986, will also be available on an upcoming all-John Adams recording on the Orchestra’s own SFS Media label along with their 2010 performance of Adams’ Harmonielehre, a work SFS commissioned and premiered in 1985. The recording will be available on March 13, with a special pre-release on iTunes and in the San Francisco Symphony store in Davies Symphony Hall beginning on February 15, the composer’s birthday.)

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