The ASO on GPB

Leila Josefowicz and Kwame Ryan speak with Terrance McKnight about growing up with musical aspirations. Josefowicz’s prodigy childhood was intense but she had the personality to deal with it. She talks about the eccentricity of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, writing her own eccentric cadenza and her seven-year-old son’s love for music. Ryan recounts being born in Canada, growing up in Uganda and Trinidad and being thankful to go to boarding school in England at age 14. He also talks about his massive arm muscles, and how he gets to know a new orchestra. Both Josefowicz and Ryan speak of music as a source of emotional healing.

Listen Now:

 Standard Podcasts: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download | Embeddable Player | Hits (9)

In conversation with Terrance McKnight, Twyla Robinson and Mariusz Kwiecien speak of the comfort, beauty and joy found in Brahms’ German Requiem. Kwiecien talks about the Polish holidays All Saints Day and All Souls Day and how they relate to the Requiem. He discusses Chopin, his love for the stage and what he sings for fun. Robinson recalls driving to college cranking the ASO Chorus’s old recording of the Brahms Requiem – and now here she is, recording that very piece with that very chorus. The two singers talk about their first professional encounter with each other and finding and working with managers.

Listen Now:

 Standard Podcasts: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download | Embeddable Player | Hits (10)

Roberto Abbado from Milan is fluent in 5 different languages, thanks to his travels. In conversation with GPB’s Sarah Zaslaw, the Italian maestro describes the Milanese stereotype and his technique for combating jet lag. He also talks about working with soloists, dealing with cancellations, operatic culture in Italy and conducting Barber, Mozart and Mahler’s Fourth with the Atlanta Symphony. He has yet to beat ASO music director Robert Spano at picking up the check when they eat out together.

Listen Now:

 Standard Podcasts: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download | Embeddable Player | Hits (3)

One of the first films Yefim Bronfman saw in America was Disney’s Fantasia. He tells GPB’s Sarah Zaslaw about meeting with Roy Disney years later to work on Fantasia 2000, introducing a new generation to classical music. He recalls the amazing fruits and vegetables of his native Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Sergei Prokofiev’s daunting Second Piano Concerto has 20 elements, says Bronfman, and you can only control 10, so you keep practicing and hope you get lucky.

Listen Now:

 Standard Podcasts [18:03m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download | Embeddable Player | Hits (6)

Alison Vulgamore talks to GPB’s Sarah Zaslaw about planning the Atlanta Symphony’s concert season. Vulgamore, who studied music at Oberlin College, describes herself as a singer turned manager. When putting together a season, Vulgamore and her colleagues ask, “What do our audiences need next?”

Listen Now:

 Standard Podcasts: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download | Embeddable Player | Hits (3)

Ollie Knussen tells GPB’s Sarah Zaslaw about expanding Maurice Sendak’s 360-word children’s book Where the Wild Things Are into a 40-minute opera. Knussen talks about the origin of the “wild things,” what language they seem to be muttering in and why they sing a barbershop quartet.

Listen Now:

 Standard Podcasts: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download | Embeddable Player | Hits (4)

For the Khatchaturian Violin Concerto, Cecylia Arzewski wears red, because “it’s a piece you need to bite your teeth into and hang onto it once you do.” Speaking with GPB’s Sarah Zaslaw, she explains that she sees auras around music. She also talks about her favorite notes in pieces, her first encounter with this concerto, studying with Ivan Galamian, fingerings and scales, and her career goals after she retires from the concertmaster’s seat. The 2008–9 season was her last with the ASO.

Listen Now:

 Standard Podcasts: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download | Embeddable Player | Hits (5)

American conductor Hugh Wolff tells GPB’s Sarah Zaslaw about how he taught himself to conduct. Wolff discusses balancing work and family, his sons’ musical tastes and talents, the physical techniques of conducting and playing an instrument and his first job as a conductor. (He says people often confuse his name with that of Austrian composer Hugo Wolf.) The conversation moves on to conveying emotions and sarcasm in music and the dark side of Shostakovich.

Listen Now:

 Standard Podcasts: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download | Embeddable Player | Hits (3)

Donald Runnicles talks with GPB’s Sarah Zaslaw about Berlioz’s Requiem. A requiem is a story, he says, and everyone needs stories to relate to. He talks about returning to Scotland to lead the BBC Scottish Symphony (as of 2009-10 he’ll be based in Berlin with the Deutsche Oper) and what it’s like when conductors and composers come together. He also talks about his cowboy-hat-wearin’ photo shoot for the Grand Teton Music Festival.

Listen Now:

 Standard Podcasts: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download | Embeddable Player | Hits (4)

Donald Runnicles compares and contrasts Gorecki’s and Brahms’s Third Symphonies. He talks with GPB’s Sarah Zaslaw about audience reactions, his children, recurring anxiety dreams and the ego of a conductor. Runnicles says good music goes straight to the heart and bypasses the head.

Listen Now:

 Standard Podcasts: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download | Embeddable Player | Hits (4)

Hans Graf speaks German, Italian, French, Russian and English. He explains to GPB’s Sarah Zaslaw how he learned them all. Graf discusses working with the Iraqi National Symphony for a year, life in Baghdad in the 70s, his position as director of the Houston Symphony Orchestra (which began with a flood) and music of Tchaikovsky, Beethoven and Rachmaninoff.

Listen Now:

 Standard Podcasts: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download | Embeddable Player | Hits (3)

Laura Jackson spent three years working with the Atlanta Symphony as a conductor and head of her own series: Symphony 360. Returning to Atlanta as a guest conductor, she talks with GPB’s Sarah Zaslaw about conducting all over the country and her quest to find a home orchestra. (She has since been named music director of the Reno Philharmonic.)

Listen Now:

 Standard Podcasts: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download | Embeddable Player | Hits (3)

Christopher Rex chats with GPB’s Sarah Zaslaw about the Atlanta premiere of Barber’s Cello Concerto and his own connection with composer Samuel Barber. He also talks about being part of a family string quartet, the mellow personality of a cellist, the music festivals he directs in Amelia Island (Fla.) and Madison (Ga.), his Zuni “fetish” collection and his latest creation – a painting of a fiddler crab holding a violin and bow.

Listen Now:

 Standard Podcasts: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download | Embeddable Player | Hits (4)

William Pu describes growing up in China during the Cultural Revolution, learning the violin from his neighbor and getting accepted to the conservatory in Shanghai in its most competitive year. In conversation with GPB’s Sarah Zaslaw, he talks about moving to the States, the struggles of living life in English, his time with the Houston Symphony Orchestra, his love for chamber music and raising a family as a practicing Buddhist.

Listen Now:

 Standard Podcasts: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download | Embeddable Player | Hits (3)

Nicholas McGegan tells GPB’s Sarah Zaslaw that when most people attend symphony concerts, they don’t expect to laugh. By contrast, the audience rolled with laughter during his Shakespeare concert with the Atlanta Symphony combining opera, symphony and theatre, with music by Mendelssohn, Sibelius and Cole Porter. He also talks about his early exposure to Shakespeare in England and the difficulties of understanding the Shakespearean language. When Shakespeare is done right, he says, anyone can understand it.

Listen Now:

 Standard Podcasts: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download | Embeddable Player | Hits (5)

Georgia native Robert McDuffie recalls his childhood violin teacher in Macon (Hungarian emigre Henrik Schwarzenberger) and the life-altering day his parents made him miss a basketball game to go hear Itzhak Perlman. On the phone with GPB’s Sarah Zaslaw, McDuffie also discusses the new violin concerto by Philip Glass, the old concerto by Tchaikovsky, his violin and…his neck. The chat finally turns to pet projects: the new Robert McDuffie Center for Strings at Mercer University, Macon, and the chamber music festival he runs in Rome, Italy.

Listen Now:

 Standard Podcasts: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download | Embeddable Player | Hits (7)

In a leisurely conversation with GPB’s Sarah Zaslaw, Leonard Slatkin describes conducting Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings after September 11, 2001 and his relationship to the music of Barber generally; his family background in musical Hollywood; his decision to lead the Detroit Symphony and the community work that awaits him there; new pieces he’s written for young pianists and strings; and the book he’s planning on the profession of conducting.

Listen Now:

 Standard Podcasts: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download | Embeddable Player | Hits (4)

Roberto Abbado praises violinist Gil Shaham as a musician and a person, saying the two facets are inextricable. He discusses rehearsals and acoustics and how Atlanta Symphony assistant conductor Mei-Ann Chen helps him out. He paints an interesting picture of wartime Soviet Union 1944, when Prokofiev wrote his highly successful Fifth Symphony, and contrasts Prokofiev and Shostakovich. Abbado spoke with Sarah Zaslaw in the GPB studios.

Listen Now:

 Standard Podcasts: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download | Embeddable Player | Hits (8)

Shai Wosner and Donald Runnicles explore the element of spontaneity common to both improvisation and the performance of notated music. Wosner explains the pivotal role of the Piano Concerto No. 9 among Mozart’s concertos. Runnicles sees in Strauss’s Alpine Symphony, which traces a hiker’s day up and down a mountain, a larger story about the life cycle from birth to death; he loves the vistas and thrills of hiking and skiing himself. And, in the GPB studios with Sarah Zaslaw, the two describe the “healthy nerves” they feel just before performing.

Listen Now:

 Standard Podcasts: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download | Embeddable Player | Hits (5)

Jennifer Higdon and Jennifer Koh provide a glimpse into the relationship between a composer and her interpreter. The two were in Atlanta for performances of Higdon’s The Singing Rooms, written for Koh. In the GPB studios with Sarah Zaslaw, they talk about the performer’s glimpse into the composer’s soul, the unique idea of a violin concerto with orchestra and chorus, the role of the violin in such a sonority, Hidgon’s selection of the poetry and the piece’s use of percussion. The two also touch on the pros and cons of amplification (not used in this piece).

Listen Now:

 Standard Podcasts: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download | Embeddable Player | Hits (6)

Alvin Singleton was making a living as a composer in Europe when he met Robert Shaw, Shaw asked him to come be the Atlanta Symphony's composer in residence, and in half an hour his life changed.  In conversation with Sarah Zaslaw at GPB, the New York native and Atlanta resident reviews his career doing the only thing he really wanted to do - composing.  After ditching accounting as a young man, he never looked back.  And he discusses his choral work Praisemaker, with its theme of memory and its inspiration in the oral tradition of griots. (Also in the studio is composer Jennifer Higdon, who pitches in.)

Listen Now:

 Standard Podcasts: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download | Embeddable Player | Hits (3)

In fall 2009 Nicola Luisotti becomes music director of the San Francisco Opera. Visiting Atlanta to conduct the Atlanta Symphony, the effusive Italian chats with Sarah Zaslaw at GPB about his precocious, multifaceted musical career, he sings a bit of the folk song Tchaikovsky uses in his Capriccio Italien, he compares collaborating with a soloist to getting to know a romantic partner, and he calls Prokofiev the “Mozart of the 20th century.” Luisotti praises dynamic extremes (we are all “full of dynamics inside”). And he depicts his childhood in a crowded house in a Tuscan village. They ate a lot of pasta.

Listen Now:

 Standard Podcasts: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download | Embeddable Player | Hits (5)

Born in Britain and raised in Switzerland, Gilbert Varga is ethnically Hungarian and now lives in France. After training as a violinist he developed a career as a conductor, and in conversation with Sarah Zaslaw at GPB, he talks about the mysterious process of learning to conduct, the pros and cons of batons, his brief encounter with actor Robin Williams and his aversion to describing the emotional, nonverbal art form of music through analytical words.

Listen Now:

 Standard Podcasts: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download | Embeddable Player | Hits (5)

Texan composer Chris Theofanidis chats with GPB’s Sarah Zaslaw about starting composing at age 19 and about his latest piece for the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, titled simply “Symphony.” (He describes the opening moments as an “invitation to the temple.” Further in, he has the musicians sing and hum.) He praises his working relationship with Robert Spano – and reveals the secret of the backstage stash of earplugs. If Theofanidis had not become composer, he says, he would have gone into science or cooking.

Listen Now:

 Standard Podcasts: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download | Embeddable Player | Hits (6)

Donald Runnicles and Mei-Ann Chen talk with GPB’s Sarah Zaslaw about Mahler’s Symphony No. 6. To Runnicles, the Sixth evokes the specter of mortality and fate, as in the two great hammer blows in the finale. He describes Mahler’s use of distant-sounding offstage musicians to create a sense of space, and the feeling when he himself steps off the podium at the end. Chen talks about watching the piece transform from rehearsals to performance. Both conductors recall their first Mahler experiences (for him, the “Resurrection” Symphony in Edinburgh; for her, the Fifth in Spain).

Listen Now:

 Standard Podcasts: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download | Embeddable Player | Hits (12)

Mei-Ann Chen, assistant conductor of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra from 2007 to 2009, recounts her personal history with Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony (it helped her, an unknown, win the Nicolai Malko International Conducting Competition in 2005), and enthuses about the spontaneity and expressiveness of her collaborator in the February concert she led in Atlanta, violinist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg. She also fills GPB’s Sarah Zaslaw in on her life story, from childhood in Taiwan to, improbably, studies in Boston, and on to her burgeoning conducting career and what she’s learned from ASO music director Robert Spano.

Listen Now:

 Standard Podcasts: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download | Embeddable Player | Hits (11)

Conductor Miguel Harth Bedoya says that musicians are like chefs, they have to create shows that are engaging, much like a chef would plan a menu. While describing his “Inca Trail” progam to Sarah Zaslaw, he talks about unearthing Latin American compositions everywhere from music libraries to families of composers. He talks about Gabriela Lena Frank’s Illapa, about the ancient Andean god of the weather, and the different types of flutes Jessica Warren-Acosta uses in her performance with the Atlanta Symphony. He tells the sad story behind Osvaldo Golijov’s Mariel, and he also talks about Fiesta! by Jimmy Lopez, an energetic mini-symphony that includes cumbia and techno rhythms.

Listen Now:

 Standard Podcasts: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download | Embeddable Player | Hits (9)