July 1, 2007

It’s this week in classical music, an update on what’s happening in the classical music world, I’m Randy Kinkel.

Opera Diva and former Met Opera Chairwoman Beverly Sills is reportedly gravely ill with cancer.  Publicist Edgar Vincent said, “It’s grave.  The whole matter of this discovery of cancer has been just about four weeks now.  Up until then she had no idea”.  Vincent declined to release details on the nature of her cancer.  The 78-year-old Sills previously underwent successful cancer surgery in 1974.

Like father, like son—Ken Masur, son of longtime New York Philharmonic conductor Kurt Masur, has been named resident conductor of the San Antonio Symphony.  Masur the younger is currently director of the Ensemble Berlin Projekt in Germany.  In San Antonio he will conduct 24 young people’s concerts, Four interactive family concerts and a summer series each season.

The Grateful Dead are still truckin’ along, this time in the form of a Symphony written by 45-year-old Composer Lee Johnson, who wove nearly a dozen of the groups songs into the work: Dead Symphony No. 6: an orchestral tribute to the Grateful Dead”.  The work has been recorded by the Russian national Orchestra and was released as a download in May and as a CD last Tuesday.  Johnson said, “I have a profound and deep respect and love for what they did.”

Phoenix-based Duo 46 (violinist Beth Ilana Schneider and Guitarist Matt Gould) has been awarded an encore grant by the American Composers Forum to support the performance of John Mayrose’s “Trigger” for violin and guitar.  The work, nominated for a grammy for “best contemporary classical composition” in 2007, will be taken on tour in multiple performances over the next 18 months in Europe and the U.S.  

For more information on these and other items and events, go to the KBAQ website at KBAQ-dot-org.… be listening every week at this time for another update, and join me at noon every weekday for the Mozart Buffet, an hour of music by Mozart and his contemporaries, … I’m Randy Kinkel, for KBAQ’s  “This week in Classical Music”…  on 89-five KBAQ, K-B-A-Q Phoenix, a service of Rio Salado College and Arizona State University