October 21, 2007

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

Washington DC’s Post-Classical Ensemble is looking to do classical concerts in new and different ways.  In a recent interview with Stephen Brookes in the Washington Post,   Joseph Horowitz, Artistic director of the group and author of the book “Classical Music in America: A History of its Rise and Fall”, puts it this way “There's a need for fundamental change -- the format and the repertoire of the concert needs to be completely rethought," Conductor Angel Gil-Ordonez agrees: "We cannot do music in the same way, because humanity has changed.”  Each Post-Classical Ensemble performance focuses on a single idea -- often a single piece of music -- then explores it by drawing freely on film, theater, dance, poetry or anything else to provide context or insight.  the ensemble's fifth season -- which opened last week, includes a program on the first African American opera company in the United States (complete with the operetta performed), a concert devoted to the brilliant, little-known Mexican composer Silvestre Revueltas and a provocative look at how exile in the United States affected the immigrant composers Kurt Weill and Arnold Schoenberg.

A collection of Musical scores and manuscripts stolen from Arthur Rubenstein’s Paris apartment in 1940 by Nazis has been donated to the Juilliard School by the pianist’s family.  Part of the collection had been returned in the late 1950s, and last year the remainder of the collection was returned to Rubenstein’s heirs.  The collection featuring 71 items including original scores autographed from other composers; it will be kept at Juilliard as the Arthur Rubenstein Music Collection and will be available for study.

Concert Violinist David Juritz has just returned from a worldwide tour—not unusual for a concert violinist—but Juritz has been doing it a little differently than most—instead of playing in a concert hall or auditorium he’s been playing in subway stations, on university campuses and on the streets of cities in Europe, Singapore, Uruguay and other countries around the globe, hoping people will throw a little cash into his open violin case...  AND he’s been doing it all for a good cause—the charity Musequality, which funds music programs for poor children around the world.  So far Jurwitz has raised $50,000  and hopes to raise even more.

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.