May 18, 2008

by: Randy Kinkel

May 18, 2008

Leontyne Price

( Phoenix, AZ )
•NEA Opera award winners announced
•Recordings added to Archive in DC
•Byrne plans to create building / instrument in NYC

It?s This Week in Classical Music, an update on what?s hapenning in the classical music world, I?m Randy Kinkel.

Last week, the National Endowment for the Arts announced four winners of it?s first NEA opera Honors, the first new national program of arts awards since the Jazz Masters awards were established in 1982? the winners were Soprano Leontyne Price, Conductor James Levine, Composer Carlisle Floyd and administrator Richaard Gaddes, who retires from The Santa Fe Opera this year. Each winner recieves $25,000 in a ceremony to be held in October in Washington D.C.. NEA Chairman Dana Goia said, ?American Opera is really second to none in the world? Opera has become a thriving, Growing American Art Form.?

25 recordings were added to the national recording registery at the Library of Congress. The classical standout was ?Casta Diva? from Bellini?s ?Norma?, sung by Rosa Ponselle with the Met Opera Orchestra and Chorus from 1928, also on the list, Producer David Lewiston?s collection of Balinese music ?Music from the Morning of the World?, released in 1967, and a recording of Fiorello LaGuardia reading the comics over the radio during a newspaper strike in 1945. National Recording Registry is part of the library's attempt to save America's aural history by archiving recordings deemed "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant."

Former Talking Heads Singer David Byrne?s latest project is to turn a NYC building into a gigantic musical istrument. Byrne plans to transform the Great Hall of the Maritime Battery Building by connecting various devices to beams, pipes, and other structires within the building. An Antique organ will control the sounds and serve as the ?keyboard? for the building/instrument. The Installation, called ?Playing the Building?, will be in place from May 31 through August. Visitors to the landmark will be able to create sounds throughout the building by playing the centerpiece organ. Byrne called a similar installation in Sweden in 2005 ?Very Moving to me?. Typical parts of buildings can be used to produce interesting sounds. Everyone is familiar with the fact that if you rap on a metal column, for example, you will hear a ping or a clang," he said.
"But I wondered if the pipes could be turned into giant flutes, and if a machine could make girders vibrate and produce tones."
The 55-year-old former pop star has made a career as a solo musician and visual artist since Talking Heads stopped making records in 1991.

For more on these and other items and events, go to the website kbaq.org, be listening each week at this time for another update, and join me every weekday at noon 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 89.5 KBAQ Phoenix, a service of Rio Salado College and Arizona State University.

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