First the good news. Today’s recording session at Ora TV was a portrait in smooth. The crew is slick as snail slime on a bowling alley and incredibly easy to work with. I am working in front of a green screen (see below), which will allow my producer Jason Rovou (who was kind enough to take the pictures below) to superimpose virtually anything behind me. It will be fascinating to see what he comes up with. We have one more day of shooting (tomorrow), and then the episodes will be in the hands of Jason and the production crew. The bad news: ah, show biz. Larry King ran late today and thus we did not have a chance to record my segment. Boo-hoo for me: all dressed up (in a tie and jacket, no less!) and no place to go. I will return sometime later this spring, before the release of my shows, in order to record the segment. I look forward to it.
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Robert Greenberg
Historian, Composer, Pianist, Speaker, Author
Author Archive for Robert Greenberg – Page 79
Yesterday I headed off to the OraTV studios in Southern California to record 15 episodes of what I hope will be an ongoing show, “Conspiracies, Peccadilloes, and Dirty Little Secrets! Fun and Games with the Great Composers”. As the show’s title rather breathlessly indicates, each episode focuses on a conspiracy, or a peccadillo, or a dirty little secret from the life of a composer. As part of the process, I’m slated to appear on the Larry King show this morning. King is a co-founder of OraTV, which “broadcasts” directly to your computer (or digital device) from its website. I will let you all know when the Larry King segment is scheduled to appear and, of course, when “Conspiracies, Peccadilloes, and Dirty Little Secrets . . .” makes its debut.
Continue ReadingColor me thrilled and grateful. Our Kickstarter campaign has raised its required 3k minimum, and will thus pay out on March 11, the day of the premiere for which the campaign was created. However, my dearest, darling, beneficent, generous-to-a-fault friends (was that treacly enough?), the cause of new American music is a good one, and while we’re raising money for such, we might as well go whole hog and keep the dollars coming in for the remaining five days. All additional funds raised via the Kickstarter will go into the coffers of the estimable Composers, Inc., the mission of which is the performance of new American music by living American composers. The essential beneficiary of the Kickstarter is the premiere of my piano quintet “Invasive Species” by its dedicatees, the brilliant pianist Roger Woodward and the magnificent Alexander String Quartet. We’ve been in rehearsal all week. As a teaser, I offer up a brief video below, which features the conclusion of the final movement of the piece, entitled “E. globulus (10-20-1991)” “E. globulus” is the species name of the Blue Gum Eucalyptus tree, an incredibly fast-growing weed of a tree that was planted across the San Francisco Bay Area in […]
Continue ReadingI receive all sorts of (usually lovely) mail and email from all sorts of folks asking all sorts of questions, mostly about music but not infrequently about other things as well. You will – I’m sure – be relieved to hear that for now I will focus on the former, reserving my advice on dating, brands of gin, and whether the martini should be shaken or stirred for another time. For now, it’s on to one of my most frequently-asked-questions, and that is: if my Great Courses surveys were a curricula, in what order would I suggest they be consumed? It’s a good question (at least I think so). Courses numbers one, two and three as identified below might be considered the basic prerequisites to the remainder of my catalog. Course number one: “How to Listen to and Understand Great Music”, 3rd edition (2006). I know, this is pretty much a no-brainer; it’s The Great Courses’ equivalent to Music 101, “tunes for goons”. Please, please, please, the 3rd edition only. The second edition (from 1998) is flawed, and the first edition (1993) was made during the Stone Age. Course numbers two and three: “How to Listen to and Understand Opera” […]
Continue ReadingToday’s post offers an invitation, a request, and a screed. Invitation Come one; come all; please: I have a premiere coming up on March 11 at the First Congregational Church in Berkeley, California; 8 PM. The concert will take place under the auspices of Composers, Inc., an organization dedicated to the performance of new American music currently celebrating its thirtieth anniversary. My piece – scored for piano and string quartet – is entitled “Invasive Species”. It will be performed by the spectacular Alexander String Quartet and the brilliant Roger Woodward. A program note for the piece appears in the link below. A request Composers, Inc. is running a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds that will be used to pay the performers and defray the costs of the concert. This link will take you to the Kickstarter page, and I humbly beg, beseech, and implore you to contribute towards this event. Any amount would be wonderful, though I would point out that $75 or more is going to cadge you an invitation to a party at my house in the hills of Oakland, CA, at which I will mix you a martini, feed you, and, once sodden enough myself, play piano […]
Continue ReadingI have been busy with a new project that I am now in the position to share with you! I have been writing a series of fifteen eight-minute episodes (1100-1150 words each) for Ora TV, an on-demand digital television network founded in 2012 by Carlos Slim (Forbes Magazine’s 2013 “richest man in the world”) and Larry King. The CEO of Ora TV, a fine gent named Jon Housman, contacted me after reading my December 4 post on Mozart’s death on this very site. Together, we have developed a show entitled: “Conspiracies, Peccadilloes, and Dirty Little Secrets! Fun and Games with the Great Composers” in which each episode focuses on a conspiracy, or a peccadillo, or a dirty little secret from the life of a composer. Aside from the purely salacious, voyeuristic joy of dishing dirt on famous dead people, the point of this series is to render composers, who for reasons mysterious to me are among the most hallowed of historical figures, more real, more human, and more accessible. By doing so, this series is ultimately intended to make their music – which is so often treated like some supra-human thing – more real, more human, and more accessible as […]
Continue ReadingEvery now and then a friend sends along a link like this one, indicating that one of my The Teaching Company/Great Courses surveys is being publicly screened. According to the article, from the Chatham (New Jersey) Courier, my DVD series “The 23 Greatest Piano Solo Works” is being shown (free of charge) at the Senior Center of the Chathams starting on Monday, January 6. Now that’s what I’m talking about! And much as I’d wish that each-and-every-one of the fine folks who watch the series had paid full retail for it, I am, in truth, thrilled by this sort of thing. Dissemination, dispersion, and diffusion: we cannot glory in and celebrate our wonderful musical heritage too much and that is what I’d like to believe my courses are all about. Besides, should I ever find myself in Chatham, N.J. without a date, this should improve my chances of linking up with someone exponentially, provided that she is okay with hanging out with a younger guy.
Continue ReadingBack in early autumn, I ran a series of blogs on my favorite jazz pianists. With your indulgence, I would resume with a wonderful – if somewhat under under-appreciated – pianist, whose name I will broach in due time (not that you haven’t just checked the bottom of the post). But first, a necessary screed. The holiday season is finally behind us, and for a humbug like me, I’d hazard that IT’S ABOUT TIME. Consider this: Hanukkah started at sundown on November 27, the day before Thanksgiving. Figuring that the “holiday season” runs through New Year’s Day, that’s a holiday season of 36 days, a full 9.86% of the entire year. There’s just so much good cheer and rapacious consumerism a person can indulge. So it’s time to put the tree out by the curb, toss away what remains of that toxic, rum-infused fruitcake, brace ourselves for our credit card bills, and settle in for the winter, with the knowledge that Spring Training (and with it the rebirth of life as we know it) is but six weeks away. For me, one of the biggest problems of the extended holiday season was the non-stop music. Now don’t get me wrong; […]
Continue ReadingIn honor of the day I offer up a few Beethoven jokes. Beethoven himself loved a good joke. According to his pals, no one laughed louder at Beethoven’s jokes than Beethoven himself, who would throw his head back and howl with inappropriately loud laughter. (We are told that Beethoven’s friends invariably laughed along, not because the jokes were funny but because they got such a kick out of Beethoven’s own reaction to them.) The available repertoire of Beethoven jokes is, unfortunately, rather poverty stricken. Out of sheer stubbornness I refuse to relate any joke that concludes with the line, “Oh, that’s just Beethoven decomposing.” Neither will you find any of the various jokes that conclude with the line, “the bassists were loaded in the bottom of the 9th” or “Arnold Schwarzenegger never performs Beethoven because he claims ‘I’ll be Bach’”. Finally, we will not repeat any of the “what’s on the piano stool?/Beethoven’s last movement” jokes here; HEY, I’m trying to maintain a modicum of taste in this blog, okay? Here we go. Having just crossed the road, why did Beethoven kill the chicken? It kept saying ‘Bach, Bach, Bach’. Why couldn’t Beethoven find his composition teacher? Because he was […]
Continue ReadingMozart died 222 years ago today at the not-at-all ripe age of 35 years, 10 months, and 8 days. In yesterday’s post I described some of the conspiracy theories that have accumulated around Mozart’s death like guano on seaside rocks. Today we move on to some of the medical diagnoses that have been proposed to explain his untimely death. What killed Mozart? According to his death certificate, Mozart died of “heated miliary fever” which was eighteenth century for “haven’t a clue.” A contemporary newspaper claimed that he died of “dropsy of the heart,” a swelling of the body due to water retention as a result of kidney failure. So, kidney failure has also been blamed for Mozart’s death, a failure that could have been brought on by a streptococcal infection (strep throat), viral hepatitis, scarlet fever, or some other viral illness. According to Dr. Peter J. Davies in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine (1983), Mozart died from Henoch-Schonlein syndrome, another secondary illness brought on by a viral infection. In fact, some 150 separate diagnoses have been proposed to explain Mozart’s death. According to Dr. Jan Hirschmann of Puget Sound Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Seattle, Mozart died […]
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