How To Get and Keep Kids Interested In Concert Music – Part Nine
March
26th,
2013
[caption id="attachment_532" align="alignright" width="300"] Lillian and Daniel with their Grandfather Rich with my New York Steinway D[/caption]Suggestion number nine for getting and keeping our kids interested in music: acquire a piano. The medium-to-long-term denizens of his site have heard this particular song before, though I will repeat it, because like any good tune, repetition breeds…
Revisiting “The Music of Richard Wagner”
March
22nd,
2013
In honor of Richard Wagner’s 200th birthday (which falls on May 22), and in anticipation of my upcoming trip to Berlin to hear the Berlin Staatsoper and Daniel Barenboim perform The Ring (about which I will blog endlessly once on site), I offer a twelve minute introduction/teaser on the Ring Cycle drawn from Lecture 17…
How To Get and Keep Kids Interested In Concert Music – Part Eight
March
20th,
2013
[caption id="attachment_525" align="alignright" width="300"] A happy (if dentally challenged) little fella dancing away on the lawn at Chicago’s Ravinia Festival.[/caption]Suggestion number four for getting and keeping our kids interested in music (FYI, suggestions numbers one through three were posted, respectively, on February 21, 24, and 25): introduce them to the unparalleled joy of live music,…
The String Quartet in Time of War: Dmitri Shostakovich, String Quartet No. 8 (1960)
March
13th,
2013
Shostakovich: the SOVIET Composer Art, politics, and current events make problematic bedfellows, but they are a Ménage à trois that cannot be avoided when talking about Dmitri Shostakovich and his music. Shostakovich was born on September 25, 1906 in St. Petersburg, and died in Moscow on August 9, 1975, a few weeks shy of his…
The String Quartet in Time of War: Benjamin Britten, String Quartet No. 2 (1945)
March
3rd,
2013
“It” Benjamin Britten was born in 1913, on November 22: the feast day of St. Cecelia, Patron Saint of Music. Britten’s birth date pleased his mother Edith no end. Britten’s childhood friend Basil Reed recalled that: “[Britten’s mother was] determined that he should be a great musician. Quite often we would talk about the three…
South Bay Angle (A Twisted Tango)
March
1st,
2013
On Sunday, March 17 a piece of mine for violin and piano will receive its rather long-awaited premiere under the auspices of “Sounds New” at 3 p.m., at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley at 1 Lawson Road, Kensington. It should be a blast. My program reads as follows: South Bay Angle (A Twisted Tango)…
How To Get and Keep Kids Interested In Concert Music – Part Seven
February
26th,
2013
[caption id="attachment_502" align="alignright" width="300"] Gary Oldman as a dead ringer for the 38 year-old Beethoven from "Immortal Beloved"[/caption]Suggestion number three for getting and keeping our kids interested in music: movies and videos. We are visual creatures, and while I am generally not in favor of increasing screen time in our children’s lives, there are some…
How To Get and Keep Kids Interested In Concert Music – Part Six
February
24th,
2013
Suggestion number two for getting and keeping our kids interested in music: dance, conduct, and even play along with the music. A few preliminary observations. We perceive music by listening to it. We listen with our ears. Based on such obvious truisms, it was seem that the act of perceiving music involves only one of…
How To Get and Keep Kids Interested In Concert Music – Part Five
February
21st,
2013
Suggestion number one for how to get and keep our kids interested in music: play a variety of music at home and in the car. As if you really needed me to tell you that. If we leave musical selection entirely up to the kids, it’ll be Raffi and Miley Cyrus until they are ten,…
How To Get and Keep Kids Interested In Concert Music – Part Four
February
19th,
2013
[caption id="attachment_489" align="alignright" width="300"] Okay, she is admittedly something less than "natural", but then so were the girls I dated as a teenager. Welcome to Mr. Greenberg's neighborhood.[/caption]I am just naïve enough to believe that almost all music is accessible – on some level or another - to almost all people. Obviously I’ve hedged, because…