Here’s a neglected symphony sampler for your listening assessment. What, exactly, is a “neglected symphony,” you ask? In this case, these are works which your curator — me — has decided are worthy of at least a few more performances
Word: ‘Crescendo’
(One in an occasional series) Let us now consider an oft-misused and misunderstood word: Crescendo. Musicians get it, of course, but others don’t. Take this recent example: “After seven years of political fireworks over the Affordable Care Act (ACA), a
Orchestra selfie
Pacific Symphony at the Pacific Amphitheater last night. That’s flutist (and photographer) Cindy Ellis in the front. Conductor Richard Kaufman is back left.
Happy 4th: Horowitz plays ‘Stars and Stripes’
Everyone should hear this at least once in their life: Vladimir Horowitz plays his own arrangement of Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes Forever” on April 23, 1951 at Carnegie Hall.
Sunday book review: ‘Toscanini: Musician of Conscience’
Review: A Life of Toscanini, Maestro with Passion and Principles. The New York Times Book Review, June 27, 2017.
Video: Overture to ‘Candide’
As part of their annual Symphony in the Cities concerts this month in Newport Beach, Irvine and Mission Viejo, Carl St.Clair and the Pacific Symphony will perform Leonard Bernstein’s rambunctious Overture to “Candide.” Here’s Bernstein himself conducting the New York
Sousa addendum: ‘The Stars and Stripes Forever’ piccolo part
As mentioned in my previous post on Sousa, the United States Marine Band is currently immersed in creating a new edition of all of the marches, in chronological order. Not only are the band’s recordings available for free downloading, but
Sousatime
By TIMOTHY MANGAN Summer is upon us and that means that, as Americans, at some point in the next few months most of us will hear a Sousa march. The Pacific Symphony alone has four of them on its schedule.
Audio: Symphonic ‘La La Land’
https://youtu.be/wnGUgN0YaNE I hope this will eventually become part of the symphonic pops repertoire. For those of you who have seen the movie, this is the music played during the scene inside the Griffith Observatory. It’s good to listen to it
Band on the run: Youth Wind Ensemble to take European tour
By TIMOTHY MANGAN Writer-in-residence Gregory X. Whitmore is a band guy through and through, a protege of the legendary bandsman H. Robert Reynolds, a former drum major of the Michigan Marching Band, able to rattle off the history of the