The El Paso Symphony in Texas is expanding its After-School Music Project, Tocando, to Tornillo Elementary School as an in-class and after-school program in January 2020. Tornillo is an impoverished rural community 40 miles east of El Paso predominantly populated by resettled immigrants from Mexico; Tornillo gained national attention during the migrant crisis earlier in 2019. The symphony’s Tocando program provides free instruments, music instruction, and performance opportunities. The new site joins existing programs for students in grades 2-8 at Tocando sites in El Paso at Hart Elementary School, Aoy Elementary, Young Women’s Academy, and Guillen Middle School. Tocando students attend programming Monday through Thursday throughout the school year, a two-week summer camp at their home campus, and are given an opportunity to attend a week-long sleep-away summer music camp as well. Students regularly visit El Paso Museum of Art and participate in annual career-day visits to the University of Texas at El Paso that introduce them to college life.
Author: Jennifer Melick
Jennifer Melick, Symphony magazine’s former longtime managing editor, is a freelance journalist based in Detroit.
Getting to know seventeenth-century composer Barbara Strozzi and her world
“Like many celebrated musicians, Barbara Strozzi has a Facebook page with thousands of followers,” writes Bonnie Gordon in Friday’s (12/20) New York Times. “Though in this, her 400th birthday year, she’s hardly a household name like Beethoven or Mozart…. Named ‘la virtuosissima cantatrice’—the most dazzling singer—by a contemporary, Strozzi published eight volumes of music between 1644 and 1677, more than any composer of any gender in 17th-century Venice…. If your musical tastes lean toward Monteverdi, Bach, Handel, vocal jazz, singer-songwriters, or the blues, you’ll probably like Barbara Strozzi…. The texts Strozzi chose to set mostly explore desire and passion…. ‘L’amante segreto,’ from her 1651 collection, is a tiny drama about someone who would rather die than have his secret love revealed…. Strozzi shared a world with some outspoken feminists who made themselves heard. In 1612, Artemisia Gentileschi reported the teacher who raped her. He was exiled, and she went on to become a famous painter.… In classical music, it can sometimes feel hard to fully feel the relevance of a composer who has been dead for centuries. But when it comes to Barbara Strozzi and her anniversary year, there are some striking reverberations in the present.”
As Paris’s Notre Dame rebuilds, its chorus decamps to nearby churches
“Notre Dame kept Christmas going even during two world wars,” writes Thomas Adamson in Friday’s (12/20) Associated Press. “Yet an accidental [April 15, 2019] fire in peacetime finally stopped the Paris cathedral from celebrating Midnight Mass this year, for the first time in over two centuries.… It has decamped its rector, famed statue, liturgy and Christmas celebrations to a new temporary home pending the restoration works, just under a mile away, at another Gothic church in Paris called Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois.… Christmas-in-exile at Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois this year will be a history-making moment [with] a wooden liturgical platform that has been constructed in the Saint-Germain church to resemble Notre Dame’s own. A service will be led at midnight on Dec. 24 … accompanied by song from some of Notre Dame’s now-itinerant choir.… This now-homeless chorus of singers … has honed an upbeat message…. Different sections of the choir put on concerts in churches, such as Saint-Eustache and Saint-Sulpice, in Paris and beyond. On Christmas Eve, its members will sing at various yuletide events, including at Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois, as well as, bizarrely, at the Russian Circus…. For the singers, the unique acoustics produced by the cathedral’s massive dimensions are sorely missed.”
Kentucky’s Owensboro Symphony and local choir director collaborate on a children’s choral ensemble
“People who attended the Owensboro Symphony Orchestra’s Holiday Pops concert on Saturday were treated to a pre-show performance by OBKY 1Voice, a new collaboration with Owensboro Symphony Orchestra,” writes Marlys Mason in Thursday’s (12/19) Owensboro Times (KY). “OBKY 1Voice is a choral ensemble for children ages 6 to 18 and is the brainchild of [local pastor] Titus Chapman, its choir director…. Auditions are not required to be part of OBKY 1Voice…. ‘Our goal is to create an opportunity for all youth, with no obstacles. It’s free and open to everyone,’ said Chapman. [At the first rehearsal] Chapman … put 10 chairs out, but … ‘almost 50 showed up.’ … Owensboro Symphony Orchestra came on board through their Music on Call community engagement program, which is underwritten by Owensboro Health. Deputy CEO of the symphony Gwen Payne said that the program supports ‘random acts of music,’ and an unmet community need. ‘Titus saw an area that wasn’t being fulfilled,’ Payne said…. Along with the guidance of the Owensboro Symphony Orchestra, OBKY 1Voice connected to local community leaders … Chapman plans to continue the choir.… They already have booked a couple of events in January and February.”
San Francisco Symphony to premiere Tilson Thomas’s “Rilke Songs” in January
“Michael Tilson Thomas and Rainer Maria Rilke will combine their talents on Jan. 9 when the San Francisco Symphony Music Director conducts the world premiere of his song cycle, Rilke Songs, a six-part composition to texts by the great German lyric poet,” writes Janos Gereben in Tuesday’s (12/17) San Francisco Classical Voice. “The work features mezzo Sasha Cooke and baritone Ryan McKinny, who also perform [at the Jan. 9 concert] in songs from Mahler’s Des Knaben Wunderhorn…. Among those who have set Rilke poems to music: Alban Berg, Paul Hindemith, Anton Webern, Arnold Schoenberg, and Peter Lieberson…. Tilson Thomas has been composing throughout his long conducting career…. In 1991, he and the New World Symphony presented a series of benefit concerts for UNICEF, featuring Audrey Hepburn as narrator of MTT’s From the Diary of Anne Frank…. His song cycle Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind, a setting of Carl Sandburg’s poem, was premiered in 2016 by the New World Symphony…. Both in Carnegie Hall and with SF Symphony, he led performances of his Island Music for four marimbas and percussion…. In June 2020, SFS Media will release an album of works composed by MTT and performed by the SF Symphony.”
Baltimore Symphony bassist’s ode to city’s local holiday-light tradition
The annual display of Christmas lights put up by Northeast Baltimore residents, known as Miracle on 34th Street, “is an outrageous display of light, music and color that regularly attracts thousands of sightseers to the Hampden block,” writes Elizabeth Nonemaker in Thursday’s (12/19) Baltimore Sun. “ ‘I’ve had governors on my porch and mayors. And now,’ [resident Bob] Hosier said, gesturing past a sea of blow-up Santas and plastic reindeer, ‘I have the BSO. Can’t get any better than this.’ Hosier was referring to Jonathan Jensen, double bassist with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, tucked onto Hosier’s porch amidst a menagerie of Santas and Christmas dolls. Tonight, Jensen had left his bass at home, in favor of an electric piano that accompanied a quartet of singers from the Baltimore Choral Arts Society…. They were singing an original composition by Jensen, a ragtime-esque ode to the Hampden light display and the off-the-wall Baltimore artistry it exemplifies…. On December 21, ‘34th Street’ will be performed by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra as part of the orchestra’s annual musical variety show, the Holiday Spectacular…. Jensen said that the BSO’s performance will mark ‘the official world premiere of the song in any public kind of way.’ ”
In photo: Baltimore Symphony Orchestra bassist Jonathan Jensen accompanies Baltimore Choral Arts Society singers in his song “34th Street” at the street that inspired it. The orchestrated version of the song had its world premiere in the BSO’s Holiday Spectacular concert on Dec 21.
Boston Symphony’s Nelsons to lead Vienna Philharmonic New Year’s concert, to be broadcast Jan. 1
PBS will broadcast the Vienna Philharmonic’s “From Vienna: The New Year’s Celebration” concert at the Musikverein on January 1, 2020 at 2:30 p.m. and 9 p.m., conducted by Boston Symphony Orchestra Music Director Andris Nelsons. It will be the first time Nelsons has conducted the annual event featuring the Vienna State Ballet and the Vienna Philharmonic. Repertoire will include waltzes by Johann Strauss Jr., Edward Strauss, and Josef Strauss, plus Von Suppé’s Light Cavalry Overture, Contradanses by Beethoven, and more. Actor Hugh Bonneville will host the program, which will include a tour of the Musikverein’s archives, which hold the largest collection of Beethoven manuscripts in the world, Vienna’s Beethoven Museum, and other locations associated with the legendary composer in honor of his 250th birthday. The broadcast will be available to stream on January 2 on pbs.org/gperf and at the PBS Video app.
Music education in low-income school districts: on the rise?
“Luke Said … is the first-chair trombone in the wind ensemble and jazz band at David Douglas High School in Portland, Oregon,” writes Lillian Mongeau in Monday’s (12/16) Hechinger Report, a U.S. nonprofit that reports on education. “Luke’s family helps to cover the cost of private lessons and band fees…. Luke is also helped by his school district, which has made music a priority at all grade levels. That is remarkable because 73 percent of the district’s enrolled students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch…. San Antonio’s school board boosted its fine arts budget to $2.7 million for the 2018-19 and 2019-20 school years…. The investment has already paid off, said Daniel Loudenback, the Texas district’s fine arts executive director. ‘We used to have two or three [high school bands] make first division,’ said Loudenback, who plays the saxophone…. In 2019, six of seven had that honor…. Now that music is included in the federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) … music educators said they hope that more schools nationally will offer music with the same depth and attention dedicated to subjects like English and math.”
Artificial intelligence meets Beethoven’s final, unfinished symphony
“Beethoven’s unfinished symphony is set to be completed by artificial intelligence, in the run-up to celebrations around the 250th anniversary of the composer’s birth,” writes Maddy Shaw Roberts in Monday’s (12/16) Classic FM (U.K.). “A computer is set to complete Beethoven’s unfinished tenth symphony, in the most ambitious project of its kind. Artificial intelligence has recently been used to complete Schubert’s ‘Unfinished’ Symphony No. 8, as well as to attempt to match the playing of revered 20th-century pianist, Glenn Gould…. When [Beethoven] died in 1827, he left only drafts and notes of the composition…. A team of musicologists and programmers have been training the artificial intelligence, by playing snippets of Beethoven’s unfinished Symphony No. 10, as well as sections from other works like his ‘Eroica’ Symphony. The AI is then left to improvise the rest…. It remains to be seen—and heard—whether the new completed composition will sound anything like Beethoven’s own compositions…. Although the computer will write the music, a living composer will orchestrate it for playing. The results of the experiment will be premiered by a full symphony orchestra, in a public performance in Bonn—Beethoven’s birthplace in Germany—on 28 April 2020.”
InsideOut concerts, with audience among musicians
“Audience members file into a concert hall at the DiMenna Center for Classical Music in Manhattan. They take their seats—not in orderly rows, but among orchestra members,” writes David Dunavin in last Tuesday’s (12/12) WSHU radio (Westport, CT). “Conductor David Bernard … the musical director of the Park Avenue Chamber Symphony … started the InsideOut series in 2015. He realized lots of people fell in love with classical music because at some point in their lives, they got to hear it from the inside. ‘Whether they played in a band or orchestra, sang in a chorus … it’s an amazing experience.’ … And where you sit changes your experience. Audience members who sit by a violinist, for instance, can hear that violinist bright and clear…. Daniel Leon brought his 12-year-old daughter, Ella. She loves classical music, even though she says her friends don’t. But she thinks even they would love this…. ‘If we want to find a way to attract more of that generation to classical music, we gotta experiment with more ways of feeling and experiencing the music like we heard here tonight,’ says Daniel.” Connecticut’s Greenwich Symphony Orchestra will perform an InsideOut concert of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony in January.