wnyc.org / 93.9fm / am 820

On Demand

Program Schedule

Topics

Soundcheck Archive


May 2004

Bass and Banjo Bonanza

Monday, May 31, 2004

Nashville-based banjoist Bela Fleck and classical bassist Edgar Meyer stop by the Soundcheck studio to perform some selections from their new live album, "Music for Two." Along with dazzling chops, the duo shows wildly eclectic tastes on the disc, with Baroque-era classical selections (including a canon in 15/8 time), jazz-influenced compositions and bluegrass-flavored concoctions. As we hear, their dynamic was honed after the duo spent several years on the road together.


Summer Festivals: The Listener Weighs In

Friday, May 28, 2004

We’re joined by Laurence Barrymore Scherer, music critic of the Wall Street Journal, as we take listener calls. Do you have a “secret” festival in the New York area that you don’t want anyone else to know about? What does it take to get you out of your air-conditioned home and into the muggy, mosquito-infested outdoors for live music? Call in and share your summer highlights. Or send us an e-mail.


More than Just Pops: American Orchestras and Austrian Escapes

Thursday, May 27, 2004

In recent years, major American orchestras have faced difficulties ranging from aging, graying audiences to financial strain. But summer is a time when they reach beyond their usual audiences and try something different. Or is it? Today, we get a perspective on American orchestras and their summer seasons with Philadelphia Inquirer music critic David Patrick Stearns. Then, for a comparison abroad we look at Austria’s Salzburg Festival, the venerable festival held in Mozart’s hometown that has become a destination for the boldest programming anywhere. We hear from our European correspondent Mariana Schroeder.


Jazz Festivals – Where’s the Jazz?

Wednesday, May 26, 2004

Jazz festivals have increasingly had to battle the trend toward commercialization triggered by the very real need for economic support. Big name sponsors have often led programming away from “purist” offerings to acts with broad appeal, turning jazz festivals into stages for the latest ZZ Top reunion tour. How can festivals featuring genres with smaller, but extremely devoted, fans balance their economic needs with interesting programming? George Wein, the legendary impresario behind the Newport and New Orleans Jazz and Folk Festivals, shares his thoughts on the changing landscape of the jazz festival circuit. We’ll also speak with jazz journalist Larry Blumenfeld about the latest developments in European jazz festivals. And, correspondant Kim Greene takes us to small-town Manchester, Tennessee for the Bonnaroo Festival, a rock festival that brings Woodstock into the 21st century.


Urban Festivals

Tuesday, May 25, 2004

When you’re programming a festival in your own backyard, how do you make it special and unique from your year-round programming? And how, amid the sweltering summer heat and busy city landscape, how do urban programmers make their presentations truly escapist and “festive”? Today we’ll hear from Nigel Redden, director of the Lincoln Center Festival about how this annual event has managed to attract New Yorkers and tourists alike to hear forward-looking programs in the middle of summer. We also speak with Richard Demarco, an Edinburgh-based impresario, about how the Scottish city has faced commercialization even as it maintains a reputation as one the most eclectic and progressive festivals on the international scene. Rounding out the show, we speak with Billboard columnist Anastasia Tscioulcas about the Fès Festival of World Sacred Music which takes place in Morocco's spiritual capital.


All the World’s a Stage: Extraordinary Locations

Monday, May 24, 2004

Great musicians and extraordinary surroundings are essential to the making of any summer festival. Every year since 1949, the world's most accomplished and promising musicians have made a pilgrimage to the Colorado Rockies for the Aspen Music Festival. We speak with David Zinman, Aspen’s music director, about what makes this idyllic destination such a destination not only for the rich and famous, but also for top-flight musicians. Then we speak with James Levine, music director of Switzerland’s Verbier Festival, about why it is fast becoming one of the hottest tickets in Europe. And we get a report from our European correspondent Mariana Schroeder about the Seville Music Festival in Spain.


Six Strings and 88 Keys

Friday, May 21, 2004

After injuring his right hand in the mid 1960's, the celebrated American pianist Leon Fleisher switched gears to conducting and teaching as well as performing the left-hand piano repertory. After years of rehabilitation, he has returned to playing with both hands, although he hasn’t entirely given up playing the left-hand works, as he will demonstrate next week at the New York Philharmonic. Today, Fleisher discusses his career and role as a spokesman for repetitive stress injuries in the classical-music field. We’re also joined by the guitarist Sharon Isbin, a pioneer in her own right. Not only does she stand at the vanguard of a field dominated by men, but she’s helped to raise public awareness of her instrument with everything from commissioning new works by leading composers to the founding of Juilliard's guitar department.


Talkin' 'bout My Generation

Thursday, May 20, 2004

"If it's too loud, you're too old," the old rock 'n' roll saying goes. As newspapers today are seeking to attract younger readers, some veteran rock critics say that their jobs are in danger. Earlier this year, one recently fired Cincinnati critic sued his former employer, maintaining that it was because he didn't fit the paper's profile of someone who should be reporting on the Britneys and Justins of the music world. Today on Soundcheck, Anthony DeCurtis, contributing editor at Rolling Stone, weighs in on whether aegism exists in rock criticism. He'll also give us the low-down on Prince, whom he recently profiled for a cover story in the magazine. Prince's new album, Musicology, is his first major-label release since 2001 and marks a return to his "old school" style of R&B, soul and funk rock.


Mexican Radio

Wednesday, May 19, 2004

Mexican-American singer Lila Downs grew up in the Sierra Madre mountains of southern Mexico and also in Minnesota as the daughter of a Scottish-American cinematographer and painter. Not surprisingly, her music captures a wide palette of cultural influences: Mexican, Indian, African, and African-American; mariachi, jazz, reggae, cumbia and rap. Newsday writes, “her songs embrace the outsider in everyone, from the undocumented Mexican migrant trying to cross the U.S. border to the American soldier who's too scared to fight.” She joins us in advance of her performance tonight at Satalla. Speaking of cross-cultural sounds, we round out the show by revisiting some of our recent conversation with singer David Byrne, whose CD Grown Backwards, is a WNYC thank you gift.


Retro Fit

Tuesday, May 18, 2004

The Frank & Joe Show is a six-piece band led by two youngish and versatile musicians, guitarist Frank Vignola and drummer Joe Ascione. They have just begun an open-ended run of Sunday evenings at Sweet Rhythm in Greenwich Village, and their first album, "33 1 /3" has just been released. Vignola and Ascione bring some of their old-school show-business pizazz to Soundcheck today, donning Hawaiian bowling shirts and sharing their melting pot of musical styles that range from gypsy swing to classic American jazz-pop to acoustic roots improvisation. We then turn our attention to electronic-music pioneer Robert Moog and composer John Eaton. They'll join us to talk about their collaborations over the years, from the 1960s heyday of the early synthesizer to the present, exemplified by the Eaton-Moog Multiple-Touch-Sensitive Keyboard.


Shock and Ma

Monday, May 17, 2004

Yo-Yo Ma's career has been a model of constant reinvention: jazz, Brazilian music, tango, and bluegrass are just a few of his more recent career forays. Now the genial cellist has landed firmly into the baroque for his latest recording with period-instrument conductor Ton Koopman and his Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra. Today on Soundcheck, Ma talks about how he approaches the music of Vivaldi and Haydn, and about learning to play a new instrument: the Baroque cello, a more physically demanding antecedent of the modern instrument.


Symphonic Youth

Friday, May 14, 2004

The New York Youth Symphony, arguably America's finest youth orchestra, routinely earns the ultimate compliment from music critics: that you forget it's a youth orchestra. Indeed, the mostly teenage band transcends its student-ensemble status with some mighty repertoire and top-flight soloists. Music director Paul Haas joins us today with a preview of their final concert of the season at Carnegie Hall, featuring Mahler's Fifth Symphony. We then shift gears and visit with guitarist Luis Dias, who hails from the Dominican Republic and as a composer has worked with some of the biggest heavies in Latin music. As a performer, he's created his own genre "Rocaribe" (Caribbean rock), an amalgam of heavy-metal guitar, Taino Indian melodies and Afro-Caribbean folkloric music.


Foreign Exchange

Thursday, May 13, 2004

Brazilian chanteuse Fernanda Porto does more than sing samba and bossa nova. She enlivens her native musical tongue with the rhythms of European electronica and drum 'n' bass. Her self-titled debut CD went gold in Brazil, earning her a Latin Grammy nod for Best New Artist in the process. The composer, singer and multi-instrumentalist joins us to perform some of her groove-laden songs. Then, we visit with Polish-born, New York-based jazz pianist Adam Makowicz, who has built a career on cross-cultural fusions in his own right. Makowicz has found common ground between centuries-old Polish dance forms and American jazz rhythms. His latest CD, “Songs for Manhattan,” is a love letter to his adopted hometown, and features everything from swing to hard bop.


Piano Forte

Wednesday, May 12, 2004

As any pianophile knows, New York is a Steinway town. Or is it? Journalist Michael Z. Wise pointed out in a recent New York Times piece that "Accusations of hard-knuckled dealing continue to circulate among titans of the keyboard as Bösendorfer and other manufacturers mount renewed challenges to Steinway's overwhelming dominance of the high-end piano market. Bösendorfer [has] begun pushing to get its pianos more widely heard, and seen, on American concert stages." Wise joins us today to discuss the rough-and-tumble piano trade. Then, we get a live performance from a Garrick Ohlsson, a prime example of an artist who has enjoyed an international career while playing the Bösendorfer, the 175-year-old Austrian firm whose instruments were played by Liszt, Brahms, Dvorak and Bernstein. Ohlsson joins us in advance of his upcoming performances with the New York Philharmonic.


No Place like Rome

Tuesday, May 11, 2004

Two lucky composers are chosen each year as winners of the prestigious Rome Prize, which provides a residency at the American Academy of Rome and an award valued at $60,000. Today, a conversation with the 2004 winners: New York composers Steven Burke and Harold Meltzer. Now in its 108th year, the Rome Prize is awarded annually through an open competition that is juried by leading artists and scholars in the different fields. We then turn our attention to this year’s Music at the Anthology festival (MATA), which is fast becoming one of New York’s premiere showcases for hot young composers in their 20s and 30s. Frank J. Oteri, editor of the Web magazine NewMusicBox.org, joins us to preview the festival’s main events, which begin tonight and run through Saturday.


Two to Tango

Monday, May 10, 2004

An 8-string guitarist and founding member of the Abaca String Band, Andrew Schulman is one of the more intrepid guitarists heard around New York these days, known for his versatility in a wide range of repertoire. He gives us a taste of that range today when he performs some live selections in the WNYC studio. We’ll hear a pair of Beatles arrangements and one of the scintillating "Choros" of Heitor Villa-Lobos, better known as the "Brazilian Tango." Speaking of tango, we’re joined in the second half of today’s program by Argentine pianist Mirian Conti, who is a featured artist at a three-day International Tango Competition sponsored by the Consulate General of Argentina. It’s often said that the tango is sublimated warfare – where elegance and ritual win out over darker impulses – and we’ll hear how the competition takes that premise to the ultimate extreme.


On the Road Again

Friday, May 07, 2004

The Subdudes are a roots-rock band from Colorado and Louisiana who hit it big in the early 1990s with a series of albums and sold-out tours. But after pressure to produce mainstream radio hits became too suffocating, the group split up in 1996. Eight years later, they’re back on track with a new CD and they join us with a live performance of their rollicking brand of gospel, folk, country and blues. You may know Todd Rundgren for his hit singles "Hello, It’s Me" or "Bang on the Drum All Day", but his real impact on the music world is in technology. Rundgren was a pioneer of music videos, created the precursor to the DVD and set the standard for interactive CDs and concert broadcasts. Todd joins us today to let us know what he’s been cooking up lately.


Super Conductor

Thursday, May 06, 2004

For years, conductor David Zinman was a familiar presence in the United States as head of the Baltimore Symphony. Lately, though, he's been active overseas, as music director of Switzerland's Tonhalle Orchestra of Zurich. Since 1996, that orchestra has sold more than a million CDs and introduced a new program called Dance Mix—an attempt to lure 20-somethings into the concert hall with a post-concert disco party featuring an open bar and DJ's. Is it really working? Tune in and find out as Zinman joins host John Schaefer for a conversation. Also on the show, Sedgwick Clark, editor of Musical America, drops by to review some recent recordings of Leonard Bernstein's orchestral works, as featured on the Naxos label.


A New Generation

Wednesday, May 05, 2004

Today on Soundcheck, we welcome members of a new generation of performers of the Sufi devotional music: Farid Ayaz Qawwal & Brothers. A style of song that has been compared to American gospel music, Qawwal was made famous in the west by the great performer Nusrat Fateh Ali Kahn. Ayaz Qawall and his fellow singers have kept the flame of this living tradition burning. Then we turn our attention to the phenomenon of artist cancellations, a regular fact of the classical-music business that gives serious migraines to plenty of agents, orchestra and opera managers. We're joined by Robin Thompson, associate artistic director of New York City Opera, who sheds some light on this issue in light of last week's cancellation by the enigmatic pianist Martha Argerich out of a series of scheduled concerts with the New York Philharmonic.


A Shicoff the Old Block

Tuesday, May 04, 2004

Once banned by the Nazis, Halevy's opera "La Juive" has undergone a surprisingly successful revival that owes much to the efforts of Brooklyn-born tenor Neil Shicoff, who sang the central role of Eleazar at Vienna State Opera in 1999 and at Metropolitan Opera in New York last November. Now, the story of Shicoff's efforts is the subject of a documentary film, "Finding Eléazar," directed by Paula Heil Fisher and being screened at the Tribeca Film Festival this week. Fisher and Shicoff join us today to discuss the drama behind the drama. We're also joined by Joanne Falletta, music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic, who has experienced her own struggles in the classical-music world, as a female in a male-dominated profession. She'll discuss some of those with us today, and talk about the Buffalo band’s busy season which includes a new disc on the Naxos American Classics series and an upcoming Carnegie Hall performance.


Club Classics

Monday, May 03, 2004

Plenty of people talk about rescuing classical music from its stuffier traditions. Cellist Matt Haimovitz is taking action by bypassing customary concert venues in favor of pubs, clubs and similar alternative spaces. The Israeli native and Harvard alumnus just finished a 50-state "Anthem" tour of the U.S., named after his cello-driven take on Jimi Hendrix's iconic version of "The Star Spangled Banner." He's in town to perform at the famed underground rock club CBGB and joins us today to perform live in the WNYC performance studio. We then get a head start on Cinco de Mayo with a life performance of traditional Mexican Norteño music, courtesy of New York's Suspenso del Norte. Founded in 1993, the band has helped to popularize a musical style that has long been popular among Mexican immigrants.