Hard to Categorize
Evening Music | May 6, 2010
Some composers write music that’s just hard to categorize, others cross over to different genres intentionally. Tonight we’ll hear samples of both.
We’ll start with a composer who crossed the aisle between popular and classical with ease, William Grant Still. Phillip Brunelle leads the Plymouth Music Festival Orchestra in Still’s raucous ballet “Miss Sally’s Party” (1940), which portrays a hilarious combination of cake walk, young boys and a frog-down-the-blouse (you get the idea).
Also, the music of composer Alec Wilder has always been hard to pin down. Is it on the serious side of Jazz? The lighter side of Classical? Decide for yourself as the Alec Wilder Octet serves up a “Wilder” sampler, including “Her Old Man was Suspicious,” “Pieces of Eight,” and “It’s Silk, Feel it!”
Igor Stravinsky brings neo-classical jazz into the mix with his “Ebony” concerto (Michael Tilson Thomas and the New World Symphony); we’ll hear African-Cuban elements in Leo Brouwer’s “Concerto de Toronto”, which he wrote for guitarist John Williams. Steven Mercurio leads the London Sinfonietta with soloist Williams in this astonishingly virtuosic (and delightful) work.
We’ll start with a composer who crossed the aisle between popular and classical with ease, William Grant Still. Phillip Brunelle leads the Plymouth Music Festival Orchestra in Still’s raucous ballet “Miss Sally’s Party” (1940), which portrays a hilarious combination of cake walk, young boys and a frog-down-the-blouse (you get the idea).
Also, the music of composer Alec Wilder has always been hard to pin down. Is it on the serious side of Jazz? The lighter side of Classical? Decide for yourself as the Alec Wilder Octet serves up a “Wilder” sampler, including “Her Old Man was Suspicious,” “Pieces of Eight,” and “It’s Silk, Feel it!”
Igor Stravinsky brings neo-classical jazz into the mix with his “Ebony” concerto (Michael Tilson Thomas and the New World Symphony); we’ll hear African-Cuban elements in Leo Brouwer’s “Concerto de Toronto”, which he wrote for guitarist John Williams. Steven Mercurio leads the London Sinfonietta with soloist Williams in this astonishingly virtuosic (and delightful) work.
