|
Your result for "Alsop" from 01/01/2000 to 11/29/2008 in Interviews/Features
| TYPE |
DATE |
|
| |
|
|
Interviews & Features |
November 21, 2008 |
Alsop goes off the cuff with Tchaikovsky program of music and a talk
By Tim Smith, The Baltimore Sun
Marin Alsop is back in town for her first Baltimore Symphony Orchestra concerts since last month's sensational production of Leonard Bernstein's Mass that won over audiences and quite a few critics in New York and Washington, as well as right here. The conductor will lead two performances of a full-length program this weekend at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, as well as introduce a new series there called "Off the Cuff."
This latest BSO product has Alsop's name all over it. The concept is simple: one work of music, preceded by a discussion of it, all packaged together in 90, intermission-less minutes or less. Not exactly revolutionary, but few conductors have Alsop's flair for public speaking and getting listeners interested in what they are about to hear.
Saturday's inaugural "Off the Cuff" is devoted to Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 6, known as the Pathetique, an emotionally searing piece that turned out to be his swan song.
"I will speak probably a good 20 minutes about Tchaikovsky as an artist, his conflicts and personality, what he would have been like to sit down to dinner with," Alsop said the other day, in between preparations for her debut at the National Press Club luncheon in Washington on Monday. (Her topic was arts education.)
"I'll go through the Pathetique - not really analyze it, that sounds pretty dry - and talk about the orchestration, the compositional techniques. And how it revolutionized the [symphonic form]. The orchestra will play examples. I'm looking for a conversational, not-overly-scripted experience for people."
After the introduction, Alsop and the BSO will perform the Pathetique complete. With a 7 p.m. starting time, the audience "will be out by 8:30 and can still go out and have dinner," the conductor said.
If folks are not in a hurry, they can linger after the performance for a Q&A session with Alsop.
Three more programs are in the "Off the Cuff" series, including a look at Brahms' Symphony No. 1 in January and Copland's Symphony No. 3 in April. Alsop will lead those two sessions. Guest conductor Peter Oundjian will guide one in February addressing all the questions posed by Elgar's Enigma Variations.
The Pathetique will also figure in the BSO's concerts tomorrow and Sunday at the Meyerhoff, sharing a program with Christopher Rouse's Concerto for Orchestra, receiving its East Coast premiere at these performances.
Dedicated to Alsop and unveiled at her Cabrillo Festival in California over the summer, the new score "is a virtuoso piece for the orchestra as a whole, for sections of the orchestra and individual instruments," the conductor said.
"It is not a typical, accessible piece. It is a major listening experience for people," Alsop added. "What attracts me to Chris' music is that he is able to put the world we live in into a musical piece, from the extreme violence to intimacy. There can be despair, there can be hope. And there's a passage in the Rouse Concerto almost identical to a passage in the Pathetique. I was highly amused to discover that."
Alsop is a longtime champion of the Baltimore-born and -based composer. "I take great pride in the fact that I hold the record of being the only conductor to do an all-Rouse program," she said. Perhaps she'll add to that record with such a program in Baltimore some day.
By the way, Alsop is not through with Bernstein's Mass. She just returned from discussions in London for a major new production there of the groundbreaking work next season.
And back to the Alsop-Rouse connection: She has been named Conductor of the Year, and he has been named Composer of the Year by the 2009 Musical America Awards, announced Tuesday. The awards, which will be presented next month in New York, are among the classical music industry's most respected honors. Musical America is the publisher of the annual International Directory of the Performing Arts. On the Web, MusicalAmerica.com is a major source of daily arts news.
Cellist Yo-Yo Ma has been named 2009 Musician of the Year, joining a luminous roster of recipients that started in 1960 with Leonard Bernstein. Other 2009 Musical America Award-winners: mezzo Stephanie Blythe (Vocalist of the Year) and Pacifica Quartet (Ensemble of the Year).
|
Interviews & Features |
November 18, 2008 |
Musical America names Marin Alsop
The cellist Yo-Yo Ma, above, has been named musician of the year by Musical America, the industry publication. Mr. Ma was awarded the honor for his mastery of “traditional classics from the baroque to the moderns” and for his Silk Road Project, which “has extended the normal boundaries of his instrument toward infinity,” Stephanie Challener, the publisher of Musical America, said in a statement. Musical America also announced that Christopher Rouse had been named its composer of the year, Marin Alsop of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra was chosen conductor of the year, the mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe was named vocalist of the year and the Pacifica Quartet was selected as ensemble of the year.
|
Interviews & Features |
October 21, 2008 |
By William Hughes, Portland Independent Media Center
"Music is the language of the spirit. It opens the secret of life, bringing peace, abolishing strife." - Kahlil Gibran
Baltimore, MD - Does the spirit of a Mozart, Bach or a Gershwin live on in their memorable works of art? When you hear a brilliant rendition of one of their pieces, are they there, too? Well, the other night, Oct. 16, 2008, at the celebrated Meyerhoff Symphony Hall in this city, I felt like the ghost of Leonard Bernstein made an appearance, and it was a happy one, indeed. The "Mass" was one of Bernstein's most controversial compositions. Its source was the Roman Catholic Mass. The program was entitled: "Mass--A Theatre Piece for Singers, Players and Dancers." It was superbly conducted by Ms. Marin Alsop, with the symphony orchestra at the top of its game. At one point, there were 250 people "on stage." This included the orchestra, a college choir, a marching band, a children's chorus and a "Street Chorus." Ms. Alsop studied under Bernstein earlier in her career and considered him "a mentor."
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2008/10/381134.shtml
|
Interviews & Features |
October 18, 2008 |
By Joe Banno, Special to The Washington Post
Leonard Bernstein's "Mass" is due for some reassessment. While not without its champions over the years, this hybrid work embracing classical, avant-garde, rock, blues, Broadway and world music has drawn much critical drubbing -- for its crazy-quilt of styles, purported showbiz gloss, countercultural agenda and brash questioning of traditional religion -- since its premiere as the inaugural production at the newly built Kennedy Center in 1971. But as performed Thursday at Meyerhoff Hall by the Baltimore Symphony, under Bernstein protege Marin Alsop's disciplined baton, the seldom-revived "Mass" re-emerged as the moving and visionary piece it's always been -- arguably the best thing Bernstein ever wrote.
And there will be more chances to hear this work. The BSO will present it in Baltimore again Saturday, and at the Kennedy Center on Oct. 26.
The work's 32 numbers (some of which were pre-recorded and played over the Meyerhoff's sound system) are scored for huge forces -- here including a rock band, the Morgan State University Choir and Marching Band, the Peabody Children's Chorus, a "Street Chorus" composed of 17 cannily chosen young singers from Broadway and the opera stage (who functioned as soloists and ensemble), boy soprano Asher Edward Wulfman and, in the role of "the Celebrant," Jubilant Sykes -- who alternated between a full-throated operatic baritone and a wispy pop croon, and whose acting had a touching, gentle glow.
Commissioned by John F. Kennedy's widow, "Mass" not only expressed the anger and frustration of its composer but functioned as something of a "JFK Requiem" -- both for the man and for the hopes of the generation grappling with his death. Accordingly, Bernstein has the members of his Street Chorus rail against a silent God and an ever-weakening Celebrant, while choral settings of the Latin Mass (written in the composer's best bluesy-Anglican, "Chichester Psalms" style) strive for supremacy.
Echoes of Bernstein's scores to "West Side Story," "Candide" and the "Kaddish" Symphony are unmistakable, and Alsop pointed up the music's debts to Stravinsky, Shostakovich, Orff and Weill, as well. Wisely, all the soloists were miked, giving prominence to the Sondheim-worthy lyrics by Bernstein and Stephen Schwartz, and helping the "Dona Nobis Pacem" achieve its scorching effect.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/17/AR2008101702828.html
|
Interviews & Features |
October 17, 2008 |
By Peter Davis, The New York Times
LEONARD BERNSTEIN, wherever he is, must surely be kvelling over the supersize 90th-birthday party New York is giving him: a multievent extravaganza that began last month, continues into December and involves nearly every musical organization in the city. The crowning centerpiece of this great love feast has to be Bernstein’s “Mass,” possibly his most flamboyant and controversial creation.
On Sunday afternoon, Carnegie Hall begins its “Bernstein ‘Mass’ Project: A Choral Exploration” in Zankel Hall with excerpts from the score and performances of original choral anthems, composed and sung by New York City high school students, based on the themes of faith, doubt, tolerance and renewal that drive “Mass.” On Friday evening, in Carnegie’s main auditorium, Marin Alsop leads a full concert performance of the work with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the Morgan State University Choir and the Brooklyn Youth Chorus. And on Saturday afternoon Ms. Alsop takes “Mass” to the United Palace Theater in Washington Heights, where more than 500 New York students will join in a performance that promises to embrace the entire community. Bernstein would have loved this. He always wanted “Mass” to be experienced in a diversity of settings, formal and informal.
Read more at "Celebrating Bernstein’s ‘Mass’ Anew" at the New York Times website.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/19/arts/music/19davi.html?
|
Interviews & Features |
October 16, 2008 |
By Murat Bigel, Johns Hopkins Newsletter
More than 200 singers and musicians are gearing up to congregate on stage at the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra for a very musical Mass.
Leonard Bernstein's Mass: A Piece for Singers, Players and Dancers is an unconventional work spanning a wide range of musical styles, such as classical, rock, jazz and folk. The full production features a massive group of nearly 250 performers. The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, led by Marin Alsop, will be performing Mass in a series of events commemorating the 90th anniversary of Bernstein's birth.
Marin Alsop is the first female conductor to lead a major American orchestra, and her appointment as the 12th musical director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra last September has brought about many positive changes in the BSO. Next week, the BSO will be taking on a exceptional challenge with a recreation of Bernstein's Mass at the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, to be followed by performances at New York's esteemed Carnegie Hall and at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.
Marin Alsop's personal connection with Bernstein uniquely qualifies her as the perfect conductor to lead BSO in its performance of Bernstein's largest and most controversial work, Mass. In a personal account, Marin Alsop says that she was convinced to become a conductor after seeing Bernstein conduct when she was nine years old. Two decades later, she was selected to study with Bernstein at the Tanglewood Institute.
"Mass is about conflict and questioning, and younger generations always push that envelope through their own musical styles," Alsop said. "The rock and jazz and folk elements all represent rebellion, alternative thinking, testing the establishment."
Commissioned by First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in 1971 for the opening of the Kennedy Center, Mass has since received divisive responses from audiences and critics. Following the premiere, Bernstein and his performers received a 30-minute standing ovation, while the New York Times wrote the following day that Mass is "little more than fashionable kitsch ... cheap and vulgar."
Structured after a Roman Catholic mass, Mass draws upon themes such as the questioning of faith, tolerance and renewal of tradition. Although Jewish himself, Bernstein had long been fascinated by the rituals of Catholicism and, in honor of the Catholic President Kennedy, Bernstein chose to set his composition in the context of a Catholic mass.
According to Alsop, "the traditional form of a mass gave him not only structure, but also language … and conflict [between] old world versus new; dead language versus living."
The conflict represented in Mass is not only about religion and faith, however.
The piece also features political undertones that were intended to communicate anti-war messages and were interpreted by some as a veiled critique of the Nixon administration's actions regarding the Vietnam War in 1971.
Perhaps it is not a mere coincidence that the revival of the production comes at a time when the nation is dealing with the similarly prominent and controversial issue of the war in Iraq.
Alsop has noticed the connection as well. "The message of Mass is even stronger and seemingly more apropos today ... with this divisive election, the nightmare of our financial climate, the fear and questioning of those we trusted ... an unfortunate cycle seems to recur!" she said.
The narrative arc of Mass centers on the Celebrant leading his congregation through a traditional Catholic mass. Having a simple and absolute faith at the beginning of Mass, the Celebrant undergoes a spiritual journey over the course of the 90-minute work, questioning his own faith after being exposed to the congregation's increasing doubt in faith and frustration with the human condition. It all culminates in the Celebrant's complete psychological breakdown and physical collapse on the stage.
Finally, a boy soprano restores peace and faith, and, as Bernstein once described the moment, "the chain of embrace grows and spreads through the entire stage, ultimately with the audience and hopefully into the world outside."
In the BSO performances, baritone Jubilant Sykes will be performing as the Celebrant. Sykes will be joined by the Morgan State University Chorus, the Peabody Children's Chorus, a 50-piece marching band and a Broadway cast performing as "Street People." In addition to the live performances, the BSO's production of Mass will be recorded and released on the Naxos record label.
Although it was written within the cultural framework of 1971, Mass continues to attract a wide audience and remains the best-selling classical multi-disc set ever produced. In fact, the BSO box office anticipates a complete sell-out of its three performances.
http://media.www.jhunewsletter.com/media/storage/paper932/news/2008/10/16/ArtsEntertainment/Bso-Finds.Religion.With.Revival.Of.Bernsteins.Mass-3491773.shtml
|
|
