Are you reading this article in order to avoid whatever you were supposed to be doing? If so, then great news: you’re not alone in your procrastination! In fact, your dilly-dallying habits are shared with several brilliant artists of classical music.
Here, we’ll explore a few wonderful pieces, the genius composers behind the scenes, and the habit that makes us all human.
Don Giovanni, or “Up-Until-Dawn” Giovanni?
Mozart’s wife, Constanze, who may have rescued Don Giovanni. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Don Giovanni is often considered one of Mozart’s greatest achievements, as well as the hymn of procrastination. Written as a two-act opera, it premiered on October 29, 1787, in Prague – fourteen days after it was supposed to premiere for the visit of Archduchess Maria Theresa of Austria.
But despite Mozart receiving those extra fourteen days to make last-minute edits and twiddle his thumbs, he didn’t compose the score until the morning before production. A popular story claims that during the eve of the premier, Mozart was chatting and enjoying beverages with his wife Constanze. Afterward, he fell asleep, and Constanze kindly woke him up at five o’clock in the morning to finish the overture. When the opera was finally performed, the ink on the sheet music of the overture was wet, still drying from last-minute copying. Musicians sight-read their parts without rehearsal.
Even with the lack of previous practice, the premiere was well-received. The Provincialnachrichten of Vienna reported that “Mozart conducted in person…” and that he was “…welcomed joyously and jubilantly by the numerous gathering.”
Mozart’s Don Giovanni Overture, performed by the Southwest German Chamber Orchestra (2020)
The Thieving Magpie
Rossini, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
Two-act operas tend to be a common struggle for procrastinating composers. Gioachino Rossini enjoyed setting new standards through his many serious and comic operas, but he may have pushed the limits a bit too far when he composed La Gazza Ladra, “The Thieving Magpie,” on the day of the opera’s opening.
A popular anecdote reports that Rossini was locked inside the attic of La Scala, the Milan theater of the opera’s premiere, by the theater manager. Rossini was instructed to write the opera, page by page, and drop them out of the window for copyists to quickly transcribe. If he didn’t finish them fast enough, stagehands were encouraged to throw him out of the window instead. Sometimes, we all need a bit of motivation, and Rossini was no exception.
Rossini’s La Gazza Ladra, performed by The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (2016)
John Pitman, All Classical Portland’s Director of Music and Programming, interviews pianist Seong-Jin Cho about the sixth and latest album. Returning to the music of Frédéric Chopin with Chopin: Piano Concerto No. 2, Cho’s CD was recorded in April of 2021, in Hamburg and London. Seong-Jin shares with John the process, and the special challenges, of recording in a studio with an orchestra during the pandemic and offers his insight into the young Chopin’s approach to the concerto form, as well as to the four Scherzi, which were written at various stages in the composer’s life.
November is National Native American Heritage Month, which presents classical music with a challenging topic. The classical tradition has a long record of cultural appropriation when it comes to indigenous musics from North America and around the globe. In the late Victorian era, non-native composers attempted to explore Native American influences in efforts like the late Victorian Indianist Movement—much of this music is criticized for othering and caricaturing its sources.
The twentieth and twenty-first centuries brought us an increasing number of Indigenous classical composers who present their own musical tradition from within. To help you explore the rich world of Native American music, we’d like to share six composers and musical works, all of which explore traditional music in nontraditional ways.
Photograph of Louis Ballard courtesy of Cincinnati Public Radio
Louis W. Ballard Katcina Dances
Louis Ballard (1931-2007) was among the first composers of Native American heritage to exert a profound influence on the culture of classical music. Ballard was of Cherokee and Quawpaw descent, and was born on the Quawpaw Reservation in Oklahoma. His composition teachers included Darius Milhaud and Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco. Ballard’s career as a composer and educator included appointments with the Institute of American Indian Arts, Santa Fe, and with the Bureau of Indian Affairs. In 1997, Ballard received a Lifetime Musical Achievement Award from First Americans in the Arts.
Ballard’s compositions fuse modernist classical techniques with influences from his Native heritage. This recording features a wonderful bassoon rendition of the fourth movement, “Bees,” from Ballard’s Katcina Dances, a 1969 suite which Ballard originally composed for cello and piano.
Image courtesy of the composer’s website
R. Carlos Nakai
Song for the Morning Star
Carlos Nakai (b. 1946) is a virtuoso of the Native American flute. Nakai is of Navajo-Ute heritage, and though he began his musical studies with classical trumpet and music theory, the gift of a traditional Native American wooden flute inspired a career in which he has become an international master of the instrument. Nakai moves freely between musical genres, and composers as diverse as Philip Glass and Billy Williams have written for him: in fact, you’ll hear him perform in a work by Dawn Avery later in this article.
In his artist biography, Nakai explains that his “career has been shaped by a desire to communicate a sense of Native American culture and society that transcends the common stereotypes presented in mass media.”
Nakai has released more than 50 record albums, and he is among the most successful Native American recording artists, with multiple Gold albums to his credit. Song for the Morning Star comes from Nakai’s 1989 album Canyon Trilogy, the first album featuring the Native American flute to reach Platinum status.
Photograph courtesy of the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation
Brent Michael Davids
Fluting Around
Composer and flutist Brent Michael Davids (b. 1959) is a member of the Mohican Nation. Davids earned degrees in both music composition and Native American studies from Arizona State University. His compositions frequently blend traditional classical sounds with the timbres of Native American instruments. Davids’s concert works include We the People, a work for chorus and orchestra composed for the opening of the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian. Davids composes for choir as well: one of his recent compositions is Singing for Water, a work for layered chorus reflecting on the struggle of the Native Americans who protested the Dakota Access Pipeline project in 2017.
In this recording, you’ll hear Davids’s 2014 concerto Fluting Around. In his program notes for the piece, Davids explains, “Borrowed from various American Indian traditions of ‘courting flutes,’ Fluting Around is a modern concerto for flute and orchestra. With a bit of humor, Fluting Around celebrates the American Indian courting flute traditions, especially in the third movement, and illustrates that a challenging flute concerto can be both exhilarating and fun for audiences of any culture.”
Photograph courtesy of the composer’s website
Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate
Pisachi (Reveal)
Composer, educator and pianist Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate (b. 1968) is citizen of the Chickasaw Nation. Tate studied piano at Northwestern University, and piano and composition at the Cleveland Institute of Music. As a classical composer, he has received commissions from the National Symphony Orchestra, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, the Dale Warland Singers, the American Composers’ Forum, and many more organizations in the United States and beyond.
In this recording, you’ll hear Tate’s Pisachi (Reveal), a work for string quartet commissioned by the contemporary ensemble ETHEL. In his program notes for the work, Tate explains its influences and purpose: “Pisachi (Reveal) is composed in six epitomes, or sections, and was originally commissioned to be performed within a slide show exhibit for ETHEL’s touring project entitled Documerica. Pisachi was conceived to be paired with images of the American Southwest. In doing so, the work draws specifically from Hopi and Pueblo Indian music, rhythms and form. The opening viola solo is a paraphrase of a Pueblo Buffalo Dance and becomes material throughout the work. Later, the work refers to Hopi Buffalo Dance and Elk Dance music. It is the composer’s intent to honor his Southwest Indian cousins through classical repertoire.”
Photograph by Deborah Martin, courtesy of the composer’s website
Dawn Avery
Hohonkweta’ka:ionse
Dawn Avery is a Mohawk cellist, composer, and educator. She holds degrees in music from the Manhattan School of Music and the University of Maryland, and she directs the World Music Program at Montgomery College. As a cellist, Avery moves freely between world, classical, and pop genres, and has collaborated with artists ranging from Carlos Nakai to John Cage to Sting. In 2006, she launched the North Indian American Cello Project, in which she toured and performed cello works by Native American composers, including her own piece for cello and voice entitled Decolonization.
In this recording, you’ll hear Avery’s haunting 2010 composition Hohonkweta’ka:ionse for native flute and string quartet. Avery discusses the work’s origin in her program notes: “The piece was written in honor of our ancestors. Avery started writing the first movement of Hohonkweta’ka:ionse, [the] Mohawk word for ancestors, during a residency at Memorial University in New Foundland. There she learned about the Beothuk, the original aboriginal peoples of the area who were believed to be extinct. Through existing songs, this belief is now being challenged. Traveling along the coast, it seemed that the ancestral voices of these people could be heard in the melodic winds, snow banks, ocean waves and ancient rocks.”
Photograph by Vanessa Heins Photography, courtesy of the composer’s website
Jeremy Dutcher
Sakomawit
Jeremy Dutcher (b. 1990) is a Canadian tenor, composer, and musicologist who studied music and anthropology at Dalhousie University. He is also a member of the Tobique First Nation in New Brunswick. In 2018, Dutcher released an innovative album entitled Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa, in which he explores the Wolastoq language and music through new compositions. Dutcher embarked upon the project while engaged in musicological work for the Canadian Museum of History: transcribing Wolastoq songs recorded by Native singers in 1907 on wax cylinders. Dutcher explains, “Many of the songs I’d never heard before, because our musical tradition on the East Coast was suppressed by the Canadian Government’s Indian Act.” He adds, “I’m doing this work because there’s only about a hundred Wolastoqey speakers left. It’s crucial for us to make sure that we’re using our language and passing it on to the next generation. If you lose the language, you’re not just losing words; you’re losing an entire way of seeing and experiencing the world from a distinctly indigenous perspective.”
To mark a milestone birthday and celebrate a new chapter in his relationship with the label, French pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet was given “carte blanche” by the Decca classical label to choose personal music that he has never recorded before—a selection that reflects on the people and pieces that have impacted his life as an artist while expanding his already diverse repertoire in new directions.
Mr. Thibaudet’s choices on his disc each have a unique story, and he shares the best with host John Pitman in the recorded conversation, which includes brief musical samples. Some pieces were specially arranged for the pianist, such as “Pride and Prejudice” by Dario Marianelli; others arranged by Thibaudet’s teachers (Elgar’s Salut d’amour one example); and still others were arranged by the pianist himself, including an astounding piano version of Barber’s Adagio. Thibaudet’s recording is as much a gift to us as it is to himself and will enhance playlists for years to come.
With Halloween right around the corner, this week is the perfect time to explore haunted houses, carve pumpkins, stock up on candy for trick-or-treaters, and of course, tune into All Classical Portland at 89.9 FM!
There’s no better way to enjoy autumn than by listening to a playlist of spooky classical music. Below, we’ll share some of our favorite festive pieces for the fall season. What’s your favorite ghoulish classical piece?
John’s guest is Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ (Im-pih-CHAH-chah-ha) Tate, whose 2009 composition, Lowak Shoppala’ (LO-wak SHO-pah-la), an epic retelling of Chickasaw stories, received its world premiere recording this year. Jerod shares his own stories of growing up in a household of Western classical music, and strong ties to his indigenous roots as well.
During Hispanic Heritage Month, which is observed from September 15-October 15, we at All Classical Portland are excited to celebrate the rich musical contributions of Latino and Hispanic composers. In this list, we’d like to introduce you to a few fascinating composers of Hispanic heritage who have lived or worked in the United States. We’ll start back in the mid-19th century, and end the list with some amazing contemporary composers.
Teresa Carreño
Known as the “Valkyrie of the Piano,” Venezuelan composer Teresa Carreño (1853-1917) was a force to be reckoned with. Her family moved to the United States in 1862, where she made her New York debut at the age of nine and played for Abraham Lincoln at the age of ten. Carreño’s life as a touring concert pianist brought her to Europe, Australia, and South America, making her one of the first Latin American women to achieve an international musical career. She also distinguished herself as a soprano, an impresario who founded her own opera company, and a composer. Carreño named this lovely little waltz after her daughter, Teresita.
Justin Elie
During his lifetime, Justin Elie (1883-1931) was easily the most recognized classical composer from Haiti. After initial training in his native Port-au-Prince, Elie studied at the Paris Conservatory, and concertized throughout Latin America before settling in New York in 1921. A versatile composer, Elie wrote and arranged music for silent films, theater, and for his own radio show, The Lure of the Tropics. He also composed concert music, drawing on influences from Haitian music and Native American music. In this recording, you’ll hear the first of Elie’s three Chants de montange for piano, composed in 1922.
Ernesto Lecuona
Cuban pianist and songwriter Ernesto Lecuona (1896-1963) has been called the “Gershwin of Cuba” for his ability to seamlessly meld popular and classical styles. Lecuona wrote his first song at the age of eleven, and was an award-winning student at the National Conservatory in Havana. Like Justin Elie, Lecuona spent part of his career in New York, where he composed for musicals, film, and radio. He also appeared as a classical composer-pianist specializing in Cuban music, and toured internationally with his band, Lecuona’s Cuban Boys. Among Lecuona’s compositions is the celebrated Malagueña. You can hear Lecuona playing the work in this historic recording.
Roque Cordero
Photograph of Roque Cordero courtesy of DePaul University Special Collections and Archives.
Roque Cordero (1917-2008) was one of the twentieth century’s most influential Panamanian-born composers and educators. Cordero studied conducting and composition in Minnesota, where Dmitri Mitropoulos conducted the premiere of Cordero’s second Panamanian Overture. After further study in New York, Cordero returned to Panama, where he taught at the National Conservatory and conducted the Panama National Orchestra. In 1966, he settled in the United States to teach at Indiana University’s Latin American Music Center, and later at Illinois State University.
In this recording, you’ll hear Orchestra NOW perform Cordero’s haunting Adagio trágico, a piece that reflects on both the death of the composer’s mother, and on the assassination of Panamanian president José Antonio Remón Cantera.
Pauline Oliveros
Pauline Oliveros (1932-2016) was an expert in electronic music, improvisation, and minimalism. Oliveros studied at the University of Houston, San Francisco State College and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. She collaborated in experimental and electronic music with the likes of Ramon Sender and Terry Riley, and taught at the University of California in San Diego. Later Oliveros was based in Kingston, New York, where she founded and directed the Deep Listening Institute. Much of Oliveros’s music explores the concept of conscious, thoughtful listening and the acoustic effects of resonant spaces. In this recording, you’ll hear “A Love Song” from Oliveros’s 1985 album The Well and the Gentle.
Gabriela Ortiz
Gabriel Ortiz (b. 1964) is a dynamic contemporary Mexican composer. Born in Mexico City, Ortiz studied at the Conservatorio Nacional de Música, the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and the City University of London. She teaches at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and at Indiana University, and her works have joined the repertoire of ensembles ranging from the Kronos Quartet to the Los Angeles Philharmonic to the Orquestra Simón Bolivar. In her artist bio, Ortiz describes her musical language as an “expressive synthesis of tradition and the avant-garde…combining high art, folk music and jazz in novel, frequently refined and always personal ways.”
In this recording, Terra Nova Ensemble plays Ortiz’s chamber work reflecting on the Dia de los Muertos: Altar de Muertos.
Gabriela Lena Frank
Gabriela Lena Frank (b. 1972) is an exciting contemporary pianist and composer, currently serving as Composer-in-Residence for the Philadelphia Orchestra. In her artist biography, Frank explains that her music explores the concept of identity, including her own, as the daughter of a Peruvian-Chinese mother and a Lithuanian-Jewish father. Frank was born in Berkeley, California, and she studied at Rice University and the University of Michigan. Frank’s many honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Grammy award. In 2016, she founded the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music to encourage the careers of emerging composers, and, as the organization states, “to encourage composers to think of the arts as indispensable to communities beyond the concert hall.”
In this recording, the Utah Symphony performs Frank’s Three Latin American Dances (2003).
John interviews Randall Goosby, whose debut on the Decca label, “Roots,” was released this summer (and is being played on All Classical Portland regularly). The disc is an exploration of music written by Black composers and of composers inspired by Black American culture. Randall tells John Pitman about the importance and responsibility of bringing underrepresented composers into the repertoire, finding balance between violin study and sports; and the mentorship of the great violinist Itzhak Perlman, whose summer camp in New York is on, naturally, Shelter Island.
Early musical instruments were designed in the same manner as many other great inventions: by accident. After realizing that ordinary objects could create fascinating melodies, our earliest innovators began testing, shaping, and playing the tangible world around us. Their historic creations have evolved into the unique medleys of science, engineering, and art that exist today.
Below, we’ll peel back the curtain and explore how several of these modern instruments are made!
If we think of music as a mirror of culture, then all music has something to tell us about ourselves and our history.Likewise, the places associated with this music—cities, landmarks, buildings—can teach us about our society and our past, and the powerful and lasting connections between art, architecture, and music.
Countless historic buildings have played a part in the story of music and place: as the sites of premieres, the homes of ensembles, and even as acoustic inspirations. In this list, we’ll take six snapshots of moments in history when music and architecture came together and created something beautiful.
