Tag: New York Philharmonic

WGUC to air ‘Leonard Bernstein: A Legacy ‘ on Sunday

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Leonard Bernstein conducting, provided/Paul de Hoeck, courtesy of the Leonard Bernstein Office, Inc.

WGUC (90.9-FM) continues its “100 Days of Bernstein” celebrating the centennial year of Leonard Bernstein’s birth with a special program, “Leonard Bernstein: A Legacy,” airing at 8 p.m. Sunday night Aug. 19.

Produced by WGUC music director, Jessica Lorey in collaboration with Naomi Lewin, Stephen Baum, and hosted by Brian O’Donnell, “Leonard Bernstein: A Legacy” will bring you a wide range of Bernstein music as well as insights from musicians, conductors, and academics with local ties who knew, worked with, or studied the man many called Lenny.

You’ll hear remarks from:Read More »

Writing for May Festival Chorus a ‘dream come true’ for Julia Adolphe

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JuliaAdolpheFor its fifth week in the just-renovated Music Hall, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra is shining a light on the May Festival Chorus. The program looks back to the event that precipitated the construction of Music Hall, when a thunderstorm pounding on the tin roof of its predecessor, Saengerhalle, ruined a May Festival concert.

Besides revisiting the works from that 1875 program by Bach and Brahms, the orchestra and chorus have commissioned a young American composer, Julia Adolphe, to compose a new work for the chorus.

“Equinox,” an a cappella piece for chorus, will have its world premiere this weekend (8 p.m. Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday) in Music Hall.

Adolphe, 29, a New York native, has already written three works for the New York Philharmonic. Her work is also championed by May Festival music director laureate James Conlon, who presented one of her pieces at the 2016 May Festival. She is now at work on her second opera.

We spoke by phone this week after she had taken the red-eye from Los Angeles where she is earning a doctorate at the Thornton School of Music, University of Southern California (USC).

Question: I recall hearing your atmospheric piece at the Cathedral Basilica during James Conlon’s final May Festival season. Did your Cincinnati connection come about because of Conlon?Read More »