Only 1.8 percent of American symphony orchestra members are African-American or of African descent, according to the League of American Orchestras. And that number doesn’t seem to be increasing significantly anytime soon. The prospect of young students of African descent not only getting into the field of classical music but succeeding in it, says Paul […]
Classical Preview
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RPO announces 2017-18 season
The Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra has announced its 2017-18 season, and its “best-of-both-worlds” approach has a lot to offer, including plenty of classic blockbusters and big names, from Perlman to Potter, and some pleasant surprises. The season will start on September 12 with an appearance from Itzhak Perlman, a violinist who truly does deserve to be […]
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Pegasus Early Music sets sights on Vivaldi
If you attended the RPO’s performance of Richard Strauss’s “Ein Heldenleben” last month, you heard one of the late-Romantic era’s biggest pieces of program music — music that paints pictures or tells a story. Strauss wrote plenty of these pieces, as did such 19th-century composers as Liszt and Tchaikovsky. But if you think program music […]
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Brad Lubman on performing Steve Reich’s music
The Musica Nova conductor explains the enduring legacy of composer Steve Reich.
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Full RPO 2016-17 schedule
Philharmonics series (All performances at Kodak Hall at Eastman Theatre): Season Opener: Stare Conducts Beethoven 7 + Nakamatsu Returns Thursday, September 15, 7:30 p.m.; and Saturday, September 17, 8 p.m. Ward Stare, conductor; Jon Nakamatsu, piano. Ron Nelson, “Savannah River Holiday” (RPO premiere); Rachmaninoff, “Piano Concerto No. 2”; Beethoven, Symphony No. 7. Seaman Conducts Elgar […]
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Virtuoso vespers
Deborah Fox, Pegasus Early Music’s artistic director, says it has long been a dream of hers that the organization perform Claudio Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610, a work she has loved since she first encountered it a couple of decades or so ago as a lute student. This weekend, Fox’s dream comes true at the Hochstein […]
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CLASSICAL: “Camelot”
Growing up in north Jersey, I thought of life as a musical. Julie Andrews and Doris Day at the movies. Yul Brynner and Rex Harrison on Broadway. It was a big deal when I got old enough to take the bus into the city on my own and head to TKTS for discounted same-day show […]
