When the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus assembled on Thursday, June 4, it did so for a season finale that carried with it all the gravitas of those words when applied to a prestige television drama. Throughout the preceding months, I’d watched the ASO open strong with Copland, Elgar and Strauss and complete its ambitious…
“Be well-assured, tempers too stubborn are the first to fail. The steel you see forged to stiffness in the furnace, you may see most frequently shivered and broken.” Such are the iconic words of Creon as he presides over the trial of his niece Antigone in Sophocles’ titular tragedy. The observation begins a monologue on…
Director Scott A. Stewart explains why the groundbreaking American composer is particularly relevant to young musicians today. :: Two weeks ago, I was commencing work with a student ensemble, and I needed the drummer to loosen up. Kids tend to play their instruments with the overly rigid formality of early 20th-century stenographers, even when the…
There’s been a recent surge in online content demonstrating how Bach’s music would have sounded on the instruments of his time. It does seem odd that the instruments modern listeners most closely associate with the composer — modern pianos, strings and woodwinds — sound nothing like what he actually had in mind. That core discrepancy…
What it means for local arts organizations, and its potential as a tool for both funding and access. :: On May 1, 1969, children’s television personality Fred Rogers, the creator and host of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, appeared before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Communications to testify against the Nixon administration’s proposed reduction of the budget…
From Glass to Rachmaninoff to a new work inspired by a traditional Korean folktale, the evening demonstrated the importance of diverse programming. :: The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra convened Thursday, April 9, for a program that, were such set lists not planned out long in advance, could have been interpreted as a response to my last…
Turn Down the Noise, the new album from Atlanta rockers The Yum Yum Tree, sits comfortably in a familiar groove with the kind of soulful but hard-driving rock that made Collective Soul, Drivin N Cryin and R.E.M some of Georgia’s chief exports during the ’90s alternative boom. That warm aura of local color so coats…
Milos Forman’s 1984 Mozart biopic Amadeus has a famous scene in which the composer stands before Emperor Joseph II defending his choice to set Beaumarchais’ The Marriage of Figaro to music despite the latter’s reservations around vulgarity and political unrest. Irritated and flustered, Mozart blurts out, “Come on now, be honest! Which one of you…
The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra convened on Thursday, March 12, for a performance of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Mass in B minor, BWV 232, with support from the legendary ASO chorus. The opening paragraph of the program notes for the event reads: “In 1818, the Swiss publisher Hans Georg Nägeli got his hands on a manuscript of…
Atlanta’s premiere classical sibling duo of violinist David and pianist Julie Coucheron appeared March 1 at Clayton State University’s Spivey Hall for an afternoon that met their usual high standards. One expects the pair to appear together under the Georgian Chamber Players moniker, an omission all the more curious given the participation of GCP mainstay…
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