A new Philip Glass opera will have it's debut October 5th in San Francisco's War Memorial Auditorium, the Opera, "Appomattox", is about the final days of America's bloody Civil war and the two generals, Grant and Lee, who met to end it. Glass chose British dramatist Christopher Hampton to write the libretto and bring a fresh, non-American perspective to the work. Glass said he was inspired to write an opera on the subject after reading about the two generals; "Grant was a man of tremendous intellectual scope," he says. "It occurred to me that there are no people in public life of his and Lee's stature. I don't mean just in America, where we always have to beat up on ourselves, I mean globally. We don't have statesmen anymore, we have politicians."

Baltimore Symphony Orchestra conductor Marin Alsop wants to make Symphony Halls more welcoming. Alsop says, "It's all about creating a sense of community...to give a feeling of connection and relevance." She also wants to use new technologies to bring the music out of the hall and into ipods everywhere. Her first concert last Thursday was broadcast live on Satellite Radio, and a podcast of an orchestra rehearsal will be available on itunes. Alsop also plans webcast commentaries that will supplement program notes for concerts. Baltimore audiences are already in love with the conductor and the orchestra; New subscriber sales are up 400%, no doubt helped with a $1 million corporate gift that cut ticket prices to $25. the conductor is willing to walk the walk as she talks the talk, too-- the first day of ticket sales, Alsop was there, handing out doughnuts to people standing in line.

Atlanta writer Pierre Ruhe says he's seen the future of classical music, and it's in the approach of Fringe Atlanta, a chamber group with a modern vision with traditional artistic values. Their recent event had many elements to it other than the music. The audience milled about looking at sketches of classical musicians in motion by a local artist, sampling beer and wine to ambient electronica spun by a popular local DJ; then they watched a 30 minute abridged version of Chen Kaige's 2002 violin competition film "Together"; followed my stylish videos of the chamber musicians themselves talking about the music. Through these types of multi-media events Fringe Atlanta aims to combine visual artists, musicians and composers together with media to create a what they call a "Fresh experience of the arts" Fringe Atlanta's next event is scheduled for December 1st. if this sounds interesting to you, Phoenix has it's own version of this concept, minus the media elements, called "Downtown Chamber Music series" that combines art, wine and chamber music played by Phoenix symphony musicians in local art galleries. Their next event is scheduled for November 17th and 18th. For more info., go to downtownchamberseries.org.

Permanent link | Comment on Story

---

Linking Policy

We encourage you to link to this page using the following format:

September 30th, 2007 by Randy Kinkel courtesy of KBAQ.

Attribution Information

Title: September 30th, 2007
Author: Randy Kinkel
Publisher: KBAQ 89.5 FM
Link to Content: URL

License Information

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.

---