Arts Alive

Superstar pianist Yuja Wang stopped by KUSC to chat with Jim Svejda about the rewards and challenges of her repertoire and how the shallow can become sublime.

The great French pianist Hélène Grimaud came by the KUSC Studios while she was in town for performances of Ravel’s G Major Concerto with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. She joined KUSC’s Jim Svejda to discussed some current and future projects, composers from Gershwin to Schubert, and her latest Deutsche Grammophon album, Memory.

A concert that explores the power of music in the darkest of times is being performed in southern California twice this month. The concert is called Defiant Requiem and in it conductor Murry Sidlin commemorates performances of Verdi’s Requiem by the prisoners at the Terezin concentration camp near Prague in the 1940s. When conductor Rafael Schächter was arrested and sent to Terezin in 1941 he brought with him a score of the Requiem. At the camp, he recruited a chorus of fellow prisoners and taught them the entire work by rote.

April marks a happy time for fans of the Bard. William Shakespeare was born this month in 1564 – April 23rd to be exact! So why not start this celebratory month with an examination of one of his best known and oft-studied characters as heard through the music of Johannes Brahms?

KUSC’s Gail Eichenthal and Arts Alive and LA Times Film critic Kenneth Turan discuss the new film “Maze”.

This Spring marks the start of the 36th season of the Verdi Chorus. Founding Artistic Director Anne Marie Ketchum visited KUSC to talk about the ensemble’s past and present.

The opening strains of Carl Orff’s 1936 choral masterwork Carmina Burana has been used to underscore any number of movie trailers, product endorsements, and battle scenes from television. This is a piece of music that is recognizable to almost anyone. But how much do you know about where it came from? And who or what is Carmina Burana?

Althea Waites is an internationally acclaimed pianist and is currently on the keyboard faculty for the Cole Conservatory of Music at California State University/Long Beach.

This Saturday, March 23 at 8pm at the First Presbyterian Church of Santa Monica, Jacaranda presents a concert called Flying Dream with Althea Waites performing music by African American composers including Florence Price. I spoke to Jacaranda’s Artistic & Executive Director Patrick Scott and to Waites about how the concert came together, including how Waites helped rescue Price’s composition from musical oblivion.

Before Romeo and Juliet, there was Dido and Aeneas. Queen Dido is a widow dedicated to leading her countrymen wisely. Aeneas is fresh off his Trojan War heroics and on a mission to found Rome. The two meet, fall in love, become playthings of the Gods and … things do not end well. It’s a tragic story that has inspired all kinds of creative re-tellings. Right now at the Norton Simon Museum, you can experience visual and audio versions with the exhibition Once Upon a Tapestry: Woven Tales of Helen and Dido and the accompanying audio tour. We spoke with Gloria Williams Sander, Curator at the Norton Simon Museum, about the treasures on display and to Stacy Brightman, Vice President Education and Community Engagement at the LA Opera, and Holley Replogle-Wong, Program Director Center for Musical Humanities at UCLA, about the special audio tour accompanying the exhibition.

Beethoven, Schubert, and Liszt learned from Salieri. Vaughan Williams got lessons from Bruch and Ravel. Faure was taught by Saint-Saens. Composers have always learned from one another. Film composer Brian Ralston says when he was a kid, James Horner became his inspiration and first teacher.

Brian Ralston recently talked to John Van Driel about his music for the new movie “Being Rose”. You can listen to more of their conversation at our website, KUSC.org.