Description
The aria Nessun dorma is one of the most famous in all of operatic history and has been sung by an array of fantastic tenors—each adding their own unique technical and expressive prowess. Take a minute to get the scoop!

Fun Fact
"Nessun dorma", "Let no one sleep" is an aria from the final act of Giacomo Puccini's opera Turandot and one of the best-known tenor arias in all opera. It is sung by Calaf, il principe ignoto (the unknown prince), who falls in love at first sight with the beautiful but cold Princess Turandot. Any man who wishes to wed Turandot must first answer her three riddles; if he fails, he will be beheaded. In the aria, Calaf expresses his triumphant assurance that he will win the princess.

About Steven
Steven is a Canadian composer living in Toronto. He creates a range of works, with an emphasis on the short-form genre—his muse being to offer the listener both the darker and more satiric shades of human existence. If you're interested, please check out his website for more. Member of the Canadian League Of Composers.

A Note To Music Students et al.
All recordings and sheet music are available on my site. I encourage you to take a look and play through some. Give me a shout if you have any questions.

Got a topic? Pop me off an email at: [email protected] 

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Description
I wanted to do a special two-part episode on the famous aria Nessun dorma. First the plot and lead up to the aria itself. Take a minute to get the scoop!

Fun Fact
Although "Nessun dorma" had long been a staple of operatic recitals, Luciano Pavarotti popularized the piece beyond the opera world in the 1990s following his performance of it for the 1990 World Cup, which captivated a global audience. Both Pavarotti and Plácido Domingo released singles of the aria, with Pavarotti's reaching number 2 in the UK, and it appeared on the best-selling classical album of all time, The Three Tenors in Concert.

About Steven
Steven is a Canadian composer living in Toronto. He creates a range of works, with an emphasis on the short-form genre—his muse being to offer the listener both the darker and more satiric shades of human existence. If you're interested, please check out his website for more. Member of the Canadian League Of Composers.

A Note To Music Students et al.
All recordings and sheet music are available on my site. I encourage you to take a look and play through some. Give me a shout if you have any questions.

Got a topic? Pop me off an email at: [email protected] 

Support the show

Description
Need a quick refresher on the plot of Verdi’s Rigoletto? Take a minute to get the scoop!

Fun Fact
Rigoletto premiered on 11 March 1851 in a sold-out La Fenice as the first part of a double bill with Giacomo Panizza's ballet Faust. The opening night was a complete triumph, especially the scena drammatica and the Duke's cynical aria, "La donna è mobile", which was sung in the streets the next morning. It initially had a run of 13 performances and was revived in Venice the following year, and again in 1854.

About Steven
Steven is a Canadian composer living in Toronto. He creates a range of works, with an emphasis on the short-form genre—his muse being to offer the listener both the darker and more satiric shades of human existence. If you're interested, please check out his website for more. Member of the Canadian League Of Composers.

A Note To Music Students et al.
All recordings and sheet music are available on my site. I encourage you to take a look and play through some. Give me a shout if you have any questions.

Got a topic? Pop me off an email at: [email protected] 

Support the show

Description
Occasionally, I am going to release a bonus interview episode for your listening pleasure. For this episode, I had the pleasure of speaking with Bekah Simms who is the outgoing General Manager for the Canadian League of Composers. She is also a truly innovative composer in her own right. We chatted all about the League as well as Bekah’s compositional process and what she’s currently working on. Enjoy!

Bekah on SoundCloud | Ghost Songs By Bekah Simms on Bandcamp

About Bekah Simms
The varied output of JUNO and Gaudeamus Award-nominated composer Bekah Simms has been heralded as “cacophonous, jarring, oppressive — and totally engrossing!” (CBC Music), “tough, even gutsy...with a sure sense of original and vibrant colours” (Vancouver Sun), and lauded for its "sheer range of ingenious material, expressive range and sonic complexity" (The Journal of Music.) Propelled equally by fascination and terror toward the universe, her work is often filtered through the personal lens of her anxiety, resulting in nervous, messy, and frequently heavy musical landscapes. Foremost among her current compositional interests is quotation and the friction between recognizability and complete obfuscation.

Bekah hails from St. John's, Newfoundland and is currently Toronto-based. Her music has been widely performed across Canada, in over a dozen American states, Germany, France, Italy, Ireland, Austria, Lithuania, the UK, and Russia. Commissioning ensembles include some of the top interpreters of contemporary music in both Canada and internationally, such as Crash Ensemble, Eighth Blackbird, l’Ensemble Contemporain de Montréal, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, Thin Edge New Music Collective, Esprit Orchestra, Continuum Contemporary Music, Ensemble Télémaque, Ensemble Paramirabo, and Duo Concertante. Upcoming commissions include new works for Crash, But What About?, New Music Concerts, and more.

About Steven (TCMM Host)
Steven is a Canadian composer living in Toronto. He creates a range of works, with an emphasis on the short-form genre—his muse being to offer the listener both the darker and more satiric shades of human existence. If you're interested, please check out his website for more. Member of the Canadian League Of Composers.

A Note To Music Students et al.
All recordings and sheet music are available on my site. I encourage you to take a look and play through some. Give me a shout if you have any questions.

Got a topic? Pop me off an email at: [email protected] 

Support the show

Description
Medieval Western European music encompassed sacred and secular genres in the Middle Ages, from the fall of the Roman Empire to the Renaissance. It spans centuries and is worth considering as an integral part of our musical development.  Join me, Steven Hobé, as we take a minute to get the scoop!

Fun Fact
Hildegard von Bingen was a rare Medieval female composer. Also known as Saint Hildegard and the Sibyl of the Rhine, was a German Benedictine abbess and polymath active as a writer, composer, philosopher, mystic, visionary, and as a medical writer and practitioner during the High Middle Ages. She is one of the best-known composers of sacred monophony, as well as the most recorded in modern history. She has been considered by many in Europe to be the founder of scientific natural history in Germany.

About Steven
Steven is a Canadian composer living in Toronto. He creates a range of works, with an emphasis on the short-form genre—his muse being to offer the listener both the darker and more satiric shades of human existence. If you're interested, please check out his website for more. Member of the Canadian League Of Composers.

A Note To Music Students et al.
All recordings and sheet music are available on my site. I encourage you to take a look and play through some. Give me a shout if you have any questions.

Got a topic? Pop me off an email at: [email protected] 

Support the show

Description
Music has the power to arouse strong feelings and recall memories and the performer is the conduit to communicate this emotion. But it is actually far more complex than that. Join me, Steven Hobé, as we take a minute to get the scoop!

Fun Fact
We’ve all had those ‘Proustian rush’ moments when a piece of music, or a single movement or even a phrase, provokes an involuntary memory, sometimes with physical side-effects such as goosebumps or shivers. Sometimes we want to feel uplifted or transported by music, taking us out of ourselves and the mundanity of everyday life to another place, to experience something touching or transcendent. Such moments, and the memory of them, are very special and individual.

About Steven
Steven is a Canadian composer living in Toronto. He creates a range of works, with an emphasis on the short-form genre—his muse being to offer the listener both the darker and more satiric shades of human existence. If you're interested, please check out his website for more.

A Note To Music Students et al.
All recordings and sheet music are available on my site. I encourage you to take a look and play through some. Give me a shout if you have any questions.

Got a topic? Pop me off an email at: [email protected] 

Support the show

Description
The theremin was the first electronic musical instrument invented purely by accident by a physicist and trained cellist. Join me, Steven Hobé, as we take a minute to get the scoop!

Fun Fact
The theremin became the go-to noise for an alien encounter, most famously in the classic 1951 movie The Day the Earth Stood Still (scored by Bernard Herrmann). Other high-profile credits, alongside lots of B-Movies, include The Lost Weekend and the Biblical blockbuster The Ten Commandments.

About Steven
Steven is a Canadian composer living in Toronto. He creates a range of works, with an emphasis on the short-form genre—his muse being to offer the listener both the darker and more satiric shades of human existence. If you're interested, please check out his website for more.

A Note To Music Students et al.
All recordings and sheet music are available on my site. I encourage you to take a look and play through some. Give me a shout if you have any questions.

Got a topic? Pop me off an email at: [email protected] 

Support the show

Description
After a harrowing pandemic, and shut down of the arts worldwide, the BBC Proms is back this summer. It will showcase repertoire not heard at the festival since 2019, but also lesser-known works in its ‘Cinderella’ instruments series. Join me, Steven Hobé, as we take a minute to get the scoop!

Fun Fact
The 2022 Proms marks the centenary year of the BBC, celebrating a historic partnership between music and broadcasting that has brought the world’s largest classical music festival into people’s homes across the UK and beyond.

About Steven
Steven is a Canadian composer living in Toronto. He creates a range of works, with an emphasis on the short-form genre—his muse being to offer the listener both the darker and more satiric shades of human existence. If you're interested, please check out his website for more.

A Note To Music Students et al.
All recordings and sheet music are available on my site. I encourage you to take a look and play through some. Give me a shout if you have any questions.

Got a topic? Pop me off an email at: [email protected] 

Support the show

Description
Franz Schubert in just eleven years (1797-1828) wrote over 600 songs. He set some of the greatest poets of his time to music. Some of them were even contemporary minor poets who were his friends. The greatest poet of Schubert’s age was Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. One of the most dramatic of Schubert’s vocal works was the setting of Goethe’s poem, The Erlking, Der Erlkönig.  Join me, Steven Hobé, as we take a minute to get the scoop!

Fun Fact
More than 10,000 of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s letters are still in existence as are nearly 3,000 drawings. He was a literary celebrity by age 25. A recent reviewer of a new biography of Goethe noted wryly that if Goethe had lived during the age of Shakespeare, we’d be wondering if there were one Goethe or if there were many, now confused under one name.

About Steven
Steven is a Canadian composer living in Toronto. He creates a range of works, with an emphasis on the short-form genre—his muse being to offer the listener both the darker and more satiric shades of human existence. If you're interested, please check out his website for more.

A Note To Music Students et al.
All recordings and sheet music are available on my site. I encourage you to take a look and play through some. Give me a shout if you have any questions.

Got a topic? Pop me off an email at: [email protected] 

Support the show

Description
It was the passionate and sometimes tempestuous relationship between Tchaikovsky and violinist Yosif Kotek that sparked the miraculous creation of Tchaikovsky’s violin concerto, a true masterpiece. Join me, Steven Hobé, as we take a minute to get the scoop!

Fun Fact
Although Yosif Kotek and Tchaikovsky were inseparable at one time, due to Kotek’s “unbelievable womanizing” the two fell apart. They would occasionally meet, love had clearly turned into contempt, and they found each other’s company “more unpleasant than pleasant,” and more “tiresome than attractive”. As it happens, contempt turned into pity when Kotek contracted tuberculosis and was sent to Switzerland for treatment. Tchaikovsky rushed to the bedside of his estranged and ailing lover, and dispensed various spiritual and physical comforts for six days. Kotek died, aged 29, and Tchaikovsky was charged with informing Kotek’s parents of their son’s untimely passing.

About Steven
Steven is a Canadian composer living in Toronto. He creates a range of works, with an emphasis on the short-form genre—his muse being to offer the listener both the darker and more satiric shades of human existence. If you're interested, please check out his website for more.

A Note To Music Students et al.
All recordings and sheet music are available on my site. I encourage you to take a look and play through some. Give me a shout if you have any questions.

Got a topic? Pop me off an email at: [email protected] 

Support the show