We are just days away from the actual 250th birthday of America.  The music developed for this event just keeps coming.  Perhaps none as expansive as the Declaration Project from pianist Lara Downes. She created it to get various takes from anyone about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This national program will end with a concert at Lincoln Center in New York.

Many classical music groups have released new music or albums about the 250th birthday of America.  Some are straightforward, others take a diverse view, like the Apollo Chamber Players. Founder and Director  Matthew Detrick says the  album, We The People, features music from composers with disparate American experiences.

We have been inundated with new music and performances of old patriotic music because of the 250th birthday of the United States. On this June 8th podcast, I’m starting a series on music composed and performed specifically for the big bash next month. This time it’s Karen LeFrak’s American Promise.  You’ll also meet Dawn Carroll who was inspired to compose Songs for Mary.  It’s about a woman who created the National Negro Opera Company and the house where it all started. June is also the month of Juneteenth and Pride month celebrations with some big firsts among them.

There aren’t many musicians, classical or otherwise who aren’t presenting their own versions of a birthday song for America’s 250th.  On this episode, we hear from Min Kwon, a pianist with a little activist nature on the side. Back in 2021 she started a project called America/Beautiful.  Since then she’s commissioned over 70 composers to come up with their musical versions of what’s beautiful about America at this time using the song America the Beautiful as source material.  Plus it was important to her because she has two daughters, with birthdays on Presidents’ Day and the Fourth of July.

Hundreds of people are expected to  voluntarily step outside of their musical genre mode this weekend and hear something new, and different and maybe even odd. It’s time for the annual HERE BE MONSTERS, Austin’s Indie-Classical  music festival.  Co-director Michael Zapruder of Tetractys says this is a growing movement within the classical or near classical genre of new music.

Many orchestras and chamber groups are celebrating the 250th anniversary of America’s founding this year.  While most of the music is a positive portrayal of the United States there is at least one musical work telling the tale of the horrific treatment of Native Americans and their lands. The piece is Requiem For America by Mohican/Munsee-Lenape composer Brent Michael Davids.  He describes it as a  searing work confronting hard truths about America’s founding. It’ll be performed by the BBC Orchestra in London this month, before its American premiere in November.   

Even though operas from long ago are still being performed, there’s a movement afoot to freshen them up or to do new 21st century operas. In the case of the 1958 opera Vanessa, a production by Heartbeat Opera is doing a stripped-down version of the Pulitzer Prize winning work. It’s directed by RB Schlather.  At The Met, they are about to premiere a  true 21st century opera by first-time opera composer and Grammy winner, Gabriela Lena Frank with a libretto by Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Nilo Cruz. Then there’s the big dispute between the Boston Symphony Orchestra and its patrons over the firing of Music Director Andris Nelsons.

Sometimes when someone makes a suggestion to you, it kind of sticks with you.  That’s what happened to jazz artist Darrel Grant.  He decided to act on this suggestion from a friend by composing Step by Step, the Ruby Bridges Suite.  It is a piece about the 6-year-old girl who was the first African American student to integrate the New Orleans public schools in 1960. It was not without protests, or strong resistance and a teacher who ignored the noise and taught the little girl in a classroom void of any other students.

In honor of April, Earth Month, more than a few composers have released albums about their love of our home planet, and their anxiety about climate change. This week’s episode features three of those albums.  

There have been several studies on the effect of music on mental health.  This is especially true with the elderly.  A long running study out of Monash University in Melbourne, Australia is finding that dementia may be delayed in the over 70 set if music is in their lives.