Classical music is rich with history of magnificent music, compelling divas, and innovative composers. Not every world premiere was grand, however. This Month in Classical Music History is a series dedicated to finding stories of the good, the bad, and the downright weird. This month, we’ve dug up moments from history that are often overlooked. Read about a composer’s poisonous encounter with mushrooms, a prominent opera house, and the first stereo!
My Music. My Story. is one of Classical Music Indy’s new initiatives to feature music, musicians and music lovers in a fun way. We spoke with Jason King, Entertainment Manager at The Vogue, to learn how he interacts and thinks about music. What is your …
November is National Native American Heritage Month, and Classical Music Indy is always looking to highlight unique projects that impact our music world. This year, we were thrilled to discover the Native American Composers Apprenticeship Project, a part of the Grand Canyon Music Festival. We spoke with Clare Hoffman, Co-Founder and Artistic Director of the festival, about how their program trains Native American students from rural Arizona to compose music.
We attended and performed for Celebrate Day of the Dead (Día de los Muertos) at the Eiteljorg Museum with partner Nopal Cultural this past Saturday, October 29. There’s still time to visit Nopal Cultural’s Día de los Muertos Linocut Prints and Altar Exhibition that will be on display and FREE to view through Nov. 2 in the Lilly Auditorium at the Eiteljorg Museum. Read below to learn more about Día de los Muertos and the events that happened this past Saturday. 2017 Update: The event is being held Oct 28 from 11am-5pm, learn more here.
Margaret Allison Bonds is an often-unsung master of classical music. Her first-rate works blend styles of African and European origin, and her compositions for voice and piano have profoundly moved audiences. Bonds is best known for her collaborations with the great African American poet Langston Hughes. Read below about Bonds’ life, career, and musical contributions to the American classical music world.
Starting this week, Classical Music Indy is bringing you free weekly listening playlists through Spotify. Celebrate Cinco de Mayo this week with classical music from Mexican composers!
To listen to the full playlist, sign up for a free Spotify account.
My Music. My Story. is one of Classical Music Indy’s initiatives to feature music, musicians, and music lovers in a fun way. This week we are featuring Eloise Paul, a Mentor at the Andre B. Lacy School of Business at Butler University, and Board Member of Classical Music Indy. She shares with us how music has helped her throughout her life, why she became involved with Classical Music Indy, and why the arts are important to Indianapolis.
My Music. My Story. is one of Classical Music Indy’s initiatives to feature music, musicians, and music lovers in a fun way. Christina Summers, from Christel House Academy, has a background in theater and education. Read below to hear Christina’s thoughts on how music affects her life, the importance of arts in education, and why students should have opportunities to be creative.
Classical Music Indy now brings you free weekly listening playlists through Spotify.
The thought of Johannes Brahms and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky blowing out birthday candles on the same day is enough to make some people’s heads explode. If you love classical music, it’s hard to imagine them doing anything together.
Yet these two composers had a great deal in common–starting, believe it or not, with their reverence for music of an earlier time. Brahms demonstrated that in the finale of his Symphony No. 4, which is based on a Bach chorale. The counterpart to that is Tchaikovsky’s Suite No. 4, his loving tribute to Mozart, which concludes with a theme that Mozart himself borrowed from Gluck. The unrequited love that Tatiana pours out in her Letter Scene, from Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, is balanced nicely by the conflicted feelings in Von Ewiger Liebe, Brahms’s setting of an expression of love in the face of potential shame.
Tchaikovsky and Brahms were also dismissed, now and then, for a certain less-than-adventurous, perhaps even academic, approach to music. Yet the Academic Festival Overture, by Brahms, concludes with a drinking song. And the Slavonic March, by Tchaikovsky, quotes Slavic folk music.
There are more surprising parallels to discover in the lives and works of these composers. All you have to do is listen–and enjoy!
To listen to the full playlist, sign up for a free Spotify account.
There’s a subversive joy in being black and achieving excellence in a field from which black people were traditionally excluded. For black classical musicians and composers, staking a claim in the classical genre means looking up to white composers – m …
We’ve asked composer Dr. Scott Perkins to write about his experience overseas exploring Silesia, where famed composer Olivier Messiaen was a prisoner of war during World War II. Dr. Perkins writes how Nazi guards encouraged Messiaen’s continued music-making once they realized his stature. Crowds of prisoners and Nazi guards gathered to listen to performances. Messiaen found some semblance of freedom despite the captivity. He continued communicating in the language he knew best – his music.
My Music. My Story. is one of CMI’s many new initiatives to feature music, musicians and music lovers in a fun way. We hope you enjoy getting to know a few of your mover and shaker neighbors while learning how they interact with and think about music. …
Classical Music Indy employs a diverse range of musicians for our events around Indianapolis. In 2016 we hired 95 musicians. Classical Music Indy has dedicated our blog articles to outstanding women musicians this month. We’ve shared about great women music educators in America and about under-recognized women musicians throughout history. This week, we take a look at a few of Classical Music Indy’s top performers – women who are doing great work here and now in the city of Indianapolis. Read below about these incredibly talented musicians, and hopefully you’ll hear them at one of our events in the near future!
Rhythm! Discovery Center is the creative vision of the Percussive Arts Society. Described as “the world’s first fully-interactive drum and percussion museum,” Rhythm! Discovery Center takes an innovative approach to experiencing the universality of rhythm and percussion. We spoke with Joshua Simonds, Executive Director of the Percussive Arts Society and Rhythm! Discovery Center, to learn more about this unique institution in Indianapolis.
My Music. My Story. is one of Classical Music Indy’s new initiatives to feature music, musicians, and music lovers in a fun way. In this excerpt from “I Walked Naked Through My House Today…..and So Should You,” our friends at Speak Your Story spoke with Trish Crowe about how music saved her life.
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