I write this post "on the road", as it were. Miss D. and I are currently in Brevard, North Carolina, savoring a weekend in the natural beauty and fresh air of the Pisgah National Forest. It's a beautiful place, and we're enjoying ourselves very much.
One of the features of this small town is the annual Brevard Music Festival. It's a summer program bringing together several hundred performers and teachers for three months of hard work, making music, and a lot of fun. The performers range the gamut of the musical experience, from folk to pop to rock to classical and almost everything in between. Live performances are a regular feature of the Festival. For today's blog post, I thought I'd bring you a few examples of what they offer.
To start us off, BMF artistic director Keith Lockhart, conductor of the Boston Pops orchestra, talks about the Music Festival experience.
Here's folk and country musician Darrell Scott with "Long Wide Open Road" from the 2010 Festival.
Here's soloist Tong Wang with Alexander Scriabin's Waltz in A Flat Major, op. 38, at the 2017 Festival.
Next, Zuri Wells on the marimba (an instrument with which I'm very familiar in its original, primitive African version - the one she plays is a modern version, much larger than usual, and clearly Westernized in its orchestral capabilities). Her comments are interspersed with her performance of an unnamed piece at the 2015 "Soloists of Tomorrow" performance at the BMF.
Let's move on to a couple of orchestral works. Here's pianist Yekwon Sunwoo with Robert Schumann's Piano Concerto Op. 54.
Finally, here's the Brevard Music Center Orchestra, conducted by JoAnn Falletta, in a 2012 performance of the fourth movement from Tchaikovsky's Symphony no. 4.
Lovely music, in a very beautiful mountain and woodland setting.
Peter
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