#stefan asbury

[garadinervi]

Conlon Nancarrow: 'As Fast As Possible', WER 67332, WERGO, 2011 [Ensemble Modern, Frankfurt Main]. Cover Art: hj.kropp. Composed by Conlon Nancarrow (tracks 1-15), Paul Usher (tracks 16-19). Performers: Amy Briggs (piano), Helena Bugallo (piano), Ingrid Karlen (piano), Amy Williams (piano), Rex Lawson (pianola), Ensemble Modern, Kasper de Roo (conductor), WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne, Stefan Asbury (conductor)

[rafiknyclassical]

Alberto Ginastera (1916-1983): Popol Vuh, La creación del mundo maya op.44 (1975/1983) -- WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln diretta da Stefan Asbury -- I. La noche de los tiempos II. El nacimiento de la tierra III. El despertar de la naturaleza IV. El grito de la creación V. La gran lluvia VI. La ceremonia mágica del maíz VII. El sol, la luna, las estrellas --- cover image by Mark Rothko

[chorusfm]

The Gaslight Anthem Released Expanded ‘History Books’

The Gaslight Anthem have released a new version of History Books that’s been remixed, remastered, and contains new bonus material. We decided to remix History Books in its entirety, the Expanded Edition is out now. When we first mixed it, we were blown away by how incredible it sounded on the vinyl test presses. That original mix still holds up beautifully on vinyl, and we wouldn’t dream of changing it. However, when the album came out digitally, it didn’t quite hit the mark we were aiming for. So, we decided to remix it specifically for digital release. View this post on Instagram A post shared by The Gaslight Anthem (@thegaslightanthem) HISTORY BOOKS (EXPANDED EDITION) showcases a brand new mix of The Gaslight Anthem’s acclaimed 2023 return to action, along with a previously unreleased rendition of “Little Fires” featuring Bully (aka singer, songwriter, and guitarist Alicia Bognanno) as well as four tracks initially found on this spring’s HISTORY BOOKS – SHORT STORIES EP, including the band’s anthemic take on Billie Eilish’s 3x RIAA Platinum-certified breakthrough single, “Ocean Eyes,” a new version of longtime fan favorite, “Blue Jeans & White T-Shirts,” and stripped-down acoustic performances of HISTORY BOOKS highlights “Positive Charge” and “History Books.” Today also sees the limited 7” vinyl release of HISTORY BOOKS – SHORT STORIES. The Gaslight Anthem continue to celebrate HISTORY BOOKS on an epic world tour, with eagerly awaited North American headline dates underway July 26 at Denver, CO’s Mission Ballroom and then continues through a September 1 finale at Detroit, MI’s The Fillmore Detroit. Support throughout comes from Joyce Manor with The Dirty Nil (July 26-August 11) and Pinkshift (August 13-September 1) joining on select dates. In addition, the band will return to their home state of New Jersey to join Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Trey Anastasio Band, Norah Jones, and more at Asbury Park’s sold-out Sea.Hear.Now Festival on Sunday, September 15. For full details, please see www.thegaslightanthem.com.   The Gaslight Anthem’s sixth full-length and first new album in nearly a decade, HISTORY BOOKSincludes such singles as “Spider Bites,” “Autumn,” “Little Fires” (featuring guest vocals from PUP frontman Stefan Babcock), “Positive Charge,” and the heavy-hearted title track, “History Books,” the latter of which sees Fallon trading duet vocals with longtime band champion and fellow New Jerseyan Bruce Springsteen. All five tracks are joined by official music videos streaming now on YouTube.   The Gaslight Anthem is: Brian Fallon (lead vocals, rhythm guitar), Alex Rosamilia (lead guitar, backing vocals), Alex Levine (bass guitar, backing vocals), and Benny Horowitz (drums, percussion, backing vocals). --- Please consider becoming a member so we can keep bringing you stories like this one. ◎ https://chorus.fm/news/the-gaslight-anthem-released-expanded-history-books/

[lesser-known-composers]

Philip Cashian - Chamber Concerto

Ensemble: Birmingham Contemporary Music Group

Conductor: Stefan Asbury

[aschenblumen]

Unsuk Chin, Double Concerto, for Piano, Percussion and Ensemble. Stefan Asbury, director Ensemble Intercontemporain

[musicainextenso]

Let’s be honest, left to my own devices, I tend to default to two periods: early Baroque and 20th century music. As different as they seem, I think they both capture my desire for a certain type of emotionality that is less overtly romantic and expressed through deeply technical means, such as ornamentation or chord structure and instrumentation. A perfect 20th century example of this is South Korean composer Unsuk Chin’s  Double Concerto for piano, percussion and ensemble, played here by the London Sinfonietta with Stefan Asbury conducting. The layers of instrumentation here thrill my soul and stab deep, especially in today’s constant turmoil.

More female composers to come as the week continues! - Melinda Beasi

[outoftowninac]

TOBACCO ROAD

1937

Tobacco Road is a play by Jack Kirkland first performed in 1933, based on the 1932 novel of the same name by Erskine Caldwell. The play ran on Broadway for a total of 3,182 performances, becoming the longest-running play in history at the time. It is second only to Life With Father as the longest running non-musical play in Broadway history. Tobacco Road opened at the Theatre Masque (now the John Golden Theatre), transferred to the 48th Street Theatre (demolished in 1955), and then moved to the Forrest Theatre (now the Eugene O'Neill Theatre). It was revived three times on Broadway. Due to its tremendous popularity, it spawned several tours, regional productions, and a film - all while still running on Broadway. 

The play is a gritty, often shocking (for the time) portrayal of a poor Georgia family of sharecroppers. It is set in rural Georgia, several miles outside Augusta during the worst years of the Great Depression.

Tobacco Road’s easy-to-tour scenic requirements were described as this: The old dull gray shack was set up to one side, its porch roof crazily careening; the bucket well to the other, and the dilapidated fence between marking a tobacco road in the back country of Georgia. 

Taylor Holmes (Jeeter Lester) was born in Newark NJ in 1878. He made his Broadway debut in 1900 in the controversial play Sapho, which was closed down for immorality after 29 performances. In the April 1900 trial, the play was ruled not obscene, and it reopened and ran for an additional 55 performances. He went on to appear in more than 35 Broadway plays, the last in 1946. He also appeared in scores of films (silent and sound) and television shows.  His last screen work was providing the voice of King Stefan in Disney’s Sleeping Beauty (1959). He died at age 81, while Sleeping Beauty was still in theatres. 

“In order to secure the services of Mr. Holmes for this role. Sam H. Grisman and Jack Kirkland, the producers of ‘Tobacco Road', were compelled to carry on lengthy negotiations with one of the largest motion picture concerns who had him under contract for his temporary release. Mr. Holmes will resume his picture work at the end of his present coast-to-coast trip with ‘Tobacco Road’.” ~ Paterson News, January 23, 1937

Sharing the stage with Holmes were Florence Gerald as Ada Lester, William Bishop as Lov Bensey, Pitt Herbert as Dude Lester, Meryl Boyden as Ellie May, Lillian Ardell as Grandma Lester, Dick Lee as Henry Peabody, and Sally Sanderson as Pearl. 

In January 1937, producers Sam H. Grisman and Jack Kirkland brought this production of Tobacco Road to Atlantic City’s The Earle Theatre, a venue primarily devoted to cinematic presentations.  

The Earle in Atlantic City opened in October 1926 on at Atlantic and Missouri Avenues. Today, the theatre is long gone and this is the end point of the Atlantic City Expressway. The Earle was owned and operated by the Stanley Company, who also ran the nearby Stanley Theatre on the Boardwalk (later renamed the Roxy), as well as the more famous Earle Theatre in nearby Philadelphia. In fact, there were Earle theatres in several cities in Pennsy, Delaware, and elsewhere. All were primarily dedicated to cinema, with occasional forays into vaudeville, burlesque and (rarely) - as in the case of Tobacco Road - legit. 

The production also played other New Jersey venues.  Montclair... 

Englewood, another affluent bedroom community of the Big Apple... 

Asbury Park, at a venue later (and still) known as the Paramount Theatre...

and Holmes’ birth city, Newark, where it was at the Shubert. At the same time, at the Garden Theatre in Patterson, Taylor Holmes’ son Phillips was appearing on screen in a double feature. Ironically, the other film on the bill was titled “Everybody’s Old Man”.  Even odder still, Phillips’ “old man” was not even mentioned in the Shubert ad, which was located only a few columns away of the April 18, 1936 Morning Call. 

The Shubert in Newark was grand, perhaps too grand for Tobacco Road. For much of the tour the show tried to keep to theme (and budget) by playing lower-rent, less ornate venues, in many case movie and burlesque houses. 

This was also the third time many of these stops saw Tobacco, some of which saw the original cast, and then a Road tour. It was difficult for some critics not to compare Holmes with the original Jeeter, Henry Hull, who by then was starring in his second post-Road play. In 1937, the Main Stem’s Jeeter was James Barton, who had inherited the overalls from Will Geer (later TV’s Grandpa Walton) and would eventually fill Holmes’ shoes in the tour. 

Finding a theatre in Chicago was difficult since the Mayor had banned the play two years earlier calling it indecent. This must have been busines as usual for Holmes. His first Broadway outing, Sapho, was similarly tagged.  

The same happened in Omaha, where the Mayor also banned the play. 

Producers shot back a telegram to the local press. 

But Omaha theatre-goers did not see Tobacco Road that night. Hearings were held the next day, at which Holmes appeared. He had added incentive to go before the Judge, who, the day before, had borrowed his fountain pen and forgotten to return it!  Curiously, when the show played Boston, a city known for the expression ‘Banned in Boston’, there was barely a raised eyebrow.

Holmes started his tour of Tobacco in August 1936, and by May 1937, he had eaten more than 350 turnips, Jeeter’s snack of choice. 

Since so many venues were also cinemas, the ads generally stipulated that this was NOT A MOTION PICTURE. Compounding the confusion was that Holmes’ name previously graced many marquees in his screen roles - and his son’s films were playing nationwide during the tour. 

The same tactic at the Orpheum in Reading PA. Film buffs beware: No screen attraction today. 

In Philadelphia, the Locust Theatre went out of their way to let the public know that this was NOT A WPA ATTRACTION.  The Works Progress Administration (WPA) was a New Deal agency, employing millions of jobseekers to carry out public works projects. In one of its most famous programs, the WPA employed musicians, artists, writers, actors and directors in the Federal Theatre Project (FTP). The resulting productions were generally free of charge to the public. This ad is to warn patrons that admission WILL BE CHARGED!

Tobacco gave the Shamokin PA something to crow about: the first big road show in ten years!  

In Muncie IN, during April 1937, Holmes was reunited with his film star son, Phillips Holmes. Five years later, Phillips died in a mid-air collision over Canada. His father was bereft. 

Holmes’ tour did make some concessions for small town America - notably replacing some of the cursing with more congenial language. Gosh! 

While the tour was in Pittsburgh, it shared column space with this item about a possible musical version by Gershwin. As history knows, this idea came to naught. It may have even been an invented story to keep Taylor’s tour in the press.

In July 1937, the Garden Pier in Atlantic City re-opened with a new production of Tobacco Road, then still wowing Broadway audiences. It was fitting that the newly refurbished pier would re-open with a Broadway hit since it had incubated so many shows in its past. Although the national tour continued, Holmes withdrew to have surgery. By November 1937 he was back on Broadway in a new show, the stress of touring behind him. 

In 1954, Tobacco Road returned to Atlantic City in yet another production, this time a pre-summer stock week at the Quarterdeck Theatre in residence at the Hotel Morton. For more about that, just click here! 

[riffsstrides]

"Rota: Konzert für Streicher ∙ hr-Sinfonieorchester ∙ Stefan Asbury" no YouTube

Giovanni Rota Rinaldi (3 December 1911 – 10 April 1979), better known as Nino Rota, was an Italian composer, pianist, conductor and academic who is best known for his film scores, notably for the films of Federico Fellini and Luchino Visconti. He also composed the music for two of Franco Zeffirelli's Shakespeare films, and for the first two films of Francis Ford Coppola's Godfather trilogy, receiving the Academy Award for Best Original Score for The Godfather Part II (1974).

Alongside this great body of film work, he composed ten operas, five ballets and dozens of other orchestral, choral and chamber works, the best known being his string concerto. 

Nino Rota:

Concerto para Strings

I. Preludio. Allegro ben moderato

II Scherzo. Allegretto comodo

III Aria. Andante quasi adagio

IV finale. Allegrissimo

HR-Sinfonieorchester - Sinfonia da Rádio de Frankfurt

Stefan Asbury,

[radioclasic]

Deschiderea stagiunii 2020-2021 a Filarmonicii bucureștene Miercuri, 7 octombrie, are loc deschiderea stagiunii 2020-2021 a Filarmonicii „George Enescu” din București. Evenimentul începe la ora 19, iar orchestra simfonică a instituției va fi condusă de dirijorul britanic Stefan Asbury.

[fileunder]

Liza Lim on Kairos

Liza Lim on Kairos

Liza Lim

Extinction Events and Dawn Chorus

Sophie Schatleitner, violin; Lorelei Dowling, bassoon;

Klangform Wien, Stefan Asbury and Peter Rundel, conductors

Kairos CD 00140220KAI

Composer Liza Lim’s creative projects have long embraced a variety of ecomusicology. The environment in her home country Australia and the treatment of indigenous peoples there have featured in several…

[riffrelevant]

Article By: Pat ‘Riot’ Whitaker, Senior Writer/Journalist ‡ Edited By: Leanne Ridgeway, Owner/Chief Editor

In what promises to be an amazing series of live events, metal legends METAL CHURCH will join forces with German metal queen Doro Pesch for a U.S. tour this April and May.

The tour starts April 17th in Las Vegas, Nevada and will end May 11th in New Bedford, Massachusetts; with support on select dates provided by IMAGES OF EDEN.

METAL CHURCH will be playing material spanning the band’s entire career, including tracks from their newest release for Rat Pak Records, ‘Damned If You Do‘. The album was issued in December, 2018, and is the second studio album (after 2016’s ‘XI‘) to feature vocalist Mike Howe since he returned to the band in 2015. Howe offered the following comment about the tour:

“I am excited to get out on the road and embrace our faithful fans again, and any new fans are welcome into the fold! I’m also looking forward to joining forces with legendary metal singer Doro Pesch!! You will not be disappointed!“

METAL CHURCH founding guitarist Kurdt Vanderhoof adds:

“We are excited to hit the road in support of ‘Damned If You Do’ and couldn’t be happier to share the stage with the legendary Doro Pesch.“

  (Photo By: Stefan Hoidn)

Then there is the long running, living embodiment of metal royalty, the beloved Doro Pesch, returning to the stages across the U.S. It has been revealed that fans can expect a “Best Of” style show focusing on music from Warlock, the iconic heavy metal band she has fronted since 1983.

Doro comments:

“We will play all the hits but we will also have a lot more stuff ready from our latest albums, so fans can expect a nice dose of brand new Doro songs from the both very successful albums ‘Forever Warriors’ and ‘Forever United’. We will play our new anthem ‘All For Metal’ and ‘Living Life To The Fullest’, which is dedicated to my dear, sadly missed friend Lemmy.“

Find the tour itinerary below… Tickets are on sale NOW!

– METAL CHURCH / DORO U.S.A. Tour 2019 –

w/ Images Of Eden (select dates)

Apr. 17 – Count’s Vamp’d – Las Vegas, NV Apr. 18 – House Of Blues @ The Parish – Anaheim, CA Apr. 19 – Whisky A Go Go – West Hollywood, CA Apr. 20 – Club Red – Tempe, AZ Apr. 23 – Jake’s – Lubbock, TX** Apr. 24 – Come And Take It Live – Austin, TX** Apr. 25 – Scout Bar – Houston, TX** Apr. 26 – The Rock Box – San Antonio, TX** Apr. 27 – Tree’s – Dallas, TX** Apr. 28 – Oklahoma City Limits – Oklahoma City, OK** Apr. 29 – Fubar – St. Louis, MO** May 1 – Black Circle Brewery – Indianapolis, IN** May 02 – Reggie’s – Chicago, IL May 03 – Route 20 – Racine, WI May 04 – Machine Shop – Flint, MI May 05 – Arcada Theater – St Charles, IL May 07 – Highline Ballroom – New York, NY May 08 – Reverb – Reading, PA May 09 – The Chance – Poughkeepsie, NY May 10 – Asbury Lanes – Asbury Park, NJ May 11 – The Vault @ Greasy Luck – New Bedford, MA

** Metal Church & Images Of Eden ONLY

METAL CHURCH & DORO Co-Headline Spring U.S. Tour; IMAGES OF EDEN Support Article By: Pat 'Riot' Whitaker, Senior Writer/Journalist ‡ Edited By: Leanne Ridgeway, Owner/Chief Editor In what promises to be an amazing series of live events, metal legends…

[larryland]

by Fred Baumgarten

The best way to appreciate Leonard Bernstein’s 1983 opera, A Quiet Place, is through the music. At Tanglewood last week, this infrequently performed work was given a spirited defense by the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra and Vocal Fellows under the baton of Stefan Asbury, in a 2013 version with reduced orchestration. Legendary Bernstein protégé Michael Tilson Thomas was in the audience, a measure of the significance of the production.

Musically, the Tanglewood performance was a rousing success. The orchestra performed beautifully, and the singers were uniformly strong. Though often far less accessible than Bernstein’s beloved musical pieces such as West Side Story and Candide, the score to A Quiet Place reveals a composer at the height of mastery and maturity, a superb craftsman, confident in lyrical and dissonant styles alike. As theater, A Quiet Place is deeply problematic, and this Spartan production — a set consisting of some risers, chairs, and projection screens — did little to overcome its flaws.

The opera was written in collaboration with the young librettist Stephen Wadsworth, after a rather pronounced dry spell in the late seventies and early eighties, and thirty-two years after Bernstein’s successful Trouble in Tahiti, to which A Quiet Place is a kind of sequel. “Tahiti” is a spare and darkly humorous portrait of postwar consumerist America. An all-American, outwardly successful couple, Sam and Dinah, confront the emptiness of their lives and marriage, finding refuge in a fictional fantasy movie, called “Trouble in Tahiti.” Along the way, a number of characters are referred to but never seen, including a son, Junior, Dinah’s psychiatrist, and Sam’s business partners.

A Quiet Place joins Trouble in Tahiti’s Sam thirty years later, when Dinah has died in a horrific car accident (illustrated, as much in the production, by a desultory projection). At her funeral, we are introduced to Junior, a daughter, Dede, and her husband Francois, who is also Junior’s not-too-secret lover, along with the unseen minor characters from “Tahiti.”

The family is a rogue’s gallery of 1980s dysfunction, and Wadsworth, presumably with Bernstein’s blessing, layered the plot with intimations of madness, incest, homophobia, psychological intrigue and just plain dyspepsia. The libretto plods along with enigmatic pronouncements (“Cake and friends we choose with care”; “Lost time is never found”; etc.) and references to “Tahiti.” The title phrase, “a quiet place,” is from Dinah’s aria in the earlier work, where she dreams of an escape from her unhappy life. The dialogue is peppered with nonsense and Godot-like repetitions.

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Contrast this with Trouble in Tahiti’s lithe libretto and you begin to see the problem with A Quiet Place: It occupies an entirely different headspace from its predecessor, and the attempt to bridge the chasm feels forced. Small wonder that attempts were made to fold Trouble in Tahiti into A Quiet Place as a second-act flashback, in order to make more sense of the story, but those versions have largely been abandoned.

Despite the family machinations, as four alienated and disturbed people try to find a way forward, more visceral drama takes place in the Bernstein score – in his soul? – than in the opera. Essentially, how could Lenny not be Lenny? A man of deep passions and longing, self-doubt and grandiosity, Bernstein connected as a composer when he gave reign to his deepest feelings. It was difficult not to experience A Quiet Place as a struggle with himself.

The music is among the most difficult Bernstein ever wrote, frequently jagged and atonal, especially in the prologue and first act. As precise and technically brilliant as it is, it sounds like a million other composers of the last thirty-five years. One strains to hear a trace of Lenny.

Suddenly, as the opera progresses, the music loosens up and Bernstein reaches a sublime level of music-making. In particular, the orchestral interludes that close the second act and open the third are deeply affecting, while holding in check any excesses and retaining the contemporary musical vocabulary of the time. Several of the arias are haunting, too.

In the end, Lenny wins. A Quiet Place proves that authentic voice of Bernstein could not be held back, and it is what made the experience of hearing it special.

A Quiet Place, Opera in three acts. Music by Leonard Bernstein. Libretto by Stephen Wadsworth. 2013 adaptation with chamber orchestra. Reduced orchestration by Garth Edwin Sunderland. Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, Stefan Asbury, conductor. Tanglewood Music Center Vocal Fellows: Elaine Daiber, soprano (Dede), Daniel McGrew, tenor (Francois), Dominik Belavy, baritone (Junior), Ryne Cherry, baritone (Sam), Olivia Cosio, mezzo-soprano (Susie), Kelly Newberry, mezzo-soprano (Mrs. Doc), Eric Finbarr Carey, tenor (Funeral Director), Alex Longnecker, tenor (Analyst), Edward Vogel, baritone (Doc), Thomas West, baritone (Bill), Robin Steitz, soprano (Mourner), Rebecca Printz, mezzo-soprano (Mourner), Chance Jonas-O’Toole, tenor (Mourner), William Socolof, bass-baritone (Mourner). Peter Kazaras, stage director, Adam Larsen, video designer, Mary Lauve, costume designer, Melissa Tosto, assistant stage director and stage manager. Performed Aug. 9 at Florence Gould Auditorium, Ozawa Hall, Tanglewood Music Center, 297 West St., Lenox, MA. Tickets for the 2018 Tanglewood Music Festival, celebrating the Bernstein Centennial, are available at www.tanglewood.org or SymphonyCharge, (888) 266-1200.

REVIEW: “A Quiet Place” at Tanglewood by Fred Baumgarten The best way to appreciate Leonard Bernstein’s 1983 opera, A Quiet Place, is through the music.

[lesser-known-composers]

Philip Cashian - Dark Inventions

Ensemble: Birmingham Contemporary Music Group

Conductor: Stefan Asbury

[eine-strasse-muss-ich-gehen]

Mo, 17. Mär 2014 | 20 Uhr

Philharmonie Berlin

SCHREKER Vorspiel zu einem Drama (Die Gezeichneten)

SCHUMANN Konzert für Violine und Orchester d-Moll

SCHOSTAKOWITSCH Symphonie Nr. 4 c-Moll

Renaud Capuçon | Violine

Junge Deutsche Philharmonie

Stefan Asbury | Dirigent

[berkshirereview]

A Singer's Notes 126: Lenox Nights—The Merchant of Venice at Shakespeare and Company and Fellows at the Festival of Contemporary Music at Tanglewood

A Singer’s Notes 126: Lenox Nights—The Merchant of Venice at Shakespeare and Company and Fellows at the Festival of Contemporary Music at Tanglewood

Kate Abbruzzese and Jonathan Epstein. ‘The Merchant of Venice.’ Shakespeare & Company 2016. Photo John Dolan. The Merchant of Venice at Shakespeare and Company The Merchant of Venice has always been called a problem play. I might call it a miracle play. Here is why. There is a role in this play which dominates—with fewer than 350 lines. In the hands of Jonathan Epstein, Shylock was believable,…