Accelerando

For eight decades, the Cheltenham Music Festival has been a cornerstone of Britain’s classical music calendar, nestled in the heart of the Cotswolds in Gloucestershire. This storied festival has built its reputation not only by presenting world-class performances but also by championing new works from internationally renowned composers. The festival’s commitment to contemporary music was READ MORE The post S. 2. 13. Stepping Into History: Jack Bazalgette's Vision for Cheltenham Music Festival first appeared on Accelerando Podcast.

Ming, a Music and Philosophy student at the University of Pittsburgh, used our cello lesson time this week to videotape an interview for his “Music Culture and History” course. The class explores classical concerts in Pittsburgh and discusses performances around the world. The group attended Madama Butterfly at Pittsburgh’s Benedum Center, and much of this READ MORE The post S. 2. 12. Mingxuan Xu: Classical Music Across The World first appeared on Accelerando Podcast.

Sonja Thoms is expanding the Wheeling Symphony Orchestra’s community presence through an innovative outreach strategy. Building on her decades of experience with the League of American Orchestras, Thoms recently established the WSO Community Choir, which will make its debut performing alongside the Symphony this season. Her plans include bringing the established Wheeling Youth Orchestra under READ MORE The post S. 2. 11. Sonja Thoms: Stewarding the Legacy and Future of the Wheeling Symphony Orchestra first appeared on Accelerando Podcast.

A twelve minute composition in seven movements has been dubbed “Very Little Night Music” and added to the catalogue of Mozart’s work, it is now KV 648. Scholars believe it was a work of Mozart’s youth, maybe as young as ten years old. There are very few chamber works from Mozart’s youth that survived, even READ MORE The post S. 2. 10. Germany: Scholars Authenticate A Previously Unknown Mozart Serenade For Two Violins And Cello first appeared on Accelerando Podcast.

Live music is increasing in our post-covid world. Gen Z-ers are outpacing Millenials for the first time as ticket buyers. It’s an exciting time to be a professional musician, and Juan Jaramillo gives us a look at the Candlelight concerts featuring classical musicians. More in the show notes at https://accelerandocast.com/show_notes/ The post S. 2. 9. Live Music: Business is Good/Candlelight Concerts with Juan Jaramillo first appeared on Accelerando Podcast.

Beethoven became gravely ill in the Spring of 1825. When he recovered he continued writing his fifteenth String Quartet. This third movement gives us special insight into Beethoven’s belief that he dodged death for at least a few years. Sean Neukom finds Beethoven’s use of Renaissance and Baroque compositional styles another indication that Beethoven was READ MORE The post S2. 8. With the Beo Quartet's Sean Neukom: Beethoven's op. 132- Song of Thanksgiving first appeared on Accelerando Podcast.

The Germans had the word for centuries. In Ancient times, they even thought a bug ground up could treat ear diseases. Today it simply means the music that gets stuck in your head More in the show notes at https://accelerandocast.com/show_notes/ The post S2. 7. Earworms (The Songs In Your Head) first appeared on Accelerando Podcast.

People often get a repulsion to sounds. Chalk, dentist drills, even bagpipes. Is this the same as Misophonia? What about ASMR: is it a subset of Misophonia? Today we find out. More in the show notes at https://accelerandocast.com/show_notes/ The post S2. 6. Misophonia, ASMR and Bagpipes first appeared on Accelerando Podcast.

Over the course of your lifetime your auditory complex learns your preferences in terms of what you want to focus on in environment and music. We can make a lot of technical comparisons like the way AI learns our likes and dislikes: Music, Shopping, Foods, and more. Every day our ears filter sounds. And each READ MORE The post S2. 5. The Auditory Complex; How We Hear first appeared on Accelerando Podcast.

Perhaps the most distinctive element of music is the one that gives nuance to our daily lives. Our ears never really sleep. They interpret the world, keep us safe, and give ongoing descriptions as we make our way through the day. When you ask yourself what your favorite song or singer or type of music READ MORE The post S2. 4. Timbre and Texture first appeared on Accelerando Podcast.

The Camera can’t be equated with the Phonograph if you consider artists were capturing images and likenesses for centuries. The phonograph is more like the first canvas that can hold a performance or a moment in perpetuity. It came sixty years after the camera. It’s been here for one hundred years. Now the camera and READ MORE The post S2. 3. Music after Digital Recording first appeared on Accelerando Podcast.

This week’s episode makes a wide arc from classical musicians and how they determine authenticity in an orchestral audition scenario, to how non musicians listen to music and determine which artists earn the badge of “authentic” in a variety of genres. More in the show notes at https://accelerandocast.com/show_notes/ The post S2. 2. Authenticity first appeared on Accelerando Podcast.

Its for sale: our time and attention. And it’s time to turn off the doomscroll and get back to real culture. More in the show notes at https://accelerandocast.com/show_notes/ The post S2. 1. Taking Back Art And Culture first appeared on Accelerando Podcast.

What better way to mark 100 episodes in the Accelerando Podcast than to feature Pittsburgh’s son Henry Mancini. I also talked to another great musician who hails from Aliquippa- George Perilli, when he performed for Chambersite’s Diamante Jazz Quartet this weekend. Joined by Kevin Clark, Lilly Abreu and Bob Insko, they played for the Roaring READ MORE The post 100. Pittsburgh's Own Henry Mancini Would Be 100 Years Old This Week first appeared on Accelerando Podcast.

The Italian word, sprezzatura, was invented in the sixteenth century by Castiglione, a writer. His book: The Book of the Courtier describes the perfect courtier, and uses the word to define and group the qualities that exemplify him. The word is popular today in fashion, and is useful to musicians who also strive to please READ MORE The post 99. Sprezzatura first appeared on Accelerando Podcast.

Daniel Kahnemann wrote about how we make decisions, and he won s Nobel Prize for his work on Behavioral Economics. With his passing last week we are thinking about his impact, and contribution to the world. When I began this podcast in April 2022 it was Kahneman who inspired this first episode. If his book READ MORE The post 98. Encore: The Trouble With Auditions first appeared on Accelerando Podcast.

Composers often use a single repeated note in a piece of music, and it usually tends to get the attention of the audience in a particular manner. Sometimes it’s soft, other times loud, but it’s always persistent. Today we talk about some well known pieces that use the One Note More in the show notes READ MORE The post 97. One Note first appeared on Accelerando Podcast.

It seems appropriate to post a podcast about the masterpieces Bach dedicated on the same date (March 24) a little over three hundred years ago, 1721 to be exact. They were first published in 1850, one hundred years after Bach’s death. The original scores were passed down haphazardly, we don’t know where they went after READ MORE The post 96. The Brandenburg Concertos first appeared on Accelerando Podcast.

Muzio Clementi was respected and praised by most of his contemporaries, especially Beethoven. Mozart paid respects by quoting or borrowing some of his themes, as composers did often in the classical era. Mozart may have been envious of Clementi’s technique and the two were put side by side on a Christman Eve’s concert type competition READ MORE The post 95. Muzio Clementi, The Composers' Composer first appeared on Accelerando Podcast.

The three violin makers that shaped the violin we know today lived in Cremona in the late seventeenth to the mid eighteenth century. Amati, Stradavari and Guarneri Del Gesu may have influenced each other and their influence reaches violin makers today. David L. Fulton collected twenty eight fine Cremonese instruments and published several documentaries about READ MORE The post 94. A Guy Walks Into Three Violin Shops In Cremona first appeared on Accelerando Podcast.

The seemingly easy and mundane task of turning another’s pages can be difficult at times or amusing. We look at a few comic skits where the page turner is the souce of jokes. We also take a deeper dive into those that take it seriously. Finally we see how technology assists in the effort, another READ MORE The post 93. Page Turning first appeared on Accelerando Podcast.

The music of Luigi Boccherini is some of the most elegant and refined of the era that emerged out of the Baroque and eventually arrives at the Classical Era. Boccherini lived in this in-between time. He began writing polyphonic music and switched to homophonic writing after he met Sammartini. Both Sammartini and Boccherini were composers READ MORE The post 92. Boccherini: Our Hero Among Cellist Composers first appeared on Accelerando Podcast.

Some people say we live in a gig economy. And its certainly true for musicians who gig, and have always gigged. But its different now than fifty years ago when industries hired locally and everything was run like a factory, because today you can choose to be infungible, one of a kind. There are so READ MORE The post 91. Leadership in the Twenty-First Century first appeared on Accelerando Podcast.

Opera is the art form that incorperates everything from complex stage sets to lighting and effects. In Italian “opera” means “work”. And Opera is a lot of work. It has drama, ballet, singing and instrumental music. Its “the works” alright. When supertitling came on the scene in the 1980’s, some Opera companies and fans that READ MORE The post 90. Opera Supertitling first appeared on Accelerando Podcast.

Environment has as much to do with our resolve and discipline as other factors like time management, finding good teachers, and being fortunate to have a good instrument. Meaning, we can have all four, and hopefully we can get good work done. Lots of books talk about preparation and planning. Those are all good, but READ MORE The post 89. Yes To Practice first appeared on Accelerando Podcast.

One can’t talk about the viola without including the viola joke. Today we explore the viola, its sometimes lonely existence, and its far too few moments in the spotlight. Stephen Weiss comments at the close about an up and coming violist/composer. There’s a lot to the viola we should give credit, where its due. I READ MORE The post 88. Take My Viola, Please first appeared on Accelerando Podcast.

Astor Piazzolla grew up playing bandoneon in tango orchestras in New York City where he met Carlos Gardel. He would return to Argentina to study music composition with Alberto Ginastera, move to Paris to study with Nadia Boulanger, and eventually become the world’s greatest tango composer. Piazolla revolutionized the tango to a style now termed READ MORE The post 87. Le Grand Tango first appeared on Accelerando Podcast.

J.S. Bach wrote a lot of monumental works and the Chaconne for violin is one of the great masterpieces in the repertoire for solo violin. Aside from the many recordings, there are countless transcriptions for piano, orchestra and chamber groups. Violinists get hooked on the Chaconne early in their pursuit of the violin, but it READ MORE The post 86. Chaconne first appeared on Accelerando Podcast.

There’s a signifigant amount of stigma among classical musicians when it comes to improvisation. But it wasn’t always this way. The Italian conservatories certainly taught improvisation in the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Episode 73). The composers from most schools of music learned to improvise. So its mainly performers who don’t take improv seriously. When READ MORE The post 85. Improvisation for Classical Musicians first appeared on Accelerando Podcast.

2024 will see development of Web 3. We’re already seeing marketplaces for non-fungible tokens, and the on-going creation of blockchain technology. Music NFT’s are available to creators and buyers. Though these seem expensive, the novelty is what sells, and the notion that we can be our own entrepreneurs is what drives the innovation. Blockchains are READ MORE The post 84. NFTs: Possibility and Potential for Musicians' Careers first appeared on Accelerando Podcast.

Barbara Krakauer taught violin in New York during the year and then took her students to Provence France each summer for a three week retreat or “Stage” as the French name it. Katie Kresek and Colin Pip Dixon are two violinists who studied with Mrs. Krakauer in their youth, attended the Stage multiple summers and READ MORE The post 83. Barbara Krakauer's Legacy and Memory: With Katie Kresek, Barbara Podgurski and Colin Pip Dixon first appeared on Accelerando Podcast.

The Symbolist movement was definitely a revolution. Artists, composers, authors and poets wanted to break away from the rules. And can you blame them? Today art means personal expression. Looking back we see times when art seemed to build on the past. The Symbolists were interested in infusing mystery, perfume, eerieness, unclear lines, fog and READ MORE The post 82. Music Symbolists: Debussy, Ravel, Liszt and Scriabin first appeared on Accelerando Podcast.

We’ve seen music adapt to new technologies over the last one hundred years . Formats determined song length: when singles had to fit on a 33 rpm vinyl record, for example. Hits in the 50’s, 60’s 70’s, and up until the 2000’s were three and a half minutes because that was the duration of a READ MORE The post 81. Streaming and AI: How WILL Technology Change Music? first appeared on Accelerando Podcast.

When digital downloads made it easy to get music for free, artists had to make big adjustments. Loyal fans would still buy CD’s but the handwriting was on the wall. We see a shift to concert tours and an increase in the ticket prices. Today we rely on philanthropy on every level in the Arts. READ MORE The post 80. The MP3: How Technology Changed Music (Part Two) first appeared on Accelerando Podcast.