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3 fresh musical events for your weekend!
We’re getting ready to share our Summer Music Guide (keep an eye out for it next week), but here are three events happening this weekend, each of which combine or reimagine classical music and dance, that we wanted to be sure to tell you about. The Rosina Project It’s Rossini like you’ve never heard him before. Chicago Fringe Opera teams ...
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra cancels summer programming
BALTIMORE (AP) — The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra has canceled its summer programming, citing $16 million in losses over the past decade. The Washington Post reports the Thursday cancellation announcement by the orchestra comes about a month after the summer season was announced. Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan approved a bill then that would give the group $3.2 million in state funding. Orchestra president ...
No Raincheck Needed! — Highlights from WFMT’s Second Annual Beach Party
Even though we had to move the festivities indoors, WFMT hosts, staff, and fans were not deterred by the torrential downpour and came together for the Second Annual Memorial Day Beach Party on May 27, 2019. A full day of celebration and commemoration included on-air games, quizzes, dedications, and of course, music and performances live from the Theater on the ...
Grammy Award-winner Giancarlo Guerrero grew up in Costa Rica listening to WFMT — Now he’s making his CSO conducting debut
Multi-Grammy Award-winning conductor and music director of the Nashville Symphony Giancarlo Guerrero never envisioned a career as a maestro, let alone as a musician. As Guerrero says, “In many ways, I am the poster child to show that music can…become a part of your life regardless of your background.” Born in Nicaragua, Guerrero and his family fled the civil war ...
Pianist Lara Downes on drawing courage, joy from women composers and artists
Pianist Lara Downes is passionate about casting light on forgotten and unsung figures in classical music’s history. Downes’ discography signals this — A Billie Holiday Songbook, 13 Ways of Looking at the Goldberg, Exiles’ Cafe, and multiple records focusing on different traditions of American music denote a keen interest in reimagining the canon. Downes’ latest record, entitled Holes in the ...
Riccardo Muti releases new book (but you have to know Italian to read it)
Riccardo Muti’s latest book, L’infinito tra le note: Il mio viaggio nella musica (which translates to English as “Infinity Between the Notes: My Journey in Music”), is now on the shelves of Italian bookstores. Published by Solferino, Muti’s second autobiography finds the Maestro reflecting on some of his favorite themes: the great conductors of the past, the composers Verdi and ...
Tough act to follow: Young maestro leads Israel Philharmonic
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — When Zubin Mehta joined the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra in 1969, it would be 20 years before Lahav Shani was even born. Now, at the age of 30, the Israeli wunderkind is poised to succeed his mentor at the helm of the acclaimed orchestra. Stepping into the shoes of a beloved living legend would seem to ...
Studs waltzes along with the Newberry Library’s latest dance exhibit
Natya Dance Theatre performers dance in Shakhti Chakra (Photo: Natya Dance Theatre) Studs Terkel was known for a lot of things-his Pulitzer Prize-winning oral histories, his seemingly boundless appetite for life, and even his penchant for cigars. One of Studs’ less well-remembered legacies, however, is his tremendous admiration for the art of dance. Studs hosted a plethora of dancers and ...
LISTEN | Late critic Andrew Patner celebrated during panel featuring Riccardo Muti and Alex Ross
Andrew Patner, WFMT’s late critic-at-large and music critic at the Chicago Sun-Times, passed away in February 2015, but his characteristic wit and wisdom live on in his book, A Portrait in Four Movements: The Chicago Symphony under Barenboim, Boulez, Haitink, and Muti. A Portrait in Four Movements, which was published in April 2019 by the University of Chicago Press, compiles ...
Studs Terkel turns 107, his archive turns 1
Studs Terkel, the gregarious, cigar-chomping oral historian, used to say of his birth that, “when the Titanic went down, I came up.” Born May 16, 1912, Studs hosted The Studs Terkel Program on WFMT for 45 years. During the run of his legendary interview show, Studs moved like a comet, illuminating great political and cultural upheavals of his time and ...
