TT: A date with Cassandra

Sniffles or no sniffles, I’m about to hit the road again. On Thursday morning I’ll be flying down to Raleigh, North Carolina, to see my beloved Carolina Ballet give the first of five performances of Tempest Fantasy, a ballet choreographed by Robert Weiss in 2006 to the Pulitzer-winning piece of the same name by Paul Moravec, my old friend and operatic collaborator. Paul will be present to take an opening-night bow, and I’ll be somewhere in the audience, cheering him on.
From there I’m going still further south. If you should happen to be anywhere near Orlando, Florida, on Saturday afternoon, I’ll be giving a lecture at the seventy-fourth annual Winter Park Bach Festival, where Brahms’ German Requiem is being performed twice this weekend. The title of my lecture is “Does Classical Music Have a Future?” Among other things, some grim and some hopeful, I’ll be talking about The Letter, the opera that Paul and I have written for the Santa Fe Opera, and how it fits into the larger context of what classical musicians must do to reach out to new audiences in the twenty-first century.
I’ll be speaking at Rollins College’s Tiedke Concert Hall at one p.m. on Saturday. A performance of the German Requiem will take place across the street at Knowles Memorial Chapel immediately afterward.
For more information, go here.
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Last week I spoke to Elizabeth Maupin of the Orlando Sentinel about my Bach Festival lecture. To read her story, go here.