It’s my pleasure to be Kirill Gerstein’s guest this Wednesday for his “Kronberg Academy” online seminar – that’s at noon ET and you can register here.
To my knowledge, this series is unique. It dives deeply – for two hours – into musical topics. It attracts a distinguished international audience. I will be discussing my new book Dvorak’s Prophecy and the Vexed Fate of Black Classical Music, and also sampling the companion Dvorak’s Prophecy films I’ve produced for Naxos in collaboration with PostClassical Ensemble.
As many of you will know, Kirill Gerstein is a probing concert pianist with extensive jazz training – someone who performs the Gershwin concerto with improvised passagework. The example of Dvorak’s bluesy American piano style, in such little-known works as the F major Humoresque and American Suite, will be a topic of special interest.
We’ll also be talking about Aaron Copland and the Red Scare, about Charles Ives and Transcendentalism, and about the recovery of an amazing specimen of “Black Classical Music” – William Levi Dawson’s oracular Negro Folk Symphony.
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