The final NEH-funded, multi-media “Music Unwound” concert featuring the South Dakota Symphony took place last Saturday night. I cast myself in a cameo role, playing the Soldier in three excerpts from Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale. I modelled my impersonation on Elmer Fudd.
The main events, however, were Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G with Jean-Efflam Bavouzet and Stravinsky’s Symphony in Three Movements with a visual presentation by Peter Bogdanoff. This was a scripted program with a continuous visual track and certain surprises straying far afield from classical music. The topic was “New World Encounters” – the impact of jazz abroad.
The South Dakota Symphony continues to impress as the most innovative, most adventurous American orchestra I know. Saturday’s concert capped a full week of activity, mainly at South Dakota State University, where my book The Propaganda of Freedom is this semester’s “common read.” The participants, all week long, include Bavouzet (a lecture/recital on “Ravel and Jazz,” performed three times) and former US Ambassador to Russia John Beyrle.
The current SDSO season concludes April 26-27 with Douglas Moore’s Pulitzer-Prize winning opera Giants of the Earth — its first performance since 1951; it will also be recorded. SDSO’s signature Lakota Music Project undertakes a statewide tour in October 2025; it begins on Native American Day at the Crazy Horse Memorial and works its way eastward, stopping at the Pine Ridge and Rosebud reservations, among others. I will be participating in a week-long Shostakovich festival, with a full range of educational partners, in March 2026. The repertoire will include the Symphony No. 8 and (at multiple venues) The New Babylon — the entire 1929 silent film classic, with Shostakovich’s amazing score performed live.
“Music Unwound” – initiated a dozen years ago in partnership with the NEH — will conclude next season with a Black Classical Music festival at Indiana University/Bloomington, and “Mahler in America” at the Colorado Mahlerfest (May 2026).
(Photos courtesy of SDSO percussionist Daniel Sailer)
Oh, no no no:
“The only fully staged production since the premiere was by the University of North Dakota in 1974.”
https://audienceaccess.co/bio/SDSO-97470
I specifically remember my parents going…
I’m delighted to hear the Giants in the Earth will be performed and recorded. I’ve known The Ballad of Baby Doe (as do most opera lovers, I think) since my college days over 60 years ago, and I have an LP of The Devil and Daniel Webster, but I’ve been very curious to hear other operas by Moore. Judging from the comment that preceded mine, Giants in the Earth has apparently appealed especially to that part of the country where the immigrants treated in the original novel settled. And there is Carrie Nation, which deals with another quintessential American experience. I wonder if someone will perform and record it?
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