SMF Live

Original air date: week of June 26, 2011 The five sonatas for cello and piano that Beethoven composed are milestones of the literature. They redefined the possibilities for these two instruments by creating music in which each part had an equally important role, setting a standard for every composer who followed. Tune in for part…

Original air date: week of June 19, 2011 During the 18th century, the cello had gradually become regarded as a solo as well as an accompanying instrument. While neither Mozart nor Haydn composed a cello sonata, Beethoven more than made up for them. Not only did he write five sonatas for the instrument, but he…

Original air date: week of June 12, 2011 The forward movement of contemporary American stringband music has always been fueled by a tradition that existed outside the classroom setting. When a young person attempts to pursue an American style such as bluegrass, Cajun, country or blues, the earliest method of learning often begins with imitating…

Original air date: week of June 5, 2011 While Beethoven is generally acknowledged as the first great composer of cello sonatas, there have been numerous outstanding works written for the cello as a solo instrument over the last three centuries. Composers such as Boccherini, Grieg, Brahms, Rachmaninoff, Debussy, Shostakovich and Britten all wrote compositions that…

Original air date: week of May 29, 2011 The string quartets written in the late 19th and early 20th century by Debussy and Ravel both dazzled and disturbed people in their first performances. Debussy’s fantastic, spiraling variations were shocking, but the exotic beauty of his writing excited many (including the young Ravel). Over time, passionate…

Original air date: week beginning May 23, 2011 The tradition of stringband playing in the United States dates back at least 200 years. In the early 19th century, the fiddle-banjo duo that was essential to the dance music of the day eventually incorporated other instruments such as the guitar, mandolin and double bass. Such an…

Original air date: week of May 15, 2011 When people hear the term “chamber music”, more often than not they think of a form of Classical music from the European tradition written for a small number of instruments. In the past 100 years, however, chamber music has grown to include any art music that is…

Original air date: week of May 8, 2011 At an audition to become the principal player on your instrument in a symphony orchestra, technical proficiency is only part of the test. Members of the orchestra weigh whether a candidate plays with strong character, yet can blend and match the ensemble’s style while also being a…

Original air date: week of May 1, 2011 The art of playing jazz piano is something that Bill Charlap and Renee Rosnes pursued for more than 20 years before they met one another. After these two premiere pianists fell in love and became a couple, they realized that one of the biggest challenges of being…

Original air date: April 24, 2011 In the decade between 1781 and 1791 in Vienna, the preeminent keyboard virtuoso of the day was a young man named Mozart. During the final ten years of his life, Mozart was undeniably the absolute piano star in this music capital, but the keyboard he played was not the…

Original air date: week of February 20, 2011 When the family band Cherryholmes burst onto the scene seemingly out of nowhere during the first few years of the new millennium, they quickly developed a loyal audience, followed by a wealth of honors and awards. On January 12, 2011, after more than a decade together, Cherryholmes…

Original air date: week of February 13, 2011 Growing up in the South Carolina low country, Shannon Whitworth was always surrounded by water, before she decided to make her home in the North Carolina mountains. It’s the reason that the themes of water and mountains surface regularly in her songs, alongside the women about whom…

Original air date: week of February 6, 2011 When you think of American roots music, one of the most distinct styles is bluegrass. Bill Monroe once characterized the genre of music he helped create as: “Scottish bagpipes and old-time fiddlin’. It’s Methodist and Holiness and Baptist. It’s blues and jazz, and it has a high…

Original air date: week of January 30, 2011 The most common piano trio format in jazz has usually included a pianist, a bassist and a drummer. Communication between these three players is built around the talents they have amassed through extensive training, so that their reflexes are to the point where the music takes over…

Original air date: week of January 23, 2011 The musical heritage of French West Africa includes a wealth of traditional and popular music styles from a variety of countries including Senegal, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Benin and Mali. The arid, landlocked nation of Mali is a cultural colossus. Its contemporary music serves as a rich and…

Original air date: week of January 16, 2011 Each Spring, twelve of the top high school jazz bands from across the nation travel to Savannah to spend three days studying with a handpicked set of instructors who, individually, are some of the greatest jazz musicians of our time. This episode of the Savannah Music Festival…

Original air date: week of January 2, 2011 When double bass player and composer Renaud Garcia-Fons arrived backstage in the van with his custom five-stringed bass, we expected to see yet another huge bass case. Instead, he unloaded a much smaller box from which emerged a wooden body, out of which came the neck, followed…

Original air date: week of December 26, 2010 At the quarter century mark in age, jazz pianist Gerald Clayton has staked a claim in the music by sticking to his mantra that tradition and innovation can peacefully coexist. But with Gerald at the keyboard, this coexistence is often anything but peaceful. Dodging early pressures to…

Original air date: week of December 19, 2010 The development of jazz music during the first half of the twentieth century occurred at an astonishingly rapid pace. The wide array of styles that emerged included the polyphonic improvisation of New Orleans jazz, stride piano, big band swing and bebop. By 1943 Duke Ellington had stopped…

Original air date: week of December 12, 2010 The term “piano trio” usually refers to to a group comprising a pianist, a double bass player and a drummer. The pianist is generally the leader of these trios, which are usually named after the pianist, such as the Bill Evans Trio or Oscar Peterson Trio. In…

Original air date: week of December 5, 2010 In this episode we listen to a 2010 performance by an American guitarist who has been closely identified to jazz, although he has always taken elements of folk, blues, rock and other styles, and spun them into a wholly original sound. Guitarist Bill Frisell is joined in…

Original air date: week of November 21, 2010 The lineage of great jazz musicians in Georgia goes back to the early 20th century when such renowned musicians as Fletcher Henderson came out of Atlanta University, moved to New York city and formed one of the finest big bands of all time. In this episode we…

For chamber music lovers, springtime in Savannah is a veritable feast of music for 17 days. Some of the world’s finest classical musicians gather to rehearse and perform masterworks of the idiom in historic and intimate spaces. Tune in to hear performances by artists returning to the 2011 festival.

Original air date: November 7, 2010 This episode is a sneak preview for GPB listeners of artists returning to Savannah in 2011. Stay tuned for our complete season announcement on November 10th!

Original air date: week of October 31, 2010 Whether one is a young student just beginning to write music, or a master at the height of their powers, the art and craft of composing chamber music is always a challenge. In this episode, we listen to three very different, but unique chamber music works: Mahler’s…

Original air date: week of October 24, 2010 Of all the major composers of the late Romantic era, Brahms was the one most attached to the classical ideal as manifested in the music of Haydn, Mozart, and especially Beethoven. As a mature composer, Brahms became for conservative music journalists the most potent symbol of musical…

Original air date: week of October 19, 2010 The year 1827 was the last full year of life for Franz Schubert. He had just turned 30 and was terribly ill, yet it was arguably his most prolific year, in which he wrote a wealth of heralded masterpieces. in this episode, we listen to two of…

Original air date: week of October 12, 2010 If the musical world of the 19th century can be said to end with Beethoven, it is the opinion of some that it should end with Wagner. Such a description expresses neatly the power that each of the remarkable figures had over the musicians and composers of…

Original air date: week of October 3, 2010 Pianist Garrick Ohlsson is an interpreter of great originality, whose playing combines supreme elegance with extraordinary tonal projection. These qualities have placed him among the ranks of the world’s foremost pianists. On this edition of the Savannah Music Festival LIVE, we listen to Mr. Ohlsson playing a…

Original air date: week of September 26, 2010 As one of the most celebrated composers of the 20th century, Dmitri Shostakovich was a child prodigy as both a pianist and composer. Born in 1906 in St. Petersburg, Russia, he first achieved national fame in the early 20s, but he would eventually have a complex and…

Original air date: week of September 19, 2010 If you were born in the 1960s, you could grow up just about anywhere in America and be exposed to gospel, jazz, blues, soul, folk and rock music on the radio and television. Such was the case of Ruthie Foster, who was raised in South Texas and…

Original air date: week of September 12, 2010 When new styles of American music began to emerge at the end of the 19th century, the primary instrument at the center of these creations was the piano. Virtuosos such as ragtime stylist Scott Joplin created works like the “Maple Leaf Rag” that would sell over a…

Original air date: week of September 5, 2010 The term “20th Century Classical Music” often conjures up the notion of sounds that are not very appealing to classical music purists. However, many 20th century composers never strayed from writing beautiful music that attracted a broad array of people, no matter how sentimental or sappy it…

Original air date: week of August 29, 2010 Violinist Mark O’Connor spent ten days at the 2010 Savannah Music Festival playing in a variety of projects. His Hot Swing! Trio at SMF featured guitarist Julian Lage and bassist Gary Mazzaroppi. Inspired by the music of Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grapelli (O’Connor’s mentor), the group played…

Original air date: week of August 22, 2010 In the late 18th century, Vienna was the major musical center in Europe and a city where the great triumvirate of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven made their homes. Beethoven’s first appearance in Vienna as a youthful musician of promise came in the spring of 1787, where he…

Original air date: week of August 15, 2010 A sonata in music literally means a piece that is played, as opposed to a cantata, which is a piece that is sung. The sonata has naturally evolved through the history of music, and it took on increasing importance by the early 19th century when it came…

Original air date: week of August 8, 2010 Born in New York City in 1904, Fats Waller played the organ and sang in the choir of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, where his father was the minister. By the time he was a teenager, the lure of playing in the theatre and accompanying silent…

Original air date: week of August 2, 2010 While it’s hard to give a satisfactory definition of “genius,” it nearly always happens that artistic genius expresses itself in youth. With the greatest of geniuses there follows an extended period of prodigious activity at the highest level, which seldom sustains its fire throughout a long life….

Original air date: week beginning July 25, 2010 In 2010, Mark O’Connor came to the Savannah Music Festival and spent ten days pursuing his American music journey. He taught master classes, played solos and duos, and performed with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis. He played original compositions with the US Army…

Original air date: week of July 18, 2010 Few musical communities have proven more nurturing of emerging talent than bluegrass and its acoustic tributaries. In part this is because precocious youth has proved a wise investment, as evidenced by former teenage virtuosos such as Marty Stuart, Alison Krauss and Chris Thile. But mostly this is…

Original air date: week of July 12, 2010 Each year during March and April, violinist Daniel Hope invites some of his favorite colleagues to spend 17 days performing chamber music with him at the Savannah Music Festival, where he serves as Associate Artistic Director. Utilizing a blend of the finest players from around the world,…

Original air date: week of July 4, 2010 When pianist Bill Charlap arrived in Savannah with his trio to play three sets of music over the course of one evening, he made it emphatically clear that he had no intention of repeating himself. possessing a profound knowledge of music and the American songbook, he delivered…

Original air date: week of June 28, 2010 Though her childhood was steeped in the culture of mining and Appalachia, Kathy Mattea wasn’t really exposed to much traditional mountain music. But after the 2006 Sago mining disaster in her home state of West Virginia, she took her collection of mining and mountain songs and embarked…

Original air date: week of June 21, 2010 Pianist Henry Butler was born in New Orleans and has developed a sound that Dr. John refers to as the “pride of the Crescent City.” As an extension of the great piano lineage that includes Jelly Roll Morton, Professor Longhair, James Booker and Tuts Washington, Mr. Butler…

Original air date: week of June 14, 2010 During his career, Czech composer Antonin Dvorak wrote 14 string quartets, all between 1862 and 1895. His final two quartets, with their mastery of form, color and expression, are a fitting summation of Dvorak’s exceptional achievement in this genre. During March of 2010, the Emerson Quartet performed…

Original air date: week of June 7, 2010 The piano has been an integral part of the jazz idiom since its inception. Due to its combined melodic, harmonic and rhythmic possibilities, it has been the one instrument that allowed the greatest jazz players to use their creativity to address all of these elements of musical…

Original air date: week of May 31, 2010 In December of 1891, Czech composer Antonin Dvorak accepted the offer of Jeanette Thurber to become the director of the National Academy of Music in New York City. Mrs. Thurber hoped that the conservatory, which she founded in 1885, would foster the development of American concert music….

Original air date: week of May 22, 2010 As one of the most revered pianists in our time, Yefim Bronfman bucks the stereotype of the Russian soloist as merely a technical wizard of large sound and emphatic personality. Though he has technique to burn, he also has a chameleon-like ability to subsume himself in the…

Original air date: week of May 17, 2010 Ever since their childhood concerts in Brazil and their New York appearances as teenagers in 1969, Sergio and Odair Assad have been touring the world and recording as The Assad Brothers. They have followed a fascinating path of musical development utilizing the traditional repertoire of the guitar…

Original air date: Week of May 10, 2010 At the turn of the 20th century when the mandolin became popular in America, a man named Orville Gibson changed its shape and marketability. What had primarily been a fad instrument would soon fall into the hands of players that would forever alter its musical direction. This…

Original Air Date: Week Beginning May 3, 2010 When mandolins began evolving from the lute family in Italy during the 17th and 18th centuries, they were designed with a round back or bowl back in what was known as the Neopolitan style. By the end of the 19th century, a new style with a carved…

Original Air Date: Week of April 26, 2010 Hungarian fiddle playing is known the world over for its passion, romance and virtuosity. To most non-Hungarians, the music is synonymous with the campfire, the open road and the Gypsies. But is Hungarian fiddle music actually Gypsy music? Within the country you will find considerable resentment towards…

As the Industrial Revolution progressed in the 19th Century, an educated middle class arose with the means and cultural aspirations to invest in a new form of domestic art: the family piano. Since there were no means to reproduce music automatically, people played. Along with this new instrument came new methods and styles of music,…