by Kile Smith | Dec 2, 2015 | American music, Classical music, Fleisher Collection, WRTI
On Discoveries from the Fleisher Collection, Saturday, December 5th, 5 to 6 pm Samuel Barber (1910-1981). Toccata Festiva (1960) Barber. Fadograph of a Yestern Scene (1971) Barber. Capricorn Concerto (1944) Barber. Knoxville: Summer of 1915 (1947) He was awarded, and...
by Kile Smith | Nov 2, 2015 | Classical music, Orchestral Music, String Orchestra, String Quartet, WRTI Arts Desk
[First published in WRTI’s Arts Desk 2 Nov 2015] Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings didn’t start out the way we know it now. In this feature for WRTI, I look at the inescapable strangeness of this work that is now one of the most heard and most moving pieces in the...
by Kile Smith | Oct 28, 2015 | Broad Street Review, Music Composition, Uncategorized
[First published in Broad Street Review, 27 Oct 2015.] The sound a rooster makes is the sound a stuck basement door makes when it is trying to open. It is the sound a car makes when it is vainly trying to stop, just before the crash. It is jackals at night. It is the...
by Kile Smith | Oct 16, 2012 | American music, Art songs, new music, Vocal music
What a program Sunday afternoon! Lyric Fest’s “Old City—New Song II” at The Academy of Vocal Arts was a straight-up no-foolin’ art song recital, a heliotrope bouquet of tunes brand-new, kind of new, and new. They were all 20th- and 21st-century...
