by Kile Smith | Apr 30, 2018 | American music, Classical music, Fleisher Collection, String Orchestra, WRTI
We keep one composer and swap out two from last month’s American Romantics program on Discoveries from the Fleisher Collection. The two new composers are two Arthurs—Bird and Foote—and we’ll hear music they first wrote for other purposes. Arthur Foote’s Theme 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 | May 17, 2013 | Dance Music, Early Music, New Compositions, new music, Orchestral Music, String Orchestra
I could hardly have been happier at the premiere of The Red Book of Montserrat last night at the Perelman Theater in the Kimmel Center, Philadelphia. This newest string orchestra work is a 20-minute suite commissioned by the Philadelphia Sinfonia, Gary White, music...
by Kile Smith | May 13, 2013 | new music, Orchestral Music, String Orchestra
On Saturday, May 11th, Aaron Picht conducted the Temple University Music Preparatory Division Youth Chamber Orchestra in the premiere of the new version of my Three Dances. It was the closing concert of the Festival of Young Musicians, held at the Church of the Holy...
by Kile Smith | May 11, 2013 | new music, Orchestral Music, String Orchestra
I’m looking forward to the premiere of the new version of my Three Dances tonight. Aaron Picht conducts the Temple University Music Preparatory Division Youth Chamber Orchestra at the Festival of Young Musicians, Church of the Holy Trinity, Rittenhouse Square,...
by Kile Smith | May 5, 2013 | Dance Music, Early Music, New Compositions, new music, Orchestral Music, String Orchestra
The Red Book of Montserrat is a suite for string orchestra commissioned by the Philadelphia Sinfonia, the excellent youth orchestra Gary White directs. It sets five of the ten songs from the Llibre Vermell de Montserrat, the 14th-century book of music and texts from...
