We are all connected on Now Is the Time, Saturday, June 20th at 9 pm. We just learned that composer Brian Fennelly passed away on Wednesday; his loving celebration of his granddaughter was already programmed for this week’s broadcast, so we will close our look at contemporary American music on a bittersweet note with that work, Fennelly’s “Sigol” for Strings.
I never met him, but going back a few years, to my time at the Fleisher Collection of Orchestral Music, I had infrequent, but memorable, correspondence with Brian Fennelly. He was always warm, always sincere, and always interested in what I was doing. He was humble and kind, and when I asked him to send me some of his music for Now Is the Time, I discovered, as many already had, a composer of deep feeling and care.
Opening the program, Paul Lansky’s Threads takes the form of a Bach cantata, but for percussion quartet, mixing sonorities in ever-delightful ways. Michael Colquhon performs on flute his own You Can’t Get There From Here, and Martin Rokeach in North Beach Rhapsody sends us a postcard of San Francisco and the energy that connects all of us, no matter where we live. May music continue to connect us all.
PROGRAM:
Paul Lansky: Threads
Michael Colquhon: You Can’t Get There From Here
Martin Rokeach: North Beach Rhapsody
Brian Fennelly: “Sigol” for Strings
Every Saturday night at 9 Eastern, Kile Smith hosts Now Is the Time, all styles of contemporary concert music by living American composers on WRTI's all-classical stream. At wrti.org click on the Listen: Classical button at the top of any page. Thanks for supporting American contemporary music on WRTI!