A. Kori Hill Leontyne Price was born in 1927 in Laurel, Mississippi. Her mother, Kate Baker Price, was a soprano in the church choir, so Leontyne was surrounded by music […]
concert spiritual “My Soul’s Been Anchored in the Lord.� Even though they have
The operas discussed here are not set in 18th century France or a mythological country. One is set in 21st century Cincinnati, Ohio; the other in 19th century South Carolina. Both deal with topics you may not expect from an opera: four high schoolers prepping for college admission essays; an enslaved Muslim man finding his way in pre-Civil War America. But what they tell us is that opera is only limited by what we decide it can express.
Did you think an opera could have an aria where a character sings about their love
A. Kori Hill If you study classical music, you’ve probably been told to take the edge out of your sound and make it pretty. There is so much classical music […]
Each musician has at least four other things they have to play.
A. Kori Hill Some folks joke that Antonio Vivaldi (1678–1741) wrote the same concerto 200 times. He didn’t; he wrote at least 300, some think as many as 500, though […]
didn’t; he wrote at least 300, some think as many as 500, though not all of them have
A. Kori Hill Unsuk Chin is a composer based in Berlin, Germany. She was born and grew up in Seoul, Korea, where she studied piano and initially wanted to be […]
But her family didn’t have enough money to get her piano, let alone keep paying
Even if you don’t know it, you’ve probably heard it. I’m talking about “Hallelujahâ€� from George Frideric Handel’s oratorio, Messiah. Celebrating the triumph of the Christian savior, Jesus Christ, over […]
entire oratorio, you’ll definitely program “Hallelujah.� But I’m sure you have
A. Kori Hill Do you know about the bamboula? It’s a music-dance form whose name comes from the bamboula drum. It developed in Africa and was brought to the United […]
Would you have known Louis was using the bamboula just by listening to?
A. Kori Hill Tai Murray was born in Chicago. She is one of six kids, and as a kid, she became fascinated with the violin. She couldn’t get enough of […]
You have to pull out different sounds to show the different emotions that are occurring
Remember how we talked about Messiah by Handel and The Ballad of the Brown King by Bonds? How did Handel tell a musical story about Jesus’ life and Bonds’ tell […]
Dett’s The Ordering of Moses may have started as a class project, but the details
A. Kori Hill Repetition is a funny thing–it can be boring or exciting. It can make you feel like you’re going nowhere or rediscovering something familiar. You can feel all […]
It may be a while before you notice that more instruments have come into the texture
