Archive for March 2009

Revisiting William Grant Still By Leon Botstein Written for the concert Revisiting William Grant Still, performed on March 22, 2009 at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center. When this concert, focused on the career of William Grant Still, was scheduled a year and a half ago, those who were betting on who might be the…

George Whitefield Chadwick, Rip Van Winkle Overture By Byron Adams, University of California, Riverside Written for the concert Revisiting William Grant Still, performed on March 22, 2009 at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center. Although one of his biographers has referred to him as a “common man,” George Whitefield Chadwick, while hardly cutting a romantic…

William Grant Still, Darker America, Africa, Symphony No. 2 By Catherine Parsons Smith is the author of William Grant Still (Illinois, 2008); William Grant Still: A Study in Contradictions (California, 2000); and Making Music in Los Angeles (California, 2007) Written for the concert Revisiting William Grant Still , performed on March 22, 2009 at Avery…

Egard Varèse, Offrandes By Byron Adams. University of California, Riverside Written for the concert Revisiting William Grant Still, performed on March 22, 2009 at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center. “I cannot resist that burning desire to go beyond those limits” wrote the French-born composer Edgard Varèse in 1928. By then, Varèse had already trod a…