Category Archives: Uncategorized

Texas Early Music Project’s “El Mundo Nuevo” (The New World)

Posted by Alison @ KMFA  🙂

Last weekend I had the great pleasure of attending my very first Texas Early Music Project (TEMP) performance. I know, I’m way overdue, but to be fair, I thought I was getting adequate early-music fulfillment with KMFA’s wonderful Sunday show, Ancient Voices.

Well, the performance I attended proved to me that there is more than great music involved in a TEMP performance. Of course I expected the beautiful vocal pieces, some haunting, some playful. The piece “El Palomo” (called a Tonadilla, i.e., a little Tonada) seemed like it was created just for soloist Stephanie Prewitt to sing, which of course is impossible, since it dated back to the 17th century. And the rousing percussion piece, labeled simply as Zarambeques, coupled with the wholesome harp, was one of my favorites.

The overall theme of the concert (named “El Mundo Nuevo: 18th-Century Music from Latin America”) was music from  the city streets, Indian villages, and missions and cathedrals of 18th-century Peru and Bolivia. (Hah! I’ll bet you thought all early music was from the courts and monasteries of old England, didn’t you? Another presumptive stereotype dashed.) One of the most interesting aspects of the performance was the brief description of the history of the percussion instruments, including the shipping crate that became a drum, and the drumstick on the alms box that changed pitch when the hinged lid is raised and lowered. There was an early-music harp featured as well, and other instruments that I didn’t get a chance to scrutinize from the back of the audience, but they all sounded so wonderful…. Guest artist Tom Zajac shared most of the historical insights between pieces, and was such an amazing performer. And because I know no one else will say it (early music people are so polite), he’s pretty good-looking, too.  😉

I highly recommend attending the next TEMP event…. this was the season opener, and after perusing their website, they have a wonderfully diverse offering this season.

Here’s a little slideshow of my surreptitiously taken snapshots:

~ posted by Alison @ KMFA

In the KMFA Studios — Dr. Joyce Wu

This weekend, KMFA’s newest show, Pianoforté, will feature some really popular piano favorites, including Schubert’s Wanderer Fantasy, Debussy’s Claire de Lune,  and Chopin’s Ballade No. 4.

Local artist and teacher, Dr. Joyce Wu, performed the Fantasy pieces live in KMFA’s Studio 2000, and I took a few photos while she was warming up. She’s really good!

You can hear this episode of Pianoforté this Saturday at 8pm. Enjoy!  🙂

Dr. Joyce Wu, playing the Steinway-O piano in Studio 2000

Note the strategic microphone placement for recording

Producer Sarah Addison governs the sound board while Dr. Joyce Wu performs

~posted by Alison @ KMFA  🙂

Just for Fun: Translating weather into music– from stormy weather to “Stormy Weather”

At KMFA we are always on the lookout for interesting interpretations of music. Here’s the latest: Nathalie Miebach, a contributor to the amazing T.E.D. Talks, translates weather and climate data into musical scores, which she then renders into vibrant, whimsical sculptures. She uses them as the basis for collaboration with musicians across a wide spectrum of styles and genres. She says on her website, “Musical notation allows me a more nuanced way of translating information without compromising it.”

Each sculpture maps the meteorological landscape of weather of a specific time and place, but is also a fully functional musical score to be played and interpreted by musicans on instruments, such as piano, French horn and electrican guitar.

"Stormy Weather, Internal Storms --Score for Sculptor and Musician" (You can click on this image to hear the actual music)

"She's Coming on Strong" -- This piece is a rendering of the path of both Hurricane Grace and the Halloween Storm, which created the "Perfect Storm"

"Urban Weather Prairies" is based on data collected in Omaha, Nebraska, during a 2-month period in 2008.

You can listen to the resulting music, as well as see more sculptures, on Nathalie Miebach’s website. One of the songs actually sounds like rain on piano keys. Perhaps playing it would be a bit of a rainmaker here in Central Texas.   🙂

~posted by Alison @ KMFA

KMFA Radio Summer Camp calls it a wrap

[UPDATE: the interviews and recorded music that these great kids compiled during their summer camp week has culminated into a radio show! Tune in to hear their show August 20th at 10am and August 21st at 3pm.]

 

~ posted by Kelsey Padgett, KMFA Production & Development Associate

I can’t believe KMFA’s Summer Camp has already come and gone – the KMFA staff and I absolutely loved having these great kids here in the studios for a full week! They were all amazing students for our first ever radio-production camp.

During the second week of June, six lucky 8th and 9th graders participated in “Kids Recording Kids,” learning on-air speaking techniques, how to record musicians performing live, radio interviewing skills, and editing and audio production techniques.

These kids are smart, fun, and enthusiastic!

Young musicians from the Austin Classical Guitar Society and the Austin Chamber Music Center were the recording subjects for the project, and by the end of the week, they had created their very own radio show!

We took lots of photos, and even turned them loose with the video camera a couple of times. We’ll be posting more photos soon… In the meantime, here’s a great video with highlights of teaching, learning, and fun!

Here’s a blog entry written by one camper, Nate:

KMFA’s summer camp, “Kids Recording Kids,” has been a great experience. I have learned so much about music and radio over the process, and I would recommend it to anyone who loves listening to radio, who is interested as to how radio works, and is interested in interviewing.

Nate sits in the "hot seat" in Master Control

One of the things I got the most out of is getting to meet all of the KMFA staff, getting the chance to ask questions, and knowing that I would always get a fantastic answer. All of the KMFA employees are laid back and fun to get to know. From the staff in the office to the radio hosts, our camp counselors to the radio engineer Phil, they all rocked my socks! I even got to sit in the radio control room while Diane Donovan did her radio show. I think I overloaded her with questions by asking her, “What does this button do? What does this switch do?”

I also enjoyed getting to learn about audio production, interviewing techniques, how to speak on the radio, getting to know more about classical music, learning how broadcasting and radio frequencies work, and of course getting to know how a radio station works and operates.

And last but not least, our camp counselors, Carmel, Lauren, and Kelsey were terrific. For the first year of this camp, they did a fantastic job of creating it and making it happen. Not to mention the fact that Carmel and Kelsey were really good at making awkward situations not so awkward. In the end, I can say that Kids Recording Kids has been terrific!!!  ~Nate Z.

and here’s Hunter’s blog entry:

At KMFA’s summer camp, there was a lot for us as a group to learn and enjoy.  Starting out, we got to have a tour of the studio by Phil Pollack, and although it maybe didn’t all make sense it was still interesting to see how the station ran.  The next day we learned about microphone and also enjoyed informally recording each other.  We continued throughout the week to enjoy interviewing and recording a quartet of the Classical Guitar Society, and Nate and I got to have some fun watching Dianne Donovan “live” on air in the control room. 

My personal favorite so far, however, has been learning things from Jeffrey in the control booth during interviews.  There are so many interesting buttons and knobs to learn about, as well as various types of electronic equipment.  Second on my list of favorites was recording a video tour with Nate of KMFA studio. As the week comes to a close, I as well as the other campers are looking forward to editing recordings as well as learning other interesting “finishing” techniques here at KMFA.  ~ Hunter A.

It was so successful, I hope that we will be able to keep this program going and growing for many years to come.


~posted by Kelsey Padgett, Camp Counselor and KMFA Production Associate

Our KMFA arts partners score big at the 2011 Austin Critics’ Table Awards!

~posted by Sara Hessel, KMFA Music Director

KMFA congratulates our cultural partners who were honored at the 2010-2011 Austin Critics’ Table Awards:

Ballet Austin (Best Ensemble for Kai)

Austin Symphony Orchestra (Best Symphonic Performance for Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez with Pepe Romero)

Adam Holzman, guitar with the Miro Quartet (Best Chamber Performance for Austin Goes Classical)

Texas Early Music Project (Best Chamber Performance for Convivencia)

Conspirare (Best Choral Performance for Renaissance and Response: Polyphony Then and Now)

Austin Lyric Opera/Austin Chamber Music Center (Best Opera for The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat)

Anne Akiko Meyers, violin (Best Instrumentalist for Anne Akiko Meyers with the Austin Symphony)

Miro Quartet (Special citation: Inimitable FourPlay Award for 15 years with Sandy Yamamoto)

Texas Performing Arts (Special citation: Ears Wide Open Award for adventurous bookings of classical music)

Congratulations, and thank you for all of your efforts in making Austin such a rich artistic environment to live in!

 See the full list of winners here.

Blast from the Past: hear a familiar KMFA voice on Classical Guitar Alive this weekend!


Russell Sarre, Australian composer (and former host of KMFA)

If you’ve been listening to KMFA since the 1990s, you’ll remember an announcer named Russell Sarre. His distinctly Australian accent, coupled with an irrepressible sense of humor, made him a popular host on KMFA. The show he was most remembered for was “Mind Your Music,” co-starring David Ford. It was so successful, they even beat the famous NPR show “From the Top” one year for a national radio award!

Russell is a classical composer, and he and his family now live in Hamburg, Germany. Luckily for his Austin fans he was interviewed by Tony Morris (host of the popular show, Classical Guitar Alive) about the premiere of his most recent work: Lyric Suite for Guitar and String Quartet.

To hear the whole episode, tune in tonight at 9pm, and again on Sunday at 11am, on KMFA 89.5.

Here’s a quick preview:

~posted by Alison @ KMFA  🙂

Magic vision in Ballet Austin’s “Magic Flute”

Stephen Mills’ Magic Vision

~posted By KMFA mid-day announcer, Dianne Donovan

Once again, Austin audiences enjoyed a veritable feast for the eyes (and ears) courtesy of Stephen Mills. In his most ambitious project to date, the Artistic Director and choreographer of Ballet Austin tackled Mozart’s The Magic Flute with nary a singer nor a supertitle in sight. As if setting Mozart’s great opera in a different medium wasn’t enough of a challenge, Mills added something very unusual to the mix; he added shadow puppetry. When I heard about this project, I thought that it could go one of two ways. It went this way — beautifully, that is. The shadows provided scary monsters, thoughtful asides, as well as interesting and almost instant set changes.

At times the dancers would interact with actual shadow puppets and other times they would team up with shadow dancers from the other side of the screen. ShadowLight Productions of San Francisco created and executed the shadow images. This was more than visual trickery, it was a true integration of forms that enhanced the production. Superimposed over this grey world were some of the loveliest, most colorful costumes I’ve seen on any stage. Costume designer Susan Branch Towne’s exotic birds, when set in motion, were positively kaleidoscopic and the priests’ white uniforms shimmered luminously.

Austin’s Donald Grantham provided a reduced score (sans vocals), well performed by the Austin Symphony Orchestra, under Maestro Peter Bay’s fine direction.

another one of the drawings of the costumes for Magic Flute

Of course mirrors and lights aren’t enough to carry such a production. As I’ve come to expect, Stephen Mills’ inventive and elegantly flowing choreography is sometimes spiked with truly comedic gestures. All of the dancers did a marvelous job of incorporating so many elements into their performance. Ashley Lynn Giffix’s Pamina made me wish that I had nagged my parents a little more forcefully for ballet lessons when I was youngster.

Once again, Stephen Mills “raises the bar” (I couldn’t resist) on what is possible in the world of dance. This production was sooo Austin, soooo Stephen Mills.

If missed the production and would like to see more of the images and costumes, please visit Ballet Austin’s blog.


~posted by Dianne Donovan, KMFA mid-day announcer and host of the show, Classical Austin (Wednesday evenings at 8pm).

Pianos in the Park, Part 2

In response to the blog post I posted about the pianos stationed around Austin last month, I received a nice email from a KMFA listener and musician, Aragorn Eissler, about a multi-media project he created that surrounds the Play Me I’m Yours piano installation around downtown Austin. He told me that he composed a series of nine piano preludes and then performed them in one circuit on his bicycle on the hike and bike trail.

SO, basically, Mr. Eissler composed a short piece of music for each location, then put on his tuxedo, grabbed his video camera, and set off on his bike to perform each one.  The result is a charming group of videos with lovely music in the foreground, with chirping birds and mopeds and the Austin skyline in the background. You don’t usually get that kind of Austin ambience in a concert hall….

On his webpage he says that throughout the day, “Austinites were very friendly. It wasn’t strange at all to see someone playing live music downtown, but riding a bike in a tux down the hike and bike trail earned me some sideways glances!”

Here’s the link to watch all his videos: http://www.aratunes.us

Here’s one of the pieces (all of them are under 3 minutes each):

Thanks for sharing these with us, Ara!

~ posted by Alison @ KMFA  🙂

A Resplendent Gala: Austin Symphony Orchestra’s 100th Birthday Gala Concert

~ posted by Dianne Donovan, KMFA mid-day announcer

 A splendid time was had by all at the Austin Symphony Orchestra’s 100th Birthday Gala Concert.

The lawn of the Long Center became the city’s living room, as folks without tickets set up blankets and canvas chairs to enjoy the simulcast on the big screen of this sold-out show.

Inside, Dell Hall was packed to its beautiful rafters. For the first half of the performance, Maestro Peter Bay selected music from the original A.S.O. program of a century ago. The orchestra played part of the Ballet Égyptien by Alexander Luigini and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Symphony no. 28.

The second half of the program included the special guest for the night, Itzhak Perlman. He performed the much-loved Bruch Violin Concerto that had the crowd on its feet instantly after that last note. Mr. Perlman came back for several bows before literally and figuratively “throwing in the towel.”

The orchestra capped the evening with Ottorino Respighi’s “Pines of Rome,” with another subtle nod to A.S.O. history: “Pines” was the last piece that the orchestra played in its old home of Bass Concert Hall. The orchestra seemed to be at the top of its game throughout, and there were many smiles from the musicians during and after the concert.

I should mention that before the performance, the orchestra announced its 2011-2012 season, which will include classical superstar violinist, Joshua Bell, as well as locally based greats, Anton Nel and Bion Tsang. After the performance the audience was on the deck to enjoy cake, drinks and a special light/music show wherein the Long Center’s Walls became the canvas to the shapes and colors. (Fireworks were to follow but due to the dangerously dry and windy conditions they had to be cancelled. Too bad, but it was a wise decision.)  All of the audience members received a complimentary commemorative book.

Between the fine performances and the magic in the air, many of us did not want the evening to end. Cheers to all involved in the past, today and in the future.

~posted by Dianne Donovan, KMFA mid-day announcer and host of the the show, Classical Austin (Wednesday evenings at 8pm).