May 10th, 2012
British Composer Roxanna Panufnik
Once again, 20♪21 host Joe Truskot presents a wide selection of music composed during the past one hundred years that explores a variety of styles and creative efforts. The program includes Leos Janacek’s Sinfonietta from 1925 as well as Jason Eckhardt’s A Way [tracing] performed by the incomparable cellist Fred Sherry composed in 2006. Roxanna Panufnik’s Westminster Mass (1999) is one of the most colorful and engaging settings of the litergy.
There’s also John Harbison’s Piano Quintet with Gilbert Kalich and the Boston Symphony Chamber Players, Shostakovich’s Piano Sonata No.2 performed by the legendary Tatiana Nikolayeva, and Gerard Schwarz and the Seattle Symphony performing Alan Hovhaness’s Prayer to St. Gregory. The program concludes with Mario Lavista’s Tres Bagatelas (2001) performed by Mexico City’s Trio Coghlan
20♪21, A Showcase of Contemporary Classical Music for the Monterey Bay area. Every Tuesday evening from 7 to 9:30 p.m.
May 2nd, 2012
American composer Eric Moe inspired the theme for this fun program with his 2006 composition, Super Hero produced by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project and led by Gil Rose. The program explores the music created by a variety of composers to celebrate, mock, or pay tribute to others. You’ll hear John Tavener’s Song of Athene, a choral work sung at Princess Diana’s funeral; David Del Tredici’s Song for Baritone honoring Matthew Shepherd, Sergei Prokofiev’s Lieutenant Kijé Suite composed for a film which never got made about a hero who never was, plus works by Charles Wuorinen, John Corigliano, Michael Torke, Aaron Copland, and Richard Stauss. There’s lots of great music from today and the past hundred years in store for you performed by such luminaries as Simon Rattle, Jeffrey Tate, Neville Marriner, and the Kronos Quartet.
Join Joe Truskot for 20♪21, A Showcase of Contemporary Classical Music, every Tuesday evening from 7 to 9:30.
April 25th, 2012
Great Graphic Art Poster Celebrating May Day
Workers of the World Unite! Join host Joe Truskot for a celebration of creativity produced during the Soviet Union’s reign and the birth of new freedom in the Russian Republic. Remember, the people united can never be defeated, except by seventy years of absolutely brutal dictators and their totalitarian regime. Yet art lived on.
- Let’s Build Thoroughly!
20♪21, KUSP’s Contemporary Classical Music Showcase, every Tuesday at 7:00 p.m. Enjoy music created by some of the most gifted composers of the 20th century. The program opens with Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No.3 “The First of May.” Violinist Cho-Liang Lin performs Prokofiev’s Second Violin Concerto with Esa Pekka Salinen and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. You’ll also hear works by Sofia Gubaidulina, Rodion Shchedrin, Arvo Pärt, and Tikhon Krenikov performed by such luminaries as Vladimir Spivakov, Leonid Kogan, Bernard Haitink, and many others.
April 20th, 2012
- Cellist Raphael Wallfisch
Join 20♪21 host Joe Truskot for English composer John Tavener’s mystical work for Cello and Orchestra, The Protecting Veil, with an outstanding performance by one of today’s leading cellists, Raphael Wallfisch. This 43-minute-long cello concerto is based on Greek Orthodox chants. The composer was present while this recording was made and it is the definitive offering of this modern classic!
Also on this Challenge the Listener Program are Andrzej Panufnik’s Tragic Overture, Karol Szymanowski’s Songs of the Fairytale Princess, Swiss composer Frank Martin’s Petite Symphonie, and shorter works by Heitor Villa Lobos, Charles Wuorinen, Allen Shawn, Libby Larsen, Osvaldo Golijov, and many others.
20♪21: Contemporary Classical Music for California’s Central Coast. Explore new worlds of music.
April 12th, 2012
Sergei Rachmaninoff
Join 20♪21 host Joe Truskot for an evening of 20th century piano music stretching just about the entire hundred years. You’ll hear Rachmaninoff’s Fourth Piano Concerto with the composer at the keyboard, plus Gerald Finzi’s Eclogue, and piano concertos by Roger Sessions, Aram Khatchaturian, Allen Shawn, and Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue thrown in for fun.
That’s KUSP’s Contemporary Classical Music Showcase, 20♪21 with Joe Truskot. It’s another challenge the listener program for Central Coast Public Radio, KUSP, Santa Cruz.
April 4th, 2012
English Composer Ralph Vaughan Williams
Join host Joe Truskot for an evening of contemporary classical music—just for fun! Because a work is cheerful doesn’t mean it’s easy to perform or lacks substance. Serious music isn’t always serious. You’ll hear Vaughan Williams Tuba Concerto, an electroacoustic composition using vocal utterances by Eric Moe entitled “Mouth Music,” plus Copland’s Clarinet Concerto, Charles Ives “Central Park in the Dark” and “The Gong on the Hook and Ladder,” David del Tredici’s “Tatoo,” Allen Shawn’s “Blues and Boogie” for cello and piano, Gary Eskow’s “Not a Sonata” and much more.
- Vermont-based composer Allen Shawn
Be part of the Contemporary Classical Club of the Monterey Bay. Tuesday at Seven.
March 28th, 2012
Join host Joe Truskot for an exciting program dedicated to music from the 20th and 21st centuries celebrating Passover and Easter. Plus several of the most requested—or most questioned (“What IS THAT you’re playing?”) works from the past six months.
Russian Composer Sofia Gubaidulina
You’ll hear Simon Rattle lead soloists and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in Karol Szymanowski’s Stabat Mater, “Easter” from Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Five Mystical Songs and his Tuba Concerto, the Funeral Ikos of John Tavenner, Ernst Bloch’s Schlomo with Mischa Maisky, Leonard Bernstein and the Israel Philharmonic, Eric Moe’s Mouth Music, and Sophia Gubaidulina’s Quartet No.2 performed by the Kronos Quartet.
It’s a Contemporary Music Showcase. Plan to give us a listen and stretch your musical tastes!
Tuesday, April 3, 2012 at 7 p.m.
March 22nd, 2012
Host Joe Truskot presents a second set of Violin Concertos all composed in the past 100 years. Aeolian Impromptu: Music from the 20th and 21st centuries. There’s more to contemporary music than meets the ear!
You’ll hear Violin Concertos composed by Prokofiev, Schnittke, Korngold, Bolcom, and Wuorinen performed by such greats as Gidon Kramer, Anne-Sophie Mutter, James Ehnes, Sergiu Luca,
March 14th, 2012
Join me for an entire program devoted to music created to celebrate the first day of Spring. It’s a time of new beginnings, brighter days, a parade of flowers, reawakened feelings and, yes, new love. Spring still inspires composers to translate their emotions into musical ideas. You’ll hear Benjamin Britten’s monumental Spring Symphony in which a score of poems are set to his most romantic music. Also, Aaron Copland’s ever-popular Appalachian Spring, plus works capturing the season by John Cage, Philip Glass, George Butterworth, and many others.
Host Joe Truskot will also pay a musical tribute to No Rooz—the Persian New Year. You may not know it but you are probably very familiar with the ancient Persian calendar, especially if you follow astrology. The signs of the Zodiac are the months of the Iranian calendar which begins on the first day of spring.
You’ll hear Californian composer Henry Cowell’s Persian Set, a work premiered in Tehran in 1957 and immediately embraced by Leopold Stokowski. Cowell was one of the pioneers of ethnomusicology and was inspired by the classical music of Iran. Also an example of Persian Classical music, the Dastegah Segah and a new work by Iranian American composer Reza Vali for string quartet.
Don’t miss one note of this special program on Central Coast Public Radio, KUSP in Santa Cruz, California.
