Good morning Kossacks and welcome to Morning Open Thread.
We're here every morning at 6:30 a.m Eastern time. Feel free to volunteer to take a day - permanent or just once in awhile. With the autopublish feature you can set it and forget it. Quite often the diarist de jour shows up much later (like me), that's the beauty of Open Thread...it carries on without you! Just let us know in the comments.
We leave tomorrow for our "world tour" of Carmel, Indiana; Carnegie Hall; and Shelbyville, TN. Well, the last one isn't actually a part of our tour, but I've included it because we are all quite pleased to go from a concert in Carnegie Hall on Saturday night to a pops concert in a horse arena on the following Tuesday.
We are performing some strange music, which was requested by the Spring for Music festival. First is Percy Grainger's "The Warriors", which was meant to be a ballet. It was written at the same time as Stravinksy's "Firebird" and was supposed to be performed just after the Stravinsky premiere, but artists will be artists, and there was a falling out, so it was never done. Here is a video of our pianist explaining the unique features of this piece, which calls for a MINIMUM of three pianos and celeste.
Then, we are premiering an electric violin concerto by minimalist composer Terry Riley, entitled "The Palmian Chord Ryddle", performed by Tracy Silverman. Here is a rather entertaining look at how Silverman prepares the piece. I'm glad to know that he has to practice just like I do!
Gary, one of our tech people, talks about the Ives and the technical difficulties of that piece.
Finally, this is a bit of the Ives performed in rehearsal. Yes, that is what it is supposed to sound like.
More about my personal feelings I cannot say. If you care to, the concert will be streamed live this Saturday at 7:30 p.m. Eastern time at the Nashville Symphony's home page.
So, now I'm off to practice, then a rehearsal of the Ives. Jibber Jabber, y'all.
3:39 AM PT: This was in the paper this morning: http://blogs.tennessean.com/...