Tag Archives: Tone Poem Tuesday

Today, a piece I really don’t like. But it is one of the best-known pieces of classical music ever composed, and last week–on the 7th, actually–marked the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth. And as performances of a piece I … Continue reading →

Busy and hectic and not a lot of time for writing, so here’s Franz von Suppe, but with one of his great overtures transcribed for wind ensemble.

I’m growing more and more attracted to the abstract, I’ve found. I think part of this comes from the greatly-increased amount of time we’ve been spending in art galleries and museums, particularly the Buffalo AKG Museum, with its amazing collection … Continue reading →

Here’s a piece I heard last week on my drive home from work. I was immediately transfixed by its color and energy, to the point that I sat in my car in the driveway while it finished. The composer is … Continue reading →

Nkeiru Okoye was born in New York City in 1972 to a Nigerian father and an African-American mother. She graduated from Oberlin in 1993, which is the same year I graduated Wartburg College. Okoye is almost entirely contemporary with me. … Continue reading →

Yup, that’s what we’re calling this series now: Tuesday Tones, because it’s still going to be a music focus series, but it won’t just be tone poems. Not that it was before, really, because if there’s one thing I like to … Continue reading →

I’m thinking about renaming this weekly feature, in order to make it into a more broad focus on classical music, but more on that later when I’ve thought of a name that I like. Meanwhile, today I have a piece … Continue reading →

I could also title this post “I listened to it, so now I’m gonna make you listen to it too!” Because it’s a piece whose existence I learned about after I watched a video on YouTube called “Reacting to One of … Continue reading →

Another new composer to me: Canadian-American composer Colin McPhee, who lived 1900 to 1964. I’m not sure what he is “best known” for, because his influence seems to be more behind-the-scenes than anything else, but McPhee did undertake some of … Continue reading →

A new composer to me! And thus, hopefully, to you. One of my favorite eras of “national” classical music is the English music of the 20th century, starting with Holst and Vaughan Williams and continuing on to Britten, William Walton, … Continue reading →