Miguel Harth-Bedoya
Conductor
Conductor Miguel Harth Bedoya says that musicians are like chefs, they have to create shows that are engaging, much like a chef would plan a menu. While describing his “Inca Trail” progam to Sarah Zaslaw, he talks about unearthing Latin American compositions everywhere from music libraries to families of composers. He talks about Gabriela Lena Frank’s Illapa, about the ancient Andean god of the weather, and the different types of flutes Jessica Warren-Acosta uses in her performance with the Atlanta Symphony. He tells the sad story behind Osvaldo Golijov’s Mariel, and he also talks about Fiesta! by Jimmy Lopez, an energetic mini-symphony that includes cumbia and techno rhythms.

 

Mei-Ann Chen
Conductor
Mei-Ann Chen, assistant conductor of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra from 2007 to 2009, recounts her personal history with Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony (it helped her, an unknown, win the Nicolai Malko International Conducting Competition in 2005), and enthuses about the spontaneity and expressiveness of her collaborator in the February concert she led in Atlanta, violinist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg. She also fills GPB’s Sarah Zaslaw in on her life story, from childhood in Taiwan to, improbably, studies in Boston, and on to her burgeoning conducting career and what she’s learned from ASO music director Robert Spano.

 

Donald Runnicles and Mei-Ann Chen
Conductors
Donald Runnicles and Mei-Ann Chen talk with GPB’s Sarah Zaslaw about Mahler’s Symphony No. 6. To Runnicles, the Sixth evokes the specter of mortality and fate, as in the two great hammer blows in the finale. He describes Mahler’s use of distant-sounding offstage musicians to create a sense of space, and the feeling when he himself steps off the podium at the end. Chen talks about watching the piece transform from rehearsals to performance. Both conductors recall their first Mahler experiences (for him, the “Resurrection” Symphony in Edinburgh; for her, the Fifth in Spain).

 

Christopher Theofanidis
Composer
Texan composer Chris Theofanidis chats with GPB’s Sarah Zaslaw about starting composing at age 19 and about his latest piece for the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, titled simply “Symphony.” (He describes the opening moments as an “invitation to the temple.” Further in, he has the musicians sing and hum.) He praises his working relationship with Robert Spano – and reveals the secret of the backstage stash of earplugs. If Theofanidis had not become composer, he says, he would have gone into science or cooking.

 

Gilbert Varga
Conductor
Born in Britain and raised in Switzerland, Gilbert Varga is ethnically Hungarian and now lives in France. After training as a violinist he developed a career as a conductor, and in conversation with Sarah Zaslaw at GPB, he talks about the mysterious process of learning to conduct, the pros and cons of batons, his brief encounter with actor Robin Williams and his aversion to describing the emotional, nonverbal art form of music through analytical words.

 

Nicola Luisotti
Conductor
In fall 2009 Nicola Luisotti becomes music director of the San Francisco Opera. Visiting Atlanta to conduct the Atlanta Symphony, the effusive Italian chats with Sarah Zaslaw at GPB about his precocious, multifaceted musical career, he sings a bit of the folk song Tchaikovsky uses in his Capriccio Italien, he compares collaborating with a soloist to getting to know a romantic partner, and he calls Prokofiev the “Mozart of the 20th century.” Luisotti praises dynamic extremes (we are all “full of dynamics inside”). And he depicts his childhood in a crowded house in a Tuscan village. They ate a lot of pasta.

 

Alvin Singleton
Composer
Alvin Singleton was making a living as a composer in Europe when he met Robert Shaw, Shaw asked him to come be the Atlanta Symphony’s composer in residence, and in half an hour his life changed. In conversation with Sarah Zaslaw at GPB, the New York native and Atlanta resident reviews his career doing the only thing he really wanted to do - composing. After ditching accounting as a young man, he never looked back. And he discusses his choral work Praisemaker, with its theme of memory and its inspiration in the oral tradition of griots. (Also in the studio is composer Jennifer Higdon, who pitches in.)

 

Jennifer Higdon & Jennifer Koh
Composer & Voilinist
Jennifer Higdon and Jennifer Koh provide a glimpse into the relationship between a composer and her interpreter. The two were in Atlanta for performances of Higdon’s The Singing Rooms, written for Koh. In the GPB studios with Sarah Zaslaw, they talk about the performer’s glimpse into the composer’s soul, the unique idea of a violin concerto with orchestra and chorus, the role of the violin in such a sonority, Hidgon’s selection of the poetry and the piece’s use of percussion. The two also touch on the pros and cons of amplification (not used in this piece).

 

Christine Brewer & Eric Owens
Soprano & Baritone
Christine Brewer and Eric Owens are colleagues and, after many joint appearances, friends. The week of their all-Strauss concert with the Atlanta Symphony, they spent a spirited half-hour with Sarah Zaslaw in the GPB studios gabbing about music and life. In these bits of the final broadcast, they discuss scenes from Richard Strauss’s Elektra, Die Frau Ohne Schatten and Salome; the sixth graders who lobbied for Brewer to sing at President Obama’s inauguration; believing in the characters you play, even when they’re insane; and the comfort of making music with friends.

 

Shai Wosner & Donald Runnicles
Pianist & Conductor
Shai Wosner and Donald Runnicles explore the element of spontaneity common to both improvisation and the performance of notated music. Wosner explains the pivotal role of the Piano Concerto No. 9 among Mozart’s concertos. Runnicles sees in Strauss’s Alpine Symphony, which traces a hiker’s day up and down a mountain, a larger story about the life cycle from birth to death; he loves the vistas and thrills of hiking and skiing himself. And, in the GPB studios with Sarah Zaslaw, the two describe the “healthy nerves” they feel just before performing.

 

Roberto Abbado
Conductor
Roberto Abbado praises violinist Gil Shaham as a musician and a person, saying the two facets are inextricable. He discusses rehearsals and acoustics and how Atlanta Symphony assistant conductor Mei-Ann Chen helps him out. He paints an interesting picture of wartime Soviet Union 1944, when Prokofiev wrote his highly successful Fifth Symphony, and contrasts Prokofiev and Shostakovich. Abbado spoke with Sarah Zaslaw in the GPB studios.