Henry Michaels, the Music Academy’s director of audience experience and engagement (a post of whose very existence I was previously unaware), has curated a four-part, multi-media presentation in Hahn Hall called Listening, Then and Now.
Each 75-minute session of this series will visit specific moments in time, providing context for listening to what was then the music of the moment, as well as broader insights about the culture that produced it.
The four parts of Listening, Then and Now, in chronological order, are:
1. “I Hear Dead People: The Cult of Genius & the Musical Museum,” 1:30 p.m. Monday, Nov. 29;
2. “Is the concert hall … haunted? Find out how and why voices of the past came to dominate concert life,” 1:30 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 1;
3. “One City, Two Publics: Italian Opera & Its Foils in London,” 10:30 a.m. Monday, Dec. 6;
4. “German composer … Italian opera . . . English audience. What gives?” at 10:30 a.m. Wednesday, Dec. 8.
The first two episodes of this series delve into the complex story behind the emergence of a canon of musical masterworks, and traces its development from a revolutionary concept to an entrenched tradition, while the concluding episodes examine the domination of British musical theater by Italian operas, even those written by German composers like Handel, in preference to native masterpieces like “The Beggar’s Opera.”
Having aroused our interest, Michaels and the Music Academy are keen to keep a dialogue going, and we are invited to “Enjoy discussion over coffee in the lobby after each event!”
Tickets to each event are $20 general admission, $10 community access, youth (ages 7-17) free, and they can be purchased online at www.musicacademy.org/events, or in person at the Hahn Hall ticket office, which will open one hour prior to each discussion. (Limited community access tickets will be sold at the door prior to the event.)
— Gerald Carpenter covers the arts as a Noozhawk contributing writer. He can be reached at gerald.carpenter@gmail.com. The opinions expressed are his own.