Arts & Culture

WAMC's Ian Pickus and resident quizzer Mike Nothnagel try to pass the "test."

Albany Symphony’s Dogs of Desire has launched “Hot, w/Mustard,” featuring 10 extraordinary emerging composers from across America, who have been putting some sizzle into the end of summer with thrilling new works. The composers, who are some of today’s most exciting new artistic voices, created short works for Dogs of Desire, the Symphony’s genre-bending 18-member new music ensemble. “During difficult times, music is a source of inspiration, hope and comfort,” according to Maestro and Artistic Director David Alan Miller – who joins us this morning.

Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute is a fine arts center in Utica, New York dedicated to serving diverse audiences by advancing the appreciation, understanding, and enjoyment of the arts.

The art institute aims to promote interest and participation in the arts and stimulate artistic self-expression and personal creativity. MWPAI continues to assume a leadership and advocacy role for the arts in Utica, NY.

Founded in 1919, the institute celebrated their 100th Anniversary last year and this – are operating during a pandemic. To tell us more we welcome Institute President and CEO Anna D'Ambrosio.

PITTSFIELD, MASS.   There is always a danger of wanting something so much that the event doesn’t match the anticipation. 

Whether irreverent, ironic, or absurdly entertaining, cartoons do much more than make us laugh. Incisive by nature, these witty, intelligent reflections on the human condition invite us, with clarity and empathy, to engage with the things in life that we sometimes may rather not confront.

For Liza Donnelly, hand-drawn lines are a means of launching political movements or calling leaders into account, of questioning the way we live our lives and finding common ground. Her cartoons have been featured in The New Yorker, where she has been a contributing artist and writer since 1979.

The new exhibition at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, “Liza Donnelly: Comic Relief” - explores the organic evolution of Donnelly’s desire to express herself and to engage with the world through drawing, tracing her transformation from
a painfully shy child growing up in Washington, D.C. to her emergence as a New Yorker artist and activist.

Sue Elliott is the Director of The Tanglewood Learning Institute. She joined us to discuss TLI's online master classes, educational series, ShopTalks, OpenForums, celebration of the 250th anniversary Beethoven's birth, and more. 

Julianne Lee has a distinctive career as both a violinist and violist, appearing frequently as a soloist, chamber musician, and orchestral player. Currently assistant principal second violinist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Lee has been a member of the violin section since 2006.

She will perform in a "BSO Musicians in Recital from Tanglewood" concert featuring works by Mozart, Roumain and Schubert. The recital will be hosted by Lauren Ambrose and will be online at tanglewood.org on August 20.

Pianist Conrad Tao made his Tanglewood debut as soloist and Ravel's Piano Concerto in G in August 2019. Now on Saturday, August 15, at 8 p.m., he will perform as part of the Great Performers in Recital at Tanglewood online series.

Known as a composer as well as a pianist, Tao will show the breadth of his musical interests in the recital of music at the center of which is Beethoven's towering Tempest Sonata, which exploits the full range and power of the piano.

Conrad Tao has appeared worldwide as a pianist and composer, and has been dubbed "a musician of probing intellect and open-hearted vision" by the New York Times.

Having celebrated his twenty-fifth anniversary as Boston Pops Conductor this year, Keith Lockhart is the second longest-tenured conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra since its founding in 1885. He has conducted more than 1,800 Boston Pops concerts.

Sadly, of course, right now - there are no concerts to conduct. But The Boston Symphony Orchestra, The Boston Pops, and the Tanglewood Learning Institute are working together to provide classical music education and entertainment in new and exciting socially distances ways.

It sounds impossible to believe, but hundreds of thousands of music lovers will not be taking in concerts from the rolling green grass at Tanglewood this summer because of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. But, The Boston Symphony Orchestra is taking its acclaimed, months-long music festival into the digital realm.

BSO musicians — along with a wide range of guest artists — are helping to produce original, pre-recorded performances for the new Tanglewood 2020 Online Festival.

Mark Volpe is the President and CEO of The BSO and he joined us.

TROY – There is little argument that Troy is one of the more architecturally interesting cities in the area, if not in all upstate New York.

WAMC's Ian Pickus and resident quizzer Mike Nothnagel swap seats for a different breed of show.

The fallout after Michelle Wolf’s roast at the 2018 White House Correspondent’s Dinner, Samantha Bee’s forced apology after calling Ivanka Trump a name I can’t say here, Kathy Griffin’s being “blacklisted” from Hollywood after posting a photo with what looked like the president’s severed head, all represent a dangerous and growing trend—to censor comedians.

In the new book, "Yes I Can Say That," comedy veteran Judy Gold argues that "no one has the right to tell comics what they can or cannot joke about…. Laughter is a unifier. It's the best medicine. It's also the most palatable way to bring up seditious, subversive topics.”

For Gold, nothing is more insidious than enforcing silence and repressing jokes—the job of a comedian is to expose society's demons, and confront them head-on, no prisoners allowed. In ten impassioned polemics, she frames comedy as a tool of empowerment, a way to reclaim hateful rhetoric and battle the democracy-crushing plight of censorship.

SARATOGA - When attending theater, I always think of a conversation I had with a world-class Shakespearean scholar many years ago.  She made a point of saying that in Shakespeare’s time, people going to the theater would say they were “going to hear a play.”

WAMC's Ian Pickus and resident quizzer Mike Nothnagel are back in the middle. 

Sue Frost is founding partner of Junkyard Dog Productions, which is the lead producing entity of the Broadway musical "Come From Away." They currently have 5 productions around the world - Broadway, North American Tour, Toronto, London and Australia - on hiatus. 

She is also an active member of the Broadway League, working on multiple task forces aimed at bringing Broadway and touring Broadway back. 

The names of two comedy legends have come to mind in the past few weeks. The first is Carl Reiner who died on June 29 at the age of 98.  Reiner is best remembered for his work on the 1960s hit TV series The Dick Van Dyke Show where he was creator, producer, writer, and performer.  Reiner played Alan Brady, Rob Petry’s formidable boss.

WAMC's Ian Pickus and resident quizzer Mike Nothnagel return for another baseball show.

In George Stevens’ poignant film, I Remember Mama, the Norwegian-American mother brings her daughter’s writings to a successful author for review.  She trades her most precious Norwegian recipes for that service.  In the end, the author advises her to tell her daughter to write about what she knows.  Tried and true advice, indeed.  And such is the case with the recently released feature Hope Gap, written and directed by William Nicholson. 

The French film Portrait of a Lady on Fire, ercently released for home viewing, has been nominated for a long list of international film awards and has won a healthy number of them.  With this project, French writer/director Celine Sciamma has intended to depict a story about falling in love and showing the span of a deeply-felt but pretty much unrealizable passion.

WAMC's Ian Pickus and resident quizzer Mike Nothnagel celebrate a delayed baseball opening day.

Best known for directing such successes as "Addams Family Values," "Get Shorty," and the first three "Men in Black" movies, Barry Sonnenfeld's importance to modern cinema expands considerably when his cinematographer credits are added to the list: The Coen Brothers' first three films: "Blood Simple," "Raising Arizona," and "Miller's Crossing." He also was the Director of Photography on "Throw Momma from the Train," "Big," "When Harry Met Sally," and "Misery," plus, of course, his television hits: "Pushing Daisies" and "A Series of Unfortunate Events."

Joe Donahue: Kathy Valentine is a musician and songwriter known for being part of the all-female band The Go-Go's. She wrote or co-wrote many of the band's most renowned songs including "Vacation" and "Head Over Heels". In addition to playing music and writing songs, she has worked as an actor, public speaker and spokesperson and producer. She is now an author, the name of the new book is "All I Ever Wanted: A Rock 'n' Roll Memoir". 

Bowing to health concerns over COVID-19, Berkshire High Peaks Festival - a 10-day midsummer chamber music intensive - is going digital.

Presented by Close Encounters With Music at Berkshire School in Sheffield, Massachusetts and venues in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, and New York's Hudson Valley, the 10-day festival typically includes concerts, lectures and master classes featuring faculty artists and young string musicians and vocalists from around the world. 

Instead, this year's festival, July 20-31, will be offered online In addition to performing and attending master classes and discussions, students each receive four private lessons.

Close Encounters Artistic Director Yehuda Hanani joins us.

NEW YORK, NY - Not long ago, on television, every evening you could see a clip of people standing on their balconies in major urban areas throughout the world, clapping, applauding and banging pots to salute health care workers during the height of Covid-19 crisis.