Gunther Schuller Legacy Concert: Every Day in the Forever Musical Life of Gunther Schuller

Name: Gunther Schuller Legacy Concert: Every Day in the Forever Musical Life of Gunther Schuller
Start: 2024-11-22T15:00:00-05:00
Location: New England Conservatory's Jordan Hall

Schedule

Fri Nov 22 2024 at 03:00 pm

UTC-05:00

Location

New England Conservatory's Jordan Hall | Boston, MA

With tonight's concert, NEC and the Gunther Schuller Society celebrate his 99th birthday.
"Gunther Schuller used the score to preserve, create and recreate from the unwritten as well as the written. The composers, artists, authors, and poets represented here tonight -- layers and generations of history and creativity -- stood for those same principles which Gunther embodied and embraced. That is the Schuller Legacy: exploration, curiosity, preservation of the continuum and moving forward; honoring the past while both imagining and forging our future.

I remember Gunther telling me, that on evenings (late) after playing horn with the Metropolitan Opera, beginning early in his career, he would nightly go to Harlem with a few friends from the Met (Opera Orch) and hear the wonderful musicians and bands which became such an integral part of his complete musical life. Tonight’s concert, in a small way, beginning with his own early songs (which were sung by his beloved wife Margie who celebrates her 100th birthday), classical performances, a world premiere, transcriptions and arrangements of works Gunther heard and wrote, and ending with the endlessly creative force of the Jerry Bergonzi Quartet, are all a metaphor for Every Day in the Forever Musical Life of Gunther Schuller."
-- Kenneth Radnofsky

The live stream of this event is available to NEC Community members only. To watch the stream, please click the “Streaming Access” button at the top of the page and enter the NEC Community streaming password on the video window labeled “NEC-Produced Stream” when prompted.
ARTIST(S)
Performers on this concert include Maria Bozich, soprano; Ziang Yin, piano; Kenneth Radnofsky, saxophone; NEC Saxophone Quartet; members of the NEC Jazz Orchestra; and the Jerry Bergonzi Quartet.
Some highlights of the program include two of Schuller's early songs (favorites of his wife, the singer/pianist Marjorie Black); a set of Charles Ives songs; the premiere of Songs of the Conjurer by Mehmet Ali Sanlıkol, commissioned for this occasion by Kenneth Radnofsky and the Gunther Schuller Society; and works by Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk, and Jerry Bergonzi.