MUSIClassical ALLEGRO
Now Playing: Best wishes on his 97th birthday this JUNE 17th....
Topic: NEWS composers
H OWEN REED ON COMPACT DISCS
H. Owen Reed was born in Odessa, Missouri, on June 17, 1910. He was a pupil of both Howard Hanson and Bernard Rogers at the University of Rochester's Eastman School of Music. He also studied with Roy Harris and Helen Gunderson. Beginning his long association with the Michigan State University in 1939, he served as professor of music and head of composition until his retirement in 1976. He is the author of several books on theory and composition. In the thirties, Reed traveled a good deal in the Americas and Europe, capturing the diversity of folk music he heard in Scandinavia, Mexico, and the Caribbean islands. His La Fiesta Mexicana, a suite for full wind ensemble has been transcribed for orchestra and premiered by the Detroit Symphony. In 1975, Reed won the Neil A. Kjos Memorial Award with his unorthodox band score, For the Unfortunate. Among his other compositions are the ballet The Masque of the Red Death, the opera Peter Homan's Dream, a symphony, concertos for violin and cello, and choral and chamber works.
La Fiesta Mexicana is one of Reed's most performed pieces...
Subtitled 'A Mexican Folk Song Symphony for Concert Band', this work was written in 1949, based on experiences gained during a five-month sojourn in Mexico on a Guggenheim Fellowship. The authentic folk tunes Reed used can be found in Chapala, Jalisco, and Guadalajara; other themes were borrowed from Gregorian motifs and Aztec dances.
(More links to Reed on the Web)
LISTEN LIVE LINK
In the mid 1930's many work projects were administered by the federal government, including the Art, Music, Theatre, and Writers' projects. Started for the creation and preservation of the nation's infrastructure by executive order of Franklin Delano Roosevelt on May 6, 1935. The WPA was a work relief program that provided jobs for many individuals who had become unemployed during the Depression. Listen to a rare symphonic orchestra music program of the Manhattan Concert Band from the Federal Music Project during the late 1930's. Plus more concert music favorites.
TCHAIKOVSKY Piano Concerto #1 in b, Op 23; Andras Schiff, piano; Chicago Symphony Orchestra; Sir Georg Solti, cond.
Singing "Questa O Quella" from "Rigoletto" by Giuseppe Verdi. Jan Peerce with Beersheba Chamber Orchestra, Mendi Rodan, conductor Recorded in 1982. Jan Peerce's birth name was Jacob Pincus Perelmuth, he grew up in New York and remained devoutly religious all his life. He was a trained violinist and also sang popular songs when it was discovered almost by accident, that he had an unusually good voice. This brought him an engagement with the Radio City Music Hall company from which he moved on to make his operatic debut in Philadelphia in 1938. He finally arrived at New York Metropolitan Opera in 1941. While his operatic home was to remain the Met, for just about all his career, he also sang abroad and was a sensation when he visited Russia in 1956. He enjoyed a particularly long career, singing well into his 70's. He was also brother-in-law of tenor Richard Tucker, with whom he shared
an intensely personal and professional rivalry. 
