Meridee Duddleston

Music Lives In David Michie's Charming Violin Shop Off Rittenhouse Square

Meridee Duddleston — Mon, 20 May 2013 12:00:29 +0000

Music lives in a quaint, historic building on Philadelphia’s Locust Street, just a few doors down from the Curtis Institute of Music, where David Michie restores and sells violins and bows, drawing virtuoso musicians from far and wide. WRTI’s Meridee Duddleston paid a visit to this master craftsman.

Michie has much to say about the importance of a high-quality bow. "What the Italians were to string instruments, the French were to bows," he explains. In the 1800s, large blocks of wood from the pernambuco tree were used as ballast in ships making their way from Brazil to France. And Francois Tourte, who developed the modern bow and is considered the “Stradavarius of bow makers,” took to the wood and started using it. Pernambuco is now an endangered species whose export is restricted. Although carbon fiber and other substitutes are now in the mix, Michie says nothing beats a bow made of pernambuco wood from Brazil. Here's the website for David Michie Violins.

http://youtu.be/SCPLkIp-w9g

Music Lives In The Voices Of The Greater South Jersey Chorus

Meridee Duddleston — Mon, 13 May 2013 02:10:32 +0000

What does it take to make a chorus come together? The pressure of an impending performance? The skill and sensibility of a conductor? The intrinsic beauty of the music? WRTI’s Meridee Duddleston stopped by the Unitarian Universalist Church in Cherry Hill for a rehearsal of the Greater South Jersey Chorus as it strives for perfection.

This Saturday evening, May 18th at 8 pm, The Greater South Jersey Chorus performs Spotlight, a program of choruses and songs from opera, stage, and screen. The concert will be performed at The Roman Catholic Church of St. Isaac Jogues in Marlton. More information about the concert.

Let us know Where Music Lives in your community! Add your ideas in the comments section here and check out our other Where Music Lives posts.

Where Music Lives: On, And At, WRTI

Meridee Duddleston — Mon, 06 May 2013 10:03:00 +0000

Music lives on - and at - WRTI, where throughout 2013 we're celebrating our 60th anniversary. "The Diamond Sessions” - a series of classical and jazz performances recorded live before audiences at the WRTI studios, are just a part of these celebrations. The first session featured jazz vocalist Joanna Pascale who told WRTI’s Meridee Duddleston that, for her, it all starts with the lyrics.

The Business Behind The Music

Meridee Duddleston — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 10:06:00 +0000

In the early 1900s, royalties from sales of sheet music produced a steady source of income to composers and music publishers. But radio changed all that. WRTI’s Meridee Duddleston sat down with a legal expert to learn how.

It was one thing to sit at a piano in a parlor and play a Stephan Foster tune from sheet music propped up on a music stand. But a broadcast of music over the airwaves was a different thing entirely! The advent of radio as a tool for entertainment set the music industry on its heels and brought about new interpretations of copyright law, just as the digital age has done.

MERIDEE DUDDLESTON: Collecting royalties from sales of sheet music could be controlled. But intellectual property lawyer Gary Rosen says making music available to everyone over the airwaves for free was as disruptive to the music industry as the Internet has been. Back in the early 1900s, composers saw radio broadcasts as a threat to their creativity and livelihoods - a threat, Rosen emphasizes, that copyright law was designed to prevent.

GARY ROSEN: Copyright is given, not as a gift to composers, but it’s meant to benefit the public by spurring creativity.

MUSIC: John Philip Sousa's The Washington Post

DUDDLESTON: The music industry and popular composers like John Philip Sousa concluded that a radio broadcast was a public performance of their copyrighted works. They demanded that the radio industry begin to pay royalties. And they banded together to enforce their rights in a way that avoided a logistical nightmare.

ROSEN: Their solution was to form this performing rights organization in which they pool their copyrights and then licensed them on what’s called a blanket basis.

DUDDLESTON: The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) was the first blanket licensing organization. Rosen says blanket copyright licenses for radio have worked the way they were intended.

ROSEN: And the fact that a mechanism was formed to actually enforce that performance right and create an income stream for composers has had a tremendous impact on the quality and variety of American music – popular, jazz, classical.

Gary A. Rosen is the author of Unfair to Genius: The Strange and Litigious Career of Ira B. Arnstein

Where Music Lives: At Bunker Hill Presbyterian Church In Washington Township, NJ

Meridee Duddleston — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 10:02:00 +0000

A concert series in southern New Jersey’s Washington Township attracts top-notch performers from the region, across the river, New York, and all around. The Music at Bunker Hill concerts take place in a church built on a high point in Gloucester County. Starting with three concerts, the program has steadily grown. Now in its fifth season, the Sunday series stands out as a breath of fresh air.

The sanctuary of Bunker Hill Presbyterian Church is the venue for Music at Bunker Hill, and it's Where Music Lives. Philadelphia Orchestra Concertmaster David Kim will perform there on April 28th at 3 pm.

Where Music Lives: At Sandi Pointe Coastal Bistro

Meridee Duddleston — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 09:00:00 +0000

An annual Jazz@The Point Festival is a cornerstone for the Somers Point Jazz Society; but the nine-year-old organization also spreads jazz around southern New Jersey throughout the year. Lectures and student workshops regularly round out concerts and performances at local venues all around Somers Point.

The Somers Point Jazz Society has helped put on a Tuesday night jazz series at Sandi Point Coastal Bistro for the last two years. WRTI's Meridee Duddleston stopped in recently on a show that featured Melanie Rice - vocals, Dean Schneider – piano, accompanied by Tim Lekan – bass, and Bob Shomo – drums.

http://youtu.be/duEtRLNxb3c

At Classical Concerts: A Whole Lot Of Coughing Going On!

Meridee Duddleston — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 00:00:01 +0000

Hiccups and sneezes are not a standard accompaniment to a performance of classical music. But when was the last time a live performance was free of coughing? At a classical music concert, rules of etiquette demand silent immersion in the music - no cell phones or texting of course, no talking, and a limited array of acceptable responses to the performance.

Economics Professor Andreas Wagener, who specializes in social policy at Leibniz University of Hannover in Hannover, Germany, reviews the research and outlines six motives for why there’s more than the usual amount of coughing during classical concerts.

Professor Wagener is the author of “Why Do People (Not) Cough in Concerts? The Economics of Concert Etiquette” - published by the Association for Cultural Economics International.

All About Jennifer Higdon: A Classical Composer For Philadelphia And Beyond

Meridee Duddleston, Jim Cotter and David Patrick Stearns — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 00:48:50 +0000

This month, WRTI is showcasing the works of various women composers. WRTI's Meridee Duddleston looks at a Philadelphia favorite: Jennifer Higdon.

Philadelphia’s Jennifer Higdon is among the most frequently performed living American composers. Now 50, the successful, unpretentious, and endlessly creative Higdon is adding an opera to her extensive repertoire. It’s a joint commission of The Santa Fe Opera and Opera Philadelphia based on Charles Frazier’s Civil War novel Cold Mountain. Higdon’s family moved from Atlanta to east Tennessee when she was an adolescent– about 40 miles, she says, as the crow flies from Cold Mountain. That geographic proximity fueled her insight into the characters she’s recasting in operatic form.

Higdon’s partner, Cheryl Lawson, runs Lawdon Press, the company that publishes and distributes Higdon’s works. Among her most-performed compositions is blue cathedral, a tone poem she wrote after the death, from cancer, of her brother Andrew Blue Higdon. Her works have been recorded on dozens of CDs and performed around the world.

Where Music Lives: At the Collingswood Senior Community Center in Camden County

Meridee Duddleston — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 10:02:00 +0000

Music lives in South Jersey, where WRTI's Meridee Duddleston finds jazz creating connections in the neighborhood. The “Jazz Bridge" project deepens the region’s rich jazz roots with a series of neighborhood concerts featuring the area’s great jazz musicians. At the same time, the concerts enable the non-profit Jazz Bridge to provide emergency financial support to local jazz musicians in crisis. It’s a win-win.

The concerts, at five sites in the Philadelphia area, tackle an all-too-common problem for jazz musicians and bring live jazz to close to home.

Meridee Duddleston attended a "First Thursday"concert at the Collingswood Senior Community Center to see how it works. The evening featured the distinguished Bob Pollitt Jazz Quartet: Bob Pollitt on saxophone, Henry Miller on drums, Craig Thomas on bass. and Bill Schilling on piano.

One Woman In A Hundred: Harpist Edna Phillips And The Philadelphia Orchestra

Meridee Duddleston — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 11:38:13 +0000

A new biography reveals what it was like to be the first woman to enter the all-male sanctum of The Philadelphia Orchestra in 1930. WRTI’s Meridee Duddleston discovered the powerful combination of talent and fear.

On September 14, 1930, the headline of the Philadelphia Public Ledger read: "Solo Harpist to Be First Girl in Philadelphia Orchestra." A young Edna Phillips entered the single-sex fortress of The Philadelphia Orchestra in 1930 - a year after pianist Sergei Rachmaninoff called it "the finest orchestra the world has ever heard." She’d played the harp for only five years when she was hired as the first female member and principal harpist. Her "musicalité" may have been obvious to the pioneering Leopold Stokowski, but was she ready? What was it like to be the only woman among men at a time when gender equality and workplace mores were far different from what they are today?

Author Mary Sue Welsh worked with the observant, warm, and funny Phillips on her story during Phillips’ lifetime, completing it after the first harpist’s death in 2003. True to Phillips’ desire, it’s as much about the challenges and triumphs of her own life, as about how the Orchestra grew and responded to its conductors - particularly Leopold Stokowski.

http://youtu.be/Zq_Ab9fd0CU