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Book Cascade Sounds for a groupmuse

Listenable turn-of-the-century classics


Details

Cascade Sounds full profile / Two woodwinds and cello / 3 musicians

Other players: Bruce Carpenter and Grant Olson


Full program notes

To ring in 2025, this program features our own full-sounding and intricate trio arrangements of listenable art and popular music that developed between 1875 and 1925--the time surrounding the turn of the previous century! First, we present late- and post-romantic themes by Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Mahler, Vaughan Williams and others. Then we conclude with uniquely American musical creations: early examples from ragtime, musical theater and jazz standard genres.


Historical context

This program explores the particularly rich post-romantic era of western art music, as well as the American popular musical tradition that developed at the same time. While late nineteenth and early twentieth century romantic composers explored new depths of expression, the newly invented recording industry was bringing all types of "listenable" music into the homes of regular people; for the first time, society could experience music "as a whole." As home audiences grew, so did audiences of clubs, theaters and concert halls. The resulting birth of American jazz and musical theater comprised our country's unique contribution to the discipline, or "canon," of western tonal music.


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