Synopsis

Summer music camps offer young talent a chance to rub shoulders with seasoned professional musicians and to perform both old and new musical works. On today’s date in 1977, American composer, conductor and educator Howard Hanson led the premiere of his Symphony No. 7 at the National Music Camp in Interlochen, Michigan. Hanson subtitled his Seventh A Sea Symphony, and it includes a choral setting of passages from Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass.

For 40 years, Hanson headed the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York. And years later, Eastman professor Augusta Read Thomas follows in Hanson’s footsteps as composer-in-residence at various summer music camps. On today’s date in 2001, at the annual Aspen Music Festival in Colorado, her piece Murmurs in the Mist of Memory received its world premiere.

Speaking of music in general, Thomas says, “Music of all kinds constantly amazes, surprises, propels and seduces me into a wonderful and powerful journey. I am happiest when listening to music and in the process of composing music. I care deeply that music is not anonymous and generic or easily assimilated and just as easily dismissed.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Howard Hanson (1896-1981): Symphony No. 7 (A Sea Symphony); Seattle Symphony and Chorale; Gerard Schwarz, conductor; Delos 3130Augusta Read Thomas (b. 1964): Wind Dances; Louisville Orchestra; Lawrence Leighton Smith, conductor; Albany/Louisville First Edition 010