The Second Street Dreams Audio Network

Cliburn Competition Applications Are Open . Already you say? Didn’t the Cliburns just crown a winner, Yunchan Lim of South Korea? Well, yes but that was an entire year ago. Now they’re looking for the next winner for the Seventeenth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in 2025 . Jacques Marquis President and CEO of the Cliburns says it takes a long time to find the pianist ready to embark u...

The debut of the Austin Opera’s 2023-2024 season is at hand. The first production this season is Pagliacci composed by Ruggero Leoncavallo. Just a week later is the live taping of Ryan Speedo Green In Concert for PBS. Annie Burridge, General Director, and CEO of Austin Opera says there are advantages of having that kind of national exposure.

Rosalyn Aninyei is doing her best to create and maintain a world class orchestra in her home country of Nigeria. Florence Price is getting the festival treatment at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. Blake-Anthony Johnson talks about his path to become the first African American to be the CEO of a world-renowned orchestra, the Chicago Sinfonietta . There’s a new album of music by Florence Price a...

How much do you really know about your favorite composer? You love the music, but how did the composer come to write a particular piece? Judith Lynn Stillman – the Artist-in-Residence and professor of music at Rhode Island College in East Providence answers that question and many more with her plays-within-a-concert. Her latest is Dvořák: A Bohemian Rhapsody . Did you know he loved trains?? It ope...

Even the Artistic Director and Founder of Conspirare , Craig Hella Johnson, finds it hard to believe that the choral ensemble is 30 years old. He’s developed a fall season that’s kind of eclectic with a nod to the past and an eye on the future. One choral group is being invited back for the holiday program. It’s Isaac Cates & Ordained who will, says Johnson, bridge the past with the future.

In this month of September, your ears will be filled with the sound of STILLPOINT . It’s Awadagin Pratt ’s latest album. He’s performing music he commissioned from several composers of color. You can hear the life and times of Aaron P. Dworkin ’s in his debut spoken word album The Poetjournalist . Malakai Bayoh didn’t win Britian’s Got Talent 2023. The 14-year-old DID win a record deal and his deb...

The Long Center is celebrating its 15th anniversary with something they’ve never done before. They’re throwing open the doors of the performing arts facility for the First Annual Teresa Lozano Long Community Day . Dr. Long broke racial barriers at the University of Texas back in the 1950’s. She and her husband Joe have funded many scholarships, educational institutions and The Long Center. Long Ce...

Remember the name Langston Lee . You most likely will be hearing about this 18 year old from Rouse High School in Leander, Texas. He is the first winner of “The Jimmys” , a national high school musical competition, to represent local version, the Heller Awards For Young Artists in their first year of eligibility.

There’s good news about the progress of the once dilapidated National Opera House in Pittsburgh. They are still in need of financial help and volunteer personnel. We honor the life and career of Pianist Andre Watts with good friend and colleague Norman Kreiger. There’s a new debut album from Sphinx Virtuosi called Songs for Our Times . Bass player Joseph Conyers is making history again with the Ph...

With summer almost over and school starting soon, there’s one more fun item that your children might appreciate. Teachers can take advantage of it too. It’s Carnegie Hall Kids . This voluminous website offers games, quizzes, musical maps and more for children to play with.

This next book on the summer reading list comes with its own soundtrack amid a story based on a Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale . It’s The Nightingale, a book with music and other 21st century upgrades from the River Oaks Chamber Orchestra or ROCO in Houston.

This is another addition to your summer reading list: There are hundreds of books about Mozart but the author of Mozart In Motion has a different take. Author Patrick Mackie takes us time traveling through the swirl that was Mozart’s short life.

It’s PanelPicker time for SXSW 2024. That’s when the festival calls for applications for those wanting to present a panel discussion. Last year in what’s believed to be the first time, there was a classical music panel. Artists & out of London is now looking for classical musicians to appear on the planned 2024 panel and the concert after.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be featuring my summer reading list on Staccato. The first one is about composer Tina Davidson , whose complicated life can be heard in her music. Her biological Mother adopted her in Sweden back in the 1950’s but never told her about her birth. There are other surprising revelations as well in Davidson’s book Let Your Heart Be Broken . You can listen to her playlist...

Next week is Father’s Day. The Austin Symphonic Band is honoring Dads with a Father’s Day concert on June 18th at the Zilker Hillside Theater. Cellist Bion Tsang , who leads the cello program at the University of Texas in Austin, is honoring his late father with a new album he calls Cantabile. It’s dedicated to the music they enjoyed together. Tsang says he’s hoping his father Paul Ja-Min Tsang ,...

If you’ve ever done a large creative project, you know it usually takes longer than 96 hours – four days – to create what one might call something good. Composers and Librettist will be attempting this feat in the Atlanta Opera’s 96 Hour Opera Project. The Atlanta Opera’s New Works Administrator Cara Consilvio says it’s not as arduous as it seems. Still, some of the 2 person teams won’t even meet...

There’s a new Draylen Mason Composer in Residence at KMFA. She is Clarice Assad , a Brazilian-American composer who, when not on the road, lives in Chicago. In addition to composing, Assad likes teaching children how to collaborate with music and performance art. She is also working on an orchestral piece for KMFA. Her new work will be performed sometime in September in Austin.

If you’ve been musing about playing the instrument you haven’t touched in more than a few years, there’s a cure for that. Hundreds of adult music camps all over the country have programs that might fit. There’s the International Music Camp , the New England Adult Music Camp and the Interlochen Chamber Music Camp , to name a few. In Austin there’s the Austin Chamber Music Center’s Adult Music Camp...

Grief is a heavy burden to carry. Composer Curtis Stewart has composed music expressing the devastation he feels over his mother’s death. He calls the album OF LOVE and has released a video for one of the tracks DRIFT TO WAKE . There’s an update on Ralph Yarl , the 16 year old who was shot twice when he went to the wrong house. We say goodbye to Soprano Grace Bumbry who went beyond the white curta...

Amid the graduations, weddings, and other joyous events, celebrate with music of all genres this month. There’s the Big Sing from Conspirare , the ERA Project from LOLA , the Here Be Monsters one day new music festival and a free stream of the Dallas Opera ’s 2022/23 season. Have fun and enjoy.

A Grammy nominated Harpists is releasing a new piece of music in celebration of Mother’s Day (May 14th) and Mother Earth. Yolanda Kondonassis has added Wildflower to her digital album Five Minutes For Earth . It was composed for her by Cuban virtuoso trumpeter and composer Arturo Sandoval . There's also a music video of Wildflower. It’s part of Kondonassis’ dedication to the environment with her f...

The universe sings. Or at least it provides data that’s music to the ears of NASA scientists working at the Chandra X-ray Observatory in Cambridge, MA. By a process of Sonification these scientists/technicians/musicians translate data into sound. More specifically music, which is now on an album called Universal Harmonies . Dr. Kimberly Arcand , a visualization scientist at NASA, says she was insp...

It’s almost time to choose another class of Draylen Mason Fellows at Austin Soundwaves. Hermes Camacho, the Development and Operations Director of Austin Soundwaves says they’re looking for applicants who are not only musical but are socially conscious in the way Draylen Mason was before he was killed by a package bomb in 2018. The current class has their Capstone Concert coming up next month at t...

In what may be a first, there’s The Oxford Book of Choral Music by Black Composers . It was edited and curated by conductor, educator, and composer Marques L. A. Garrett . Listen to the music here . Pamela Dawson of Desoto High School in Texas revels in her win as the 2023 Grammy Music Educator of the Year. Apply to enter the J.S. Bach Competition . Composers might want to enter the American Compo...

If you’ve never seen a show called Now Hear This , now may be the time. It’s a program featuring a modern look at classical composers from many years ago and those making music today. Host Scott Yoo says the show was born 5 years ago in Austin after a concert with UT Music Professor Bion Tsang .