America 250: CRB's Summer of American Music

Henry Santoro: Celebrations for America's 250th birthday are filling the calendar this year, and at our sister station 99.5 WCRB Classical Radio Boston, they have their own way to mark the occasion. Joining me now to discuss is WCRB General Manager Sam Brewer. Good morning, Sam.

Sam Brewer: Good morning, Henry.

Henry Santoro: Nice to see you across the hall. What is going on this weekend? It's a big weekend that you're gonna carry right through the entire summer.

Sam Brewer: That's right. We're kicking off our summer of American music. So every day from this Memorial Day weekend through Labor Day, we're spotlighting one piece of American music somewhere in our programming, somewhere in the schedule throughout the day. It'll be a surprise for our listeners when they come across it, and we're pairing that with a little story about what makes that music a special part of our heritage here in America.

Henry Santoro: What kind of music are we talking about? Are we talking about like real American fanfare music?

Sam Brewer: Great question. And of course we had a huge, huge, huge collection of music to narrow down as we did this project, and that was part of the fun, in deciding. You know, one thing to keep in mind is, is music sort of needs stability to grow and flourish and obviously, the colonies in the 1600s which are happening at the same time that there's this rich baroque scene in Europe were very different places. What started out as, in America, is sort of choral music, a strong tradition of church hymns and pipe and fife traditions and battle songs, and folk music that's imported over, eventually grows and flourishes and becomes a unique sound that incorporates voices from immigrant composers and people of all different races.

Henry Santoro: So who are some of the composers that you can share with us?

Sam Brewer: Well, I brought two songs that we can hear, and I think our listeners will probably recognize both. It's a reminder of how many melodies are just in the background of of collective cultural heritage. So, the first is George Gershwin, right? Everyone knows George and Ira Gershwin as the legendary composer and lyricist brother duo who shaped the American sound through the Great American Songbook. Now George Gershwin also had an orchestral career, and he was commissioned by Paul Whiteman, who had this touring jazz orchestra, for a project called Experiment in Modern Music. This is in 1924, and while we were researching songs, of course, I, you know, everyone knows Rhapsody in Blue, which you're about to hear, but I didn't know the Boston connection. So Gershwin had had planned out this piece, but it was only on a train that he rode to Boston, and I have to read a little bit of this quote here.

He says, "It was on that train with its steely rhythms, its rattly bang that I suddenly heard the construction of the rhapsody from start to finish."

So you can imagine George Gershwin, during the Depression in 1924, sort of rolling into Boston and conjuring up this really iconic orchestral piece that premiered in 1924 with, I have to share, Fred Astaire, Rachmaninoff, Soussa, and Stravinsky in the audience. So if you can hear the clarinet glissando, which is about as iconic as anything you might hear in in classical music.

Henry Santoro: You know, and, and it further proves that musicians and composers, they find inspiration anywhere. I mean, if he found the inspiration for Rhapsody in Blue on a rackety train track. That's absolutely brilliant.

Sam Brewer: it also shows us all the different idioms and styles that become American classical music. In this case, of course, jazz, right, is the sort of heart of this piece, but it also led to the commissioning by the New York Philharmonic of his Concerto in F, and that's what we're going to hear this weekend. Now there's also a focus on new music that pushes boundaries.

Henry Santoro: Can you share some of that with us?

Sam Brewer: Yeah, absolutely. So, one of the amazing things about the music scene today is that it's just so much more welcoming and inclusive of different styles. There's a rich history here of that in Boston. Amy Beach was the first woman composer [whose] music was featured by the Boston Symphony. And the music of Florence Price, William Grant Still is very much sort of part of the classical canon now.

Henry Santoro: Sam Brewer is the general manager of WCRB, 99.5 Classical Radio Boston. The Summer of American Music begins tomorrow. Sam, thanks so much.

Sam Brewer: Thank you, Henry.

Henry Santoro: I'm Henry Santoro. This is GBH.