TACO Talk American Classical Orchestra

In the season finale of TACOTalk, producer Mark Zaki interviews ACO Artistic Director Thomas Crawford about his musical journey from ear-splitting rock bands to jazz improv to his decision to build a career in classical music.

Talking about his eclectic taste in music, Tom describes the goosebumps he felt at his first listen to Paul McCartney’s “Yesterday,” and his first experience rehearsing with period instrument players, when after just one bar he was so overcome with emotion at the sound, he had to step off the podium.

In this week’s episode, Tom talks with Music Educator Katie Traxler and Mae Miller, ACO Director of Education and the inspiration, twenty-three years ago, for Tom to create ACO’s Classical Music for Kids. The three discuss kids’ enthusiastic reaction to CMK school visits; Katie has welcomed CMK to her school for eleven years. They also discuss children’s visceral reactions, a CMK favorite, Peter and the Wolf, and ACO’s upcoming film of the work, which adds to the cast of musicians and two professional mimes.

Note: the film will be featured on the PBS Learning Channel – allowing children around the world to enjoy and be inspired by this great Prokofiev children’s classic.

Tom talks with ACO Principal Bass and champion of classical literature for bass John Feeney, and preeminent period violinist Krista Bennion Feeney, who served as concertmaster and guest soloist in a number of ACO concerts.

Long married with two grown sons. the couple was used to the routine of practice, travel, rehearsals, and performance that came to a sudden halt during the lockdown. But over the months, they discovered and reveled in the untapped joys of nature, slowing down, and the fortunate symbiosis between bass and violin.

Why are there three pedals on the piano, when we have only two feet? Revered American fortepianist Malcolm Bilson, a pioneer in the historic performance movement, talks with Tom about how the movement took off in the 1970s, when he made his beloved recordings of the John Eliot Gardner series of Mozart piano concertos on fortepiano. 

Contrary to a commonly held perception of two kinds of pianos—period and modern—the fortepiano evolved as much from the mid-17th to the mid 18th century as the modern piano did over the century that followed, with each mechanical “improvement” affecting interpretation and the resulting sound.

Rutgers University Professor of Music, TACOtalk producer, and violinist Mark Zaki discusses with Tom the practice of composers “borrowing” from those who came before them. Enjoy excerpts of great music as they trace a trail of musical appropriation of the 11th century Gregorian Easter Chant Victimae Paschali Laudes across the centuries to Martin Luther, then on to Bach’s early 18th century setting in Christ lag in Todesbanden, and finally to Mark’s own setting of the work in his string quartet it comes to tell us it is gone.

Julianne Baird, internationally renowned soprano and Distinguished Professor of Music at Rutgers University, joins Tom for a lively conversation around singing as an “act of joy.” Enjoy recorded excerpts revealing “artistry of a high order” (New York Times) between Dr. Baird’s reflections on the vibrato controversy, John Dowland’s beautiful lute-and-voice madrigals, babies in the opera house (hers), naked dancers on stage, and much, much more.