Missouri Classical Music News and Notes

The Today Show, America's favorite morning TV show, will feature a profile of 'music man' Rob Kapilow on Monday, October 18, between 8 and 8.30 am* on NBC.

Audiences throughout America can tune in and meet the man who - more than any other since Walt Disney with Fantasia or Leonard Bernstein with his Young People's Concerts - has brought music into the lives and households of huge numbers of people, with his inimitable blend of accessible and humorous entertainment; probing and interactive compositions and workshops; magical musical incarnations of classic texts and children's books; and above all an intelligent and multi-dimensional circus of music in all its glorious and sometimes mysterious forms. NBC's own Katie Couric meets Rob Kapilow at the piano, where they talk about his new symphony examining the Lewis & Clark expedition through the eyes of American Indians, receiving its first St. Louis performance - in the expedition's gateway city - just hours after Rob's Today Show appearance. Katie Couric will also look at just exactly what Rob Kapilow does to bring music alive, through his "What Makes It Great?" presentations (in radio, in concert and now on CD), his Family Musik events (in concert and soon also on CD), his "Citypiece" compositions, and his life as a traveling musical ringmaster. With footage from concerts and events around the country, as well as an extraordinary behind-the-scenes look at the composer's collaboration with a Native American Blackfoot writer set against the backdrop of a Montana landscape, the Today Show will unveil just what it is that makes Rob Kapilow so great.

*check local listings; date and time subject to change