Missouri Classical Music News

Amari has been teaching piano for two years while obtaining her master's degree in Music with an emphasis in Piano Performance, from the University of Missouri - Columbia.
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“I began piano lessons at age four in Columbia,” says O'Donnell. “I was very fortunate to have had teachers who inspired me to excel in piano. I was able to participate in many competitions in my childhood and throughout my college years.”

Her goal and ambition has always been to inspire other people to want to learn to play the piano. While there are many fine piano teachers in this area, there is not an emphasis on helping a child to achieve competitive status. “I would like to provide those opportunities here,” expresses O'Donnell. “Currently the closest city for these expenses is Columbia. However, I am also interested in helping someone to learn to play only for enjoyment, whether it be hymns, classical, pop, etc.”

I've experienced bouts of fairly severe tinnitus on several occasions after a loud rehearsal or concert, and I know I'm not the only person who's guilty of having been somewhat cavalier about hearing loss. Now that so many of us seem to spend half our time with headphones on or listening to car, stereo or TV speakers, a new generation of the hearing impaired is on the horizon, and many of us will be affected unless we start to pay more attention.

The native of Canada has been an assistant in Kansas City since 1999, conducting the orchestra’s pops series, family and children’s concerts and holiday concerts.

In his new post, he will conduct seven classical concerts and three pairs of pops programs, plus family and youth programs. His new contract begins June 1; he will start in September.

“Of all the orchestras that I applied for, this is the one I coveted the most,” said Hankewich, 38.

For the coming season he could still maintain some of his Kansas City duties, but his contract runs out in August. He said he and his wife, Jillien, a pharmacist, will move to Cedar Rapids this summer.

Nicole Schroeder, violin, Junior Strings, Jessica Platt, teacher

Rebecca Caliendo, soprano, Young Artist Voice, Jo Ella Todd, teacher

Katie Andres, Fr. Horn, Young Artist Brass, Marcia Spence, teacher

Natalie O. Wells, composer, Elementary Composition, Mara Gibson, teacher, "Cy's Trolley Ride"

John R. Ernst, composer, Young Artist Composition, Thomas McKenney, teacher, "The City Awakens," for clarinet, 'cello, piano

In May 1913, the lobby of the Théâtre Champs-Elysées in Paris was also over-poweringly hot. Yet the city's most glittering figures - Picasso, Cocteau, Proust, Ravel and Debussy - still went to the theatre that night.

They wanted to witness the premiere of The Rite of Spring, written by Igor Stravinsky and choreographed by the great Russian dancer Vaslav Nijinsky. The music assaulted their ears. Stravinsky had experimented with ferocious stamping rhythms and set them against each other so that they clashed unpredictably. The choreography shocked the first-night audience with its daring modernism, ripping up the rulebook of classical ballet with its heavy, savage movements. One of the dancers later commented, "With every leap we landed heavily enough to jar every organ in us." Most shocking of all was the subject matter of pagan rituals and the barbaric sacrifice of a young virgin.

Winners for the Missouri Southern International Piano Competition's Honors Audition, held last month, have been announced.

The winners were Jessica Lawson and Mason Moon, both of Springfield; Emily Yates, of Tulsa, Okla.; and Catherine Yang, of Fayetteville, Ark.

Each of the four will receive a $500 cash prize and will participate in Master Class with the panel of international judges during the piano competition, scheduled for April 24-29.

The audition was open to pianists 18 and younger from Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma and Arkansas.

— the working draft of the four-hand piano arrangement of Beethoven's Grosse Fuge . . .
— The long-lost transposed continuo part of Bach's Cantata BWV 176, with markings by the composer
— First sketches for the ethereal opening of Beethoven's Ninth, together with the corrected copy of the symphony that was sent to the printer
— Corrected proofs of Brahms's Klavierstücke Op. 118 and 119
— Copland's Clarinet Concerto, inscribed to Benny Goodman
— Mozart's score for the wind, brass, and timpani in the final scene of The Marriage of Figaro (written out separately because there wasn't room in the main score)
— A draft of the ending of the first movement of Mahler's Ninth
— A draft of the opening scene of Puccini's Fanciulla del West
— A major trove of Schubert manuscripts and marked editions
— Sketches for an unknown Symphony in C minor by Schumann
— A large batch of manuscripts of Alfred Schnittke, including sketches for the opera Historia von D. Johann Fausten
— Stravinsky's earliest sketches for Petrushka
— The typescript of Joseph Gregor's libretto for Richard Strauss's Daphne, with notes by the composer in the margins

This is the place to read about the latest in classical music, opera and a few other cultural items. My hope is that it will allow me to get news out in a timely manner, instead of waiting for the Sunday A&E arts briefs, and to explore some items in depth for which there just isn't space in the paper

David Robertson will fill in this week for another (literally) fallen colleague: Jimmy Levine tripped and fell onstage last week in Boston during ovations for Beethoven’s 9th, as performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra.