Con Fuoco: A Podcast about Classical Music and its Future

Dr. Philip Ewell is an Associate Professor of Music Theory at Hunter College of the City University of New York, where he serves as Director of Graduate Studies in the music department. His specialties include Russian music and music theory, Russian opera, modal theory, and critical-race studies. He received the 2019–2020 “Presidential Award for Excellence in Creative Work” at Hunter College, and he is the “Susan McClary and Robert Walser Fellow” of the American Council of Learned Societies for 2020–2021. In August 2020 he received the “Graduate Center Award for Excellence in Mentoring,” which recognized his “ongoing, long-term, commitment to students at all stages of graduate research.” He is also a “Virtual Scholar in Residence” at the University of the Pacific Conservatory of Music for 2020–2021. As a result of his ACLS award, he is currently working on a monograph—to be published by the “Music and Social Justice” series at the University of Michigan Press—combining race and feminist studies with music and music theory. Finally, he is under contract at W.W. Norton to coauthor a new music theory textbook, “The Practicing Music Theorist,” which will be a modernized, reframed, and inclusive textbook based on recent developments in music theory pedagogy.The Question of the Week is, "How can classical music confront its own history of exclusion?" Dr. Ewell and I discuss his experience presenting his paper on race, how classical music and institutions operate through a white racial frame, his advice on how to approach those who do not want to discuss issues in classical music, the inclusive theory textbook he and his colleagues are currently formulating, and his recommendations on those who want to learn more about diversity and equity in classical music. Dr. Ewell's website - http://philipewell.comDr. Ewell's presentation Music Theory and the White Racial Frame - https://vimeo.com/372726003Fact Check - At the end of our conversation, I refer to three recent police shootings and mistakenly called thirteen-year old victim, Adam Toledo, African-American when he is actually Mexican-American. Dr. Ewell corrected me and I wanted to include a fact check note in the show notes to verify this correction. This Season Finale episode of Con Fuoco is dedicated to George Perry Floyd Jr. (October 14, 1973 - May 25, 2020)

This week, we have a rebroadcast of my conversation from September of 2020 with performer and educator Vanessa Mulvey. The Question of the Week we discussed was, "Should understanding the body be a priority in music education?" Ms. Mulvey and I discuss how everything in our body is connected, how modernity encourages us not to use or understand our bodies, the disconnect between good and bad performances, and how all music performance revolves around movement. Truly understanding the bod...

Simon Woods joined the League of American Orchestras as President and CEO in 2020. Born in London, England, Mr. Woods earned a degree in music from Cambridge University and a diploma in conducting from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. From the late 1980s to the late 1990s, he worked as a record producer at EMI Classics in London, where he initiated and produced recordings at Abbey Road Studios and on location with many of the world’s foremost classical artists and ensembles....

Dr. Nina Kraus is Hugh Knowles Professor of Communication Sciences, Neurobiology, and Otolaryngology at Northwestern University. She is a scientist, inventor (holder of several patents), and amateur musician who uses hearing as a window into brain health. She began her career measuring responses from single auditory neurons and was one of the first to show that the adult nervous system has the potential for reorganization with learning; these insights in basic biology galvanized her to invest...

This episode is a rebroadcast of my conversation with President and Artistic Director of the Sphinx Organization, Afa Dworkin. Afa Dworkin is the President and Artistic Director of the Sphinx Organization, where she oversees all fundraising, strategic, and artistic initiatives. Founded in 1997, the Sphinx Organization has four program areas - Education and Access, Artist Development, Performing Artists, and Arts Leadership - which form a pipeline that develops and supports diversity and ...

Ben Yee-Paulson is an internationally recognized American composer, who's music has been premiered at Carnegie Hall, Jordan Hall, Harvard University, Curtis Institute, Warwick Castle in England, La Schola Cantorum in Paris, the DiMenna Center in New York City, and the world opening of Microsoft’s flagship store in New York City. Nationally, Ben’s music was awarded first-place in the Costello Competition, both a Merit Award and “Emerging Composer” status from the Tribeca New Music Festival, ho...

With the “energy, creativity and charisma not seen since Leonard Bernstein” and “vibrant,” “mind-blowing,” and “spectacular” conducting, Ming Luke is a versatile conductor that has excited audiences around the world. Highlights include conducting the Bolshoi Orchestra in Moscow, performances of Romeo and Juliet and Cinderella at the Kennedy Center, his English debut at Sadler’s Wells with Birmingham Royal, conducting Dvorak’s Requiem in Dvorak Hall in Prague, recording scores for a Copp...

My guest this week is violinist, Liana Branscome! Liana is the first prize winner of the Artist Series Concerts of Sarasota Competition Junior Division (2015), Boca Raton Symphonia Concerto Competition (2014), the Ars Flores Symphony Orchestra Concerto Competition (2014) and second prize winner of the New World Symphony Young Artist Competition (2014). She has appeared as soloist with the Vidin Philharmonia in Bulgaria, Palm Beach Atlantic Symphony, the Ars Flores Symphony Orchestra and the T...

Jan Swafford is an author and composer. His musical works range from orchestral and chamber to film and theater music, including four pieces for orchestra, Midsummer Variations for piano quintet, They That Mourn for piano trio, and They Who Hunger for piano quartet. His music has been played around the U.S. and abroad by ensembles including the symphonies of Indianapolis, St. Louis, Harrisburg, Springfield, Jacksonville, Chattanooga, and the Dutch Radio. His degrees are from Harvard and the Y...

Donato Cabrera is the Music Director of the California Symphony and the Las Vegas Philharmonic, and served as the Resident Conductor of the San Francisco Symphony and the Wattis Foundation Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra from 2009-2016. Since Mr. Cabrera's appointment as Music Director of the California Symphony in 2013, the organization has reached new artistic heights by implementing innovative programming that emphasizes welcoming newcomers and loyalists alike,...

Called “one of the Boston music scene's most valuable players” by The Art Fuse, percussionist, composer, and producer Julian Loida's musical curiosity and open-mindedness has propelled him towards a wide-range of sounds, genres, and artistic endeavors. He’s performed jazz, folk, and classical, collaborating with dancers, visual artists, songwriters/composers, and musicians of all stripes. The thirst to participate in and experience this range of sounds is partly a product of Loida’s syn...

Francesco Lecce-Chong is the Music Director of the Eugene Symphony in Oregon, and the Santa Rosa Symphony, performing at the Green Music Center in Northern California. The press has described him as a “fast rising talent in the music world” with “the real gift” and recognized his dynamic performances, fresh programming, deep commitment to commissioning and performing new music as well as to community outreach. Mr. Lecce-Chong has appeared with orchestras around the world including the San Fra...

Dr. Sharon J. Paul is a performer and educator who holds the Robert M. Trotter Chair of Music at the University of Oregon, where she currently serves as Interim Department Head of Music Performance and Director of Choral Activities. Her teaching includes graduate courses in choral conducting, repertoire, and pedagogy, along with conducting the internationally award-winning Chamber Choir, which has placed first or second in four international choral competitions, most recently winning first pr...

My guest this week is violinist, certified personal trainer, and holistic health and mindset coach, Kiyoshi Hayashi. As a performing musician, Kiyoshi is the founder, managing director, and violinist of the award winning Rasa String Quartet, the Co-Artistic Director of the musician-led string ensemble and nonprofit organization, Palaver Strings, and regularly performs with numerous ensembles around New England, including A Far Cry, Cape Cod Chamber Orchestra, and Phoenix Orchestra. As a ...

Andrew Ousley is the founder of Unison Media, one of the top PR and Marketing companies for classical music, opera and performing arts. He formed the company based on the principles of honesty, transparency, and holding himself and his staff to a higher standard of results. Clients of Unison Media include some of the leading artists in the field of classical music, including conductor Gustavo Dudamel, tenor Lawrence Brownlee, jazz legend Wynton Marsalis, and more. Mr. Ousely also curates, pre...

Loving the idiosyncratic and the zany, Lainie Fefferman is a composer, performer, and experimenter in the performative application of emergent music technologies. Her most recent commissions have been from Tenth Intervention, So Percussion, Make Music NY, Experiments in Opera, ETHEL, Kathleen Supové, TILT Brass, James Moore, Eleonore Oppenheim, JACK Quartet, and Dither. Her one-woman voice & electronics feminist song performance project "White Fire," an electroacoustic meditation on the h...

My guest this week is performer, educator, and arts administrator, Joseph H. Conyers. Conyers was appointed assistant principal bassist of the Philadelphia Orchestra in 2010 and has been acting associate principal since 2017. Described by the Grand Rapids Press as “a lyrical musician who plays with authenticity that transcends mere technique,” Conyers has performed with numerous orchestras as soloist including the Alabama, Flagstaff, & Richmond Symphonies, the Chamber Orchestra of Philade...

Dr. Stephen Rodgers is Professor of Music Theory and Musicianship at the University of Oregon School of Music and Dance, where he has been teaching since 2005. He writes about the relationship between music and poetry, focusing especially on German Lieder. His edited collection, The Songs of Fanny Hensel, is forthcoming from Oxford University Press, and he is currently working on a book about Clara Schumann’s songs and another about song and the musical aspects of poetry. Rodgers’s work exten...

Jessie Montgomery is an acclaimed composer, violinist, and educator. She is the recipient of the Leonard Bernstein Award from the ASCAP Foundation, the Sphinx Medal of Excellence, and her works are performed frequently around the world by leading musicians and ensembles. Her music interweaves classical music with elements of vernacular music, improvisation, poetry, and social consciousness, making her an acute interpreter of 21st- century American sound and experience. Her profoundly felt wor...

Called “contemporary chamber trailblazers” by the Boston Globe, Hub New Music — composed of flute, clarinet, violin, and cello — is forging new pathways in 21st-century repertoire. The ensemble’s ambitious commissioning projects and “appealing programs” (New Yorker) celebrate the rich diversity of today’s classical music landscape. In recent seasons, HNM’s performances have been described as “gobsmacking” (Cleveland Classical), “innovative” (WBUR), and “the cutting edge of new classical music...