Tucson Desert Song Festival will star in two of the five programs Chicago classical behemoth WFMT is airing next week as part of its celebration of Leonard Bernstein’s 100th birthday.
And excerpts and interviews of the festival will be sprinkled in the rest of the WFMT “Exploring Music” with Bill McGlaughlin’s Bernstein weeklong series Aug. 20-24.
The series kicks off with the Tucson Symphony Orchestra’s performance of Bernstein’s “Kaddish” Symphony at 7 p.m. Aug. 20 on 90.5 FM KUAT. That show also includes an interview with Bernstein’s daughter Jamie, who narrated the “Kaddish” and was the artist in residence for the song festival’s “Bernstein At 100.”
Over three weeks last January through early February, nine Tucson arts groups and the prestigious Ravinia Steans Music Institute of Chicago mounted 30 programs devoted to Bernstein. Highlights included the Marana High School choir performing Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms; Arizona Opera mounting “Candide;” and Grammy nominated baritone Jubilant Sykes joining True Concord Voices & Orchestra for Bernstein’s Mass.
WFMT’s McGlaughlin, who in the early 1980s served five seasons as the TSO music director, spent two of the festival’s three weeks in Tucson, conducting interviews with local musicians and observers. Some of those interviews, including with longtime Tucson fine arts reporter Dan Buckley and Jack Forsythe, who founded the Tucson Desert Song Festival, will be featured in the broadcasts.
Here’s what you can expect from the broadcasts, which begin at 7 each night:
- Monday, Aug. 20: Three movements of the TSO’s “Kaddish” concert from Jan. 19 and 21; interview with Jamie Bernstein.
- Tuesday, Aug. 21: Includes excerpts from the TSO’s “On the Town” and “Trouble in Tahiti,” and interviews with TSO musicians and Music Director José Luis Gomez.
- Wednesday, Aug. 22: Arizona Opera’s “Candide” (Jan. 27-28) and interviews with Song Festival’s Executive Director George Hanson, Forsythe and Song Festival President Jeannette Segel.
- Thursday, Aug. 23: Interview with Jubilant Sykes.
- Friday, Aug. 24: Interview with Jubilant Sykes.
“Exploring Music” is broadcast on hundreds of stations around the world including in Australia and New Zealand. KUAT’s reach extends throughout Southern Arizona from Bisbee to Nogales, Duncan/Safford to Sierra Vista and throughout the greater Tucson area including Oro Valley and Marana.
Tucson’s Bernstein at 100 was lauded as one of the most compelling tributes to the composer because it surveyed all areas of his work, from chamber pieces to symphonies to his song cycles, Broadway and opera.
