Muse Mentors

"THE CHILDREN ARE PLAYING" is a tiny fairy-tale of a piece for solo flute written by Denmark's best-known composer Carl Nielsen in 1920 as incidental music for a play called "The Mother." The whimsical music is a tip of the cap to Hans Christian Andersen and sounds like kids on playground on a spring day--leaping and laughter and teasing and taunting with a mix of sun and clouds. 

Georg Philip Telemann, Fantaisie...

In this encore episode James Pease Blair, one of National Geographic's legendary photographers  talked about love, life, and legacy. 

Jim began his 32 year career at the National Geographic Society with a splash as staff photographer on board Jacques Cousteau's Calypso in 1962. As a photography student in the fifties at the Institute of Design in Chicago, he studied with Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind, but it was his years...

Composer/flutist/pianist Louis Moyse's Pastorale was written in 1925 when he was just 14 years old.  Louis was the son of the great French flutist Marcel Moyse, and he grew up steeped in Parisian culture and with the sound of the flute in his ears and his heart. That influence shows in this evocative, oh-so-French piece that sounds like a marriage between Impressionism and springtime in the French countryside.  

 Georg Philip Te...

Composer Katherine Hoover's Winter Spirits is a musical tribute to the American Desert Southwest. This 5 minute piece was inspired by Marie Buchfink's artwork picturing a cross-legged native American flute player: A colorful cloud of tiny beneficent spirits rises from the flute into a cloud. Elements of dance, chant, and drumming combine to create a mystical, magical soundscape. 

Katherine Hoover, Kokopeli
Katherine Hoover, W...

In this first full episode of the FLUTE STORIES MINI-SERIES host and flutist Karen Kevra explores Claude Debussy's  magical mythical Syrinx, the finest gem of the solo flute repertoire.

Claude Debussy, Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune
Claude Debussy, Syrinx
CPE Bach, Poco Adagio from Sonata in A minor for solo flute
Karen Kevra, flute

Albert von Tilzer, Take Me Out to the Ballgame,
Mark Herman, organ

Muse Mentors host Karen Kevra is your guide in Flute Stories--These  short episodes weave performances of flute music with the stories behind them. 

All performances by Karen Kevra

Georg Philipp Telemann, Fantasie #12 in G minor
Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov, Flight of the Bumblebee
Joachim Anderson, Etude in G major, #3, Op. 15
Louis Moyse, Pastorale
Claude Debussy, Syrinx
Jules Mouquet, Pan and the Birds
Edgard Varèse, Density 21.5
Carl Niels...

Nicholas Kitchen, one of the country's leading violinists is a founding member of the Boston-based Borromeo String Quartet. Nick is perhaps the most important protégé of the great Polish violinist Szymon Goldberg. Nick has been loaned his teacher's violin-- the Giuseppe Guarneri, Cremona, ca. 1730, "Goldberg-Baron Vitta" to play throughout his career. In his musical life, Nick was first nurtured by his musically han...

Tony Barrand was born in England in 1945 but has lived most of his life in southern Vermont in the vibrant town of Brattleboro—a place that shines all the more brightly because of him. This Cornell PHD and Professor Emeritus of Boston University is not just an academic, but also a singer, dancer, and story-teller. What first grabs you is his way with words—he can give them weight, or make them sparkle depending on the point he is t...

In this short anniversary episode, Muse Mentors host Karen Kevra looks back on a year with a podcast, and a year without concerts.  She previews an upcoming concert by Boston's Borromeo Quartet and discusses Beethoven's transcendent Op. 132 A minor string quartet with Nicholas Kitchen, the first violinist of the Borromeo quartet.

Credits:
Kuhlau, Fantaisie in D major, Adagio - Karen Kevra-flute
Big Yellow Taxi - Joni Mitchell
B...

Encore episode:  Rob Mermin ran off to join the circus in 1969 at the age of 19. He clowned with renowned European circuses, including England’s Circus Hoffman, Sweden’s Cirkus Scott, Denmark’s Circus Benneweis in the famous Circus Building by the Tivoli, and many more. It was his long mentorship with the iconic French mime Marcel Marceau that shaped him as a performer and inspired him to dream and make plans.  In 1987 he founded C...

In this encore episode of Muse Mentors, pianist Jeffrey Chappell reflects on his life and his formative relationship with his mentor the legendary Leon Fleisher. He addresses overcoming challenges and adversity through the lens of his teacher's career-altering medical condition. The episode closes with the voice of Leon Fleisher who offers powerful words to live by. 

Kerrin McCadden's new collection of poems called American Wake is made of the stuff of life --subjects like family, divorce, raising children, love and even her brother's tragic death by drug overdose are poignantly bound together by her strong Irish Heritage and her family's immigrant story. American Wake, is an actual term that refers to a kind of "Irish wake-style" farewell party that was thrown for Irish fam...

Lou Kosma was a bass player in the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra for 36 years. He grew up in Philadelphia in the fifties in a blue collar Italian American family - a loving home where the sound of Italian tarantellas  played on guitar and accordion spilled from the windows, and the smell of frying meatballs and Roma tomato sauce filled the air. Little did his working class family know that their son would one day ascend to one of th...

James Pease Blair, one of National Geographic's legendary photographers  talks about love, life, and legacy. 

Jim began his 32 year career at the National Geographic Society with a splash as staff photographer on board Jacques Cousteau's Calypso in 1962. As a photography student in the fifties at the Institute of Design in Chicago, he studied with Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind, but it was his years as a summer intern with...

It can sound hyperbolic to make the claim that a person has changed the world and made it a better place. In the case of Eli Newberger, it is utterly true.

Eli Newberger is equal parts music man and medicine man. He was the key prosecution witness in the trial of Louise Woodward, the British nanny convicted of second-degree murder in the death of an 8-month-old in Boston in1997. Later during the Archdiocese of Boston sex abuse scan...

Paula Robison was born in Nashville to an extraordinary family of actors, writers, dancers, and musicians. She grew up in Los Angeles not only playing the flute, but studying dance with Bella Lewitzky and theater with Jeff Corey. When she was twelve years old, music claimed her heart and she knew she wanted to be a flutist. Trained at the Juilliard School, she also studied flute with the great French flutist Marcel Moyse during her...

In what could be the most important Muse Mentors episode ever, author and climate activist  Bill McKibben (who wrote The End of Nature one of the first books on global warming for the general public) talks about his childhood, teen-aged years as a journalist; and, before he even graduated from Harvard, an invitation from the late great editor  William Shawn to write for  The New Yorker Magazine. McKibben also discusses the impact t...

The New York Times called David Dworkin, the maestro who "sparkles with high-spirited virtuosity."  This Jersey boy got his start in high school in the late 1940s with clarinet lessons at The Williamsburg (Brooklyn) Community House where he met his mentor the late Metropolitan Opera Orchestra clarinetist Ben Armato. That relationship nurtured David who went on to play in both the American Symphony and Met Orchestras, as wel...

Tony Barrand was born in England in 1945 but has lived most of his life in southern Vermont in the vibrant town of Brattleboro—a place that shines all the more brightly because of him. This Cornell PHD and Professor Emeritus of Boston University is not just an academic, but also a singer, dancer, and story-teller. What first grabs you is his way with words—he can give them weight, make them sparkle, or swirl depending on the point ...