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Ask Bill
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Just got to hear some of your nice program on tempo and it reminded me of a device I always wanted someone to invent: a tempo changer. Maybe if you mention that on the air, someone will build it!
—G.

Great idea, but I’d actually recommend getting yourself an orchestra. Then you’ll have the fun of trying to convince a bunch of temperamental musicians of the rightness of your tempi.

The problem with just changing the tempo is that it wouldn’t change the host  of other things musicians would change if they were to take a different tempo – volume, bow stroke, vibrato, etc.

But, now that I’m really considering it, it’s a lovely idea for the short term. I’m pretty sure my engineer told me such software is already in existence. I’ll ask him.

Thanks for writing.
Bill McG


Appearances
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Las Cruces Symphony World Premiere 9/29/12

Here’s some copy that I sent to Lonnie Klein, the conductor of the Las Cruces Symphony, which commissioned this piece in honor of the 100th anniversary of New Mexico’s becoming a state in 1912.

Dear Maestro Lonnie,

I want to call the piece Brave New World, borrowing Miranda’s lines from The Tempest:

O wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is!
O brave new world,
That has such people in’t.

The dedication reads: For Dr. Lonnie Klein and the Las Cruces Symphony and to all the brave new citizens of New Mexico, past, present and to come.
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SUNY Purchase Pre-concert Talk, Warsaw Philharmonic

Bill is scheduled to give a pre-concert talk at this exciting performance.

The opportunity to experience the masterful playing of musicians that fill a stage from end-to-end — a true, full-scale orchestra on tour — is becoming increasingly rare. This is the opportunity! Conducted by the dynamic and expressive Antoni Wit, featuring the 2010 International Chopin Piano Competition winner Yulianna Avdeeva, the Warsaw Philharmonic’s performance of Beethoven’s final piano concerto, the Emperor Concerto, and Tchaikovsky’s last completed symphony, Pathétique, will be the kind of concert we rarely see outside of major cities these days…grand and soaring.

Visit The Performing Arts Center website for more information 


On the radio
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Exploring Music

September 10 – 14: Nadia Boulanger

“Every town in the United States had a five-and-dime and a Boulanger student,” Virgil Thomson once said, and he wasn’t far off. Nadia Boulanger taught and influenced an entire generation of musicians, from Aaron Copland and Ástor Piazzolla to Philip Glass and Quincy Jones, and this week we’ll hear some of her compositions and performances alongside those of her prolific students.

Visit Exploring Music on WFMT Radio Network for playlists and purchasing music


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Appearances

On The Radio

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