I have loved the music of Leonard Bernstein since I was a little girl. The songs and scores to West Side Story and Candide are in my blood, along with Trouble in Tahiti, the Mass, and just about everything else the man wrote. The melodies are just so achingly gorgeous, with just the right amount of darkness in the harmonies underlying them, and the dances are impossible to ignore. Joyful, energetic, ecstatic, tragic, transformative.
We’re playing suites from Candide and West Side Story tomorrow night, accompanied by vocalists and dancers from IUSB. For me a huge highlight is performing the Symphonic Dances from West Side Story with actual dancers. It chokes me up a little to see these beautiful young people able to show such energetic, beautiful, characterful drama with their highly trained bodies, and it’s a thrill to have something so visual and physical on the stage where we normally perform in polite rows to a quietly attentive audience.
Our concert is Friday night this week, to avoid conflicts with Notre Dame Football, because that is what we do here in South Bend, so if you are coming don’t forget to come on FRIDAY! Details HERE.
Thanks for reminding us about the Bernstein concert. It was THRILLING!! We especially relished maestro Tsung Yeh’s witty and amusing commentary. The dancers, most of them students, performed enviably with original choreography, quite different from the musical.Bernstein’s music exerts a special attraction on many people that is difficult to explain.And btw, for those interested in his academic work, Bernstein delivered 6 lectures at Harvard in 1973 entitled “the Unanswered Question”. (They can be viewed on the internet under that name) His exposition of the subjects is inimitable characterized by such thoroughness and clarity that renders the points he makes unforgettable.Thanks again JennetDimitri