Nikki Renée Daniels, Jeff Kready, and More Featured in Kaufman Music Center's Upcoming Streams
Rob Kapilow takes on Stephen Sondheim in What Makes It Great? (April 6), while Broadway Close Up examines the accomplishments of composer Kay Swift.
By: Chloe Rabinowitz Mar. 26, 2021
Kaufman Music Center's education/enrichment programs are taking center stage in April's world premiere online streams. Conrad Tao's ongoing Performance as Process series reveals the composer/pianist's creative process as he prepares for his Ecstatic Music concert in May (April 28).
Rob Kapilow takes on Stephen Sondheim in What Makes It Great? (April 6), while Broadway Close Up examines the accomplishments and legacy of composer Kay Swift with Sean Hartley, Nikki Renée Daniels, Jeff Kready, Sally Wilfert and Klea Blackhurst (April 19).
For a window into the future, you're invited to attend online performances by rising musicians from KMC's Special Music School and Lucy Moses School (April 1 and April 29). The latter program spotlights these talented young players in a program of music by Black composers. And Luna Composition Lab's exciting annual Solar Flare showcase offers brand new works by teen female and nonbinary composers (April 27).
Thursday, April 1 (7 pm) - Henry Schneider Concert
A recital by performers from Kaufman Music Center's Lucy Moses School, which offers music, dance, and theater classes and instrument lessons to students of all ages and backgrounds.
Tuesday, April 6 (7 pm) - What Makes It Great? - Stephen Sondheim
Featuring Nikki Renée Daniels & Michael Winther; streamed from Merkin Hall
Only a handful of artists in the 20th century redefined their fields as completely as Sondheim redefined musical theater, yet his fundamental temperament is almost directly at odds with the upbeat aesthetic of the Broadway musical itself. "Ambivalence is my favorite thing to write about, because it's the way I feel, and I think the way most people feel." How did Sondheim turn this ambivalence into the most important theater music of the last 50 years? Come explore Sondheim's magical art of ambivalence in music from A Little Night Music, Follies, Sunday in the Park with George and Company.
Monday, April 19 (7 pm) - Broadway Close Up: Kay Swift
With host Sean Hartley and Nikki Renée Daniels, Jeff Kready, Sally Wilfert and Klea Blackhurst; Music Directed by Georgia Stitt
Sean Hartley and a stellar cast of Broadway performers explore the life and music of composer Kay Swift (1897-1993). The first woman to write the score to a successful Broadway musical, Fine and Dandy, Swift is often remembered as George Gershwin's lover. Did Swift's long relationship with Gershwin help her career, or prevent her from reaching her full potential? Why are there almost no female composers from the 1930s to the 1950s, and what dynamics did women in the field need to navigate at that time? Discover Swift's dramatic life story, and hear her hit songs from Fine and Dandy, musical revues, and the Hollywood film Never a Dull Moment.
Tuesday, April 27 (7 pm) - Solar Flare: Luna Composition Lab
Young musicians from Kaufman Music Center premiere works by the 2020-21 Luna Composition Lab Fellows: Vera Gjaja, Alisha Heng, Jordan Millar, Zola Saadi-Klein, Azalea Twining, and Marina Zurita McKinnon. A national mentorship program founded by 2018 Grammy nominee Missy Mazzoli and 2019 Pulitzer Prize winner Ellen Reid with Kaufman Music Center in 2016, Luna Lab is "changing the playing field by providing mentorship and exposure to teen-age female, non-binary, and gender nonconforming composers" (The New Yorker).
Wednesday, April 28 (7 pm) - Conrad Tao: Performance as Process
2020-21 Kaufman Music Center Artist-in-Residence Conrad Tao is a pianist, composer, Avery Fisher Career Grant winner and alumnus of Special Music School. In a series of eight free monthly digital Performance As Process events, he invites audiences into his creative practice as he develops programming for his May 6 Ecstatic Music performance in Merkin Hall. Streamed from his home in Manhattan, these events will give the audience a deeper look into his work in piano, electronics, composition and improvisation as the program for his May concert comes into focus.
Thursday, April 29 (7 pm) - Fast Forward: ComposerFest
Students from Kaufman Music Center's Special Music School and Lucy Moses school perform music by Florence Price, Margaret Bonds, Samuel Coleridge Taylor, and Joseph Boulogne, Chevalier de Saint-George.
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