Joining the ranks of some of the UK’s most illustrious citizens past and present, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra’s longtime  music director, Nicholas McGegan was made an Officer of the British Empire on this year’s Queen’s Birthday Hounors List.  I asked PBO’s PR guy, Sasha Hnatkovich if this meant we get to call him “Sir” Nic.  Sasha said no, he is now officially Nicholas McGegan, OBE- but stay tuned!

Congrats Nic!

An orchestra of laptops?  Why not?  At Stanford, Professor Ge Wang runs the CCRMA, Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics. Is this the wave of the future?  Computers are precise, can produce just about any sound and they don’t get tired like, say, a trumpeter.  Add people to the mix and you add emotion, intention, and expressiveness.  Wang says, “You pull these elements together and then see where the intersection is”.  Click here to listen to Slork which is an acronym for Stanford Laptop Orchestra.

Once you help us put together the ultimate KDFC Summer Soundtrack, we will slap the Top 100 suggestions onto an iPod for you just in time for some very musical summer fun.  Rumor is that gas prices will actually go down this summer, making the proverbial summer road trip more affordable than it’s been in years.   Here’s a list of Top 10 Road Trips compiled by Yahoo that will have you singing America the Beautiful:
 http://travel.yahoo.com/p-interests-3434…

Our Beautiful Big Sur

During his 4 month residency at Recology San Francisco back in 2007, young Bay Area composer Nathaniel Stookey was inspired to write Junkestra, a 3-movement piece for percussion instruments improvised from stuff he found at the dump! Stookey assembled what he called “a sonorous collection of pipes, pans, bottles, deck railings, bike wheels, bathroom fixtures and shopping carts”.  Junkestra has already been performed many times to great acclaim and you can hear it next when members of the SF Symphony take up these, uh, instruments to play it on May 9 at 2pm.  Click here for more.

Stookey

That’s the nickname for a beautiful gilded harpsichord built especially for Philharmonia Baroque’s maestro, Nicholas McGegan.  One of the cool things about this instrument is that it has two sets of legs so it can be one height when Nic is playing sitting down and higher when he is playing and conducting.  Here’s a photo:

Hope you’ll be able to join us for our next KDFC at Yoshi’s SF concert.  This time we welcome pianist Jon Nakamatsu to the casual nightclub setting of Yoshi’s.  A native of the Peninsula, Jon won the 1997 Van Cliburn Competition and since then has become one of today’s most sought-after performers.  When he was here for a KDFC Casual Concert, we had a great time and discovered that he is not only incredibly talented as a musician but super articulate, funny, and approachable.  All those things will be on offer Monday, May 3rd at 8pm.  Get your tickets here and check out Jon’s website there.

Jon Nakamatsu

The Vienna Philharmonic has announced that it has appointed a woman as concertmaster of the orchestra.  The leader of the violin section also traditionally serves as a kind of second-in-command of the orchestra.  It’s the first time a woman has risen to this level in the Vienna Philharmonic.  In fact, they only began allowing women into their ranks in any capacity as recently as the 1980’s but only on a provisional basis.  Full membership in the Philharmonic Society was not granted to women until 1997!  The Vienna Phil is one of the world’s top 5 orchestras, with positions often passed from father to son for generations.  Well, all I can say is it’s about time!

Albena Danailova

Hope you’ll join Hoyt and me for our 3rd annual Family Day at the San Jose Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose on Saturday March 20. The museum is free all day and is one of the great family experiences in the Bay Area.  Still on view is the Star Trek exhibit and also on view Saturday the 20th will be Hoyt and me doing a live broadcast from The Tech.  This is a wonderful opportunity for us to meet our South Bay listeners (and you are legion).  So grab the kids and come on down for the live broadcast and stay for live music and dance performances to follow!

The Tech's bright purple dome

Every year it seems Beethoven’s mighty 9th Symphony conquers the KDFC Top 100 Classical All-Stars.  Can you predict what will be #1 when we reveal your absolute favorite soundtrack this Friday at 5p?  Check out the list so far here and see if your fave has already aired.  Will the Top 10 be dominated by John Williams? Will one of the younger film composers prevail, eg. Alexandre Desplat, Randy Newman, James Horner? How important is a great soundtrack to a movie?  Tell us which movie score should win and why.  Predict the winner right here with a comment to this blog.

Will Max Steiner's greatest score be #1?

The organizers of “The Year of Chopin” in the composer’s native Poland weren’t sure which date to use to commemorate his 200th anniversary.  There is a birth certificate on file with February 22 1810 listed as the date but Chopin himself always stated his birthday as March 1st. What to do?  How about a marathon concert spanning the entire 7 day period between the two dates?  Works for me.  171 hours of non-stop Chopin, including concerts nightly by the Warsaw Philharmonic with a who’s who of great pianists as soloists.  KDFC celebrates this Monday with Chopin’s music every hour plus he’ll be feted by us throughout 2010!