Con Fuoco: A Podcast about Classical Music and its Future - How can classical musicians encourage healthy relationships with one another? with Liana Branscome

How can classical musicians encourage healthy relationships with one another? with Liana Branscome

02/24/21 • 40 min

Con Fuoco: A Podcast about Classical Music and its Future

My guest this week is violinist, Liana Branscome! Liana is the first prize winner of the Artist Series Concerts of Sarasota Competition Junior Division (2015), Boca Raton Symphonia Concerto Competition (2014), the Ars Flores Symphony Orchestra Concerto Competition (2014) and second prize winner of the New World Symphony Young Artist Competition (2014). She has appeared as soloist with the Vidin Philharmonia in Bulgaria, Palm Beach Atlantic Symphony, the Ars Flores Symphony Orchestra and the Treasure Coast Youth Symphony. She has also performed as guest artist at the Newport Music Festival in Rhode Island and the Auras Nunes Aula de Cámara in Santiago, Spain. Recent engagements include a recital tour of Portugal, Spain and London with pianist Bernardo Santos and a tour of South Florida with pianist Lewis Warren Jr.
Liana is pursuing her Master of Music in violin performance at the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music where she studies under Glenn Dicterow. She received her Bachelor of Music at the New England Conservatory under the instruction of Paul Biss and Lucy Chapman. Her precollege teachers include David and Linda Cerone. She has attended the Heifetz International Music Institute, the Sarasota Music Festival, and the Chautauqua Institute. Liana served as a Fellow in NEC’s Community Performances and Partnerships Program where she presented numerous solo and duo recitals in the Boston community. Liana is currently a teaching assistant at the University of Southern California in non-major violin and has presented several masterclasses and recitals at schools around South Florida. Liana is currently part of the administrative team of Project Build: Peer Masterclass Series, an organization that seeks to create a space in which young professional musicians can learn from and connect with each other.
While at the New England Conservatory, Liana also received a minor in creative writing and served as an editor of New England Conservatory’s academic journal Hear, Here! and student newspaper, The Penguin.

Previous Episode

Do classical musicians really understand our own history? with Jan Swafford

Jan Swafford is an author and composer. His musical works range from orchestral and chamber to film and theater music, including four pieces for orchestra, Midsummer Variations for piano quintet, They That Mourn for piano trio, and They Who Hunger for piano quartet. His music has been played around the U.S. and abroad by ensembles including the symphonies of Indianapolis, St. Louis, Harrisburg, Springfield, Jacksonville, Chattanooga, and the Dutch Radio. His degrees are from Harvard and the Yale School of Music. In 1989 he was a Mellon Faculty Fellow at Harvard. In 2018 he was awarded an honorary Harvard Phi Beta Kappa. In 2012 his online music journalism won a Deems Taylor Award.
As a music journalist and scholar, Swafford has written for Slate, The Guardian, Gramophone, and 19th Century Music among others. He is a longtime program note writer for the Boston Symphony, and has written program and liner notes for the symphonies of Chicago, Cleveland, Los Angeles, Detroit, and San Francisco, for Chamber Music at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, the Metropolitan Opera, and Deutsche Grammophon. Recently he has appeared in television documentaries in Germany and England. His books include the biographies Charles Ives: A Life with Music (nominated for a National Book Critics Circle award); Johannes Brahms: A Biography; and Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph. All these books were Critics’ Choices in the New York Times. HIs biography on Mozart was just published in December of 2020. His books have been widely translated in Europe and China.
The Question of the Week is, "Do classical musicians really understand our own history?" Jan and I discuss the habit classical musicians have of deifying composers, assumptions and narratives he needed to unlearn, how the teaching of the history of Western classical music has changed, how his research and writing of composers has informed his own composition process, and why he believes talent does exist.

Next Episode

How can classical musicians be effective collaborators with others? with Ming Luke

With the “energy, creativity and charisma not seen since Leonard Bernstein” and “vibrant,” “mind-blowing,” and “spectacular” conducting, Ming Luke is a versatile conductor that has excited audiences around the world. Highlights include conducting the Bolshoi Orchestra in Moscow, performances of Romeo and Juliet and Cinderella at the Kennedy Center, his English debut at Sadler’s Wells with Birmingham Royal, conducting Dvorak’s Requiem in Dvorak Hall in Prague, recording scores for a Coppola film, and over a hundred performances at the San Francisco War Memorial with San Francisco Ballet. The 20-21 season Luke conducts San Francisco Symphony, Houston Symphony, and at Classical Tahoe with musicians of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. He has been recognized nationally for his work with music education and has designed and conducted education concerts and programs with organizations such as the Berkeley Symphony, Houston Symphony, Sacramento Philharmonic, San Francisco Opera and others. Luke has soloed as a pianist with Pittsburgh Symphony, Sacramento Philharmonic, and San Francisco Ballet, and currently serves as Music Director for the Merced Symphony and Berkeley Community Chorus and Orchestra; Principal Conductor of the Nashville Ballet, Associate Conductor for the Berkeley Symphony; and Principal Guest Conductor for the San Francisco Ballet. Long time critic Allan Ulrich of the San Francisco Chronicle said, “Ming Luke delivered the best live theater performance I’ve ever heard of [Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet]” and in 2016 Luke’s War Requiem was named best choral performance of 2016 in the San Francisco Bay Area. Passionate about collaboration with dance companies and deepening the impact of movement to live music, Luke has guested with Boston Ballet, New York City Ballet Orchestra, Nashville Symphony/Ballet, San Diego Ballet and others and conducted l’Orchestre Prométhée in Paris as part of San Francisco Ballet’s residency with Les Etés de la Danse. Famed dancer Natalia Makarova stated, “Ming has a mixture of pure musicality and a sensitivity to needs of the dancers, which are such rare qualities.”
The Question of the Week is, "How can classical musicians be effective collaborators with others?" Ming and I discuss his experience working with dancers as a conductor of ballet, what he believes is the key to being an effective collaborator, and his definition of a "successful classical musician."
You can find out more about Ming on his website, mingluke.com.