Wednesday, Dec. 4, 2024
10:00 am - 11:30 am
Listen Up: Seminars on Music is a weekly gathering of music lovers every Wednesday morning, hosted by AZMF’s Resident Artist, Josh Condon. Each session will be a combination of music history, active listening, analysis, and discussion, designed to enhance your listening experience and overall music appreciation. Listen Up covers all genres, emphasizing our common humanity through the universal language of music! Coffee and refreshments provided.
Arizona Musicfest celebrates the return of the Festival Chorus this year during our Festival Orchestra week, performing Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Requiem Mass in D minor. Our Listen Up series will take a deep dive in the life of Mozart, why he matters, and the fascinating history behind this piece that was left unfinished at the time of Mozart’s death at age 35 in 1791. In part 1, we’ll begin with the story of his genesis.
A Requiem Mass, or Mass for the dead, is the liturgical worship service of the Catholic Church offered for the repose of the soul of a deceased person, more often today called a “Funeral Mass”. Mozart received a commission to compose a Requiem from Count Franz von Walsegg (a German aristocrat), whose 20-year-old wife had recently died. Working from a prescribed set of religious texts from the Catholic rite, Mozart fell ill and proclaimed he was writing this Requiem for himself. Upon his death and leaving his wife Constanze in a difficult financial predicament, Constanze’s solution was to hire Austrian composer Franz Xaver Süssmayr to complete the work, passing the piece off as authentically Mozart’s to the Count in order to receive his full payment.
Join us as we explore more about the significance of the Mass, and how Mozart (and eventually Süssmayr) interpreted these texts through musical composition by beginning our journey listening through of the most beloved choral works of all time.
Instructor
Josh Condon
As a pianist equally adept in the genres of jazz, pop, and classical, Josh Condon has served as music director/supervisor for over 40 musical theatre productions, in addition to leading concerts with symphony orchestras, choirs, jazz ensembles, and pop/rock bands. He has traveled the world as a music director and pianist for the Norwegian, Celebrity, and Princess Cruise Lines where he worked with numerous Broadway and West End performers.
Currently, Josh serves as Resident Artist and Director of Community Music Programs for Arizona Musicfest in Scottsdale, an organization which features concert performances of the music industry’s top talent. In addition to serving as Assistant Conductor for the Musicfest Festival Orchestra, he lectures on topics surveying a huge breadth of music history and analysis, including popular song, symphonic repertoire, jazz performance practice, musical theatre, and everything in between.
He also serves as Assistant Conductor for the North Valley Symphony Orchestra, and has appeared as Guest Conductor with the Scottsdale Symphony Orchestra, the Scottsdale Philharmonic, and the Arizona Musical Theatre Orchestra. Josh is passionate about using flexibility, positivity, and encouragement to create spaces where all can learn and perform to their best ability. He holds a BM in Jazz Studies from Ithaca College and an MM in Musical Theatre/Opera Music Direction from Arizona State University, and resides in Phoenix, AZ with his wife Lexy, their son Arlo, and their cat Sadie.