Wednesday, Nov. 13, 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.
In honor of our concert performance of “Neil Berg’s The 60’s,” and as a follow-up to last season’s Beach Boys seminar, we begin where we left off: this time focusing exclusively on the music of Brian Wilson!
Beginning with songs like “Good Vibrations,” we see an artist whose musical sensibilities went beyond just the typical pop song. Despite a much-publicized mental health struggle, Wilson continued to create and shape new sounds that mixed popular song forms with the Avant-garde. Thus, we might ask ourselves if the press’s assessment of “Brian Wilson is a genius” is more than just hyperbole?
Join us as we survey the music of Brian Wilson, both with the Beach Boys and his long career following. You’ll likely discover songs you never knew existed, and face the work of an artist whose creativity challenged even the most open-minded listener!
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.