Wednesday, Nov. 20, 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 combines music history, analysis, active listening, and discussion, designed to enhance your listening experience and overall music appreciation. Listen Up covers all genres, emphasizing our common humanity across all musical styles! Coffee and refreshments provided.
This session of Listen Up will include a conversation between Josh and SPECIAL GUEST Dr. Ilona Kubiaczyk-Adler, organ soloist for our upcoming Festival Orchestra performance. You don’t want to miss it!
Continuing our sessions on music for with this year’s Festival Orchestra, we explore American composer Samuel Barber’s 1960 composition Toccata Festiva for Organ and Orchestra.
The piece was originally commissioned by Mary Curtis Zimbalist for the inauguration of the new organ installed at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia–the largest movable organ at the time of its creation. Zimbalist was one of Samuel Barber’s earliest patrons and organist herself, and Barber had graduated from her namesake’s Curtis Institute of Music; entering into the young artist’s program when the school was founded in 1924. The premiere was performed in 1960 at the Academy of Music with organist Paul Callaway, conductor Eugene Ormandy, the Philadelphia Orchestra.
A significant contribution to the organ repertoire, the piece as a small concerto demonstrates incredible virtuosity, complete with a cadenza for pedals played by just the performer’s feet! The sweeping, exciting work demonstrates Barber and his lush, colorful textures, combining neo-“romanticism” harkening back to traditional symphonic music and combining it with modernist “American” harmony. Classical music as a whole was looking to break new boundaries in the 1960s, and Barber sought to appeal to the broader public while still pushing the boundaries of what new music could be. Instead of the organ being a pure soloist with an orchestra supporting, the whole orchestra is written to “become” an extension of the organ itself!
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.