Lifelong Learning

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. A sweeping portrait of America at the turn of the 20th century, Ragtime is a musical that blends hope, heartbreak, and history with an unforgettable score. In this seminar, we’ll explore how Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty use music—from ragtime piano to soaring ballads—to give voice to a diverse cast of characters navigating race, immigration, wealth, and justice. Through close listening and guided discussion, we’ll examine how the score deepens the show’s themes and what makes Ragtime both a period piece and a timely reflection of American identity. Bring your thoughts, your questions, and perhaps a favorite moment or lyric that’s stayed with you.

This four-week series will delve into the music of America and how it shaped and was part of shaping the country’s identity as it matured from its infancy to today. We’ll first look at what America inherited musically from the European roots of its Colonists and how the people and the land they encountered, once they arrived, altered or added to their musical language. How did their various approaches to religious life inform the music used in their rituals and ceremonies? One huge aspect that contributed to American music was its deep roots in specific regions of the country, and we’ll examine those contributions. We’ll ask, “Is there an American sound, and if so, what might that be?” Audio, video, and visual art examples will help illustrate this journey, exploring the creation of popular music, jazz, country, American concert music, music for the theatre, rock and roll, and the contemporary sounds of today.

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. A sweeping portrait of America at the turn of the 20th century, Ragtime is a musical that blends hope, heartbreak, and history with an unforgettable score. In this seminar, we’ll explore how Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty use music—from ragtime piano to soaring ballads—to give voice to a diverse cast of characters navigating race, immigration, wealth, and justice. Through close listening and guided discussion, we’ll examine how the score deepens the show’s themes and what makes Ragtime both a period piece and a timely reflection of American identity. Bring your thoughts, your questions, and perhaps a favorite moment or lyric that’s stayed with you.

This four-week series will delve into the music of America and how it shaped and was part of shaping the country’s identity as it matured from its infancy to today. We’ll first look at what America inherited musically from the European roots of its Colonists and how the people and the land they encountered, once they arrived, altered or added to their musical language. How did their various approaches to religious life inform the music used in their rituals and ceremonies? One huge aspect that contributed to American music was its deep roots in specific regions of the country, and we’ll examine those contributions. We’ll ask, “Is there an American sound, and if so, what might that be?” Audio, video, and visual art examples will help illustrate this journey, exploring the creation of popular music, jazz, country, American concert music, music for the theatre, rock and roll, and the contemporary sounds of today.

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 provided.