The latest edition of my Music for a While is here. There is a smorgasbord this time (as usual). The podcast begins with a Mozart piano concerto (the concluding rondo of). I have two settings of “The Cloths of Heaven,” the Yeats poem — one by Thomas Dunhill (very well-known), the other by Rebecca Clarke (not well-known). I also devote a little time to Ken-David Masur. He is a conductor, and a son of the late Kurt Masur, who was one of the most prominent conductors in the world. There have been many father–son pairings among conductors: Erich and Carlos Kleiber; Armin and Philippe Jordan; Michel and Emmanuel Plasson; and so on.
There are father–son pairings in every field. I did a piece about this in 2015, “The Dynasty Question.”
Last month, I recorded a Q&A podcast with Robert P. George and Cornel West, writing about it here. They are two prominent academics and close friends of each other. One is on the right (George), the other on the left (West). I asked them about their influences, intellectual and artistic. Now, Robby George is a banjo player, out of West Virginia. He named Bill Monroe, the father of bluegrass music, and Earl Scruggs, that all-time banjo master. Cornel West said something I found moving: “When it comes to preserving my sanity and dignity, Sarah Vaughan and John Coltrane.”
On this Music for a While, I have Bill Monroe in his classic “Blue Moon of Kentucky,” and Earl Scruggs in his classic “Foggy Mountain Breakdown.” I also have John Coltrane teaming up with Kenny Burrell in a Kern & Hammerstein song: “Why Was I Born?” And Sarah Vaughan singing “Black Coffee.”
Again, for this new episode, go here.