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Including Hip-Hop In Classroom Instruction Aims To Revolutionize Education

July 30, 2013 - 11:59pm

Many children who are immersed in hip-hop culture learn early on that there’s little room for their love of combustible beats and edgy rhymes in the classroom, and as a result, school isn't a place for them either.

But an emerging movement of artists and educators aims to improve the academic success of these marginalized students by bringing hip-hop into the classroom.

Performer and recording artist Baba Israel and beat-boxing champion Yako 440 said that they regularly take time out of their touring schedules to teach hip-hop arts to elementary, middle school and high school students....

Transformed into Singing Voices

July 24, 2013 - 11:11am

In July 1825 Franz Schubert was traveling through Upper Austria, enjoying mountain scenery and the company of friends. From the picturesque city of Steyr he wrote to his parents: In Steyreck we stayed with Countess Wiessenwolf, who is a great admirer of my humble self, owns everything I have written,...

Desperate Departure

July 23, 2013 - 11:02am

Sir Henry Wood was one of England’s most distinguished conductors of the early twentieth century. In 1888, though, he was a nineteen-year-old student whose departure from the Royal Academy of Music was anything but dignified. He told the story in his 1938 autobiography. During the Handel Festival at the Crystal...

The Accused

July 22, 2013 - 11:56am

At the end of World War II in Europe solid facts were almost as hard to come by as solid food. In Allied-occupied Vienna the distinguished Hungarian composer Ernst von Dohnányi suddenly found his career threatened by a rumor. During the war Dohnányi had done what little he could to...

The Desirable Ordeal

July 20, 2013 - 11:31am

Attending the Bayreuth Festival became all the rage for musicians in the late nineteenth century. The annual tribute to Wagner’s operas drew performers and composers from all over the world. But it took a toll on its attendees, as composer Hugo Wolf wrote to Melanie Köchert on July 20, 1891:...

Monster

July 19, 2013 - 11:39am

American bandleader Patrick Gilmore came to England to recruit performers for a giant concert to be part of a World Peace Jubilee. Gilmore had in mind an ensemble of 20,000 that would “whip creation” in size and sound. Not everyone was thrilled by the so-called “monster concerts” that swept through...

No Excuses

July 18, 2013 - 11:35am

English violist William Primrose made a policy of never making excuses for his performances, no matter how difficult the circumstances surrounding them. While he was a member of the prestigious London String Quartet, the ensemble was scheduled to perform at New York’s Town Hall. The program included works that had...

The Elusive Muse

July 17, 2013 - 11:28am

Although he was one of the world’s great composers, Giacomo Puccini sometimes despaired as he searched for the subject of his next opera. Two years after the success of his 1910 masterpiece La Fanciulla del West, he considered basing an opera on another American subject, Washington Irving’s Rip Van Winkle...

The Children

July 16, 2013 - 11:30am

It was to be a combination of youthful innocence and Celtic grief. When the London Sinfonietta commissioned a work from John Tavener, the composer found his atmosphere in the brooding landscape of Ireland, his structure in the traditional requiem, and poignant symbolism in children’s games. Tavener built his work around...

I Am Sure to Die Here

July 15, 2013 - 11:03am

Inspired by the musical experiments of his teacher, Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern was starting to write works that broke new ground. But being an avant garde composer didn’t earn Webern a living, and so he did his best to support himself as an opera conductor. A spring holiday in 1909...