No Vivaldi in the Garage

A Requiem for Classical Music in North America

 

October 2004 - Friend and colleague Sheldon (Shelly) Morgenstern has written a book that I would like to recommend.  The following is taken from the book’s dust jacket:

 

“For nearly forty years, Sheldon Morgenstern has passionately devoted his life’s work to classical music in a highly successful career as a musician, symphony orchestra conductor, teacher and director of a major music festival.  In this intriguing memoir, he weaves together the engaging story of his own experiences with forthright and harsh commentary on the people and institutions responsible for the rapidly deteriorating state of the performing arts in the United States and Canada.”

 

Northeastern University Press/University Press of New England 2001

ISBN 1-55553-493-7

ON MY MIND

Photo by Ron Compton

Larry Alan Smith and Shelly Morgenstern

had a chance to talk about the book during the composer’s

trip to France in June 2005.

Larry Alan Smith and poet Richard Nickson

had a chance to visit in New York City recently. 

 

Dr. Nickson’s poems are the texts for the following Smith vocal works: Strands (1982) for tenor and harp, Songs of the Silence (1983) for tenor and piano and Songs of the Darkness (1991) for soprano, flute and guitar.  Larry Alan Smith plans to set more of Richard Nickson’s poems during the coming months.

 

It should also be noted that a book written by Richard Nickson and Junius Irving Scales has been released in paperback by the University of Georgia Press.  Cause at Heart is the extraordinary story of the only American ever to be convicted solely for being a member of the Communist Party.

 

2005

ISBN 0-8203-2785-9