Nikhil Hogan Show

I’m so delighted to introduce my guest today, acclaimed Classical Pianist, Composer, Improviser, Musicologist and Conductor, Robert Levin! An international performing concert pianist, he has performed throughout the US, Europe, Australia and Asia. As a recording artist, he has recorded for DG Archiv, Decca, Deutsche Grammophon Yellow Label, SONY Classical and more. Levin is renowned for his restoration of the Classical period practice of improvised embellishments and cadenzas; his Mozart and Beethoven performances have been hailed for their active mastery of the Classical musical language. In addition to his performing activities, Robert Levin is a noted theorist and Mozart scholar, and is the author of a number of articles and essays on Mozart. His completions of Mozart fragments are published by Bärenreiter, Breitkopf & Härtel, Hänssler, and Peters, and have been recorded and performed throughout the world. In 2016 he was inducted as Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is currently the inaugural Hogwood Fellow of the Academy of Ancient Music for 2017 and 2018.

My guest today is the exciting, up-and-coming composer, sound designer and guitarist, Joe Kataldo! Kataldo is the founder and audio director of Mad Wave Audio, LLC, an audio production company that specialize on game audio. Some of the work he’s done is music and sound design for "The Last Night", a post-cyberpunk video game set in a world with a deep, vibrant vision of the future, HyPerParasite, an Italian Twin Stick shooter, and sound design for the company Spaces Inc. Kataldo regularly composes music for "H3VR", a room-scale gun simulation VR experience for Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, one of the top selling VR Games on Steam in 2018. Kataldo is a graduate of Berklee College of Music and the Conservatory of Napoli and holds degrees in music and composition.

My guest today is composer, pianist and music historian, Dr. Robert Greenberg! Dr. Greenberg has composed over fifty works for a wide variety of instrumental and vocal ensembles, and his works have been performed all over the world. A “Steinway Artist,” Dr. Greenberg has also received many other honors including three Nicola de Lorenzo Composition Prizes and a Koussevitzky commission from the Library of Congress. He has been profiled in various major publications, including The Wall Street Journal; Inc. magazine; and the London Times. Dr. Greenberg is popularly known for his over 550 lectures recorded for the esteemed education company The Great Courses, including popular courses such as “How to Listen to and Understand Great Music”, “How to Listen to and Understand Opera”, “Great Music of the 20th Century” and many other great ones. We talk about his early years in music, his training in music composition, many interesting perspectives and anecdotes on music history, His stellar work on the great courses, his music and so much more!

GRAMMY award-winning Classical guitar virtuoso Jason Vieaux is our guest for the first time today! Vieaux, “among the elite of today's classical guitarists” (Gramophone), is the guitarist that goes beyond the classical. NPR describes Vieaux as, “perhaps the most precise and soulful classical guitarist of his generation.” Among his extensive discography is the 2015 Grammy Award winning album for Best Classical Instrumental Solo, Play, from which the track “Zapateado” was also chosen as one of NPR’s “50 Favorite Songs of 2014 (So Far).” In 2012, the Jason Vieaux School of Classical Guitar was launched with ArtistWorks Inc., an unprecedented technological interface that provides one-on-one online study with Vieaux for guitar students around the world. Vieaux has taught at the Cleveland Institute of Music since 1997, heading the guitar department since 2001. In 2011, he co-founded the guitar department at the Curtis Institute of Music, and in 2015 was invited to inaugurate the guitar program at the Eastern Music Festival. Pat Metheny has composed a 4-movement suite for Vieaux which will be premiered later this year. Finally, Vieaux is in the midst of recording a new Bach album on Azica records.

My guest today is MacArthur Foundation Genius award winner and one of the top composers around today, Bright Sheng! A MacArthur fellow and proclaimed by the foundation as “an innovative composer who merges diverse musical customs in works that transcend conventional aesthetic boundaries”, Sheng has created an oeuvre that is not only with Asian influence but also with strong synthesis of Western musical tradition which makes his work distinctive and original. Sheng himself admits: “I consider myself both 100% American and 100% Asian.” In September of 2016, in a co-production with the Hong Kong Arts Festival, with sold-out runs at both places, the San Francisco Opera premiered Sheng’s commissioned opera Dream of The Red Chamber featuring a libretto by David Henry Hwang and Sheng, based on a beloved Chinese novel by the eighteenth century writer Cao Xueqin. He conducted a three-city tour of the production in China. In addition to composing, Sheng enjoys an active career as a conductor and concert pianist, and frequently acts as music advisor and artistic director to orchestras and festivals. He is currently the Leonard Bernstein Distinguished University Professor at University of Michigan, and the Y. K. Pao Distinguished Visiting Professor at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology where, in 2011, he founded and has been serving as the Artistic Director of The Intimacy of Creativity—The Bright Sheng Partnership: Composers Meet Performers in Hong Kong. He was born in Shanghai, China and moved to New York where he pursued his graduate work and studied composition and conducting privately with his mentor Leonard Bernstein.

Our guest today is the renowned composer, oboist, poet and teacher Samuel Andreyev! Andreyev studied composition with Allain Gaussin in Paris, then at the Paris Conservatory, where he obtained a masters degree in composition under Frédéric Durieux, and a prix d’analyse under Claude Ledoux. He also studied electroacoustics at IRCAM from 2011-12. His composition Night Division was awarded the grand prix of the Concours Henri Dutilleux in 2012. In the same year, he was awarded a one-year residency at the Casa de Velázquez in Madrid. Frequently sought after as a guest lecturer, Samuel Andreyev teaches privately and in many conservatories and universities across Europe and North America. Samuel Andreyev’s music is performed throughout the world by ensembles such as Esprit Orchestra, Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, les Percussions de Strasbourg, HANATSU miroir and many others. His most recent book, The Relativistic Empire, was released in October 2015 from Bookthug. His most recent potrait CD, ‘Music with no Edges’, was released by Kairos Records (Vienna) in October 2018. Finally, Samuel runs his popular YouTube Channel also contains interviews, music analysis and music. Chris Dzengelewski and I ask Samuel about his music, his style of composition, his views on the contemporary music of today and much, more!

In today's episode, we talk to violinist Nicholas Mann, who is the Chair of the Manhattan School of Music String Department and a Juilliard Faculty member. We talk about the legacy of his late father, 4-time GRAMMY winner and Juilliard String Quartet Founder, Robert Mann and his recently released posthumous memoir, “A Passionate Journey”! Over a 50 year period, Robert Mann led the Juilliard String Quartet playing almost 6,000 performances all over the world, scooping up 4 GRAMMYs and sharing their distinctive sound with such notable figures such as Glenn Gould, Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein and even Albert Einstein. His incredible career is chronicled in “A Passionate Journey: A memoir” also written by Robert Mann and available for purchase. “A Passionate Journey” is a collection of both spoken and written words in the form of essays, letters, lectures, and interviews from various times in his life, offering an engrossing glimpse into a life filled with musical milestones and the mind of a musical giant. I am joined again by my good friend Christopher Dzengelewski and we chat to Nicholas about his father's incredible musical legacy!

We’ve got an amazing guest today, Academy Award-winning Composer, Elliot Goldenthal! He’s the composer for films such as Alien 3, Interview with the Vampire, Heat, Titus, Public Enemies, Batman Forever, Demolition Man, Final Fantasy the Spirits Within and many more. Goldenthal’s original two-act opera Grendel, directed by Julie Taymor, premiered at the Los Angeles Opera and was a finalist for the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in music. Goldenthal has composed music for more than a dozen theatrical productions including Juan Darién: A Carnival Mass, which received five Tony nominations including Best Musical, and Original Musical Score. Goldenthal recently composed the music for the Netflix-produced film, Our Souls at Night. In October 2017, the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia premiered a trumpet concerto written by Goldenthal. He also composed the original music for M BUTTERFLY starring Clive Owen on Broadway in the Fall of 2017.  We talk about his background and training, studying with legendary composers Aaron Copland and John Corigliano, his approach to composition and style, his upcoming projects and much, much more!

We are delighted to have the renowned master of classical improvisation, pianist Dr. John Mortensen, join the show for the first time! Dr. John Mortensen is a leader in the international revival of classical improvisation. Appearing frequently as concert artist and masterclass teacher at colleges and universities in America and Europe, he is noted for his ability to improvise entire concerts in historical styles, including complex compositions such as Baroque fugues. His book on classical improvisation, “The Pianist’s Guide to Classical Improvisation” with Oxford University Press, will be a comprehensive method for training advanced pianists to improvise in historical styles. He is a Steinway Artist and an Ohio Artist on Tour.  In 2017 he was selected as a Fulbright Specialist by the US Department of State to serve as an international artistic ambassador. In 2018 he toured Europe for three months, performing and teaching improvised music at conservatories across the continent. His articles appear in International Piano, Clavier, College Music Symposium, Piano Pedagogy Forum, and American Music Teacher. Mortensen studied with Lynne Bartholomew at the University of Michigan and Anne Koscielny and Raymond Hanson at the University of Maryland, receiving his doctorate in piano performance from the latter.  He holds National Certification in Piano through the Music Teacher’s National Association and was recently recognized as an Excellence in Education honoree by the Ohio Senate. He now serves as professor of piano at Cedarville University. In 2016 he was named Faculty Scholar of the Year, that institution’s highest award. We talk about his background, his approach to classical improvisation, the different tools and techniques needed to improvise in classical music, his upcoming book “The Pianist’s Guide to Classical Improvisation” with Oxford University Press, his tour of Europe and much, much more!

Dorico Product Marketing Manager Daniel Spreadbury returns to the show for his 2nd appearance to talk about the recent major release of Dorico Pro and Dorico Elements. Great new features such as added Video, Time Signatures, System Track, Automation, Divisi, Ossias, Slashes, Bar Repeats, Note Performer 3 and many more! We talk in-depth about the exciting new features and also spend a little time talking to Daniel about his musical tastes!