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I’m bringing you a lot on your radio: WNYC’s fundraiser (concluding this Friday night!); an Ear to Ear interview with composer Laura Andel Saturday night; a Sacred Sunday interview with composer Douglas J. Cuomo Sunday night; theremin music on Spinning On Air; plenty of special music throughout the weekend, and I’m planning a big Halloween edition of Evening Music for next Friday.

Plus, I’m preparing a multi-media performance of my music at Monkey Town in Brooklyn, Tuesday, Oct. 28th, 8 pm. If you’re curious, all the details can be found here.

I enjoyed sharing some autumnal images with you last week. Here are two more photos from that trip. The vertical one shows a beautiful tree with bark that almost looks designed by Dr. Seuss. The tree is unfamiliar to me. Do you know what it is? As usual, your comments about trees, the seasons, music, and life, are welcome.

A week ago, one Evening Music Listener asked me to name my ten favorite composers. Aside from the difficulty of trying to narrow the list to ten, that query led me to question the variety of music and composers regularly represented on the show (perhaps I’m not as musically inclusive as I’d like to believe).

Based on your listening of the show, which three composers get the most air time during Evening Music? And — which three composers would you like to hear from more often during the program?

Leave your answers below.

On Tuesday and Wednesday I got out of town, and into autumn. I learned just recently (by listening to the Leonard Lopate Show!) that the reason New York City has muted fall foliage is that we have few maples. Up in Dutchess County the maples offered brilliant reds and oranges against a bright blue sky. It felt good to reconnect to the arboreal splendor of autumn.

Presidential politics and economic tumult seemed less all-encompassing in the colorful dazzle. But we did tune in the debate on the car radio during the dark drive back home… Below are some photos I took, with the idea of spreading the wealth of color here on the Blog.

I wish I could invite you to submit your own images of autumn here, but we’re not set up to do that. If you have images posted elsewhere, you can link to them in the comments section. And I’d welcome your one-sentence description of what autumn looks and feels like in your neck of the woods.

Guest Blog by WNYC’s Aaron Cohen

Le Marche is one of Italy’s best-kept secrets. I had the great pleasure of spending a week there in early August with author & journalist Fred Plotkin. Fred’s three great areas of expertise are Italy, food, and opera, and many people know him through his books, articles and media appearances in these fields. Among his books are “Opera 101: A Complete Guide to Learning and Loving Opera” and “Italy for the Gourmet Traveler.” As you can imagine, I could not ask for a better travel companion. Through Fred I learned that this region (the Italian equivalent of a US state) called Le Marche, with Tuscany to the west and a long Adriatic coastline to the east, has more historic opera houses (76) than any other region of Italy. We set out to explore some of them.

Our visit began in the charming hill town of Macerata. I knew of Italy’s reputation as a global food capital, but nothing could prepare me for the food in Macerata. I had heavenly gnocchi at Osteria dei Pigliapochi, the most voluptuous watermelon I’ve ever eaten at da Silvano, and a local lasagne called Vincisgrassi at Trattoria da Ezio that I will remember for the rest of my life. Aside from the food, the most famous summer attraction in Macerata is the Sferisterio Opera Festival. We saw two classic operas here, Tosca and Carmen. The performances take place in the open-air Arena Sferisterio, which was originally built as a place for sporting events nearly 200 years ago but became home to the festival in 1921. The three things the struck me were the half-moon shape of the arena, the enormous width of the stage (almost 200 feet), and the beauty of the 56 columns that make up the back wall:

From Macerata we traveled to Pesaro, a beach town on the Adriatic and birthplace of the composer Gioacchino Rossini, a figure who dominates the entire place. There is Rossini street, Rossini theater, the Rossini Museum in the house where he was born, and every summer you can attend the Rossini Festival. Fred said that what Bayreuth is to Wagner, Pesaro is to Rossini, plus it has much better food and nice beaches. The Festival presents performances in two main venues: the Teatro Rossini and the Adriatic Arena (a sports complex). Surprisingly, the sound was quite good in the Adriatic Arena. Seeing Rossini here would be the equivalent of seeing a Monteverdi opera at Madison Square Garden.

The Festival takes great delight in presenting many of Rossini’s lesser-known works. Most people are surprised to learn that Rossini wrote about 40 operas. We heard three, none of which I knew: Ermione, L’Equivoco Stravagante, and Maometto II. Ermione (Hermione), written in 1819, is a tragedy in two acts based on the Greek story of the daughter of Helen (before she became Helen of Troy) and Menelaus. L’Equivoco Stravagante (The Outlandish Misunderstanding), written when Rossini was just 18, is a comedy in the same style that would later make him famous with The Barber of Seville. Maometto II (Mahomet the Second), written in 1820, is another tragedy set in Greece, this time about the conquering of Negroponte by the Sultan Mahomet and his Turkish army in the fifteenth century.

The standout performer at the Rossini Festival was mezzo-soprano Daniela Barcellona. She sang the role of “Calbo” in Maometto II and brought the house down with her aria “Non temer d’un basso affetto.” Here she is with a bust of Rossini in the Festival offices:

Fred asked Daniela why Rossini loved mezzos so much and why he used them to play “en travesti” roles in several of his operas:

And here is Daniela Barcellona joined by Marina Rebeka and Francesco Meli singing the Trio from Act 2 of Maometto II live at the Rossini Festival in August 2008:
 
After Le Marche, I was off to the Veneto, Liguria, and Tuscany. The details of those places will have to wait for my next entry, but I leave you with three of my favorite memories from Le Marche:

In addition to serving as WNYC’s Associate Director of Programming Operations, Aaron Cohen is an award-winning radio producer and an accomplished oboist. His most recent solo CD, “Oboisms,” features works for oboe and piano by 20th Century North American composers.

Reportedly, Thelonious Monk’s wife Nellie described his music with the phrase “Melodious Thunk.”

That’s not just a funny play on words; it’s a very concise, apt description. Monk’s compositions and piano playing were so idiosyncratic that despite general acknowledgment of his genius, and a degree of influence, Monk’s music remains a world of its own.

We’ll visit that world on Friday, the anniversary of Monk’s birth in 1917. I’ll help you explore and get to know Thelonious Monk’s music, mostly through the primary source: solo, group, and large band recordings by Monk himself. We’ll also hear a few interpretations by Steve Lacy, Miles Davis, and the Kronos Quartet, and get a bit of context from music by Satie and Stravinsky.

Here’s what I’d like you to do: listen, and then react in our comments section with a concise description of your experience. I’ll read these on the air. No need to be as rhyming as Nellie Monk. Besides, there are probably a limited number of variations on the sound of Monk’s name, and you may find that some felonious skunk already stole your pun.

And I invite you to continue this throughout the weekend: listen to the music that’s on the air, and then describe it as concisely and evocatively as you can.

More about Monk on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thelonious_Monk

Leonard Bernstein’s life and his music embraced an enormous amount of influences, and his religious compositions were no exception. As many New Yorkers and people of Jewish faith and heritage around the world acknowledge the High Holy Days — Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur — we’ll provide a musical backdrop reflecting the important principles of new beginnings, self evaluation and forgiveness, which are the cornerstones to many religious systems.

And in keeping with the spirit of Leonard Bernstein, the first hour of Wednesday’s show is a tapestry of music from various cultures and genres, music that is spiritual in nature, music that speaks to the timeless universal appeal of Yom Kippur.

We’ve been listening to Leonard Bernstein’s many successes for over a week. “A White House Cantata” seeks to redeem and rework one of his few failures, “1600 Pennsylvania Avenue,” a flop that ran for only seven performances on Broadway in 1976. I’ll offer some of this Bicentennial-inspired work Friday at 8 pm.

It gets me thinking about creative failure. Photographers take dozens of pictures for each image we see hanging in a gallery, or printed in a book, poster, or calendar. Are those unseen, unsatisfactory photos “failures,” or just part of the process that makes for good photography? Thomas Edison famously said, “If I find 10,000 ways something won’t work, I haven’t failed. I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.”

What is the role of failure in creativity? How can failure—or for that matter, success—be gauged? Commercial and artistic values can be connected, or they can be entirely different concerns.

Have you ever failed and then turned it around? Do you have a method, philosophy, or experience that helps you proceed? Tell us about it in the Comments, and I’ll read responses on air—maybe we can all learn from each others’ mistakes!