Music as a Mirror of History

Learning how to appreciate the unmatched beauty, genius, and power of concert music can permanently enrich your life. Why is this so? As award-winning composer and Professor Robert Greenberg explains, "Music, the most abstract and sublime of all the arts, is capable of transmitting an unbelievable amount of expressive, historical, and even philosophical information to us, provided that our antennas are up and pointed in the right direction. A little education goes a long way to vitalizing and rendering relevant a body of music that many feel is beyond their grasp.

The life of Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–1893) exhibits as close a link as you will find anywhere between an artist's inner world and the outward products of that artist's creative activity. As a man, Tchaikovsky was defined by and indivisible from his music, which became an outlet for all the shifting moods of his turbulent soul. As Professor Robert Greenberg says, "If Tchaikovsky felt it, it found a way into his music."

The concept of TALKING WITH THE BLUES is based on a view of the various US states as blues regions. Even casual blues listeners are familiar with the fact that there is Chicago Blues or Mississippi Blues and the gripping social history of the music is very much marked by its geography. But there is much more that just those two places and to this day blues music stays committed to local styles. Moreover, many US states are endowed with a unique cultural identity grown out of the prevailing social, historical and ethnic realities. Reflections of these specific identities are also expressed in the blues.