Spoleto Today with Marcus Overton and Jennifer Foster

Did you miss a broadcast of Spoleto Today?

If you or someone you know missed any of the Spoleto Today episodes this is the place to catch up. We'll be back next year with more Spoleto Today!

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Tuesday - June 14, 2011 at 11:00
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Did you miss a broadcast of Spoleto Today?

If you or someone you know missed any of the Spoleto Today episodes this is the place to catch up. We'll be back next year with more Spoleto Today!

...more information »

Tuesday - June 14, 2011 at 11:00
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Carolyn Hart and Fran Rizer: southern mysteries

He Laughed ‘Til He Died is mystery writer Carolyn Hart’s 20th Death on Demand mystery. This time, more than one death in Broward's Rock, S.C., engages Annie Darling and her husband, Max. Maybe the need some help? They get it in the form of a group of local ladies, led by mystery writer Emma Clyde, who assist Annie and Max in the hunt for the killer. She’ll give Walter the bird’s eye lowdown on this caper.

 Columbia’s Fran Rizer has always loved to write. She has turned that love into a second career, writing a successful series of mysteries featuring her protagonist, Callie Parish, a beautician at the local mortuary in fictional St. Mary, South Carolina.

Fran Rizer joins Dr. Edgar for a free-wheeling conversation about Callie and the second novel in the series, Hey Diddle Diddle, the Corpse and the Fiddle.

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Friday - August 27, 2010 at 12:00 pm
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The final episode of Spoleto Today for 2010

Opener: Summarizing Spoleto 2010
From men in tutus, an opera featuring puppets and everything in between, Spoleto Festival USA’s 2010 season has delighted, and at times, disappointed. Hosts Jennifer Foster and Marc Overton talk over the best – and worst – in this summary of the Spoleto Festival USA, and we’ll revisit some of the memorable voices from the 2010 Festival, including General Director Nigel Redden, new Chamber Music Director Geoff Nuttall, Colla Marionette General Manager Piero Corbella, Polish jazzman Leszek Możdżer, and Charleston mayor Joseph P. Riley.

Music: Emmanuel Villaume: Completing the Circle (Mozart: Overture, Le nozze di Figaro)
We’re also hearing another Spoleto voice – and personality - for the last time. Emmanuel Villaume made his Spoleto Festival USA debut 20 years ago conducting Renée Fleming in The Marriage of Figaro. Completing the circle, Villaume conducted the Spoleto Festival USA Orchestra in the Overture to Mozart’s opera as one of two encores at his last concert as Spoleto’s Music Director for Opera and Orchestra.

Feature:  Robert McPherson: Whistling Past the Well
Whistling may not come to mind when you think of necessary skills on a job application. But, for tenor Robert McPherson’s job as Hob in Flora, an Opera, this skill set was at the top of the list. As with any new position, skills take time to master, and after a while, Robert was whistling while he worked, as he explains to Marc Overton.         

Feature: Inon Barnatan
Winner of the 2009 Avery Fisher Prize, the young Israeli pianist is one of the most talked-about young artists today   He joins Marc Overton to discuss his style, his approach to chamber Music…and Brahms, whose music he’s playing for his Spoleto debut.

Music: Brahms with a Bang  (Piano Quartet in G minor, Op. 25, Finale)
A zesty performance of the “Rondo Alla Zingarese” movement, played in concert this week at the Dock Street Theatre, featuring violinist Livia Sohn, violist Barry Shiffman, cellist Alisa Weilerstein, and pianist Inon Barnatan.

Feature: Unleashing instruments
Gervais Street Hagerty takes a walk down our street to Marion Square and finds an unconventional petting zoo with a refreshing mission. Chamber Music Charleston’s Instrumental     Petting Zoo unleashes  instruments to budding instrumentalists.

Feature: Churches of Charleston: Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim
Our audio/video tour continues with a visit to the spiritual heart of Jewish Charleston. 

Music: Mendelssohn: Piano Trio No. 2 in C minor, Op. 66: Finale
Kahal Kadosh is home to Piccolo Spoleto’s popular “World of Jewish Culture” series, including a June 6 concert called “Jewish Music Among Old Friends.”  From that concert we’ll hear violinist Yuriy Bekker, cellist Kenneth Law, and pianist Stephen Buck play Mendelssohn. 

Overtone: Space for Art; Art in Spaces
Marc Overton revels in experiencing the arts “outside the box,” e.g., beyond the television screen…

Music: Mascagni: Intermezzo from Cavalleria Rusticana
The second of two encores to Emmanuel Villaume’s last concert as Spoleto Festival USA Director for Opera and Orchestra, and a fitting end to our 2010 Spoleto Festival USA coverage. Villaume conducts the Spoleto Festival USA Orchestra.

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Friday - June 11, 2010 at 11:00 am
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Dawn Upshaw, Alisa Weilerstein, and Brooklyn Rider

Opener: Audience Behavior
Charlestonians, renowned for grace and proper etiquette, have been putting their skills to work as patrons at the Spoleto Festival USA. Or have they? A recent dust-up at the Dock Street Theatre during a Gate Theatre production of "Present Laughter" sparks a discussion between Marc Overton and Jennifer Foster about regional differences in audience habits. 

Feature/Music: Alisa Weilerstein I: Chopin for the Cello?
Cellist Alisa Weilerstein, at 28 already a veteran of seven Spoleto seasons, stops by our studios to set up her Dock Street performance (with pianist Inon Barnatan) of Chopin's Introduction & Polonaise Brilliante, Op. 3…a piece she says has been made a lot more interesting for cellists thanks to some of her illustrious predecessors.  

Feature/Music: Alisa Weilerstein II: 5-Day Pie and an odd Quartet
..in which we discover the connection between a pie recipe and Alisa's career, and discover the unusual String Quartet No. 2 in A minor by Russian composer Anton Arensky, a piece that swaps the second fiddle for an additional cello. We'll then hear a Spoleto Chamber Music performance of the Finale, featuring cellists Weilerstein and Christopher Costanza, violist Hsin-Yun Huang, and violinist Daniel Phillips.

Spoleto Daybook: FFJ is A-OK
Marc Overton recommends an ode to a singular opera diva Florence Foster Jenkins, recounted for Piccolo Spoleto festival-goers in a one-woman show.

Music: The Curious Moonlit Beast
From the Dock Street Theatre, soprano Dawn Upshaw gives the Spoleto premiere of “Even When I Am not Playing,” the last of six "Piano Lesson," by pianist Stephen Prutsman, set to the poems of Billy Collins. Prutsman explains, “This curious and mysterious beast, with its enormous smile, occupies a large part of our collective heart. The song cycle is dedicated to those most patient of people: our piano teachers.”

Feature: Dawn Upshaw: More than Beautiful Music
The Prutsman premiere was one of several new works Dawn Upshaw sang in no fewer than three Chamber Music concerts at the newly-reopened Dock Street Theatre – a rare chance for Spoletians to savor Upshaw's remarkable vocal artistry and versatility. She joins Jennifer Foster to discuss her relationship to the music of composers Osvaldo Golijov and Spoleto Composer-in-Residence Jonathan Berger, how she strives to represent herself in her work, and how she's never seen her music as beautiful.

Performance-Chat: Brooklyn Rider
Jennifer Foster doesn't "sits down with" but rather has a "stand up session" with the boys of Brooklyn Rider ,for music and conversation about the band's unique sounds as an energetic and innovative ensemble that's changing our concept of the string quartet. The ensemble is making its Spoleto Festival USA debut, and we'll hear them preview selections from their two Spoleto programs, including "Viaggo in Italia," by contemporary Italian composer Giovanni Sollima, the second movement ("Assez vif et bien ryhtmé") from Claude Debussy's String Quartet, and “Loveland,” from violinist Colin Jacobsen"s quartet tribute to Debussy called , "Achille's Heel."

Overtone: The Women Behind the Curtain
Marc Overton reveals the storied history of Charleston women, especially their roles on the plantations of early Charleston.

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Thursday - June 10, 2010 at 11:00 am
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Soprano Heather Buck, Mayor Joe Riley

Opener: More Songs about Buildings and Food…
Besides the Charleston cuisine, Jennifer Foster and Marc Overton consider the costs, and the consequences, of the auditorium-renovation parade, starting with the $6 million Memminger makeover, the $18 milliion Dock Street Theatre do-over, and now the proposed $142 million campaign to gut-and-glitzify Gaillard Auditorium.

Feature: Joe Riley: No Guts, No Gaillard, No Glory
The Mayor of Charleston, Joseph P. Riley, stops by the Spoleto Today studios to make his case for what he calls the new “Gaillard Center,” and what it represents for the city’s future, and considers the current financial straits of the Charleston Symphony Orchestra.

Music: The Sparkle in the Dock Street Shine
One of the bright spots of the current Spoleto season has been the steady attendance at the Chamber Music Series at the Dock Street Theatre, drawing crowds curious to see the plumped-up surroundings, sample the acoustics, and to hear new Spoleto Director of Chamber Music Geoff Nuttall in action. None of the above disappoints in this performance of the sparkling Flute Quartet in D by Mozart, featuring flutist Tara Helen O’Connor.

Feature: Pirates of the…..Caroiinas?
We pay a visit to the Powder Magazine, the 18th-century garrison on Cumberland Street in what was then “Charles Towne” to take in a little of the popular Piccolo Spoleto presentation of The Trial Of The Gentleman Pirate Stede Bonnet, and to converse with its creator, actor Rodney Lee Rogers.

Music: Bach for cello
An entirely different solo act from Piccolo Spoleto: Cellist Natalia Khoma, in recital Tuesday afternoon at a Piccolo Spoleto Early Music Spotlight series concert at First Scots Presbyterian Church in Charleston, plays the Prelude from Bach’s Solo Cello Suite No. 3 in G.

Feature: Heather Buck: The Breakout Star of Prosperina
Marc Overton talks to soprano Heather Buck, who has dazzled audiences in Charleston in her tour-de-force performance in the title role in German composer Wolfgang Rihm’s opera Proserpina (pro-SEHR-pee-nah), receiving its American premiere at the Spoleto Festival USA.

Music: Bloch (after Bach & Buck)
From a Piccolo concert called “Jewish Music Among Old Friends,” violinist Yuriy Bekker, the Charleston Symphony concertmaster, joins Converse College cellist Kenneth Law and pianist Stephen Buck in the Andante quieto from one of Ernest Bloch’s Two Nocturnes for Piano Trio.

Spoleto Daybook: Cheerfully Un-centered Eclecticism
Marc Overton recommends a performance by a company that’s “part theatre, part carnival sideshow and part dance, something that blurs the line between dreams and reality.”

Music/Feature: The Churches of Charleston II: The Cathedral Church of St. Luke & St. Paul
After a musical introduction from the Westminster Choir performance space of choice (the catchy Serbian wedding dance Fatice Kolo), our audio/video tour series of some of the Churches of Charleston continues with tour guide Scott Cullom Howell, the church’s Archivist. Followed by a performance of the first of the beautiful Litanies of the Blessed Virgin by French Baroque composer Marc-Antoine Charpentier. Joe Miller conducts the Westminster Choir and Spoleto Festival USA Orchestra.

Overtone 9 – Whence the Charleston name “Meminger”
More Lowcountry lore as only Marc Overton can tell it….

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Wednesday - June 09, 2010 at 11:00 a.m.
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Tuesday’s Spoleto Today

More from Spoleto USA and Piccolo Spoleto...

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Tuesday - June 08, 2010 at 11:00 am
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