Special Programs: Upcoming Community and Cultural Programs

Airs Saturday, July 21 at 3:00 p.m. Join us for Part one of an exploration of the piano music of Rachmaninoff with commentary by Valery Gergiev, Alexander Toradze, Gianandrea Noseda and Joseph Horowitz. All performances on this program are live except for Rachmaninoff's 1929 performance.  In this hour we'll hear four works by Rachmaninoff:
     Excerpts from Second Piano Concerto (Rachmaninoff, piano - 1929)
     Etude Tableau in E-Flat Minor, Op. 39 (Vakhtang Kodanashvili, piano)
     Variations on a Theme by Chopin (Alexander Korsantia, piano)
     Excerpts from Preludes, Op. 32 (Ketevan Badridze, piano)

Airs Friday, July 20 at 12:00 noon.   Spring for Music showcases some of North America’s most exciting orchestras at Carnegie Hall. In Program 1, the Houston Symphony performs an all-Shostakovich program including a rarity, Anti-Formalist Rayok, a protest piece that was not performed publicly until the Soviet Union was self-destructing. Also on the program is Shostakovich’s iconic Symphony No. 11. Music director Hans Graf conducts, with bass soloist Mikhail Svetlov.

Bill Beckett talks with Dr. Shane Rasmussen, Director of the Louisiana Folklife Center and Assistant Professor of English at Northwestern State University about this weekend Folk Festival, Gumbo Contest and the Louisiana State Fiddle Championship. You can find out more about the festival by Clicking Here.

Airs Thursday, July 19 at 8:00 p.m. When the family band Cherryholmes burst onto the scene seemingly out of nowhere during the first few years of the new millennium, they quickly developed a loyal audience, followed by a wealth of honors and awards. On January 12, 2011, after more than a decade together, Cherryholmes surprised the music world by announcing that they had decided to disband the group and would be performing their last show in May of 2011. In this episode, we listen to Cherryholmes' performance at the Savannah Music Festival.

Airs Monday, July 16 at 8:00 p.m.  Stochasticity (a wonderfully slippery and smarty-pants word for randomness), may be at the very foundation of our lives. To understand just how big a role it plays, we look at chance and patterns in sports, lottery tickets, and even the cells in our own body.  Along the way, we talk to a woman suddenly consumed by a frenzied gambling addiction, meet two friends whose meeting seems to defy pure chance, and take a close look at some very noisy bacteria.