Hi- I'm Midday Classical Host Jennifer Reason. I began the weekly Local Artist Feature over two years ago, with the goal of highlighting and celebrating the incredible musical talent in our Northern California community. Now, this April, the milestone 100th feature has been reached- and without repeating one guest on air! In celebration, we recorded a live concert right here in the station's community room and invited multiple guest artists to come participate. Some guests were previous features, others were brand new; the performances ranged from solo classical guitar, to opera, to jazz quartet- all reflecting our music station's on air programming. 

Enjoy the entire hour long live concert recording, and be sure to tune in every Friday at noon and 6pm as we look to future milestones for the feature!

Bassoonist Dr. David Wells plays the instrument like few others. In other words, he has figured out how to make it work flawlessly all the way from historically performed baroque performances, to lyrical classical playing, and even to taking solos with a jazz ensemble! In this feature we enjoy hearing the bassoon in three different settings, including a fun jazz standard. We also learn how long distance swimming has helped Dave develop breath control for his difficult wind instrument.

Every Friday at noon and 6pm Jennifer Reason curates and hosts the Local Artist Feature on air, created to highlight and celebrate the extraordinary talent right here in our region. Come meet your musical neighbors!

Brennen Milton, woodwinds

Brought up in Northern Ireland, Kathryn McDowell has spent her entire career fostering arts education in communities and organizations across the United Kingdom. Throughout the last 40 years she has worked with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, the Welsh National Opera, the Arts Council of England and the Association of British Orchestras. 

McDowell has been the Managing Director of the London Symphony Orchestra since 2005. In that time, she has overseen an extension of international partnerships for the orchestra around the world as well as the development of LSO Live, their incredibly successful orchestra owned recording label. And with the challenges of a global pandemic, the orchestra found a way to flourish through digital online recordings and performances; a concept that has brought them an even wider audience.

Kathryn McDowell is also the chair of the London Lieutenancy Council for Cultural Heritage. Their mission is to “build bridges across London's most deprived communities through cultural activities.” Youth education has always been at the heart of McDowell’s mission. 

The LSO is currently on tour in the United states, with a selection of pieces that embrace their history as well as continue to innovate. Among their schedule of concerts is a stop right here in northern California, at the Mondavi Center at UC Davis.

Midday Classical host Jennifer Reason recently sat down with McDowell to discuss her vision for the future of the orchestra as well as their upcoming program. 

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Interview highlights 

On what it means to be Managing Director

In the U.K, the managing director tends to hold a responsibility for both the business side, but also the artistic side, liaising with the various conductors and artists as well as keeping the whole business and commercial side of the company in good shape.

On embracing both digital and live aspects of performance

The thing is that with the LSO, when they decide to do something, they do it wholeheartedly. I remember immediately after the pandemic talking to people about a hybrid future, that we would need to embrace both elements, the digital and the live. It’s really interesting to see that coming into being that we can develop audiences in new territories through the digital and then go as a live orchestra. 

On staying relevant in today’s age

I think in any business context you have to stay ahead of the curve. Nobody owes you a living, and so it’s the responsibility of the management to really be sure that they’re staying relevant and focused, and that they’re always looking at how they look after their existing audiences and how they can develop new ones. It has to be about excellence and innovation. The other thing about the LSO is that our musicians are absolutely at the heart of the board of the organization. We have 9 playing directors on the board and 8 non-playing directors, including me.  

On the importance of youth education within the organization

We want to give every child an opportunity to hear live orchestral music. We want to give them a love of music at a really early stage because all the research shows that if they get that opportunity early on, it stays with them through their lives. They may go and explore other areas of music and that’s great too, but it’s there. It’s something that they can come back to. It’s not going to be for every child, but they should have that opportunity regardless of what their background is. I think music has a power to communicate beyond words and giving young people that opportunity, giving broader communities that chance to engage with music and the arts is really important. In fact, I would go as far as to say that it’s a right that they should have. 

On their current tour of the U.S.

I think these programs play to the real strengths of the LSO; the charisma and personality that the LSO has. We’ve got Mahler’s Symphony No.1 and that’s a very “LSO” piece. We also have pieces like the George Walker Sinfonia No.5, which is a composer that we only discovered recently. We also have with us Janine Jansen, the Dutch violinist, who is just such a legend. She’s a player that the LSO absolutely adores to work with and she’s playing the Bernstein Serenade. People will know that Leonard Bernstein was president of the LSO in his later years. We always felt that we were Leonard Bernstein’s European orchestra. There’s a good range of repertoire there. 

Cellist Susan Lamb Cook started the Great Composers Chamber Music Series at a time when the need for music performance was paramount in Sacramento. The Sacramento Philharmonic and Opera had taken the year off to reorganize and Cook was determined to keep the music she loved alive and available for the community.

She turned to the VITA Academy whose mission it is to focus on music education and innovative music programming in the region to partner with her on the series. The first concert for the Great Composers Chamber Music Series was held in 2014. Now, in its 11th season, the series kicked off this week with a fascinating program featuring the unlikely pairing of two heroines of the 19th century: Adelaide Ristori and Clara Schumann.

Cook’s vision to combine the music of Schumann with the personal tale of actress and entrepreneur Ristori was inspired by the work of her friend and collaborator, Giulia Cailloto.

Cailloto, who is from Verona, Italy is the author of the book, “The Admirable Construction of Me” that fuses the legacy and inspiration of Ristori with her own venture which she calls Business Theater. Cailloto describes Business Theater as “a method that uses artistic tools in order to improve communication skills with a focus on feminine empowerment using storytelling."

Cailloto explains, “I’m working with a lot of women in Italy that want to improve their communication skills, that want to transform themselves. I needed a model to tell these women that they can change. In Italy, [this is] a problem. You can’t have everything in Italy as a woman. You are a mother or you have a career.”

Cailloto is making her first trip to the United States to debut a new script that tells the story of Adelaide Ristori and the challenges she faced to make a name for herself in the 1800s.

I spoke with Cook and Cailloto to learn more about this weekend's program, called “Ahead of Their Time” which takes place this Sunday at the Harris Center in Folsom.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

On the concept of music and monologue in concert

Cook: “I did a program similar to this about 8 years ago actually with the music of Robert and Clara Schumann and Donna Apidone participated in that program and did the readings from the conversation books of Robert and Clara and so this is just an extension of that concept so the program is similar in that sense. But now there’s a different character, there’s Adelaide Ristori who’s intertwined into the Clara Schumann story.”

On the impetus for the program “Ahead of Their Time”

Cook: “This all started about a year and a half ago when we met up in Verona and we were chatting about this and Giulia told me about her work and I thought, “Adelaide Ristori – that’s exactly the same time period as Clara Schumann in Germany.” And their stories are very similar in that way.

And Giulia began doing research and so she’s developed this wonderful script which tells the story of Adelaide Ristori but also tells the story of Clara Schumann so they’re both intertwined.”

On Adelaide Ristori

Cailloto: “[Adelaide Ristori] was a very famous actress in the 19th century but she was very weird, a very weird figure because she was an actress – a poor actress, but she married a Marquis. And in the common sense, she’d have to stop her career and [live] the noble life. But she decided, ‘No, I want everything.’”

On Clara Schumann

Cailloto: “She was [a child prodigy] and then she got married against her father’s wish and then she had to wait. She had to wait for the right time to flower… but then she flowered. And she composed and played her own music until [her] death.”

Violinist Randall Goosby is quickly making a name for himself in classical music circles. He’s a genuine prodigy who picked up the violin at the age of 7 and made his professional debut with the Jacksonville Symphony at only 9 years old. Four years later, Goosby made his first appearance at Lincoln Center alongside the New York Philharmonic as part of their “Young People’s Concert” series.

A decorated artist, Goosby is a graduate of the Perlman Music Program where he first encountered the legendary violinist Itzhak Perlman. Goosby would continue his studies under Pearlman and Catherine Cho at The Juilliard School of Music, where he received a Bachelor’s and a Master’s Degree. 

In 2020 the rising star signed an exclusive recording deal with the Decca Classics, and has since released 3 albums. 

This Wednesday, Goosby will set foot on the Jackson Hall stage at the Mondavi Center for the first time alongside the London Philharmonic Orchestra. He says “For me, personally, music has been a way to inspire others.”

This interview has been edited for clarity.

On what drew him to music 

I was seven years old when I started and it was only because my mom wanted me and both my younger siblings to play an instrument. 

So she was like,'hey, you guys are gonna play music you don't have a choice in that but you do have a choice in what instrument you play.’ 

So she asked us what we wanted to play and I just blurted out ‘violin’ out of the blue. I don't know why, I must have heard it on the radio or seen it on TV or something, but I say it worked out.”

On when he decided to become a professional

“I don't remember really considering it as a career path until I was probably [a] sophomore in high school; it wasn't until that point I started to ask myself the question, or rather my teacher asked me the question: ‘Do you really want to do this. Do you really want to play violin for the rest of your life? Do you want to do it as a career?’ 

At that point, my mom was flying me up to New York City once a month for lessons. (We lived in Memphis Tennessee at the time.) We'd fly up on a Saturday, I'd have a three-hour lesson straight through on Saturday afternoon. I'd go to sleep in the hotel, practice a little bit. We'd have a three-hour lesson again on Sunday and we'd go home. 

You know, this was always something I did because I loved it. It was fun. And now I'm having to choose whether or not I want to do this as a career when I'm, you know, 13-14 years old. So I was like, ‘I have to think about it.’” 

On studying with Itzhak Perlman at the Perlman Music Program

“[The intensive] takes place on Long Island every summer; it's a seven week long program. So it really is intensive. They mean that and that was the real turning toint, the kind of light bulb moment for me. It wasn't just because of Mr. Pearlman, it was really more because of the fact that suddenly for the first time ever in my life, I found myself part of a community of people of young musicians my age, a little bit older or a little bit younger who were just as passionate and and just as in love with music as I was.

I didn't know kids my age were out here doing this and so that really inspired me and motivated me to kind of take it forward into the future and following that summer. I actually immediately began studying with Mr. Pearlman, who's been my long time mentor at the Juilliard pre-college program.”

On his family ties to the region, and his debut performance at Mondavi Center

“Yeah, my dad [is] an alumni of UC Davis. He studied I believe economics and Asian studies, which led him to move to Japan for three years following his graduation to teach English there in Osaka. So that's where he eventually met my mom and they eventually came back to the West Coast and settled down.

This will be my first time [playing at Mondavi]. My dad and all his friends have just been hyping it up to me for years. He grew up in the Sacramento area as well. So his whole network of buddies is all out there.”

On his hopes for the future of classical music

“It's a really exciting time I think in classical music because things are changing. You know, we're starting to kind of shed some of the layers of tradition that have kind of bogged down the art form and that have prevented new listeners from coming and joining in on what I think is the most magical form of human expression really. So the crux of what I do is really not on the stage. 

My favorite part of the job is going around into parts of the community that don't have regular access to classical music. Usually that means schools, you know, kids from largely communities of color or communities that really are not…physically or financially able to really enjoy or access classical music at a high level. And I think hopefully that leads to soloists of the next generation looking out into the audience and seeing all different kinds of people, all different kinds of ages, all different kinds of backgrounds, walks of life, cultures, and I think that's that's already starting to be reflected in our programming on a very general level.