Movie Review | 'Music Makes a City'
rootlesscosmo
12,848 Posts
My cousin worked on this doc.
September 17, 2010
Movie Review | 'Music Makes a City'
Louisville, Ky., as a Contemporary Music Hub
By ANDY WEBSTER
A singular harmonic convergence is recounted in ???Music Makes a City,??? Owsley Brown III and Jerome Hiler???s enlightening documentary about how Louisville, Ky., became a locus for contemporary music in the mid-20th century. In striking synchronicity, a mayor, a con- ductor and a robust postwar generation of composers inter- sected to make the city a hub for visionary composition.
Louisville had been battered by a flood and the Depression when Robert Whitney, a young Chicago conductor, arrived in 1937 to build what became theLouisville Orchestra. When it hit financial trouble, Charles Farnsley, the mayor and a be- liever in the Confucian notion that high culture attracts wealth and power, boldly proposed commissioning works from modern composers while honor- ing the traditional repertory.
Their efforts drew local and international acclaim. By 1953, with a major Rockefeller Foun- dation grant, the orchestra was bringing in 46 originals a year, by the likes of Ned Rorem and Elliott Carter (both articulate on camera), and had its own record label, First Edition. At its peak, luminaries like Martha Graham and Shostakovich came to its stage.
Louisville Orchestra. When it hit financial trouble, Charles Farnsley, the mayor and a be- liever in the Confucian notion that high culture attracts wealth and power, boldly proposed commissioning works from modern composers while honoring the traditional repertory.Their efforts drew local and international acclaim. By 1953, with a major Rockefeller Foun- dation grant, the orchestra was bringing in 46 originals a year, by the likes of Ned Rorem and Elliott Carter (both articulate on camera), and had its own record label, First Edition. At its peak, luminaries like Martha Graham and Shostakovich came to its stage.
Aesthetic trends ??? the battle between Neo-Classicists and the atonalists, for example ??? are addressed, but the music is given ample room to speak for itself, in lyrical landscape mon- tages. Viewers unfamiliar with artists like Lukas Foss and Gun- ther Schuller will find them- selves agreeably challenged. And stirred.
The personalities here are as noteworthy as the soundtrack. Whitney was a tireless leader. The charismatic Farnsley, an intellectual with a populist style, after a term as a congressman (where he helped create the National Endowment for the Arts and was a proud signer of the Voting Rights Act), retired from politics to host an overnight classical-music radio program in Louisville.
MUSIC MAKES A CITY
Opens on Friday in Manhattan.
Directed by Owsley Brown III and Jerome Hiler; written by Mr. Hiler; narrated by Will Oldham; directors of photography, Marcel Cabr??ra and Mr. Hiler; edited by Anne Flatt?? and Nathaniel Dorsky; produced by Robin Burke and Mr. Brown; released by Mr. Brown and the Quad Cinema. At the Quad Cinema, 34 West 13th Street, Greenwich Village. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. This film is not rated.
http://movies.nytimes.com/2010/09/17/movies/17music.html
September 17, 2010
Movie Review | 'Music Makes a City'
Louisville, Ky., as a Contemporary Music Hub
By ANDY WEBSTER
A singular harmonic convergence is recounted in ???Music Makes a City,??? Owsley Brown III and Jerome Hiler???s enlightening documentary about how Louisville, Ky., became a locus for contemporary music in the mid-20th century. In striking synchronicity, a mayor, a con- ductor and a robust postwar generation of composers inter- sected to make the city a hub for visionary composition.
Louisville had been battered by a flood and the Depression when Robert Whitney, a young Chicago conductor, arrived in 1937 to build what became theLouisville Orchestra. When it hit financial trouble, Charles Farnsley, the mayor and a be- liever in the Confucian notion that high culture attracts wealth and power, boldly proposed commissioning works from modern composers while honor- ing the traditional repertory.
Their efforts drew local and international acclaim. By 1953, with a major Rockefeller Foun- dation grant, the orchestra was bringing in 46 originals a year, by the likes of Ned Rorem and Elliott Carter (both articulate on camera), and had its own record label, First Edition. At its peak, luminaries like Martha Graham and Shostakovich came to its stage.
Louisville Orchestra. When it hit financial trouble, Charles Farnsley, the mayor and a be- liever in the Confucian notion that high culture attracts wealth and power, boldly proposed commissioning works from modern composers while honoring the traditional repertory.Their efforts drew local and international acclaim. By 1953, with a major Rockefeller Foun- dation grant, the orchestra was bringing in 46 originals a year, by the likes of Ned Rorem and Elliott Carter (both articulate on camera), and had its own record label, First Edition. At its peak, luminaries like Martha Graham and Shostakovich came to its stage.
Aesthetic trends ??? the battle between Neo-Classicists and the atonalists, for example ??? are addressed, but the music is given ample room to speak for itself, in lyrical landscape mon- tages. Viewers unfamiliar with artists like Lukas Foss and Gun- ther Schuller will find them- selves agreeably challenged. And stirred.
The personalities here are as noteworthy as the soundtrack. Whitney was a tireless leader. The charismatic Farnsley, an intellectual with a populist style, after a term as a congressman (where he helped create the National Endowment for the Arts and was a proud signer of the Voting Rights Act), retired from politics to host an overnight classical-music radio program in Louisville.
MUSIC MAKES A CITY
Opens on Friday in Manhattan.
Directed by Owsley Brown III and Jerome Hiler; written by Mr. Hiler; narrated by Will Oldham; directors of photography, Marcel Cabr??ra and Mr. Hiler; edited by Anne Flatt?? and Nathaniel Dorsky; produced by Robin Burke and Mr. Brown; released by Mr. Brown and the Quad Cinema. At the Quad Cinema, 34 West 13th Street, Greenwich Village. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. This film is not rated.
http://movies.nytimes.com/2010/09/17/movies/17music.html