The Butler County Symphony Orchestra presents "The Golden Age of Hollywood" at the Butler Intermediate High School April 8th 2023 with Music Director Matthew Kraemer who has recently been named the Music Director of the Louisiana Philharmonic. The program includes scores from film classics by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Max Steiner, Franz Waxman and Miklos Rosza, plus Henry Mancini's Moon River. Matthew Kraemer runs down the delights of the concert and fills us in on his plans for New Orleans in this conversation with Jim Cunningham.

Concerto Koln makes their Pittsburgh debut with soprano Jeanine De Bique at Carnegie Music Hall in Oakland on Sunday March 26th presented by Chatham Baroque in their Renaissance and Baroque series. Jim Cunningham spoke with Artistic Director and Principal Cello Alexander Scherf shortly after the orchestra arrived in Costa Mesa, California for their concert near Los Angeles.

Hoping for sunshine they arrived amidst torrential rain, damaging winds, and tornados but still managed to visit the beach at sunset. After Orange County, it’s La Jolla, Pittsburgh, and Carnegie Hall in New York on March 28th. Alexander spoke about the recording  they made with Jeanine, "Mirrors," which has been widely praised and is the center of the music they’ll play on the tour. Handel’s arias for historical figures Cleopatra, Rodelinda and Alcina and their treatment in music by Carl Heinrich Graun and others all turn up next to instrumental works from opera by Handel and his contemporaries.

Concerto Koln has made nearly 100 recordings and found many composers not often heard, plus standards by Bach and Mozart. For Pittsburgh, they will include discoveries by Riccardo Broschi and Gennaro Manna. The music scene in Cologne, climbing the cathedral, and wearing the fragrance known as the echt Kolnwasser all wound up in this conversation with Jim Cunningham.

Tim Kaiser serves as a board member for Pittsburgh’s Roberto Clemente Museum explaining to Jim Cunningham why you should visit and talking about his Father Lloyd Kaiser who served as President and CEO of  WQED Pittsburgh from 1971 to 1993. Tim credits his Dad for helping him stay grounded in the high energy world of Hollywood and recalls his Father’s pride in building a new tower for WQED to hold the antenna for WQED-FM in 1973 after successfully winning the license for Pittsburgh against the plan to build a state wide network of noncommercial stations that would have been controlled elsewhere.  Lloyd brought his son to the studio to meet Fred Rogers who had Tim sit in the control room and peek in the camera viewfinder. After graduating from Oakmont’s Riverview High School then  Westminster College and starring on the football team  Tim went on to work for Kentucky public television and then took a chance on a new show to be created for NBC by Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David. Tim produced nearly 200 episodes winning two Emmys, a Golden Globe Award and a People’s Choice Award. Seinfeld joined the distinguished company of I Love Lucy and The Andy Griffith Show for ending its run at number one in the ratings. The “show about nothing” changed everything about comedy on American television. Tim Kaiser then produced Will and Grace and 2 broke Girls winning more acclaim. Megan Mulally gave a shout out to Tim from the stage when she won her Emmy for Will and Grace. Tim remembers the “no soup for you!”  Soup Nazi and Elaine’s  dating The Maestro, the sad clown opera references in the show and many more Seinfeld details. Tim did it all while commuting from his home in Hampton for over 14 years in one of the longest commutes to work in Western Pennsylvania history. His home in LA has usually been on standby while Tim made it home for his three kids Adam, Joshua and Michael plus wife and high school sweetheart Kristin.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that!

Kyle Haden is the director of "The Devil is a Lie" at Quantum Theatre. Their show runs April 7th-30th.  "The devil is a Lie" is written by California artist Jennifer Chang and will be produced at the Frick Building downtown. 

The Beo String Quartet is Sean Neukom, Jason Neukom, Ryan Ash, and Andrew "Gio" Giordano. They will be performing two pop-up concerts next week. One is March 30th at 6:30pm at the Bantha Tea house in Bloomfield, and the other is on March 31st at 7:30pm at the Bellevue Presbyterian Church. They will be playing a performance version of Bach's Art of the Fugue.

The Steinway Society of Western Pa presents pianist David Deveau who taught at CMU for a number of years then joined the faculty at MIT where he taught for over three decades. He talks with Jim Cunningham about his teachers Russell Sherman and Beveride Webster (who was born in Pittsburgh) as well as other great pianists he's worked with.

He remembers fondly his years at CMU and colleagues Andres Cardenas, Hanna Li, Harry Franklin and more. Everything you need to know about the late Sonatas written when Beethoven was nearly deaf, intimate yet virtuoso and point to the future. David has recently recorded Schubert Sonatas, Wagner's Siegfried Idyll and several concertos in arrangements for quartet with some cadenzas by composer John Harbison.

David also suggests some listening to great pianists on record including Wilhelm Kempff, Richard Goode, Peter Serkin. The concert is Sunday March 26 at 3pm Kresge Theater CMU.

WQED-FM's Anna Singer spoke with Jeanine DeBique.  She's in Pittsburgh for two performances - one with the Pittsburgh Symphony and their performance of Mozart's "Requiem," and with Concerto Koln, as part of the Renaissance and Baroque concert series.