(Boston) Celebrity Series of Boston presents What Makes it Great? with Rob Kapilow, the music of Cole Porter. The streaming digital performance is part of the “Celebrity Series at Home” series of virtual concerts, and takes place on Sunday, October 4, 2020 at 7pm ET. This performance is sponsored by Amy & Joshua Boger. The performance is streamed from WGBH’s Fraser Performance Studio in Boston, MA.
The sophisticated rhymes and imagery of Cole Porter’s lyrics made him one of the nation’s preeminent songsmiths. But an overlooked element of Porter’s legacy is the music underlying those lyrics, which Rob Kapilow argues is essential to understanding the work’s genius. Broadway stars Sally Wilfert and Michael Winther join Kapilow for a musical tour through Porter's life and career.
This performance marks the 86th Celebrity Series performance Rob Kapilow and the 46th presentation of What Makes It Great© since its Boston debut in 1997.
Tickets for the digital concert are $20 and are available online at celebrityseries.org. To browse the entire “Celebrity Series at Home” series and learn more about ticket bundles, visit: celebrityseries.org/athome.
About Rob Kapilow:
For over 30 years, Rob Kapilow has brought the joy and wonder of classical music – and unraveled some of its mysteries – to audiences of all ages and backgrounds. Characterized by his unique ability to create an “aha” moment for his audiences and collaborators, whatever their level of musical sophistication or naiveté, Kapilow’s work brings music into people’s lives: opening new ears to musical experiences and helping people to listen actively rather than just hear.
Kapilow’s range of activities is astonishingly broad, including his What Makes It Great?®presentations (now for over 20 seasons in New York and Boston), his family compositions and Family Musik® events, his Citypieces, corporate programs, and residencies with institutions as diverse as the National Gallery of Canada and Stanford University. The reach of his interactive events and activities is wide, from Native American tribal communities in Montana and inner-city high school students in Louisiana to audiences in Kyoto and Kuala Lumpur, and from tots barely out of diapers to musicologists in Ivy League programs.
As the music world largely shifted to the virtual arena this summer, Mr. Kapilow recorded a new, three-part, socially-distanced series of “What Makes it Great?” programs entitled “Beethoven, the Pandemic and the Power of Connection” filmed in New York City’s Merkin Hall with the Kaufman Music Center. He created Livestream programs for the Caramoor Festival as well as Stanford Live, and taught a 7-week online course, “Inside the Great American Songbook from Gershwin to Sondheim” for the Thurnauer School of Music of the Kaplan JCC of the Palisades, and worked with related themes in a unique, virtual corporate program on listening for CEOs in Istanbul and Dubai.
A summer highlight was a collaboration with the innovative dance group Pilobolus in which Mr. Kapilow helped curate and perform, as well as compose a new choral work based on a Rumi text, for their remarkable, live, car-safari-experience-in-the-woods at their Five Senses Festival in Washington Connecticut. In addition to the Rumi choral composition, Mr. Kapilow also worked intensively on his new, large-scale choral/orchestral composition, We Came to America, based on immigrant stories, and previewed parts of the work on a special 2-hour evening on WWFM radio combining demonstrations and discussions of the new work along with analyses of music ranging from Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony to Harold Arlen’s “Over the Rainbow.”
In June, Mr. Kapilow signed a new, two-book contract with Norton/Liveright, and he is currently hard at work doing research for both books, the first on the music of the Woodstock Generation.
Kapilow has appeared on NBC’s Today Show with Katie Couric; he presented a special What Makes It Great?® for broadcast on PBS’s Live From Lincoln Center; and he has written two books published by Wiley/Lincoln Center: All You Have To Do Is Listen, which won the PSP Prose Award for Best Book in Music and the Performing Arts, and What Makes It Great (2011), the first book of its kind to be especially designed for the iPad with embedded musical examples. His new book, Listening for America: Inside the Great American Songbook from Gershwin to Sondheim, published by Norton/Liveright is now available.
Rob Kapilow dedicates his summer months to writing and composing new music. He was the first composer to be granted the rights to set Dr. Seuss’ words to music, and his Green Eggs and Ham has been called “the most successful piece written for families this half century.” A CD featuring Nathan Gunn and Isabel Leonard in two more of his popular Family Musik® compositions, Chris van Allsburg’s Polar Express and Dr. Seuss’s Gertrude McFuzz, was released in 2014, and his new piece for the 25th anniversary of Ottawa Chamberfest based on Louise Bourgeois’ spider sculpture, “Maman.” received its premiere in August of 2019. He is currently working on a large new piece for the JCC based on immigrant stories called “We Came to America” to be premiered in 2021.
Kapilow’s career has been marked by numerous major awards and grants. He won First Place in the Fontainebleau Casadesus Piano Competition and was the second-place winner of the Antal Dorati Conductor’s Competition with the Detroit Symphony. He was featured on Chicago Public Radio’s Composers In America series, and is a recipient of an Exxon Meet-the-Composer grant and numerous ASCAP awards.
Kapilow has conducted many of North America’s major orchestras, as well as new works of musical theater, ranging from the Tony Award-winning Nine on Broadway to the premiere of Frida for the opening of the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival, and premieres of works for the American Repertory Theater. At the age of 19, Kapilow interrupted his academic work at Yale University to study with the legendary Nadia Boulanger. Two years later, after graduating Phi Beta Kappa from Yale, he continued his studies at Eastman School of Music. After graduating from Eastman, he returned to Yale, where he was an assistant professor for six years at the university. He lives in River Vale, NJ, with his wife and three children.
About Celebrity Series of Boston
Celebrity Series of Boston was founded in 1938 by pianist and impresario Aaron Richmond. The Series has been bringing the very best performers–from orchestras and chamber ensembles, vocal and piano music, to dance companies, jazz, and more–to Boston’s major concert halls for 81 years. The Celebrity Series of Boston believes in the power of excellence and innovation in the performing arts to enrich life experiences, transform lives and build better communities. Through its education initiatives, the Celebrity Series seeks to build a community of Greater Boston where the performing arts are a valued, lifelong, shared experience—on stages, on streets, in neighborhoods–everywhere.
Celebrity Series of Boston is grateful to our 2020-21 Season Sponsors Amy & Joshua Boger, and to the many individuals, corporations, foundations, and government agencies whose support helps fulfill our mission to present performing artists who inspire and enrich our community. Institutional supporters include the Barr Foundation through its ArtsAmplified initiative, Stephanie L. Brown Foundation, The Catered Affair, Susanne Marcus Collins Foundation, D.L. Saunders Real Estate Corp., First Republic Bank, Foley & Lardner LLP, Ipsen Biopharmaceuticals, Liberty Mutual Foundation, Massachusetts Cultural Council, National Endowment for the Arts, Outside the Box: A Production of the Boston Arts Summer Institute, Cynthia and John S. Reed Foundation, Royal Little Family Foundation, Stifler Family Foundation, Anonymous, and many others.
celebrityseries.org
###