Classical Music, as Defined by Reinvention

15 July 2010

BARBARA KLEIN: Welcome to THIS IS AMERICA in VOA Special English. I'm Barbara Klein.

STEVE EMBER: And I'm Steve Ember. Today we present the second of two programs about contemporary classical music written by composers working in the United States. We begin with Osvaldo Golijov. He grew up in La Plata, Argentina, in a Jewish family from eastern Europe. He studied music in Israel and currently lives in the United States.

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BARBARA KLEIN: This is Osvaldo Golijov's "La Pasion segun San Marcos," or "Saint Mark Passion." He wanted it to express the story of Jesus' last days as seen through the Latin American experience. The performance includes dancers and folk instruments like the accordion and guitar.

Festival de Saint-Denis – Sébastien ChambertOsvaldo Golijov

The work was first performed in Germany in two thousand to mark two hundred fifty years since the death of the composer Johann Sebastian Bach. The crowd cheered wildly for over twenty minutes. One music critic wrote that modern music history had just been made.

Osvaldo Golijov's more recent work "Azul" is a cello concerto written for Yo-Yo Ma and the Boston Symphony Orchestra:

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STEVE EMBER: John Adams began his music career playing the clarinet, but he also began composing as a child.

His works over the years include the opera "Nixon in China," based on the historic visit by President Richard Nixon in nineteen seventy-two. Another of his works is "Shaker Loops":