From the Ives Studio || Jan Swafford & James Sinclair

Composer and writer Jan Swafford and Maestro James Sinclair join us to discuss the historic objects making up Charles Ives' recreated studio at the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
~~~~~~~~~~~
Jan Swafford's music has been played around the country and abroad by ensembles including the symphonies of St. Louis, Indianapolis, and the Dutch Radio; Boston's new-music groups Musica Viva, Collage, and Dinosaur Annex; and chamber ensembles including the Peabody Trio, the Chamber Orchestra of Tennessee, and the Scott Chamber Players of Indianapolis.
Over the years his music has evolved steadily, but in all its avatars his work is forthrightly expressive, individual in voice, and steadily concerned with lucidity of texture and form. Beneath the surface there are contributions from world music, especially Indian and Balinese, and from jazz and blues. The titles of his works-including Landscape with Traveler, From the Shadow of the Mountain, and The Silence at Yuma Point-reveal a steady inspiration from nature. The composer views his work as a kind of classicism: a concern with clarity and directness, pieces that seem familiar though they are new, that aspire to sound like they wrote themselves.
Also a well-known writer on music, Swafford is author of biographies of Ives, Brahms, and Beethoven. His journalism appears regularly in Slate. He is a long-time program writer and preconcert lecturer for the Boston Symphony and has written program notes and essays for the orchestras of Cleveland, Chicago, San Francisco, and Toronto.
~~~~~~~~~~~
James Sinclair has served as the Music Director of Orchestra New England since its founding in 1974. His versatility in delivering superb performances in styles ranging from Baroque to pops literature has driven the remarkable success of Orchestra New England.
Maestro Sinclair is currently recording for the Naxos label the complete orchestral music of Charles Ives, an eight-CD project. The first six discs have been released. Naxos is the leading repertoire provider in the recording world; their catalogue comprises more than 150,000 releases. In June 2023 Naxos released his already-acclaimed new recording with Orchestra New England of Ives’s complete Sets for Chamber Orchestra.
James Sinclair is among the world's pre-eminent scholars and champions of the music of Charles Ives. He is the Executive Editor for the Charles Ives Society, supervising the work of Ives scholars throughout the United States. Maestro Sinclair has served as music director for four PBS television documentaries, including the Peabody Award-winning film about Ives, A Good Dissonance Like a Man.
In 1999, Yale University Press published Sinclair’s 800-page A Descriptive Catalogue of the Music of Charles Ives; the Association of American Publishers cited the catalogue as the best publication of 1999 in arts scholarship.
A native of Washington, DC, James Sinclair earned his bachelor’s degree in music at Indiana University and taught at the University of Hawaii where he earned his master’s degree. He relocated to New Haven in 1972, where he has served as an Assistant Professor and a Visiting Lecturer in Music at Yale University. Sinclair is an Associate Fellow of Berkeley College (Yale) and is married to Sylvia Van Sinderen.
In 1999, Maestro Sinclair was awarded an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from the University of New Haven. Recently he was honored with The American Prize National Arts Award for 2023. During 2024, Maestro Sinclair is teaching an Ives course at Yale University.
~~~~~~~~~~~
From the Ives Studio is a series of videos produced by the Charles Ives Society to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the composer's birth in 1874. The videos, called commentaries, are shot at the American Academy of Arts and Letters, which transferred Mr. Ives' studio from his summer home in West Redding CT to the Academy's headquarters in Manhattan in 2012. The entire studio has been painstakingly re-created at the Academy - all the bookshelves, desks, bulletin board, Ives' piano, all the photos, everything is placed at the Academy in the precise location it occupied in the Ives home in West Redding. In every month of 2024 and for the foreseeable future, the Society will post a new commentary by a scholar, writer or performer offering a very personal perspective on Ives. All videos and more information on Charles Ives can be accessed at charlesives.org
~~~~~~~~~~~
Filmed in the Charles Ives studio at the American Academy of Arts and Letters
Videographer / Editor: Gil Gilbert
Producer: Kathryn King / Kathryn King Media
Executive Producer: Kathryn King / Ives Society
#charlesives #ives #ivessocety #fromtheivesstudio #janswafford #orchestranewengland #americancomposers #contemporarycomposers #ives150 #classicalmusic #classical #pianomusic #piano #newengland #concord #newyear #newyear2024

[@mainemanayuh]

A really helpful tour of the studio, James and Jan! I had the honor of spending a good amount of time there in Ives' recreated studio in NYC a number of years ago - even playing his music on his piano.

[@rogerofinvisibleamerica]

Two masters who clearly dislike one another. Charlie would love it! czcams.com/video/ZByeJp_7a3E/video.html