By the opening years of the 1910s how people on both sides of the Atlantic saw their world was changing fundamentally: the naive, confident spirit of King Edward's England and President Theodore Roosevelt’s America would not survive the decade. Two events in the opening years of the ‘teens – a monumental disaster in the North Atlantic and the premiere of a scandalous new ballet in Paris – have become symbols of those deep social transformations that would end in a catastrophic world war, political revolution, and socio-cultural transformations that would bring to an end forever The Age of Innocence.
Ian Whitcomb sets the stage ominously for this evening's unusual concert with a line from his Grammy winning CD, Titanic – “On the night of April 14, 1912, in a few seconds of legendary hubris, the unsinkable collided with the unthinkable, and the first lesson of the 20th century began.” He proceeds, with Dick Hyman and company, to re-create the world of popular and classic music of the 1910s – best represented by the music played on the fateful maiden voyage of the Titanic. Then Conductor and Artistic Advisor James Paul and the Festival Orchestra will present the piece of music that in 1913 rocked the world of classical music at its foundations – Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring–and caused just a wee bit of a riot in the theater! Within a year the world was at war. By the end of the decade the Jazz Age had begun.
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James Paul, artistic director & conductorDick Hyman, jazz advisor |