Entries Tagged as 'Uncategorized'

Rick Hauser on “Laws of the Pipe”

December 9th, 2012 · No Comments · Uncategorized

This collection of musical elegies and celebrations by Curt Cacioppo skillfully evokes a Native American time, a space and a people. The history and the literature these meditations trace are often tragic—intensely dramatic. Tone poems infused with vibrancy, they elevate. Listen to the “Invocation” trilogy—the work summons images of Native American lifeways paradoxically familiar and […]

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“Laws of the Pipe” released by Navona

December 9th, 2012 · No Comments · Uncategorized

In honor of Native American Heritage Month this year, Navona Records released my new CD entitled “Laws of the Pipe.” The disc is a collection of three of my larger works inspired by Native American culture, including the recent string quartet “Kinaaldá” as performed by the highly acclaimed Borromeo Quartet. Navona has posted a Youtube […]

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Michael Hersch and the Romantic Continuum

December 2nd, 2012 · No Comments · Uncategorized

(a portion of the following essay appeared as program notes for Hersch’s Kaufmann Hall concert in May of 2007) The Sonata No. 2 for unaccompanied cello (2000-1), The Vanishing Pavilions for piano (2005), Caelum Dedecoratum for unaccompanied contrabass (2006), and the Fourteen Pieces for unaccompanied violin (2007) link together in an unbroken (and perhaps still […]

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A Pianist in Dante’s Hell

December 2nd, 2012 · No Comments · Uncategorized

Marino Baratello’s Malebolge cycle (This paper in its Italian form, “Un pianista nell’ Inferno di Dante,” was read at the Fondazione Cini’s Sala del Soffitto, Isola di S. Giorgio Maggiore, and at the Tempio Library of Palazzo Albrizzi, San Polo, in Venice in September, 2009. It is published in the Cini Foundation’s annual peer reviewed […]

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The Realm of Mark Hagerty

November 23rd, 2012 · No Comments · Uncategorized

Notes for my upcoming release of “The Realm of Possibility” and “After Duchamp” by Mark Hagerty, on the Meyermedia label. The character and argument of The Realm engage me. The work’s emotional narrative exteriorizes an autobiographically authentic psychological history that, though sometimes refracted through scientific metaphor, ultimately roams a varied inner human terrain to intersect […]

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The secret to Schubert at the piano

November 23rd, 2012 · No Comments · Uncategorized

Writing to his parents July 25, 1825, Franz Schubert says of his piano playing: “…people assured me that under my fingers the keys were transformed into singing voices…” and further “…I cannot abide that cursed hacking of the instrument to which even first-class pianists are addicted: it pleases neither the ear nor the heart.” This […]

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Schubert at the Brink

November 22nd, 2012 · No Comments · Uncategorized

Notes from my Nov. 30 performance of Winterreise with baritone Alexander Dobson. In a diary entry in March of 1824, Schubert invoked and implored: “O imagination! Man’s greatest treasure, inexhaustible source at which both Art and Learning come to drink! O remain with us…safeguard us…” He may not have feared for any attenuation or surcease […]

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“Heavy Pedal”

July 24th, 2011 · No Comments · Uncategorized

July 26 is the official release date for the Navona Records organ music CD “HEAVY PEDAL.” The disc features Di Cibo Celeste by Curt Cacioppo, performed by organist Robert Gallagher. The work, commissioned by the Settimana Organistica Internazionle of Piacenza, Italy, is a ciaconna-fantasia on elements from Mozart’s “Don Giovanni.” Cacioppo’s work stands alongside those […]

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Amazon customer review of “Italia”

November 13th, 2010 · No Comments · Uncategorized

5 stars – Amazon 5.0 out of 5 stars Expressive and Rich, October 4, 2010 By HitsToClassics This review is of: Italia (Audio CD) This is serious contemporary chamber music at its best. Cacioppo is a contemporary American composer who loves Italy. He writes in an idiom that sounds “modern” although I am not able […]

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Online compliments for “ITALIA”

September 15th, 2010 · No Comments · Uncategorized

“The sound is great…[compared to other releases] this is music of freer range imaginatively…I felt like I was breathing clearer air. Impressions of Venice is a travelogue that will energize you…deeply veined exoticism (Red Dove of Libya)” — Indystar online, Jay Harvey “…intriguing pieces, skirting the line between nostalgic tonality and exploratory dissonance, approachable but […]

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