I was a latecomer to Dvořák. By late I mean maybe the summer of my sophomore year at college, when the Serenade for Winds & String Bass was being rehearsed at the Blossom Festival. Of course I must have heard some of his music prior to this, but other than the energetic Slavonic Dances, it […]

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In the last few days I have completed a half-hour-long 2-piano work called STORIES FROM THE 7TH WARD, a tribute to New Orleans. My friend Althea Waites, a member of the Orpheus Duo for which the set is written, and a native of New Orleans who grew up in the 7th Ward, was the catalyst […]

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A stunning Hollywood-style trailer for Cacioppo’s monumental TRILOGIA DANTESCA may now be viewed on Youtube at https://youtu.be/FbGCnK_3q2E. Produced in conjunction with audio engineer/narrator Jeanne Velonis and videographer/digital artist John Thornton, the 6-minute film encapsulates the beauty and expressive range of Cacioppo’s concert-length concerto-oratorio for piano, orchestra and chorus. Reactions from listeners: “Wow, this is fantastic. […]

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Florentine music critic Alessandro Michelucci writes in Cultura commestibile: “The passion of the composer for Italy does not at all end with the two discs ITALIA and RITORNELLO. Confirming this is the monumental “Dante Trilogy” [TRILOGIA DANTESCA] for piano, orchestra and chorus, completed in 2006. 2015 marks the 750th anniversary of the poet’s birth: Cacioppo […]

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In this commemorative year marking the 750th anniversary of the birth of the Italian poet Dante Alighieri, the fine commentary by Eric Massey on Curt Cacioppo’s TRILOGIA DANTESCA for piano, orchestra and chorus, based on The Divine Comedy, is posted here for readers and may be accessed at this link: Trilogia commentary

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The new Cacioppo disc RITORNELLO was released by Navona Records on August 12th, and has garnered both a Grammy nomination and inclusion on Fanfare’s end-of-year critic’s “want list:” “Curt Cacioppo is a prolific, uncategorizable American composer, whose music on his latest release, Ritornello, is more often than not tonal, melodic, and programmatic, inspired by Italian […]

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For those who requested copies, I am posting below the typescripts of the two talks that I gave in Bari, Italy Oct. 7 & 8 for the festival and conference on Louis W. Ballard and the Music of the Southwest at the Piccinni Conservatory, in both Italian and English.  Contact me through this site if […]

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The music of Curt Cacioppo displayed the greatest theatrical range of the bunch in “Philadelphia Diary” [just released on Kuumba Records – see next post], his five-section local musical travelogue for solo piano. His mood ranged from solemn— as in his depiction of the Treaty Elm where William Penn met with the Lenape in 1682— […]

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Pianist Althea Waites released a new Kuumba Music CD in recent weeks featuring the world premiere recording of Curt Cacioppo’s “Philadelphia Diary” and her lustrous live performance of his “Fantasy-Choruses on This Little Light of Mine,” which he dedicated to her. The disc, entitled CELEBRATION, also includes pieces by John W. Work, Margaret Meier, Duke […]

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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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