This Week in Classical Music with Randy Kinkel 06/03/18

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Minnesota's Cox wins conducting award;
Assault with a Deadly...Bassoon?

 

 

It’s “This Week in Classical Music”, An Update on what’s happening in the classical music world; I’m Randy Kinkel.

 

Minnesota Orchestra's Roderick Cox just won the country's most prestigious award for young conductors.

The Solti Conducting Award is aimed at assisting outstanding young U.S. conductors in their careers. Winners get $30,000 toward training and career advancement, plus concert dates with the Chicago Symphony and the Chicago Lyric Opera. 

Cox shared the news Wednesday via Instagram, adding  hashtags #blessed, #inspired and #motivated.

A native of Macon, Georgia, Cox arrived at the Minnesota Orchestra in 2015 as the ensemble’s assistant conductor. He was promoted to associate conductor one year later. 

A video from that concert went viral, with Cox conducting Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony, racking up more views than any other vid in the Minnesota Orchestra’s online history. 

The Sir Georg Solti Conducting Award was founded in 2000 in memory of the Hungarian-born conductor, who spent 22 years as music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

 

22-year-old Springfield, Ohio man Eric Barga drove to Covenant Presbyterian Church for bell choir practice and arrived half an hour early.  No big deal—he thought—I’ll just get a little practice time in”

Barga pulled his custom-made Fox 610 red maple bassoon out of its case, sat on the trunk of his car and started playing scales.

About seven minutes later, police received a 911 call reporting that a white male in a jacket and jeans was sitting on the back of his car in the church lot with what looked like a long rifle.

the call was dispatched as a “possible suspicious activity.”, two units rolled up on the scene

“They didn’t immediately approach me,” Barga said. “I saw a …big police van, roll up really slowly”. moments later, as that van pulled into the lot from in front of him, another unit pulled up behind him.

 “At this point, I realize they’re confronting me,” he said. “I put on a little dopey smile and said, ‘Did somebody call the cops on me?’”

Searching his mind, he wondered if he had somehow violated a noise ordinance. The officers “were all giggling” by the time they came to a stop, Barga said. One even asked him the classic question: “Is that a bassoon or an oboe?”

 

For more on these and other items and events, go to the website, K-B-A-C-H dot org; Be listening each week at this time for another update. Follow us on Facebook and twitter, and also listen every weekday at Noon for the Most Wanted Hour with Linda Cassidy, playing your top 100 classical hits.  I’m Randy Kinkel for KBACH’s “This Week in Classical Music”; Member supported 89.5 KBAQ Phoenix and HD, a service of Rio Salado College and Arizona State University.