It’s a thrill to announce that In Concert has won a Silver Medal for “Best Classical Format” at this year’s New York Festivals Radio Awards. I’m lucky to work with an outstanding team at CBC Music and I’m so proud of our team and our little radio show. You can hear In Concert live here…
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I went to a high school that had a full symphony orchestra, and even back then I could see, as a lowly quirky nerdy bassoonist, that certain instruments attracted certain personality types. The brass players were brash. The woodwinds were varying degrees of studious and serious, depending on how many reeds there were on their…
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There are few places right now that have the electricity and the energy that is flowing through the city of Shanghai. Perhaps you’ve seen pictures of the incredible skyline that’s sprung up in record time. It’s futuristic and sleek: right out of a science fiction movie. If there is a place to be in the 21st…
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This Sunday I’m lucky enough to begin a fantastic gig: hosting CBC Radio 2’s weekly classical music performance program, In Concert. Preparing tomorrow’s show put me in mind of summer camp – and thus conjured up all kinds of feelings and recollections. Once upon a time there was a camp called Toronto Music Camp that…
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The year I moved to Vancouver, I arrived in the middle of November. It was dark and gloomy and dreary and rainy. I did a lot of walking that month, to get to know my new neighbourhood and my new city, and my constant companion was Rufus Wainwright. I know not everyone likes Rufus Wainwright….
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Here are some of my favourite things about America: Win Butler. Big Sur. The drumming of Art Blakey. The Third Coast International Audio Festival in Chicago. My earliest memories, of splashing through the shallows of Cape Cod as a toddler. That list is quickly cobbled-together over a bleary Sunday morning coffee – but needless to…
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Dramatic irony is one of those storytelling techniques we all learn about in high school, and I haven’t thought about it much since then – except to enjoy it, when it’s used effectively, and even then, I don’t sit there and think, “This is a really great example of dramatic irony.” But I’ve been thinking…
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This Saturday, on CBC Radio’s Saturday Afternoon at the Opera, I’ll be presenting a Canadian Opera Company production of Georges Bizet’s Carmen, starring soprano Rinat Shaham. Carmen is an opera that’s impossible not to love. It’s not for nothing it’s one of the most popular operas of all time. And Carmen herself is a big…
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I always like it when something opens up my ears in ways I hadn’t considered. That’s exactly what happened this week when I listened to a new piece by Gordon Monahan called A Piano Listening to Itself. Monahan’s been creating compositions for years that force us to think about how we listen – he’s swung…
Read MorePaolo Pietropaolo is a journalist, broadcaster, composer and writer based in Vancouver, Canada.