Main content
Sorry, this episode is not currently available

Musical Boston

Tom Service travels to Boston to discover music-making in one of America's leading musical cities. Guests include clarinettist Richard Stoltzman and early music pioneer Joel Cohen.

Tom Service travels to Boston, Massachusetts, to discover the music making in one of the United States' leading musical centres. He talks to clarinettist Richard Stoltzman who has made his life in the city and who revels in memories of playing clarinet with his father, rediscovering with Tom his very first clarinet after many years.

There's the latest on how Boston is at the centre of the El Sistema projects being run across the US. Based on the models of music education used in Venezuela, and now copied across the world, to help impoverished children get a better education, Tom visits a school in the Boston suburbs and discovers how some of the city's children's lives are being changed.

Boston has long been an important centre for composition, performance and music education, and a leading place for instrument makers. It's the home to some of the oldest musical establishments in the United States, including the Handel and Haydn Society - the country's oldest continuously performing arts organization. Tom meets members of the Society at the Harvard Musical Association on Beacon Hill in Boston, together with the music director of Boston Camerata Joel Cohen, and instrument maker Ingeborg Von Huene. In a wide ranging discussion they consider the importance of the early music revival in the city, how American music making differs from that in Europe, and how the country's politics will shape the musical future.

Producer: Jeremy Evans.

45 minutes

Broadcast

  • Sat 23 Apr 2011 12:15

Knock on wood – six stunning wooden concert halls around the world

Steel and concrete can't beat good old wood to produce the best sounds for music.

The evolution of video game music

Tom Service traces the rise of an exciting new genre, from bleeps to responsive scores.

Why music can literally make us lose track of time

Try our psychoacoustic experiment to see how tempo can affect your timekeeping abilities.

Podcast