Monday Mix: New Orleans playlist on Spotify

Jazz Beat - by Debra Hurd

Big Easy: music about and from New Orleans - click to link to spotify!

I think I've finally figured out the best way (for the time being anyway) to share my mixes with the world: SPOTIFY! I'll be posting playlists/mixes every Monday.

My Mom recently went to New Orleans as part of a volunteer trip and she's been inspired to throw a New Orleans party, and asked me to put some music together. This mix is WAY too good not to share.

Click here to listen

In it you will find tunes that my parents specifically asked for, and some stuff that I've either performed, studied, or just plan old like.

What I love about New Orleans music, more than any other regional "genre" is its sense of fun. With names like "Cissy Strut" and "Ooh Poh Pah Doo" there's just this feeling of silliness. And this mix certainly capitalizes on that.

Enjoy!

Five Bay Area choirs to perform lost 40-part Renaissance Mass

It is no secret that the Bay Area loves its choirs. And it’s nice when we really get to flex our choral muscles.

This weekend, back in the Bay by popular demand, Cal Performances presents “The Polychoral Splendors of Renaissance Florence” Alessandro Striggio's Missa sopra Ecco sì beato giorno for 40 and 60 voices. The piece was last performed in 2008 at the Berkeley Festival & Exhibition. This mass is the largest known contrapuntal choral work in Western music.

UC Berkeley Musicology Professor Davitt Moroney spent twenty years looking for the 16th century manuscript and finally found it in 2005; it was miscataloged, filed under the wrong composer name and the wrong title.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE

Watch and Listen to UC Berkeley musicologist and conductor Davitt Moroney as he discusses this work.