My Interview with Conductor and Composer John Mauceri

September 16th, 2012

  by

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I interviewed John Mauceri at radio station WFDD on the campus of Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, NC.  We covered 40 years of his life in music, starting with his relationship with Leonard Bernstein, formed in the early 1970′s, and scanning his career through the present time.  He has influenced music ranging from movie scores, Broadway, the conducting stand, scholarly writings, and now through arts education–today he is Chancellor of the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, just a stone’s throw from Wake Forest.

Throughout the interview, John faced straight ahead with his eyes closed.  He answered questions in fully formed sentences and paragraphs, so that if you imagined them written down, you would have had a final version in the first draft, virtually no corrections needed.  His recall was comprehensive and his voice sonorous.  He has years of experience as a radio host himself, and I am sure he was a good one.

Find out why Leonard Bernstein referred to Jerome Robbins, his collaborator on West Side Story, as “Black Jerome, as though he were a pirate.”  Hear John describe those who insist that classical music is a higher art form that Broadway and cinematic music, as suffering from “hardening of the categories.”

Tune in to hear a walking, talking encyclopedia of music, September 22 at 9 am, September 23 at 8 pm and September 24 at 11 pm on SiriusXM Pops.

(Photo by Robert Millard.)