The Novel Voices Refugee Aid Project, created and directed by the Carr-Petrova Duo, is a project designed to give voice and visibility, through music and film, to the lives and struggles of both local and international refugee communities, and to encourage audiences and artists alike to become connected and involved. Since August 2018, it has brought free, interactive classical music concerts and workshops to displaced populations while increasing awareness of and raising support for both U.S.-based and international refugee-aid programs.  From August 12th to October 1st, 2019, The Novel Voices Refugee Aid Project, and the Carr-Petrova Duo are launching #50Days4Refugees - a social media campaign which walks through our past year of travels with the Novel Voices Refugee Aid Project from start to finish. We are releasing a single story/image/clip a day in order to give our followers the chance to virtually travel with us, meeting and engaging with the people, places, life-stories, cultures, music, and organizations we encountered along the way. Follow us daily as we share our journey and highlight the activities, strengths, and specific needs of the organizations we partnered with - along with what we learned about ways anyone anywhere can get involved.  Day 7: "Reality Check" Please meet our sweet, gentle, and very shy friend named Siha. Siha is an Egyptian from Kuwait awaiting asylum in Denmark. We were immediately drawn to Siha because of her deep, curious, thoughtful, and expressive eyes - and although she was very reserved upon our initial meeting, we were excited to watch her slowly start to open up after making music together and by the end even got to hear about her favorite song "Lille Petter Edderkopp" (AKA - "The Itsy Bitsy Spider"), her love of dancing, and how she would sit with her family in Kuwait listening to music all together in their livingroom in the evenings...   Siha gave us another "reality check" moment on our second day when we were working with the students to design a "musical story" together. The students created the story, and we had to narrate it with the sounds that matched the characters and activities in the story. When we asked for a volunteer to draw what "happiness" might look like - Siha came up and drew a couple getting married (shown in the clip).  When we all spoke later that night about the day's activities, this moment came up again - and we all simultaneously abashedly admitted how our pre-conditioned psyche's had actually expected a "refugee girl" to draw something more exotic and un-relatable to ourselves and our cultures. And instead, we were faced with a moment of seeing just how similar our new friend from Kuwait was to every other little girl we had ever met in each of our respective countries and cultures…

The Novel Voices Refugee Aid Project, created and directed by the Carr-Petrova Duo, is a project designed to give voice and visibility, through music and film, to the lives and struggles of both local and international refugee communities, and to encourage audiences and artists alike to become connected and involved. Since August 2018, it has brought free, interactive classical music concerts and workshops to displaced populations while increasing awareness of and raising support for both U.S.-based and international refugee-aid programs.  From August 12th to October 1st, 2019, The Novel Voices Refugee Aid Project, and the Carr-Petrova Duo are launching #50Days4Refugees - a social media campaign which walks through our past year of travels with the Novel Voices Refugee Aid Project from start to finish. We are releasing a single story/image/clip a day in order to give our followers the chance to virtually travel with us, meeting and engaging with the people, places, life-stories, cultures, music, and organizations we encountered along the way. Follow us daily as we share our journey and highlight the activities, strengths, and specific needs of the organizations we partnered with - along with what we learned about ways anyone anywhere can get involved.  Day 6: "Smiles" -  Music has such an uplifting, community-building effect, that it was easy for us to forget amidst our camp visits, the abundance of darkness and sadness which we were so often staring in the face. It was hard for our psyches to consolidate the innocent smiles we saw together with the knowledge of what those smiles had already experienced at such a young age. Only one moment in our first trip ripped away the veil and gave us a half-second glimpse into reality. On our second day in the Jelling Refugee Camp, we greeted the children as they entered the Jelling Red Cross School classroom, and were stopped in our tracks when a disagreement broke out between two of the students over who would have first dibs on playing the viola. We held our breath and felt our blood run cold as a chair flew threw the air and two incredibly sweet children with whom we had interacted the entire day before released furious tirades at each other in Arabic. As the teachers moved in to assuage the situation, one of the children released a scream none of us will forget. That scream told it all - there was more anger, sadness, frustration, and fury in that sound than any of us had ever witnessed.  Things quickly went back to normal, and we carried on with our activities - but all of us were shaken by that brief glimpse into the sorrow and trauma that was and would continue to run underneath those innocent smiles for years to come...    

Bion Tsang was born in America to Chinese parents, and after debuting with Zubin Mehta and the New York Philharmonic at age 11, studied at Juilliard, Harvard and Yale. He's a recording artist and professor of cello at the University of Texas-Austin. Tsang's newest release is on the Sony Classical label, and it contains two major works: the "Concerto for Cello and Orchestra in b minor, op. 104," by Antonín Dvořák, and the "Symphonie Concertante for Cello and Orchestra, op. 8" by George Enescu. Both pieces are chock-full of drama, emotion and power and there are myriad opportunities for Tsang to display his technical virtuosity. There are lovely lyrical passages as well, full of beauty and subtlety. Tsang handles them all with depth, skill and ample musicality. The Royal Scottish National Orchestra under the baton of Scott Yoo is crisp and clean with a terrific sense of ensemble. Their playing is sensitive and nuanced, providing an equal partnership for the drama unfolding in both pieces. "Each of these concertos takes the listener on an epic journey," says Tsang. "They are both gloriously lush and dramatic in their orchestration, and the cello sings above this backdrop with intense emotion. In both pieces, I feel there are distinct depictions of longing, searching, struggle, and finally triumph." SEE THE Wisconsin Public Radio PAGE

Kansas City is one of the few metropolitan areas of its size in the country without a full-time classical music broadcaster.
That may be about to change. KCUR 89.3 has signed an agreement to purchase KWJC 91.9 FM from William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri, with the intention of bringing 24-hour classical music programming to Kansas City. On Thursday, KCUR - Kansas City's public radio station - filed an application with the Federal Communications Commission to approve the purchase. "Given the strength of the performing arts community and the classical music community in town, we think it's a huge hole, both for audiences and performing arts organizations," KCUR general manager Nico Leone said. "We see in market after market that classical music stations can be a rising tide for performing arts organizations." READ THE FULL ARTICLE

After 30 million albums sold worldwide, 13 No. 1 jazz albums in the United States, and a music, film, television and Broadway career spanning three decades, the Grammy® and Emmy® winning and Tony nominated musician and actor, Harry Connick, Jr. returns with a sensational new record, True Love: A Celebration of Cole Porter on the legendary Verve Record label. The first single "Just One Of Those Things' has just been released and goes #1 on both Play MPE's 'Jazz downloads & Jazz streams'  charts.

p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Helvetica Neue'; color: #4d4d4d} p.p2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Helvetica Neue'; color: #4d4d4d; min-height: 14.0px} The Novel Voices Refugee Aid Project, created and directed by the Carr-Petrova Duo, is a project designed to give voice and visibility, through music and film, to the lives and struggles of both local and international refugee communities, and to encourage audiences and artists alike to become connected and involved. Since August 2018, it has brought free, interactive classical music concerts and workshops to displaced populations while increasing awareness of and raising support for both U.S.-based and international refugee-aid programs.  From August 12th to October 1st, 2019, The Novel Voices Refugee Aid Project, and the Carr-Petrova Duo are launching #50Days4Refugees - a social media campaign which walks through our past year of travels with the Novel Voices Refugee Aid Project from start to finish. We are releasing a single story/image/clip a day in order to give our followers the chance to virtually travel with us, meeting and engaging with the people, places, life-stories, cultures, music, and organizations we encountered along the way. Follow us daily as we share our journey and highlight the activities, strengths, and specific needs of the organizations we partnered with - along with what we learned about ways anyone anywhere can get involved.  Day 5: "The Bongo King"  Please meet one of the most enthusiastic participants of our musical workshops over this past year of #NovelVoices Refugee Aid Project travels: Mohammad from Kuwait. Mohammad lives in the Jelling Refugee Camp in Denmark and happens to have one of the cutest and sweetest smiles any of us had ever had the pleasure of experiencing. Mohammad has a very open, uplifting, and welcoming spirit - with an eternally curious mind that is ready at any moment to stir up a little mischief. During every activity we offered - Mohammad would be the FIRST to volunteer - ESPECIALLY when it came to playing the bongo (or foosball).  :) 

In "2001: A Space Odyssey," Stanley Kubrick memorably used classical music by two Strausses - Richard's "Also Sprach Zarathustra" and Johann's "The Blue Danube" - forever linking those pieces with outer space. That was 1968. A year later, humanity actually made it to the moon - and for 50 years Hollywood, ironically, has explored our future in the cosmos with music that looks back, in a decidedly classical language. The Los Angeles Philharmonic will provide a primer on that tradition - and recent departures from it - on Thursday 8/15 with "America in Space," a program at the Hollywood Bowl conducted by David Newman. Two influential pieces from the repertoire, Gustav Holst's "The Planets" and Aaron Copland's "Fanfare for the Common Man," will be paired with mostly contemporary music from space movies. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge will be celebrated with archival footage and words from Abigail Fraeman, who was on the Mars Curiosity Rover team. A tribute to the female astronauts of NASA will be underscored by a new piece by Penka Kouneva, the lone female composer on the program. READ THE FULL Los Angeles Times ARTICLE