One of our new favorite albums in the WGUC music library this fall has been Rachel Barton Pine’s Blues Dialogues. It offers something so fresh, so interesting, so fun. We often get caught up with the “greats” in classical music – Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms – but fail to remember that there were countless others composing around them who have essentially slipped through the cracks of time. Rachel Barton Pine has committed the last 15 years of her life to researching music by black composers. Blues Dialogues explores just a sampling of this repertoire. WGUC had the pleasure of chatting with Rachel about this CD project. She told us the scoop on how the album came to be:
Many of the works on this album are old favorites, but there are a few new discoveries too.
The first track on Blues Dialogues in one by David Baker. Rachel remembers her first impressions of this piece when she found it in a sheet music shop as a teenager.
Having a background playing the real blues helped her to better interpret the art music on this album.
It’s hard for her to choose just one favorite piece from this album.
For more from Rachel Barton Pine, tune to 90.9 WGUC, listen online at wguc.org, via our free mobile app, or your smart speaker.
