In lieu of its normally full slate of live events, the Department of Music is sharing a variety of faculty and student projects on a new Quarantunes page.
The site includes music from pianist Xak Bjerken, violinist Ariana Kim, voice instructor Steven Stull (an aria from Mozart’s “The Magic Flute”); and projects by Lucy Fitz Gibbon and Ryan McCullough, postdoc Mark Gotham and the Cornell Concert Series. New content is added regularly.
Keyboard performances by Professor Emeritus Malcolm Bilson are added each Monday; including Felix Mendelssohn’s meditative “Song Without Words” in A flat Major on a replica six-octave Viennese fortepiano. The series features historic keyboards from Bilson’s collection of “old pianos.”
“I had a concert March 4 in Vienna at Musikverein … but I didn’t want to risk it,” Bilson said. “I lost a good concert, so I thought I would play for people from home and started with a camera making recordings. I’m having a good time doing it.”
Bilson prepared an hourlong video program of music with commentary for residents of Kendal at Ithaca, another inspiration for his home recordings; it showed recently on Kendal’s CCTV network.
Bilson also has been trading limericks with Jonathan Uphoff ’92, J.D. ’97, son of Professor Emeritus of Government Norman Uphoff and Dr. Marguerite Uphoff of Ithaca.
He shared this one:
I wanted to make music for Kendal,
Could be Bach, might be Brahms, even Händel.
But the building got shuttered,
My playing then stuttered.
I wonder when all of this end’ll.
