American Public Media’s Pipedreams announces a newly updated website. For the first time the entire history of Pipedreams programming is available for global 24/7 online listening with a new audio playback engine, more than 1,600 shows. A comprehensive index is found at www.pipedreams.org/episodes.
Pipedreams was launched in January 1982 by Minnesota Public Radio’s then-music director Michael Barone as a 14-program “limited-series.” The majority of those first programs derived from recordings made during the 1980 American Guild of Organists national convention in Minneapolis and Saint Paul. Included were premieres by Marilyn Mason of Alberto Ginastera’s Variazioni e Toccata sopra “Aurora lucis rutilat,” by David Craighead of Calvin Hampton’s Concerto for Organ and Strings, by Robert Glasgow of Robert Ward’s Celebrations of God in Nature, and performances by the Choir of Saint Paul’s Cathedral, London, in their first appearance in the United States. These programs also marked the first time the AGO had received significant national radio exposure, though by the conclusion of those first broadcasts in April 1982, there had been no thought of a continuing series.
With recordings from the 1982 AGO convention in Washington, D.C., other materials accessed through the European Broadcasting Union, numerous concerts recorded in Minnesota, and additional audio sources, Pipedreams reappeared in national syndication in October 1983, first of 90-minute duration and later two-hours, and has been providing weekly programs to a national audience ever since.
In addition to music from every subsequent AGO national convention one finds features including Marie-Claire Alain reflecting on her career and the music of her brother Jehan, competition winners, inaugural concerts, the premieres of many new scores, a review of the life of Sigfrid Karg-Elert commented upon by Felix Aprahamian (who heard Karg-Elert live), a focus on historic instruments in Mexico, and numerous programs devoted to the work of African-American composers and performers, with commentary from by Mickey Thomas Terry and the late Herman D. Taylor. These are all accessed in search content by artist, composer, instrument builder, topic, or locale.
Among October’s Pipedreams programs is Program #2040 (available at www.pipedreams.org on October 5 and broadcast the following weekend) in observance of the 150th birthday of former Notre Dame Cathedral organist Louis Vierne (1870–1937), “Venerating Vierne,” including recordings of works by Bach and Vierne performed by Vierne. The following week’s Program #2041 highlights “A Grand Organ Extravaganza” featuring David Briggs, Olivier Latry, and Wayne Marshall in an appearance at the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia recorded February 26, 2020.
Pipedreams is heard on public radio stations across the United States, in collegial collaboration with the AGO, the Organ Historical Society, and The Diapason. Support comes from the Associated Pipe Organ Builders of America (APOBA) as well as from the family of Lucinda and Wesley C. Dudley, from Walter McCarthy, Clara Ueland, and the Greystone Foundation, from Jan and Steve Kirschner, from the Art and Martha Kaemmer Fund of the HRK Foundation, and from listener-supporters of public radio across the country.
For information: www.pipedreams.org.
Other items of interest:
Eric Plutz presents Vierne Project
