Carnegie Corridor launches ‘If This Corridor May Speak’ – a podcast collection exploring its wealthy historical past and lore
For individuals who love historical past as a lot as music, the launch of Carnegie Corridor’s new podcast collection, ‘If This Corridor May Speak’, is thrilling information. Created in collaboration with WQXR and Sound Made Public and hosted by Broadway star Jessica Vosk, the collection delves into the legendary and eclectic historical past of Carnegie Corridor. And what a narrative it’s.
The corridor is internationally famend as one of many best settings for artists and audiences on the planet, beloved by musicians for its acoustics, atmosphere and historical past. It’s virtually unattainable to think about that it was threatened by the wrecking ball within the late Nineteen Fifties. The corridor was saved from that destiny by the efforts of violinist Issac Stern, philanthropist Jacob Kaplan and the numerous others who rallied to the trigger.
The luminaries of classical music – singers, instrumental virtuosi and the world’s nice orchestras – have all carried out at Carnegie Corridor. The listing of fashionable entertainers is simply as exhaustive. Judy Garland’s 1961 live performance is the stuff of legend, and the recording of the live performance received the Grammy Award for Album of the 12 months, making Garland the primary lady to win the award. It spent 13 weeks at Number one on the Billboard album chart.
Performers from pop to hip hop have appeared at Carnegie Corridor. In 1961, the Rat Pack had been there to help the work of Dr Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Beatles gave two performances in 1964. Carnegie Corridor sponsored a household day with free admission to rejoice the fiftieth anniversary of hip hop.
Political and social historical past was additionally made on Carnegie Corridor’s stage. Music typically performed a component however not all the time. The corridor fulfilled the dream of Andrew Carnegie, the person who envisioned and paid for it: ‘It’s constructed to face for ages, and through these ages it’s possible that this corridor will intertwine itself with the historical past of our nation. All good causes could discover right here a platform’.
On the flip of the 20th century, these causes included ladies’s suffrage. Over two dozen occasions had been held at Carnegie Corridor in help of girls acquiring the correct to vote, starting from mass conferences and conventions to lectures and rallies. For each, ladies turned out in droves.
In March 1917, the Emergency Peace Federation held its ‘Rally In opposition to US Participation in World Warfare I’ at Carnegie Corridor. Lower than one month later, Congress handed a warfare declaration, and organizations such because the American Protection Society had been quickly holding occasions like ‘Win the Warfare’ there. Former President Theodore Roosevelt gave a speech entitled ‘Do Your Preventing and Do It Now’ on its stage. On 8 July 1919, President Woodrow Wilson appeared on the corridor to ship his first report on the Treaty of Versailles. Though Wilson was greater than three-and-a-half hours late, the practically 4,000 folks rose and cheered for a number of minutes when he stepped on stage.
Carnegie Corridor responded to the Nice Melancholy in 1932, when the financial system was in a free-fall and unemployment pushed past 23%, by providing free lunchtime concert events. Two years later, along with United Mother and father Associations of New York Metropolis, it offered two collection of occasions for youngsters and younger folks. One in all them featured the Carnegie Corridor Circus and Tulsa & Judy, ‘the smallest performing child elephants within the circus world…3,000 kilos and nonetheless they’re cute’.
In 1938, as storm clouds once more gathered over Europe, Carnegie Corridor performed host to ‘A Mass Assembly in Protest of 5 Years of Hitler Terror’. The corridor was packed, and 1000’s had been turned away. In 1942, the corridor was once more full for ‘Artists’ Entrance to Win the Warfare’ with the overflow crowd listening on the road to speeches from movie stars Charlie Chaplin, Orson Welles and others that urged the US to motion.
Carnegie Corridor opened on 5 Might 1891, with Tchaikovsky conducting his personal music in his American debut. In 1943, Toscanini led the NBC Symphony in an all-Tchaikovsky program that raised greater than ten million {dollars} in help of warfare bonds, a report for fund-raising at a single live performance. The manuscript of Toscanini’s association of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ was auctioned as a part of the profit.
On 18 Might 1976, Carnegie Corridor celebrated its eighty-fifth anniversary with the ‘Live performance of the Century’, that includes performances by members of the New York Philharmonic, the Oratorio Society of New York, Leonard Bernstein, Vladimir Horowitz, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Mstislav Rostropovich and others.
A decade later, Bernstein was again on stage with James Levine, Yo-Yo Ma, Murray Perahia and 4 of the best opera stars of the period – Leontyne Value, Marilyn Horne, Luciano Pavarotti and Samuel Ramey – in a live performance entitled ‘Music for Life.’ It raised $1.7 million in help of the Homosexual Males’s Well being Disaster, a charity that helps folks with HIV and AIDS.
There could be different such concert events, together with Tony Award–successful singer and actress Bernadette Peters’s Carnegie Corridor debut in 1996, once more to learn GMHC. The New York Instances referred to as the live performance ‘thrilling’.
In eight episodes, ‘If This Corridor May Speak’ will take listeners behind the scenes for a take a look at the unforgettable performances, fascinating figures and shaping of American tradition from the Rose Archives – together with Judy Garland’s signed album of her 1961 album, Benny Goodman’s clarinet, Ella Fitzgerald’s glasses, a Ladies’s Suffrage Occasion Conference booklet and a T-shirt made solely for the ushers to put on at rock and fashionable music concert events by such acts as The Seaside Boys, Pink Floyd, Joni Mitchell and Chicago.
Together with Jessica Vosk, every podcast options voices that vary from marquee musical skills to historic specialists – together with members of Carnegie Corridor’s personal Rose Archives crew – guiding listeners on a journey by unimaginable moments which have helped form the tradition through which we reside as we speak.
‘If This Corridor May Speak’ is offered wherever you get podcasts with new episodes launched each different week.
Rick Perdian
Click on right here to entry the ‘If This Corridor May Speak’ podcasts.
Featured Picture: Carnegie Corridor Opening Night time ticket © Chris Lee
