March 14, 2005

Regina Resnik Presents The Classic Kurt Weill

Program to air on CUNY TV Channel 75 on March 21, 9 p.m.

City University Television will offer Regina Resnik Presents The Classic Kurt Weill as its first live classical concert production, to air on CUNY TV Channel 75, Monday, March 21 at 9 p.m. (also 9 a.m. and 3 p.m.), and again on Sunday, March 27 at 1 p.m. This acclaimed concert was originally performed at the Elebash Recital Hall, CUNY Graduate Center, and was made possible by a generous grant from the Baisley Powell Elebash Fund.

The Classic Kurt Weill features opera legend Regina Resnik, who presents and narrates the program, and soprano Jennifer Aylmer, tenor Michael Philip Davis, and pianist Kenneth Merrill. Highlighting the classically trained voices for which Kurt Weill originally wrote, the program traces his opera, song and musical theater works from Berlin in the 1920s to Paris in the 1930s and New York in the 1940s. The artists draw on the composer's endless array of musical styles and his profound sense of social conscience in songs from The Threepenny Opera, Lady in the Dark, Knickerbocker Holiday, Street Scene, and many others. Special attention is paid to Weill's presence as a Jewish composer in Germany during Hitler's rise to power, and the composer's ardent embrace of America, his adoptive homeland.

The next collaboration between CUNY TV and Regina Resnik Presents will be The American Jewish Composers in Classical Song, which will air the end of May. This concert will feature four world premières and two U.S. premières, including a work by composer John Corigliano and librettist William M. Hoffman written especially for the occasion. The program was made possible by a generous grant from the Ledler Foundation.

Both programs are part of CUNY TV's ongoing "Celebrate 350" series, commemorating the 350th anniversary of Jewish life in America.

CUNY TV is seen in the five boroughs of Manhattan on Channel 75 on Time Warner Cable and Cablevision systems, and on Channel 109 on RCN. Posted by jmwc at March 14, 2005 09:26 AM