Mozart Week On Daybreak

Monday 1/21/08

Mozart's Bakery And Piano Cafe
mozartscafe.com

"Marrying Mozart"
by Stephanie Cowell
marryingmozart.com

Tuesday 1/22/08

David Puls
Trillium Piano Trio
www.trilliumpianotrio.com

Clay Alder
www.clayalder.com

Ce Ce Gable
www.cecegable.com

Wednesday 1/23/08

Phil Grabsky
Director, "In Search Of Mozart"
www.insearchofmozart.com
www.directcinemalimited.com
www.seventh-art.com

Thursday 1/24/08

Andrew Cook
Assistant Professor of Music
Ohio Valley University
www.ovu.edu

Friday 1/25/08

Trillium Piano Trio
David Puls, Violin
Cynthia (Lutz) Puls, Cello
David Cooper, Piano
www.trilliumpianotrio.com

Blog about Mozart!
http://www.wtap.com/wtapblogs/news/14025292.html

Hello!
I would like thank my very nice friends Sherry and Sheryl Davis for all their help with Mozart week on Daybreak. They actually inspired me to take on this project.
-Beth Lanning, Daybreak Producer

Here is a message from Sherry:

January 22, 2008 "Memoirs of a Mozartian"
Greetings! Thank you for joining WTAP in celebrating the world's greatest musical genius! I would like to thank WTAP Producer Beth Lanning for successfully bringing this idea to fruition with her dedication, willingness and creativity. Beth and I met on the basketball court in high school and she has since been a good friend and colleague.

And now, without further delay, an introduction! My name is Sherry Davis, I'm 29 years old, and an aspiring Mozart scholar and artistic administrator. It is my personal and professional ambition to introduce and sustain interest in Mozart's life and music. I'm particularly interested in integrating young people and other untraditional publics such as families and minorities into the existing traditional audience. I was born in Athens, Ohio and subsequently attended Ohio University, studying the disciplines of psychology and music. Shortly thereafter, I attended the University of Westminster in London, England and graduated with an MA in Communications and Public Relations in the School of Arts, Media and Design.

My experience in London brought forth a personal evolution in regards to Mozart's significance in my life. His presence to me was now all-encompassing which made it absolutely clear, without question, that his music was to be my life and my profession. Music has always been a significant part of my life, beginning with childhood impromptu performances in the living room with my twin sister, but now the music had taken on a higher meaning, one that was now evident in full score.

Since then, I've met a number of wonderful scholars, writers, artists and devotees who have influenced my progression tremendously. These figures include Stephanie Cowell, Agnes Selby, Phil Grabsky and Dr. Cliff Eisen. I've traveled to the music capitals of Vienna, Salzburg and Prague to seek out the lasting remnants of the genius: residences, manuscripts, instruments, letters, portraits and other artifacts including a lock of his hair. Imagine that! I've heard Mozart's operas and symphonies performed by some of the best performers of our day. I've become acquainted with Clay Alder, the great-great-great-great grandson of Lorenzo da Ponte, Mozart's librettist. So many opportunities approached my path that it was and is impossible to think of it as pure coincidence. It has certainly been a dream.

In 2006, I began the authorship of "The Chronicles of a Modern-Day Mozartian" and started promoting the North American theatrical release of "In Search of Mozart," the first full-length feature film ever created about the composer. It gives me exceptional pleasure and excitement to announce that I'll be attending King's College in London to study historical musicology with one of the world's foremost Mozart scholars, Dr. Cliff Eisen. Dr. Eisen is Associate Editor of the Köchel Verzeichnis (catalog of Mozart's music), Editor of the Cambridge Mozart Encyclopedia, Founder of the Journal Eighteenth Century Music and Member of the Akademie für Mozartfoschung in Salzburg amongst other accomplishments.

So, why exactly is Mozart's music so important to me and why should it be to others? Well, Mozart's life portrays a relevance to us with its many triumphs and failures as his music captures and elicits a consummate realm of human emotion. The characters in his operatic works are vulnerable, loving, flawed and in every sense of the word, human. He was a dramatist and knew exactly how to use the music to enhance and engage the audience which is the most powerful characteristic of his genius. A man of the Enlightenment, Mozart reflected reason, equality, happiness, progression and liberty in his art, which are indeed concepts of great relevance to us. The most famous example of his liberalism is the common man's triumph over the floundering noblemen in his opera, Le Nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro).

British musicologist, Sir Henry Hadow, once stated: "No other form of music has such power to engage our attention - no other can delight our senses with such exquisite beauty of sound."

Mozart's music is elegant, deceptively simplistic and charming. His musical architecture not only expresses every range of emotion from the deepest melancholy to the greatest joy, but it also lifts us beyond human trifles. The music inspires me to be a better person, to reflect and realize matters of importance and to seek life's happiness with anticipated purpose. I believe all who listen are beneficiaries of the music in their own regard. Mozart is humanitarianism. In an age of crass entertainment, I think it's only a matter of time until society begins to search for something more significant and meaningful, and this is where I make my entrance with the advocation of Mozart's musical gift.

The public perception of Mozart has in many ways taken on board many Romantic ideas of the genius which differ greatly from scholarship, so it's very important, as Simon Keefe points out in the Cambridge Companion to Mozart, to reconcile these distanced positions. As I embark on studies in musicology, I hope to combine my experience and education in music, psychology and communications to examine and improve this contrasting relationship, bringing more people to the music. WTAP has given me a wonderful opportunity to practice this collaboration and share my love of Mozart with you during Mozart Week. Please be welcome to visit my site and to send correspondence. I'll look forward to hearing from you! And now, I'll leave you with a quote from the Chronik von Berlin in 1790, written one year before Mozart's death at age 35.

"Mozart belongs among those extraordinary men whose glory will endure for centuries. His great genius embraces as it were the entire compass of musical art; it is rich in ideas; his works are a torrent, in full flood, which carries forth all in its wake. None before has surpassed him, and deep reverence and admiration will posterity not deny him."

Yours in Music,
Sherry
www.sherrymozart.blogspot.com