TSO & Rob Kapilow's What Makes it Great?

Last night I went to the Toronto Symphony Orchestra's performance of Mozart's Jupiter Symphony. They were conducted by Rob Kapilow. It was my second time going to one of his "What Makes it Great?" performances. (Last year I got to see them do "Spring" and "Summer" from Vivaldi's Four Seasons with Jennifer Koh.)

Rob Kapilow breaks the music down so that even my Mom can understand the music!

For Mozart's Jupiter Symphony he showed us how simple isn't always simple and how doing things slightly different can make a big difference.

We bought his book "What Makes It Great: Short Masterpieces, Great Composers"
He talks about masterpieces by composers like Bach, Handel, Schumann and Tchaikovsky. There is a website that has clips of what he's talking about in the book. We already downloaded the clips and I can't wait to read it and learn more about some of my favourite pieces of music.



The best part of the night was getting to meet him. He doesn't know it, but he's one of my musical heroes!

If you can't make it to one of Rob Kapilow's concerts you can hear him talk about "Summertime" by George Gershwin on NPR
http://www.npr.org/2008/10/23/95761927/a-languid-look-back-to-gershwins-summertime
There are links to other pieces as well, but Summertime is one of my favourites.

Here's a link to his website:
http://www.robkapilow.com/index.shtml