WorldView Episode 58: William Banfield

Welcome to the fifty-eighth episode of WorldView, here on charlottesvilleclassical.org! I was unable to write a longer post for this week’s episode, but I still want to share some information about the episode’s featured composer, William Banfield. Enjoy!

William Banfield was born in 1961, and has served as an Africana Studies professor, music instructor, and composer for decades. He has been commissioned by numerous ensembles, including the National Symphony, the Akron Symphony, and the Havana Camerata of Cuba. Banfield was a W. E. B. Du Bois Fellow at Harvard University in 2002, and a visiting artist at Princeton in 2003. Most recently, Banfield was appointed to serve as a research associate with the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, where he is studying how contemporary art relates to cultural ties and traditions. 

In this hour, the Akron Symphony Orchestra and Alan Balter perform Banfield’s 6th symphony. The work is titled “Four Songs for Five American Voices”, and features trumpeters Jack Schantz and John English. The symphony is also composed of four movements, entitled “If Bernstein Wrote It…”, “In An Ellington Mood”, “I’m DIZzy over Miles”, and “Someone Said Her Name Was Sarah”. Enjoy!

WorldView Episode Fifty-Eight Playlist:

Judith Lang ZAIMONT, “Piano Sonata”, {Christopher Atzinger (pf)} - Naxos

George ENESCU, “Ballade”, {Axel Strauss (vn), Ilya Poletaev (pf)} - Naxos

William BANFIELD, “Symphony No. 6, ‘Four Songs for Five American Voices’”, {Akron Symphony Orchestra, Alan Balter, Jack Schantz (trp), John English (trp)} - Telarc

WorldView is a classical music radio show featuring composers from everywhere in the world - except Western Europe. Tune in to hear works by lesser-known artists such as Nancy Dalberg and Isang Yun, and widen your knowledge of classical music. Hinke Younger hosts each week’s episode of WorldView on Mondays at 9AM and 6PM (with a rebroadcast Saturdays at 2PM) on Charlottesvilleclassical.org.