MUSIC GURU AND MULTI-TALENT ROB KAPILOW LAUNCHES HIS BUSIEST CONCERT SEASON EVER

Kapilow's famed "What Makes It Great?" and "FamilyMusik" presentations introduce happy new audiences – as well as "repeat customers" – to classical music all around the country

10th Anniversary Season of Familymusik at Boston’s Celebrity Series

Kapilow "invades" Canada with new series in both Toronto and Vancouver

Simon & Schuster to publish book of Kapilow's insights in 2006

“Rob Kapilow has created a flourishing career by explicating live classical music in a personable, even boyish, and certainly well-informed manner.”
     — The New York Times

Music guru Rob Kapilow – renowned for his ability to communicate the joy of music to audiences young and old – has been on a book-writing sabbatical for several months. His volume of musical insights will be published in 2006 by Simon and Schuster. But Kapilow resumes concertizing full-time in October, with nearly 50 appearances scheduled in the coming season.

Mr. Kapilow will continue presenting his unique brand of music salesmanship in concert-venues coast-to-coast, including the cities where his "What Makes It Great?" events are perennial favorites: New York, Boston, Kansas City and Cerritos, CA, his west-coast base.

Highlights for the coming season include Kapilow's unprecedented tenth-anniversary season of FamilyMusik in Boston's esteemed Celebrity Series. He'll give no fewer than six FamilyMusik concerts in The Hub, beginning October 22. Martha Jones, President of the Celebrity Series (and also celebrating her own tenth year there), praises his achievements:

"For the past ten years, Rob has single-handedly introduced a whole new generation of children to the wonders of classical music and dance.  In a matter of minutes he had 6-year-old "doubting Tomases" eating out of the palms of his hands, and now we have 16-year-old music and dance lovers for life!  His inspired compositions, his infectious good nature and his tireless devotion to the human spirit make Rob Kapilow, in my opinion, one of the natural wonders of our world.  Nothing makes me prouder of my ten years at the helm of the Celebrity Series then to have Rob Kapilow by my side."

The Kapilow show invades Canada for the first time this season, with a new series of “What Makes It Great?” shows specially targeting teenaged and young adult audiences in Toronto (Oct. 15-21), and a new FamilyMusik series in Vancouver (Jan. 15; May 7). Another new city on Rob's “What Makes It Great?” trail this season is Columbus, GA (Nov. 5; April 1), and "What Makes It Great?" will debut on Stanford’s famous “Lively Arts” series on December 7 (also Jan 8). Rob hopes to be able to present Louisiana Philharmonic audiences with "What Makes It Great?" on March 26, if sufficient recovery from the devastation in New Orleans has been achieved by then.

Kapilow opens his season on October 5 in Cerritos, California, where his musical collaborators for an all-Mozart program are, appropriately, the members of the New Hollywood String Quartet. Rob will perform in cities in the Midwest and the South in addition to making nine appearances at New York's Lincoln Center, beginning on December 3 & 5; he's the only artist to be honored by the world's largest performing arts complex with his own concert series.

Rob Kapilow: his unique presentations and collaborators

Rob Kapilow – a composer, educator, scholar, author and public speaker rolled into one dynamic personality – has a virtual patent on concert presentations in two user-friendly formats. Katie Couric, of NBC's Today Show, calls him "a wonderful guy who brings music alive!" In his inventive "What Makes It Great?" programs he plays, examines and explains an individual piece (Mozart's Eine kleine Nachtmusik and "Jupiter" Symphony are especially popular, as are those demonstrating American popular song standards). And his "FamilyMusik" series – aimed at younger audiences and enjoyed by Boston families for a decade – started last season at Lincoln Center in a free-standing new "Great Performers" series. This season’s ‘family fare’ ranges from Vivaldi's Four Seasons and Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf to Kapilow’s own chamber compositions and mini-operas such as And Furthermore, They Bite! and Green Eggs and Ham – the first musical composition ever based on a work by Dr. Seuss.

Rob collaborates with many musicians around the country. This season pianist Jonathan Biss will play Schumann, and Jon Kimura Parker will participate in the program examining Beethoven's "Appassionata" sonata. Alexander Fiterstein will play the Brahms Clarinet Quintet; the Alexander, Borromeo, Daedalus, Jupiter, Miami, New Hollywood, Pacifica and St. Lawrence String Quartets will join Kapilow on various programs, and soprano Jessica Rivers will aid and abet him for Rossini's Barber of Seville in Cerritos. Michael Winther, of Broadway’s Mamma Mia fame, will be lending his voice to both the Bernstein song evening in Stanford and to the grand finale of Rob's performing season: a program devoted to Stephen Sondheim in Boston on June 2, 2006.

Kapilow as composer

Kapilow is an active composer, in frequent demand for commissioned works. As the Boston Globe once remarked, “Kapilow has cornered the market in quality music addressed to children and their families, and within just a couple of years he has become a very hot commodity, one of America's most performed and sought-after composers.” In addition to his wildly popular Green Eggs and Ham, described by the Globe as "the most popular ‘family music’ since Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf and Britten's Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra," Kapilow also offers his own And Furthermore, They Bite! as a companion piece to Saint-Saëns's beloved Carnival of the Animals. Kapilow’s music publisher reports that his concert pieces for kids are among the most popular works rented out for concerts across the country.

Rob's "Citypieces" are popular fare throughout the United States. He wrote his latest Citypiece symphony, Summer Sun, Winter Moon, last year to commemorate the bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark expedition. His collaborator was Darrell Kipp, a Blackfoot Indian, whose libretto told the story of the expedition as seen through the eyes of Native Americans. The work will be performed by the Helena Symphony in Montana on October 29. The symphony thus comes full circle, returning to the place of its inspiration, conception and creation on the Blackfoot Indian reservation in Montana, where Darrell Kipp lives and works. Both the composer and the librettist will attend the concert and related events in Helena.

On March 25, 2006, there will be a special FamilyMusik performance in Boston called "Crossing the Divide" in which excerpts from Summer Sun, Winter Moon will be played.

Book to be published by Simon & Schuster in 2006

Simon & Schuster has invited Rob Kapilow to write a book about music and listening, to be published in 2006. Further details about the book will be available in the New Year.

Highlights of last season

Rob wrote his symphony Summer Sun, Winter Moon with Blackfoot Indian Darrell Kipp, with the goal of portraying a new and unique perspective on the saga of Lewis and Clark's American exploration: that of the usually unheard Native American encountering Europeans for the first time. Commemorating the bicentennial of the historic expedition, Rob Kapilow became the first western composer to collaborate with a Native American librettist in the creation of a large-scale orchestral-choral work. Kapilow conducted the premiere performances of the symphony in Overland Park, KS, St. Louis (the departure point of the Lewis and Clark expedition) and New Orleans in the fall of 2004 and spring of this year.

Another highlight of the season was the start of Rob Kapilow’s new series for families at Lincoln Center – the first family music series ever presented by the New York venue. Starting in December 2004, Great Performers began the series with Rob’s widely performed and critically acclaimed “Green Eggs and Hamadeus”.

Last season also saw Rob Kapilow’s triumphant orchestral presentation of "What Makes Mozart’s 'Jupiter' Symphony Great?" at Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival, featuring the popular summer festival’s resident orchestra. As the New York Times wrote of Kapilow’s orchestral debut at Mostly Mozart, it was an occasion for both novices and classical music aficionados to learn how better to listen to and understand the music:

“It's worth noting that Mr. Kapilow helped sharpen the ear and bring out details even to someone who has heard the piece dozens of times. The audience seemed to listen more intently than usual to the complete performance of the piece that Mr. Kapilow led after intermission: not a cough, barely a rustle …The real point was helping people learn to listen better, and that Mr. Kapilow achieved admirably.”

New CD series introduced in 2004-05

Also making their debuts at the Mostly Mozart event were the first two CDs in Rob Kapilow’s new series of “What Makes It Great?” recordings – featuring Mozart’s “Jupiter” Symphony and Eine kleine Nachtmusik respectively. New York’s Daily News wrote of Kapilow’s inaugural discs: “Even if you've heard the work many times, his insights make the music sound fresh.” The CDs are available on Vanguard “Everyman” Classics label.

And coinciding with the start of Kapilow’s new FamilyMusik series at Lincoln Center, Vanguard “Everyman” Classics released a new family recording, Green Eggs and Hamadeus, featuring Rob’s Seuss piece and Mozart’s Eine kleine Nachtmusik in an exuberant and kid-friendly exploration of classical music for little ears.

21C Media Group, Inc.
Contact: Louise Barder
212-245-2110, ext. 202

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