Michael Repper Champions Samuel Coleridge-Taylor in New York Times Feature
Conductor Michael Repper speaks with Eleanor Stanford from The New York Times regarding his extensive research and recording project centered on the celebration of illustrious composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.
Photo Credit (left to right): András Grausz, Hulton Archive/Getty Images
In celebration of the 150th anniversary of the birth of Black British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, GRAMMY® Award-winning conductor Michael Repper embarked on a massive research and recording project of the composer’s works.
Eleanor Stanford from The New York Times spoke with Repper about this undertaking, which included going note by note through Coleridge-Taylor’s manuscripts, unearthed by the Library of Congress and the British Library, and ensuring that each piece was performable and accessible. Among those published include Coleridge-Taylor’s “24 Negro Melodies,” which is featured on Repper’s recent album with the National Philharmonic and violinist Curtis Stewart.
Repper remarks that engaging with Coleridge-Taylor’s music is important “because it reminds us how much passion, emotion, and love can be in every note.” He believes that the composer deserves to be widely appreciated because the “quality of his musicianship, the quality of his writing, merits it.”
Read the full article from The New York Times here.
Listen to the album here.
Photo Credit: Elman Studio
Michael Repper Celebrates 150 years of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor on NPR
The conductor talks with NPR about the overlooked composer who is now getting his due, 150 years after his birth.
Aug. 15 marked the 150th anniversary of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's birth, a composer who gained prominence in his early 20s with two major successes: the orchestral work Ballade in A minor and the secular cantata Hiawatha's Wedding Feast, both from 1898.
On Aug. 1, conductor Michael Repper, violinist and composer Curtis Stewart, and the National Philharmonic released the album Samuel Coleridge-Taylor: Toussaint L'Ouverture ᐧ Ballade Op. 4 ᐧ Suites from "24 Negro Melodies" (AVIE Records), which was specially planned to celebrate the composer's 150th birthday.
“With this project, we aim to preserve and promote the legacy of one of the greatest composers from the turn of the 20th century,” says Repper, who in 2023 became the youngest North American conductor to win a GRAMMY® Award in the Best Orchestral Performance category.
Read Repper’s NPR interview and feature here.
Listen to the new album here.
The New York Times: Making Sweet, and Bittersweet, Music Together
A bite of bruschetta helped lay the foundation for the relationship between the conductor Michael Repper and Vanessa Moody. That honesty served them well when she was diagnosed with a brain tumor.
Michael Eric Repper’s history of unflagging devotion to a narrow set of passions dates back to the early 1990s when, as a 3-year-old, he snapped to attention the moment the orchestra kicked in at a classical music concert. By the time he had reached his early 20s, another of his select few passions was consuming him: his relationship with his girlfriend, Vanessa Rodrigues Moody.
Dr. Repper, now 33, became the youngest American to win a Grammy Award for Best Orchestral Performance this year, and Ms. Moody, 31, a lawyer with the global law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, met and began dating in April 2013 as students at Stanford.
Six months later, when she was a senior and he had graduated and moved to Baltimore to start a doctoral degree in music, neither was sure what would become of their budding romance. But on April 14, 2014, she called to tell him she had been diagnosed with a rare brain tumor the size of a tangerine and asked whether he wanted out of the relationship. Both knew then it was built to last.
“I was terrified,” Dr. Repper said. “But I was also all in.”
The New York Times
By Tammy LaGorce
A bite of bruschetta helped lay the foundation for the relationship between the conductor Michael Repper and Vanessa Moody. That honesty served them well when she was diagnosed with a brain tumor.
Michael Eric Repper’s history of unflagging devotion to a narrow set of passions dates back to the early 1990s when, as a 3-year-old, he snapped to attention the moment the orchestra kicked in at a classical music concert. By the time he had reached his early 20s, another of his select few passions was consuming him: his relationship with his girlfriend, Vanessa Rodrigues Moody.
Dr. Repper, now 33, became the youngest American to win a Grammy Award for Best Orchestral Performance this year, and Ms. Moody, 31, a lawyer with the global law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, met and began dating in April 2013 as students at Stanford.
Six months later, when she was a senior and he had graduated and moved to Baltimore to start a doctoral degree in music, neither was sure what would become of their budding romance. But on April 14, 2014, she called to tell him she had been diagnosed with a rare brain tumor the size of a tangerine and asked whether he wanted out of the relationship. Both knew then it was built to last.
“I was terrified,” Dr. Repper said. “But I was also all in.”
Read more here.
SYMPHONY MAGAZINE: YOUTH ON THE RISE
After the New York Youth Symphony submitted its debut album in the Best Orchestral Performance category for the 2022 Grammy Awards, neither the young musicians nor their music director, Michael Repper, thought they’d edge out competition like the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Berlin Philharmonic. Yet in February, the fresh-faced ensemble became the first youth orchestra to be awarded a Grammy, winning with a recording of music by Black women.
Symphony Magazine
By Vivien Schweitzer
After the New York Youth Symphony submitted its debut album in the Best Orchestral Performance category for the 2022 Grammy Awards, neither the young musicians nor their music director, Michael Repper, thought they’d edge out competition like the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Berlin Philharmonic. Yet in February, the fresh-faced ensemble became the first youth orchestra to be awarded a Grammy, winning with a recording of music by Black women.
The album, which reached #1 on Billboard’s “Traditional Classical Albums” chart, features the first recording by an American orchestra of Florence Price’s Ethiopia’s Shadow in America (1932). It also includes Price’s Piano Concerto in One Movement (1934) with soloist Michelle Cann. The NYYS had been scheduled to perform the work with Cann at Carnegie Hall in the spring of 2020, but after the pandemic shuttered concert halls Repper decided instead to record it with Cann.
Read more here.