American Academy in Rome

It was collectors and museums.

But it, for the first time in my life, sent me on this kind of journey, like, so what is this about? What do you feel about becoming an artist, and we were in Rome, because life is very perverse, so I lost all this work, and then I got invited as a painter to the American Academy in Rome, and Joy, my wife, and I, and our eight-year-old daughter moved to Rome for the year, and I gotta tell you, Rome, it's the best place to be depressed, you know, like, I will admit I started smoking again.

And we had a great life there.

I mean, really, we did.

His work is in such collections as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and Tokyo's Institute of Contemporary Art.

He is the recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts grants, has been a visiting artist at the American Academy in Rome, the Vermont Studio Center, and serves on the board of YADO, the oldest arts community in the U.S.

He is also known for his latest novel, Ten Perfect Guests, which is out now.

He lives in New York, where he is currently at work on a new novel.

You know, they're just objects.

I could distance myself enough to say that.

At the same time, I had been invited as a painter to the American Academy in Rome.

And so a few months later, I packed up my wife and myself and my eight-year-old daughter.

Barber dedicated the work to his composition teacher and premiered it at a League of Composers concert in New York with himself performing the piano part and his friend Orlando Cole on cello.

The Sonata was a resounding success, earning Barber both a Pulitzer Prize travel stipend and the Rome Prize at the American Academy in Rome in 1937.

We'll listen to this wonderful early work of Barber and many more this hour here on Anytime Classical.

I'm your host, Denise Finnegan-Hill.

Ward Stare led the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra.

Rounding off the hour with early music of American composer Samuel Barber, written while he was still a student at the Curtis Institute of Music.

This is his Cello Sonata, which earned him both the Pulitzer Prize Travel Stipend and the Rome Prize at the American Academy in Rome in 1937.

Here is a recording by the cellist Shaku Kanemason and pianist Izata Kanemason.

The family in Italy is kind of an institution that comes before the state, said Mr. Baggiani, whose latest work exposes the physical and psychological violence that can rot a family from within.

There's this idea that is very much Italian, he said in an interview at the American Academy in Rome, where he once was a fellow.

Families are these little totalitarian systems.

The Anniversary, told from the point of view of a 40-something narrator who has not seen his dictatorial father or self-abnegating mother for a decade, a period he describes as the best 10 years of my life, has resonated deeply with readers in Italy.

And today we're speaking with Andrea Clearfield.

Andrea has written over 175 works for orchestra, opera, chorus, chamber ensemble, dance, and multimedia collaborations, and she's been supported by the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage, the Rockefeller Foundation, the American Academy in Rome, the McDowell Foundation, and others.

We're excited to be with her today.

Thank you for tuning in.