Leonard Bernstein’s Mass at the BSO

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

In 1971, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis asked Leonard Bernstein to compose a new work to celebrate the opening of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington DC.  The piece he wrote, Mass, requires hundreds of performers and spans genres from traditional symphonic music to blues to rock and roll.  Last autumn Baltimore Symphony Orchestra music director Marin Alsop led the BSO, the Morgan State University Choir, and the Peabody Children’s Chorus as they teamed up to perform the piece.  Alsop and Dr. Eric Conway, Director of the Morgan Choir, joined Marc in the studio to discuss the piece and the new CD of the performance.