{"id":5701,"date":"2014-05-03T19:34:41","date_gmt":"2014-05-04T02:34:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/?p=5701"},"modified":"2014-05-03T22:24:03","modified_gmt":"2014-05-04T05:24:03","slug":"other-matters-jim-stephensons-kid-stuff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/2014\/05\/other-matters-jim-stephensons-kid-stuff\/","title":{"rendered":"Other Matters:  Jim Stephenson&#8217;s Kid Stuff"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Rifftides<\/em> was at ebb tide most of this week while I jumped in to help the Yakima Symphony Orchestra teach a couple of thousand children about music. The Chicago composer James Stephenson (pictured) was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/Stephenson_2press.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/Stephenson_2press.jpg\" alt=\"Stephenson_2press\" width=\"160\" height=\"240\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-5702\" \/><\/a>scheduled to be the narrator for his <em>Compose Yourself<\/em>, a 50-minute tour through instruments of the orchestra, long scheduled for the YSO\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s annual children\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s concert. An unforeseen development&#151;the need for the orchestra\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s musical director and conductor Lawrence Golan to be elsewhere&#151;meant that Stephenson had to conduct. Since he couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t lead the band and narrate at the same time, I was called upon to be the speaker. <\/p>\n<p>A year ago, I had the pleasure of narrating Mr. Stephenson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s moving Civil War tone poem <em>Two Brothers<\/em>, and I was delighted to be involved with another of his works. Rehearsals and the performance occupied a couple of days. The experience was worth every minute of it. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nothing like a theater full of enthusiastic fourth-graders to stimulate optimism about the future. They loved the trombone demonstration and the rather more serious bassoon demo, both shown here with other sections from an earlier performance of <em>Compose Yourself<\/em> with a different narrator. There are slight pauses between the sections. A trombone piece by Louis Seltzer and assorted other Stephenson clips are  tacked by <em>YouTube<\/em> onto the end of the <em>Compose Yourself<\/em> excerpts as part of the package and can&#8217;t be detached, so enjoy as much of it as you have time for.<\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: center;\"> <iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"540\" height=\"355\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/telAcU5WFn4?list=PLF8109F6B877BB245\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe> <\/iframe><\/div>\n<p><p>To hear the first half of a previous performance of <em>Compose Yourself<\/em> with a different narrator, <a href=\"[contextly_auto_sidebar id=\"IW3foiWMmRvsObFD7I5A1FOhUmYNgD5v\"] https:\/\/soundcloud.com\/james-m-stephenson\/cy-overture-families-inst\"target=\"_blank\">go here<\/a>. For more about Jim Stephenson, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.stephensonmusic.com\/jimbio.htm\"target=\"_blank\">go here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rifftides was at ebb tide most of this week while I jumped in to help the Yakima Symphony Orchestra teach a couple of thousand children about music. The Chicago composer James Stephenson (pictured) was scheduled to be the narrator for his Compose Yourself, a 50-minute tour through instruments of the orchestra, long scheduled for the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-5701","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry","8":"has-post-thumbnail"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5701\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}