FORUM OF THE ARTS WITH MILDRED KAYDEN: DAVID HAYS, JOHN BASINGER (RADIO)
Summary
One in this series of talk shows that aired on WEVD in the 1960s in which composer/librettist/Vassar music professor Mildred Kayden interviews renowned performing artists about their musical influences. In this program, Kayden talks with David Hays, founder and director of the National Theatre of the Deaf, and musician/composer John Basinger.
Topics discussed include:an explanation of the National Theatre of the Deaf's combined use of American Sign Language and voiceover; Hays' interest in expanding forms of theater and music; the theater's production of "Blueprints," directed by Gene Lasko, which featured fifteen different poems by e e cummings and Rainer Maria Rilke, among others, "linked by mood" and set to music; Hays' desire to avoid "cheating" deaf audience members with "electrical amplification"; descriptions of the original instruments created for the National Theatre of the Deaf "from scratch" by François Baschet, with input from Hays; how the instruments, built at the New York School for the Deaf, make use of vibrations; Basinger's musical background and how he became involved with the National Theatre of the Deaf as a composer and solo instrumentalist; why Hays dislikes the term "handicapped" in describing actors at the National Theatre of the Deaf; the actors' strong sense of rhythm and physical expression (using "the whole body" as an instrument in place of speech); and Basinger's creation of the mood of a Spanish garden in his score for "The Love of Don Perlimplín and Belisa in the Garden" by Federico García Lorca, using Baschet's unusual instruments.
Mildred Goldstein studied music at Vassar College under Ernst Krenek, from 1940 to 1942. After graduation, Goldstein worked as an instructor of music literature at Vassar College as well as a composer and lyricist. In 1950, she married Bernard Kayden, taking his name and composing under the name Mildred Kayden. During her career, Kayden wrote operas (including "Mardi Gras" and "The Last Word") and scores for musicals such as "Call the Children Home," "Storyville," "Sepia Star," and the hit 1974 Off Broadway show "Ionescopade" (revived in 2012 by the York Theater in New York City), as well as music and lyrics for the NBC television program "Strangers in the Land."
Mildred Kayden's weekly radio program, "Musically Speaking" -- in which she interviewed luminaries from classical music, opera, theater, dance, and jazz -- aired from 1956 to the early 1960s on WEVD in New York, followed later in the 1960s by the radio program "Forum of the Arts."
Cataloging of this program was made possible by The Kayden Foundation.
Details
- NETWORK: WEVD
- DATE: November 30, 1999
- RUNNING TIME: 0:24:15
- COLOR/B&W: N/A
- CATALOG ID: 108178
- GENRE: Talk/Interview
- SUBJECT HEADING: Talk/Interview; Music; Deaf culture; Music - Analysis, appreciation
- SERIES RUN: N/A
- COMMERCIALS: N/A
CREDITS
- Mildred Kayden … Host
- David Hays … Guest
- John Basinger … Guest
- François Baschet
- e e cummings
- Gene Lasko
- Federico García Lorca
- Rainer Maria Rilke