Suzanne Bona
Sunday Baroque Host and Executive ProducerSuzanne Bona is the host and executive producer of Sunday Baroque, a syndicated weekly radio show of Baroque and early music. She originated the program in 1987 on WSHU Public Radio in her hometown of Fairfield, Connecticut. Sunday Baroque has been distributed nationally since 1998, and is currently heard by more than 400,000 listeners every week on approximately 260 public radio stations and networks across the United States.
Suzanne is also a classically trained flutist who earned her Bachelor of Music degree from The University of Connecticut. She continues to perform frequently as a soloist and chamber musician, and has especially enjoyed collaborating with some of her musically talented public radio colleagues in performances for listeners across the country, including in West Lafayette, IN, Phoenix, AZ, Cincinnati, Ohio, across Connecticut and on Long Island, NY, and in March 2012 and October 2016 as guest soloist with members of the Guam Symphony Orchestra in Tumon. Suzanne is a member of the Sylvan Trio, with pianist Greg Kostraba (a radio colleague) and cellist Josh Aerie. Their recordings include the 2020 download album, MUSIC FOR FLUTE, CELLO AND PIANO BY WOMEN COMPOSERS, featuring music by Clara Schumann, Lili Boulanger, Princess Anna Amalia of Prussia, Judith Lang Zaimont, Mel Bonis, and Dianne Goolkasian Rahbee.
When she is not making radio or playing her flute, Suzanne’s hobbies include reading, running, cooking, baking and traveling. She is also passionate about the cause of literacy; she was a longtime volunteer tutor and board member for her local Literacy Council, and served on a community advisory board for a children’s literacy initiative.
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Austrian musician Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897-1957) fled Europe to the United States in 1938, and pursued a wildly successful career as a composer of mainly film music.
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Canadian musician Stewart Grant is also an oboist and conductor. He credits his interest in yoga and meditation and his love of nature as some of his main inspirations.
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Today's Beautiful Music is a complete performance of George Frideric Handel's 1739 biblical oratorio ISRAEL IN EGYPT by Croatian Baroque Ensemble.
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Today's Beautiful Music is a moving favorite -- Ennio Morricone's Love Theme from Cinema Paradiso.
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British conductor Andrew Davis was born in Hertfordshire, England in 1944, and as a small boy started piano lessons. Showing great promise, as a teenager he began studying the organ, too. Later he became an Organ Scholar at Kings College, Cambridge.
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Shall we dance? Today's Beautiful Music is a tango with a baroque twist.
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Gateways Brass Collective is a top-tier ensemble of instrumentalist-educators -- trombonist Isrea Butler, trumpeters Herbert Smith and Courtney Jones, French horn player Larry Williams, and tuba player Jerome Strover.
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April is National Poetry Month. It’s an occasion to highlight the art form and its place in our culture. We’re marking the occasion with poetic music by a variety of composers, including selections from an opera about the mythological poet and musician Orpheus.
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Today's Beautiful Music has a co-curator -- Sunday Baroque producer (and my longtime friend) Julie Freddino! She recommended a song she comes back to over and over when she needs a pick-me-up, and we hope it does the same for you.
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Today's Beautiful Music features the marvelous cellist Seth Parker Woods with pianist Andrew Rosenblum. They are playing the Cello Sonata written in 1957 by American composer, pianist, and organist George Walker (1922-2018.)