The Indiana University Jacobs School of Music today announced a new music podcast.The audio and video project, found within the school’s new IUMusicLive Web site, includes performances by violinist Joshua Bell, conductor Michael Stern and the Beaux Arts Trio, and showcases three recent IU Opera Theater productions.

According to Music Dean Gwyn Richards, the project has been “a dream of the Jacobs School of Music for some time ‚Ķ to disseminate performances of faculty and students in a more immediate and flexible fashion.”

“As of today, you will be able to access selections from IU performances,” he added. “Now you can carry IU performances in your pocket.”

The podcast features classical music performances such as “Spring” from The Four Seasons by Antonio Vivaldi, performed by the IU Summer Music Festival Orchestra, with violin soloist and conductor Joshua Bell.

The new podcasting service will allow the Jacobs School to share with a worldwide audience its musical offerings, the variety and number of which are unparalleled, according to the school, in college music study.

The podcast features appearances with IU’s Summer Music Festival Orchestra by Bell, an IU alumnus and Grammy Award-winning violinist, and Michael Stern, an internationally acclaimed conductor. It also includes a performance by IU Distinguished Professor of Music Menahem Pressler and his legendary Beaux Arts Trio and excerpts from recent IU Opera Theater productions of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Manon by Jules Massenet, and Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado.

The development of the IUMusicLive podcast is the result of extensive efforts by Konrad Strauss, Travis Gregg and Wayne Jackson in the school’s Department of Recording Arts, which is responsible for the approximately 700 professional-quality audio and video recordings made within the Jacobs School each year.”The podcast project is not only an opportunity to demonstrate the high level of music performance, but is a chance to feature the sophisticated technical capabilities at the Jacobs School,” said Strauss, director of recording arts in the Jacobs School, who has worked as an engineer on several Grammy-winning recordings. “The audio and video clips exhibit technical and performance expertise combined with world-class facilities that are second to none and, in many cases, rival professional arts organizations.”

Others who helped develop the inaugural podcast include Philip Ponella and his colleagues at the Jacobs School’s IT Services, marketing and publicity director Alain Barker, Associate University Counsel Beth Cate and attorneys Robert Meitus and Tony Rose of Meitus Gelbert Rose LLP in Indianapolis.

“We are grateful to all for their assistance in putting us within the public’s reach and for keeping the Jacobs School at the forefront of technology’s potential,” said Richards.

The IU Jacobs School of Music podcast initially includes:

VIDEO

• Don Giovanni (Final Scene) by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, IU Opera Theater
• Manon (excerpt from Act II) by Jules Massenet, IU Opera Theater
• The Mikado (“The Sun Whose Rays”) by Gilbert and Sullivan, IU Opera Theater

AUDIO

• “Spring” from The Four Seasons by Antonio Vivaldi, performed by the IU Summer Music Festival Orchestra, with violin soloist and conductor Joshua Bell
• Trio in B-Flat Major, D.898 by Franz Schubert (Allegro moderato), performed by the Beaux Arts Trio
• Mikhail Glinka: Overture to Russlan and Ludmilla, performed by the IU Summer Music Festival Orchestra, conducted by Michael Stern
• Hear My Prayer by Henry Purcell, performed by Pro Arte Singers
• Symphony No. 104 in D Major (Adagio, Allegro) by Franz Joseph Haydn, performed by the IU Chamber Orchestra
• Sonata in A Major for Violin and Piano, Op. 100 (Allegro amabile) by Johannes Brahms, performed by Mark Kaplan, violin, and Yael Weiss, piano
• “Noveaux concerts” (selected movements) by Fran√ßois Couperin, performed by Early Music Department Faculty.