Ah, Thanksgiving - that great celebration of friends, family and American abundance. If your family is like mine, then you probably recently enjoyed that one special dish that absolutely must appear on the Thanksgiving table, or else it just isn't Thanksgiving. For some families, it's the pumpkin pie made with Grandma So-and-so's crust recipe. For others, it's a sweet potato thingummy slathered with butter and marshmallows. And for still others, it's Aunt Jane's blue-ribbon green bean casserole. In my family, it's the midnight salad, a salad of beautiful dark greens, like endive and red leaf lettuce, with contrasting chunks of iceberg and crunchy roasted pine nuts, radish slices and bits of jicama. But like any salad, as beautiful as the midnight salad is, it is merely a platform for the homemade creamy garlic-chive dressing that tops it off with that special zing. With the midnight salad as the centerpiece of our Thanksgiving meal, everything else, no matter how grand, is just filler. And, perhaps best of all, the midnight salad is big enough that the leftovers make Thanksgiving last an entire week. As you're enjoying your Thanksgiving leftovers, this week on The American Sound, enjoy some great American musical fare with The "Celestial Gate" symphony by Alan Hovhaness and Peter Boyer's Symphony No. 1. We'll also dig into a rag by Judith Lang Zaimont to mark the Vienna world premiere of her Fourth Symphony. And as the spirit of Thanksgiving lingers, we will gather together with the Dale Warland Singers. Please join me for The American Sound, 6 p.m. Saturday and 7 p.m. Tuesday on Classical 101.
Jennifer Hambrick unites her extensive backgrounds in the arts and media and her deep roots in Columbus to bring inspiring music to central Ohio as Classical 101’s midday host. Jennifer performed with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Civic Orchestra of Chicago before earning a Ph.D. in musicology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.