Spring 2008 Master Classes/Concerts to be Webcast Live

EVANSTON, Ill. --- With the aid of the World Wide Web and Internet2, the Northwestern University School of Music has big plans for sharing with the world live webcasts of unique master classes and concerts. These webcasts will be available to anyone with an Internet connection and free RealPlayer video viewing software.

Upcoming live webcasts this spring at Northwestern will feature PLOrk, the Princeton Laptop Orchestra, at 7:30 p.m. CDT (Central Daylight Time) Saturday, April 5; Bang on a Can All-Stars with special guest Glenn Kotche, the drummer for Wilco, at 7:30 p.m. CDT Sunday, April 6; a Kids Fare concert called "Brass Attack!" featuring the Illinois Brass Band at 10:30 a.m. CDT Saturday, April 26; and a clarinet master class with Philippe Cuper, principal clarinetist with the Paris Opera Orchestra, at 5 p.m. CDT Tuesday, May 6.

Specific information about webcast content and events will be announced on the Pick-Staiger Web site at http://www.pickstaiger.org/webcast and on the School of Music Web site at http://www.music.northwestern.edu/webcast. These events also are recorded and later made available in streaming form in an online archive on the Pick-Staiger Web site at http://www.pickstaiger.org/video.

Live master classes broadcast via Internet2 last spring were widely viewed and well received. Featuring pianist Richard Goode and former Berlin Philharmonic principal clarinetist Karl Leister, the classes were also made available via RealPlayer as live webcasts on the World Wide Web.

Internet2 is a not-for-profit advanced networking consortium comprising more than 200 U.S. universities in cooperation with 70 leading corporations, 45 government agencies, laboratories and other institutions of higher learning. More information is available at http://www.internet2.edu/about. Those at institutions with access to Internet2 can view the high bandwidth mpeg2 multicast feed by using VLC player at http://www.videolan.org or by using an mpeg2 decoder.

For more technical information and specifications related to viewing School of Music webcasts, visit http://www.pickstaiger.org/webcast. For specific questions about testing RealPlayer or the mpeg2 multicast feed, contact Michael Curtis at curtis@northwestern.edu. All other technical questions about the webcasts should be directed to nusmweb@northwestern.edu.