THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, October 7, 1995 TAG: 9510050080
SECTION: TELEVISION WEEK PAGE: 01 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: Larry Bonko
TELEVISION COLUMNIST
LENGTH: Long : 113 lines
FOR CHILDREN WHO don't know Sousa from Superman, and who are otherwise musically deprived, public broadcasting has the man to set the kids straight.
He is 33-year-old trumpet virtuoso Wynton Marsalis, who appears in a four-part series on understanding and appreciating music, ``Marsalis on Music,'' starting Monday at 8 p.m. on PBS.
It's okay to watch if you're a grownup, too. Bet you learn something, Pop.
PBS in the past used primetime television as a classroom, teaching Music 101 in the ``Leonard Bernstein's Young People Concerts.'' Now the essence of making music is brought back to PBS (and WHRO locally) by Marsalis of the musical Marsalis family of New Orleans.
``Think of Wynton as our pied piper,'' said Peter Gleb, producer of ``Marsalis on Music,'' when he met with members of the Television Critics Association in Los Angeles not long ago. And how does this pied piper of primetime go about the business of explaining sonatas and such to children with limited attention spans?
He's cool about it.
Someone mention drums? ``In a jazz band,'' Marsalis tells the children age 9 to 12 in his audience at the Tanglewood Music Center, ``the drums push, pull, tug and move the band along like the engine and wheels of a locomotive.''
Got it?
Maestro Seiji Ozawa is along with a full-blown symphony orchestra to assist Marsalis in his TV classroom. In the premiere, ``Why Toes Tap: Marsalis on Rhythm,'' it's great entertainment and a neat bit of learning, too, when Marsalis and Ozawa use the score of ``The Nutcracker'' to show the kids how rhythms touch off emotions.
``I want to bring the joy of music to as many children and their parents as possible and make it as painless as possible,'' said Marsalis.
He's no Bernstein on camera. He doesn't have that kind of magnetism. Even so, kids will dig him, and pay attention when he says to the music students, ``Don't be too hard on yourself. Set goals. When you're practicing with a group, don't play too loud. Never give up on developing your musicality.''
Sony Classical Film and Video will soon release the four-part ``Marsalis On Music'' on video with a companion book from W.W. Norton and Co. There is also a 175-page book and CD on the way.
PBS affiliate WNET in New York City is on the Internet with ``Marsalis on Music'' at http://www.wnet.org. You can also tap into Marsalis at http://www.pbs.org.
When there is a chill in the night air, when pumpkins show up on porches and leaves start turning, it means that October is here and PBS has launched its new fall season. This year, it is with a sigh of relief now that the congressional budget cutters have trimmed the Corporation for Public Broadcasting's budget by less than 10 percent.
For a while there, it looked as if Barney might be out of work. That threat has passed, and PBS is moving ahead with new programming.
A sampling:
Come Sunday at 8 p.m., ``Masterpiece Theater'' begins its silver anniversary season on PBS with the five-part ``The Buccaneers.'' This is an adaptation of Edith Wharton's unfinished novel in which nouveau riche American girls mix with the British royals in the 1870s.
Helen Mirren returns to play British Detective Chief Inspector Jane Tennison in ``Prime Suspect 4: The Lost Child.'' This series was cop chic before Yank producer Steven Bochco ever heard of it. TV drama doesn't get any better than ``Prime Suspect.'' The series resumes on Oct. 22.
On ``Mystery!'', Hercule Poirot is back to give his little gray brain cells another workout in two new mysteries starting Oct. 26. A mouse as witness to a murder? But of course.
Been dying to know more about Rod Serling, the brains behind ``Twilight Zone''? Your wish has been granted by PBS on Nov. 29 with the ``American Masters'' special, ``Rod Serling: Submitted for Your Approval.'' PBS promises extensive clips.
``Nature'' returns for a new season on Sunday at 8 p.m. with ``Jaguar: Year of the Cat.'' A week later, ``Nature'' goes a mile and half under the sea for a close look at the octopus and squid. Then ``Nature'' tackles the question, ``Yes, monkeys can communicate with humans. But what are they telling us?''
``The New Explorers'' premieres on Oct. 18 with ``What Darwin Never Saw,'' an episode hosted by Bill Kurtis that takes a new look at human evolution. Princeton researchers Peter and Rosemary Grant suggest that evolution moves along at a better clip than Darwin reasoned. So why are our fingers and toes still webbed?
PBS has five other ``in performance'' specials on the schedule in addition to the Marsalis series. For pop music fans, there is ``Julie Andrews: Back on Broadway'' on Oct. 25, and for the opera fan, there is ``Arabella'' on Nov. 1 and ``Madama Butterfly'' on Dec. 27 in ``The Metropolitan Opera Presents'' series.
PBS, which is pretty darn discriminating about the movies it shows, has scheduled another good one in ``Hoop Dreams,'' to air on Nov. 15. It's a documentary by Hampton native Steve James about two high school athletes with one goal: to play professional basketball. The critics loved it.
Public broadcasting expands its children's programming with ``Wishbone,'' a series about a dog who knows Shakespeare, Dickens and Chekhov. Doesn't every pooch? It runs weekdays at 4:30 p.m. starting Monday.
The year is 1968, and divisions run deep in the U.S. The turmoil of that year came into sharp focus at the Democrats' national convention in Chicago. ``The American Experience'' returns Nov. 13 with a documentary about that convention and the year of the Yippies - the year 12,000 cops, 7,500 soldiers and 6,000 National Guard troops met the protesters.
This ``American Experience'' special is part of the PBS ``Democracy Project'' leading up to the 1996 national elections. The programs will include William F. Buckley Jr.'s ``Firing Line'' debates.
Also on PBS, ``Frontline'' goes back to the Branch Davidean compound in ``Waco: The Inside Story'' on Oct. 17. ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]
"Marsalis on Music," a four-part series, begins Monday night at 8 on
pBS. Above, Wynton Marsalis.
by CNB