“Point Counterpoint II, a 195-foot-long, self-propelled, otherworldly concert boat, has brought music from the rivers of Pittsburgh to small towns throughout America to the great capitals of Europe for 41 years,” writes Elizabeth Bloom in Sunday’s (7/9) Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “Soon, however, it may be headed for a new destination—a shipyard in Louisiana—and a new destiny, as a regular old crane barge…. The vessel’s designer [is] Louis Kahn, one of the greatest architects in American history.” Conductor Robert Austin Boudreau, 90, the boat’s owner, “is the music director of the American Wind Symphony Orchestra, which has performed on Point Counterpoint II since 1976 … ‘It’s getting to be 50 years old,’ Mr. Boudreau said…. ‘And boats don’t last forever.’ … After an article about Kahn appeared in the New York Review of Books in June, [Yo-Yo Ma] submitted a letter to the publication to make his plea…. Mr. Boudreau, a Juilliard-trained trumpeter who moved to Pittsburgh to teach at Duquesne University, started AWSO in 1957.… Mr. Boudreau first asked Kahn to design a boat for an AWSO tour on the River Thames, although that vessel was abandoned after one summer.”
Posted July 11, 2017
