MEMETERIA by Thomas May

Music & the Arts

August 15, 2024 • 7:51 pm Comments Off on Tippett Rise Art Center’s 2024 Concert Season

Tippett Rise Art Center’s 2024 Concert Season

Tippet Rise Art Center launches its ninth concert season on Friday, August 16. Running through September 15, it offers more than 25 indoor and outdoor performances over five weekends, including free pop-up concerts and family concerts and repertoire.

The season features four world premieres and the opening of a new outdoor performance venue, the Geode, designed by Arup. To mark this occasion, two special concerts are planned, including the world premiere of Àkweks Katyes (The Eagle Flies) (2024), a Tippet Rise commission by Grammy-nominated world music composer Dawn Avery, which the cellist Arlen Hlusko will perform, and flutist Claire Chase performing alongside shamisen player Hidejiro Honjoh in the world premiere of Dai Fujikura’s Reizei for flute and shamisen (2021).

The audience at the Geode will have a unique sonic and visual experience, experiencing music as if set indoors while amidst a breathtaking backdrop of seven surrounding mountain ranges.

The August 17 concert also presents the world premiere of Paul V. Cortez’s Hyacinth Garnishes from Bouquet Suite (2024), a work written as part of his participation in a Weill Music Institute program at Sing Sing Correctional Facility. On August 18, mezzo-soprano Ema Nikolovska and pianist Kunal Lahiry make their Tippet Rise debuts with the North American premiere of composer and pianist Nahre Sol’s Apperceptive Algorithms (2022).

In addition to the world premiere of Dai Fujikura’s Reizei on August 24, Valentyn Silvestrov’s Twelve Waltzes of the Moment and One Serenade for violin and piano will be unveiled by Jennifer Frautschi and Evren Ozel on August 30 and 31. This is the eighth of ten works commissioned by Tippet Rise in 2022 from Silvestrov, Ukraine’s leading living composer.

The Wander series returns, which moves musicians and audience members among sculptures, returns on September 14. This year, the concert visits Ai Wei Wei’s Iron Tree and Patrick Dougherty’s Daydreams and Cursive Takes a Holiday. A group of wind players perform music by György Ligeti, Endre Szervánszky, Astor Piazzolla, and Samuel Barber.

Filed under: art, music festivals, music news

August 30, 2023 • 2:01 pm Comments Off on In A Sunny Vale Where Hemingway Sheltered, Free Concerts Resound

In A Sunny Vale Where Hemingway Sheltered, Free Concerts Resound

A high-definition LED wall screen made its debut this season on the lawn outside the Pavilion at the Sun Valley Music Festival. (Photo by Nils Ribi)

On my visit to the Sun Valley Music Festival this month:

SUN VALLEY, Idaho — A couple of golden eagles wheeling across the sky offered a dramatic welcome during my inaugural visit to the Sun Valley Music Festival. Viewed on the drive into town from nearby Friedman Memorial Airport, these fabled messengers of Zeus complemented the stark majesty of Bald Mountain with their agile flight. The area’s most-prominent Rocky Mountain peak towers 9,150 feet into the heavens and has been beckoning serious ski lovers since the area was first promoted as a winter sport destination — part of a pioneering campaign by Union Pacific Railroad in the late 1930s…

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Filed under: Classical Voice North America, music festivals, musical travels

August 5, 2022 • 8:53 am Comments Off on A Week at the 2022 Bravo! Vail Music Festival

A Week at the 2022 Bravo! Vail Music Festival

Jaap van Zweden and the New York Philharmonic at Bravo! Vail. (Photo by Tom Cohen for Bravo! Vail Music Festival)

This summer I was able to visit the Bravo! Vail Music Festival in the heart of Colorado during the New York Philharmonic’s residency. Here’s my report for Classical Voice North America:

VAIL, Colo. — More than one-and-a-half miles above sea level, there’s a special tang to the music. Or perhaps it’s a side-effect of the serene backdrop of wooded slopes, alpine flowers, and spectacular cloud formations. Whatever the reason, the fading A minor chord that closes the lid on Mahler’s Sixth Symphony reverberated with a peculiar blend of shell-shocked dread and exuberant release.

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Filed under: Bravo! Vail Music Festival, Mahler, music festivals, New York Philharmonic

July 25, 2022 • 12:15 pm Comments Off on Starting the Week at Bravo! Vail Music Festival

Starting the Week at Bravo! Vail Music Festival

Photo (c) Jorge Gustavo Elias

Just some quick first impressions on my first trip to the Bravo!Vail Music Festival. It began Saturday with the second of four concerts of the New York Philharmonic‘s 2022 residency here. I admired Conrad Tao’s deeply personal and inventive account of Mozart’s G major Concerto K. 453 (including his own cadenzas) and a stirring Dvořák Seventh, all prefaced by Nina Shenkhar’s new “Lumina,” an exquisite study of light and shade.

The program was led by Jaap van Zweden, who returned last night with a knockout interpretation of Mahler’s Sixth Symphony. Sunday’s moody weather provided a fitting backdrop and also made me wonder whether we would have thunder underlining the hammer strokes — or even adding an extra one. But the skies behaved, and in any case all ears were intent on every gesture coming from the crowded Ford Amphitheater stage. Van Zweden’s laser focus drew remarkably tight, driven playing from the musicians but also left plenty of room for expressive and impactful solos. Mahler’s uncompromising symphonic juggernaut had its devastating effect but paradoxically left the audience exuberant, even overjoyed — an aftereffect of catharsis?

Filed under: Bravo! Vail Music Festival, Mahler, music festivals

August 28, 2021 • 12:32 am Comments Off on 2021 George Enescu Festival

2021 George Enescu Festival

The 25th annual George Enescu Festival is now underway in the composer’s native Romania. This year’s edition, held between 28 August and 26 September 26, is presenting over 3,500 international and Romanian artists. Most of the performances take place in Bucharest, but some are planned for other cities around Romania.

Paavo Järvi conducted the George Enescu Philharmonic Orchestra in the opening night concert–Ensecu’s Romanian Rhapsody Op. 11, no. 2, the Sibelius Violin Concerto, and Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 2 on Saturday, with Hilary Hahn as the soloist. A complete listing of events programmed for this ambitious festival can be found here.

Filed under: George Enescu, music festivals, music news

August 29, 2020 • 12:04 am Comments Off on Les Arts Florissants: Dans les Jardins de William Christie

Les Arts Florissants: Dans les Jardins de William Christie

Dans les Jardins de William Christie is the name of the annual festival presented by Les Arts Florissants in Thiré, France.

Running 22-29 August, this year’s edition featured a production of Handel’s L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato to open and included early J.S. Bach cantatas as well as sacred and profane music by Gesualdo. It ends today with a “pasticcio” titled Tell me the truth about love and featuring Lea Desandre and Jakub Józef Orliński.

William Christie, founder and artistic director of Les Arts Florissants, presents their summer festival on the grounds of a late-16th-century manor house that he has restored in the village of Thiré in Vendée. Because this special edition needed to accommodate health regulations, the evening concerts have been given in the Colonnades, in the northern part of the garden, against an enchantingly illuminated backdrop.

The garden setting has also been used in lieu of the usual candlelight concerts in the church, while a series of short “Meditation” concerts that had been recorded earlier in the summer — as well as contributions from students of Juilliard’s Historical Performance program — appear online.

Les Arts Florissants’ YouTube channel gathers highlights of the summer streaming series, which are also available on LAF’s website.

Filed under: Les Arts Florissants, music festivals, music news

July 13, 2020 • 12:11 pm Comments Off on Tippet Rise & Friends at Home

Tippet Rise & Friends at Home

On Thursday, 16 July, Tippet Rise launches its monthly streaming series, Tippet Rise & Friends at Home, with a concert featuring pianist Behzod Abduraimov in a program of works by Liszt, Mussorgsky, Tchaikovsky, and Prokofiev.

I was able to visit Tippet Rise over the last two summers. Its unique landscape makes an indelible impression that can’t be replicated digitally, but a short film titled Tippet Rise from the Sky (a collaboration with the drone master Blastr) will be included with the stream and should at least suggest something of the flavor of this 12,000-acre art center in Montana. The series will be available on the Tippet Rise website at tippetrise.org/virtual-events.

Filed under: COVID-19 Era, music festivals, Tippet Rise

July 8, 2020 • 2:47 pm Comments Off on Plagues and Passions: Lamentation Back before Bach at the Ravenna Festival

Plagues and Passions: Lamentation Back before Bach at the Ravenna Festival

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My first official review in quite some time — albeit of a live stream:

Quite by accident, early music groups and chamber ensembles have turned out to have a natural advantage during the current pandemic. Their compact size can more easily accommodate distancing requirements as presenters gingerly proceed to reintroduce public performances. Even more, Il Suonar Parlante pointedly homed in on the theme of plague itself for their choice of programme at the Ravenna Festival…

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Filed under: early music, music festivals, Ravenna Festival, review

June 28, 2020 • 1:07 am Comments Off on Life Is Live

Life Is Live

One sign of hope at least in the music world with regard to live performance: Lucerne Festival, after having to cancel its meticulously planned Summer Festival, has announced a short festival of 10 days that will take its place. Unlike the United States, Switzerland has a functioning government that has actually taken the coronavirus pandemic seriously and is thus in a position to start carefully relaxing restrictions on audience gatherings.

Titled Life Is Live, the short festival includes Martha Argerich and Herbert Blomstedt with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra in the opening concerts, as well as a pair of recitals by Igor Levit, who continues his complete Beethoven sonata cycle.

Filed under: COVID-19 Era, Lucerne Festival, music festivals, music news

December 29, 2019 • 3:20 am Comments Off on Opera at the 2019 Beijing Music Festival

Opera at the 2019 Beijing Music Festival

Another installment in my reporting on the 2019 Beijing Music Festival. There was a strong emphasis on opera this year, which I looked at in this story for the January 2020 edition of Opera Now.

Filed under: music festivals, new music, opera

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