Greer Grimsley as Wotan in “Das Rheingold” at Minnesota Opera. Grimsley performs the role in the Seattle Opera run as well. (Cory Weaver)
Opening Seattle Opera’s 60th season this Saturday is a new production of Das Rheingold — staged here for the first time since 2013. It’s not the start of a new complete Ring but a stand-alone production. My Seattle Timespreview:
At McCaw Hall, the gods are preparing once again to enter Valhalla.
Stagings of Richard Wagner’s cycle of four interlinked operas, together known as “The Ring of the Nibelung,” are what put Seattle Opera on the international map almost half a century ago. But a full decade has elapsed since the “Ring” was last produced here. So to open the milestone 60th anniversary season, General Director Christina Scheppelmann decided to pay homage to a central part of the company’s legacy with “Das Rheingold,” the first installment of the “Ring” operas, in a stand-alone new production directed by Brian Staufenbiel. It runs Aug. 12-20.
Congratulations to Hankyeol Yoon: the 29-year-old South Korean conductor was just announced as the winner of the 2023 Herbert von Karajan Young Conductors Award.
Conductor Hankyeol Yoon was the youngest ever recipient of the Neeme Järvi Prize at the 2019 Gstaad Menuhin Festival & Academy and subsequently received invitations from Kammerorchester Basel and the Basel and Bern symphony orchestras. Highlights of the 2022/23 season include debuts with Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, Bern Symphony Orchestra and Busan Philharmonic Orchestra and a return to KBS Symphony Orchestra for concerts in Tokyo. He is currently one of the three finalist of Karajan Young Conductors’ Award and will conduct a concert at the Salzburg Festival in August 2023.
Recent highlights include concerts with Münchner Symphoniker, Norddeutsche Philharmonie Rostock, Neubrandenburger Philharmonie, Gstaad Festival Orchestra, Kammerorchester Basel, Korean National Symphony Orchestra and Daejeon Philharmonic Orchestra.
In 2019 Hankyeol was awarded 3rd prize at CAMPUS Dirigieren in Nuremberg and in 2021 he won the 2nd and audience prizes at the inaugural KSO International Conducting Competition in Seoul. Hankyeol was also a finalist at the 2020 Georg Solti Competition and 2021 Deutscher Dirigentenpreis respectively.
In 2021 Hankyeol stepped down as 2nd Kapellmeister of Theater und Orchester Neubrandenburg Neustrelitz. During his two-year tenure Hankyeol conducted several symphonic concerts as well as performances of Pariser Leben and il Barbiere di Siviglia. He also led a production of V. Ullmann’s Der Kaiser von Atlantis.
Hankyeol has previously worked as Assistant Conductor with Staatstheater Nürnberg, Grand Théâtre de Genève and Heidenheim Opera Festival, as well as with Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks under Daniel Harding and at Lucerne Festival as a Conducting Fellow under Thomas Adès.
Also a prize-winning composer, Hankyeol has been recognised at the Luciano Berio International Composition Competition Rome in 2020, TonaLi Composition Competition Hamburg in 2018, Vareler Composition Competition in 2016 and Concours de Geneve in 2015. In 2019 Hankyeol was one of two composers mentored by the Peter Eötvös Foundation in Budapest where his compositions were conducted by Peter Eötvös and he received mentorship from Sir George Benjamin. Under Unsuk Chin, Hankyeol made his debut as conductor and composer in South Korea at the Tongyeong International Music Festival. In December 2021 his latest work, Grande Hipab, was premiered by Ensemble Modern in Frankfurt.
Born in Daegu, South Korea but calling Munich his home since 2011, Hankyeol studied conducting, composing, and piano performance at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater München.
Prom 27 on Friday, 4 August 2023 at 19:30 London Time opens with the UK premiere of Jimmy López Bellido’s Perú negro.Also on the program are Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini with Yuja Wang and William Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast; Klaus Mäkelä conducts. The performance will be broadcast here.
James Ehnes, Gabriel Kahane, and Jens Lindemann performed the premiere of Kahane’s ‘Mozart Songs.’ (Photos by Jenna Poppe)
Here’s my report for Classical Voice North America on Seattle Chamber Music Society’s just-concluded 2023 Summer Festival:
There’s nothing quite like the gentle euphoria triggered by a heavy intake of live chamber music. In the heart of summer, the Emerald City becomes a magnet for chamber-music enthusiasts, lured by the quality and variety of the Seattle Chamber Music Society’s month-long Summer Festival. This bonanza of concerts and related programs fills up the month of July — yet always seems to end too soon.
Seattle-basedErin Jorgensen, marimba player extraordinaire, is presenting a full week of performances, mini-classes, talks, and other arts goodness to kick off the month of August. Erin Jorgensen Fest (EJF) lasts from August 1 to 6 and will take place at the 18th & Union theater in the Central District. The fest is donation-based and follows a first-come, first-served basis.
EJF offers an amazing lineup: mini-classes from cellist Lori Goldston, audio legend Steve Fisk, composer/chess wizard Brian Lawlor, opera/noise artist Micaela Tobin, alt-bluegrass trio The Half Brothers, composer Benjamin Marx, armchair philosopher Pini Ben-Or, filmmaker SJ Chiro, neuroscientist/author Chantel Prat, and a ton more. Plus donuts courtesy of Mighty-O.
Here’s the schedule for just the first day (Tuesday, 1 August):
11 am music Bach & Pancakes with Erin Jorgensen Listen to a Bach cello suite performed on 5-octave marimba & eat pancakes made on-site. Today we’ll listen to Suite No. 1 in G Major. All-ages welcome!
12pm mini-class Taiko Drumming 101 with Leanna Keith Come for the loud huge drum, stay for the history of the Asian-American art form and chance to yell real loud. Ganbatte! (Do your best!)
Leanna Keith (she/they) is the professor of Flute at Cornish College of the Arts, where she also found her way into teaching the taiko ensemble. She says flute is her profession, taiko is her passion. When not playing flute/taiko, Leanna composes with a focus on timbre-shifting, queer theory, and the breaking of performer/audience boundaries. www.leannakeithflute.com
1pm record listening Intentional Record Listening | record chosen by Julian Martlew Let’s listen to a record together – no cell phones allowed! Each artist has written a short blurb on why they chose a particular record. We’ll read this together, and then hit play. Reduce your screen time while expanding your musical knowledge. Win-win.Julian Martlew is an audio engineer and media producer for KEXP – 90.3FM in Seattle.
1pm record listening Intentional Record Listening | record chosen by Julian Martlew Let’s listen to a record together – no cell phones allowed! Each artist has written a short blurb on why they chose a particular record. We’ll read this together, and then hit play. Reduce your screen time while expanding your musical knowledge. Win-win.
Julian Martlew is an audio engineer and media producer for KEXP – 90.3FM in Seattle.
3pm film Six Marimbas directed by Marcy Stone-Francois
A beautifully hypnotic fever dream featuring six virtuosic marimba players.
Six Marimbas was commissioned by Erin Jorgensen and features original music written by Benjamin Marx & Brian Lawlor. Music performed by musicians Garrett Arney, Storm Benjamin, Erin Jorgensen, Rebekah Ko, Bonnie Whiting, & Mari Yoshinaga.
Marcy Stone-Francois is a multi-talented filmmaker who loves vibrant colors, 80s and 90s pop culture, cat memes, and all things cat related. See more of her work at Marcy Stone-Francois.com.
4pm mini-class A Film Director/A Woman with SJ Chiro A talk with film clips and Q&A about women in film.
SJ Chiro‘s first feature film Lane 1974 (Sophia Mitri Schloss, Katherine Moennig), premiered at SXSW in 2017. LANE 1974 went on to win the FIPRESCI award for New American Cinema among other awards both in the U.S. and internationally. Her second film East of the Mountains (Tom Skerritt, Mira Sorvino, Annie Gonzalaz) premiered at SIFF 2021. East of the Mountains was nominated for two Satellite Awards: Best Picture, Drama and Best Actor in a Leading Role, Drama, and was included in the 2021 list of top ten films by the DGA’s Best DirectHER. She is also known for her award winning short films. SJChiro-director.com
5pm music Marimba Happy Hour with Erin Jorgensen An hour of acoustic/electric marimba, vocals, layers, loops, and whatever else Erin feels like doing. Spend the 5pm hour getting in some good vibes. Join anytime.
6pm mini-class + convo A philosophical conversation about Friendship with Pini Ben-Or What is special about friendship & why is it important? Why is it a philosophical question (what is philosophy anyway?)
Some dilemmas of friendship: Real vs Fake vs BS friendships & the trouble with BS in our lives…, and why we should invest in friends who disagree with us…
Pini Ben-Or is a father, a friend, a hiker, or a philosopher (but not an academic one…) and a data scientist puzzling over the possibility of good AI. He grew up in Israel, a 2nd grade and forever nerd, a 3rd grade rock-explorer, a 6th grade philosopher. His 10th grade math teacher said that his mathematical curiosity far exceeded his mathematical maturity. Yet he stuck with it until coming to NYC for grad school in philosophy. Then went for the action of the business world rather than settle in the ivory tower (ask him if he regrets that….). His preferred position is buried in books or being (almost) lost in the woods, or being truly lost in conversation.linkedin
7pm mini-class & meditation live from NYC! Noh theater investigation & Buddhist Meditation with Katiana Gonçales Rangel Katiana will share excerpts of the Noh play Ama The Diver, and lead a guided meditation session.
Katiana Gonçales Rangel is a performer, director and educator from Brazil based in NYC. They have created independent theater work since 1998. Their most recent work was Ama The Diver at Brick Aux with their collaborators Jim Fletcher and the cellist Lori Goldston. Katiana is also a meditation instructor, yoga teacher and drag thing called Greta Room. KatianaGonçalesRangel.com
Sameer Patel has been appointed Music Director and Orchestra Conductor of the La Jolla Symphony & Chorus. His tenure will begin with the new 2023-24 season and follows a year-long search after the departure of Steven Schick, who stepped down from the role in May 2022. La Jolla’s Search Committee invited a small group of internationally renowned conductors to audition for the position. Patel will work alongside Arian Khaefi, the Sally and Einar Gall Music Director and Chorus Conductor.
Already a familiar presence to audiences in the San Diego region, Patel is currently Artistic Director of the San Diego Youth Symphony and was previously Associate Conductor of the San Diego Symphony, where he reinvigorated the orchestra’s programming and connection with its community.
Hailed as a rising star in the conducting world, Patel brings an impressive resume of international performances and collaborations to La Jolla. Patel studied at the University of Michigan and furthered his training across Europe with some of the leading conductors of our time. He now makes his home in San Diego with his wife, Shannon, and their two children, Devan and Veda.
“I am thrilled to join the La Jolla Symphony and Chorus as Music Director and Orchestra Conductor. From my earliest experiences working with the musicians, I’ve consistently been impressed not only with their artistic integrity and curiosity, but also by the way they so joyfully and willingly share their humanity both onstage and off,” Patel said. “I am grateful and proud to expand my musical involvement in this community that I love and believe in, and I look forward to a bright future together.”
From my recent profile of Sameer Patel for Musical America, who was featured in April as their New Artist of the Month:
As he describes the career choices that have led to his current position, Sameer Patel refers to a verse from the Bhagavad Gita: “It’s better to strive in one’s own dharma than to succeed in the dharma of another’ — in other words, to follow your own virtue or path or journey.”
So proud of the wonderful Los Angeles Master Chorale, which is on the program on 20 and 21 July open the 2023 Salzburg Festival in the Ouverture Spirituelle series with Music to Accompany a Departure, its interpretation of Heinrich Schütz’s Musikalische Exequien, directed by Peter Sellars. They will also perform Sofia Gubaidulina’s Sonnengesang (The Canticle of the Sun) for cello, choir, and percussion.
I wish the timing did not coincide with a very busy festival season, which means I won’t be able to explore this new adventure in Portland. But the two productions that OrpheusPDX is offering in August look very interesting. The company’s second season will offer Mozart’s 1775 opera seria Il re pastore (3 and 6 August) and Nico Muhly’s Dark Sisters (24 and 27 August). (I well recall Vancouver Opera’s production of Muhly’s fascinating opera, which I reviewed in December 2015 for Musical America.) All performances will take place in Portland State University’s 475-seat Lincoln Performance Hall.
Portland Opera’s former General Director Christopher Mattaliano founded OrpheusPDX last year and operates the company “without an office and via lots of Zoom calls. Its model is to honor tradition and explore new directions,” he says, creating a space “where opera gets intimate.”
UPDATE: Here’s a link to Medici.tv’s recorded livestream of the closing concert.
The Italian conductor Giuseppe Mengoli has been announced as the winner of the 2023 Mahler Conducting Competition, which confers a cash prize of 30,000 euros. The competition was held in Bamberg, Germany, from 7 to 13 July, with a repertoire including Mahler’s Seventh Symphony (from which different movements were played in each round), as well as Haydn’s Symphony No. 92 in G major (first round), Bernd Richard Deutsch’s Con moto, which was commissioned by the Bamberg Symphony and given its world premiere and (second round), Berg’s Seven Early Songs (semi-final), and Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto (final round).
The sold-out concluding concert of the competition will take place on Saturday, 15 July, with Mengoli leading the Bamberg Symphony. The program consists of Mahler’s Symphony No. 7, Haydn’s Symphony No. 92, and Berg’s Seven Early Songs, with Thomas Hampson as the soloist; Mengoli will record with the Bamberg Symphony next season.
Second place went to the Japanese American conductor Taichi Fukumura, who received 20,000 euros. In third place was the German conductor Georg Köhler, who was awarded a cash prize of 10,000 euros. Additionally, a new prize was introduced this year: Best Conducting of Contemporary Composition, which confers an award of 7,500 euros (donated by the Mahler Foundation). This was awarded to the American conductor Kevin Fitzgerald.
The Mahler Competition was founded in 2004 by the Bamberg Symphony and its principal conductor at the time, Jonathan Nott, and takes place every three years. The inaugural winner was Gustavo Dudamel. More candidates than ever before applied for the 2023 competition: there were 350 applicants, of which almost 20% were women; 16 male and 4 female conductors were selected and invited to Bamberg.
Until recently, Mengoli held the position of Assistant Conductor to Lorenzo Viotti at the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra and the Dutch National Opera in Amsterdam. In May 2023 he joined the artistic team for the Orchestre National de France new production of La Bohème at the Theatre de Champs-Elysees leading stage rehearsals and assisting Lorenzo Passerini. This summer he will be assisting at the Salzburg Festival, and he will work with the SWR Symphonieorchester in the upcoming season.
In May 2022, Mengoli assisted Lorenzo Viotti in Lisbon preparing as well as conducting the Gulbenkian Orchestra in Schoenberg’s Pelleas et Melisande. In October 2022, he made his debut with the Nederlands Kamerorkest and soloist Leonard Elschenbroich conducting the world premiere of Willem Jeths’s Cello Concerto No. 2 at the Cello Biennale 2022 in Amsterdam. He stepped in to prepare Beethoven’s Fifth with the Solistes Européen Luxembourg at very short notice, which led to an invitation to join the orchestra again for upcoming projects.
Mengoli’s conducting career began as a result of his experience as a concertmaster in youth and professional orchestras from the age of 19. Since then he has worked with Oleg Caetani, Daniel Barenboim, Christoph König, and John Axelrod and with such orchestras as the Real Orquesta Sinfonica de Sevilla, Oslo Opera House, LaVerdi Symphony Orchestra, and the Royal Opera House. In 2018 he made his conducting debut with the Gustav Mahler Jugend Orchester in Bad Schandau. During this time, he also served as concertmaster of the GMJO and as a substitute in orchestras like the Konzerthaus Orchester Berlin and Rundfunk Sinfonieorchester Berlin.
Winner of several international competitions as a violinist, he completed his violin studies cum laude and with special mention. Alongside the violin, Mengoli studied percussion, piano, and trumpet, and he has also worked as a composer and arranger of jazz. Having obtained his bachelor’s degree in orchestra conducting, he is currently pursuing his master’s degree at the Franz Liszt Academy in Weimar with Nicolás Pasquet and Ekhart Wycik and is regularly working with such orchestras as the Staatskapelle Weimar, the Jenaer Philharmonie, and the Thüringen Philharmonie Gotha.
Seattle Chamber Music Society Artistic Director and violinist James Ehnes (left) with colleagues. SCMS’ Summer Festival runs July 3-28. (Jenna Poppe)
I suggested some unmissable programs in this year’s edition off the 2023 Summer Festival, which lasts throughout July:
Changes have been afoot since the Seattle Chamber Music Society returned to a full live season — from a roving concert truck to a new center located downtown — but what remains a constant is the embarrassment of riches that its Summer Festival offers throughout the month of July.
MEMETERIA by Thomas May 