Festival Finale concert ends with Mahler Symphony No. 1
By Peter Alexander July 26 at 11 a.m.
The 2023 Colorado Music Festival (CMF) is nearing its end up at the Chautauqua Auditorium, but one thing that remains the same all the way to the final concert is the felicitous mix of programming selected by Music Director Peter Oundjian.
CMF Music Director Peter Oundjian
Since his arrival at the festival as music advisor (2018) and then music director (2019), Oundjian has curated programs that recognize both the most interesting work being done by living composers and the greatest works from the standard repertoire, all performed by creative and adventurous musicians. That mixture continues.
The two final concerts conceived as a pair for Thursday, Aug. 3, and Sunday, Aug. 6 (7:30 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. respectively; see details below) are leading examples. Both concerts feature familiar orchestra works, plus violinist Joshua Bell, certainly one of the most distinctive and accomplished of soloists, playing a series of short pieces that were written for him by five different composers.
Or is it one piece?
Joshua Bell. Photo by Richard Ascroft
“Talk about a focused idea, I think it’s brilliant,” Oundjian says. Because the finished piece is scheduled for a series of official premieres starting in the fall, Oundjian thought Bell and the composers might like to hear their pieces in a workshop setting, where they could make adjustments.
“In one of my conversations with Josh, I said, ‘Do you want a preview series of performances where you can work the repertoire over an entire week?’ And we both felt it was really great way to introduce a new piece, for everyone including the composers, who I think are all going to be there. We’ll workshop these pieces over the week.”
That piece is The Elements: Suite for Violin and Orchestra. Bell contacted five composers that he knew—Jake Heggie, Jessie Montgomery, Edgar Meyer, Jennifer Higdon and Kevin Puts—and asked each to write a mini-concerto movement for him. To unify the piece, each movement (or are they separate pieces?) was based on an individual element: fire, ether, water, air and earth.
The three movements will be split over the final two concerts, both conducted by Oundjian and featuring Bell as soloist. The movements by Heggie, Montgomery and Meyer (“Fire,” “Ether,” “Water”) will be presented on Thursday, July 3, when they will share the program with Debussy’s La Mer—perhaps inevitable after the movement titled “Water”?
The movements by Higdon and Puts (“Air” and “Earth”) will follow on the “Festival Finale Concert” Sunday (Aug. 6). They will share the program with Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 in D major. The latter might be the least surprising feature of the final week, but one that history suggests will be embraced by the audience. “We have created a tradition of closing with a Mahler symphony, so that’s going to continue,” Oundjian says.
Eun Sun Kim. Photo by Nikolaj Lund
Before the final concerts, there are two separate orchestral programs scheduled for the coming weekend, featuring guest conductors. Korean conductor Eun Sun Kim, whose appointment as music director of the San Francisco Opera starting in 2021 made headlines throughout the musical world. She will lead the Festival Orchestra Thursday and Friday playing Brahms’ gently lyrical Symphony No. 2 in D major. Joining Kim, German-Canadian cellist Johannes Moser will play the Cello Concerto No. 1 of Shostakovich.
Opening the program will be The Rhapsody of Steve Jobs by Mason Bates. This is based on music from Bates’ opera The (R )evolution of Steve Jobs, which premiered at the Santa Fe Opera in 2017 under the baton of CMF Conductor Laureate Michael Christie. Bates wrote in his program notes that The Rhapsody of Steve Jobs “swirls together many key musical elements” of the opera, including electro-acoustic sound elements that “conjure the excitement of the early Information Age.”
Hannu Lintu. Photo by Veikko Kähkönen
Hannu Lintu, chief conductor of the Finnish Radio Symphony, happened to be on his way to California at the end of July, and as luck would have it, was able to stop off for a single concert at Chautauqua Sunday. “He is an absolutely extraordinary conductor,” Oundjian says. “He conducts major orchestras all over the world, so we’re delighted to have him!”
Like other programs at the CMF this summer, his concert will combine music from different centuries, opening with the 1972 orchestral score Cantus Arcticus by Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara. Subtitled Concerto for Birds and Orchestra, the Cantus incorporates recordings of birds including the shore lark and the whooper swan, collected in northern Finland and near the Arctic Circle.
Moving back a century, Canadian pianist Tony Siqi Yun, first prize winner and gold medalist at the First China International Music Competition in 2019, will play the Schumann Piano Concerto from the mid-19th century with Lintu and the Festival Chamber Orchestra. And one more century: the program will close with Joseph Haydn’s Symphony No 96 in D major.
One of the 6 symphonies Haydn wrote for his first trip to London 1791–92, No. 96 is known as the “Miracle” Symphony. The name, however, is misapplied; it actually refers to an incident in 1795, when a chandelier fell at the premiere of Haydn’s Symphony No. 102 without harming the audience, which was crowded to the front of the hall.
No chandeliers will collapse at Chautauqua. No, the miracle of CMF is in the programming, with music from the 18th century to the 21st, familiar favorites mixed with intriguing discoveries. The festival is one of Boulder’s musical treasures, and there are only eleven more days to join the 2023 CMF audience.
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COLORADO MUSIC FESTIVAL 2023 Summer Festival, remaining concerts All performances at Chautauqua Auditorium
7:30 p.m. Thursday, July 27, and 6:30 p.m. Friday, July 28 Festival Orchestra: Eun Sun Kim, conductor With Johannes Moser, cello
Mason Bates: The Rhapsody of Steve Jobs (2021)
Shostakovich: Cello Concerto No. 1 in E-flat Major, op. 107
Brahms: Symphony No. 2 in D Major, op. 73
6:30 p.m. Sunday, July 30 Festival Orchestra, Hannu Lintu, conductor, With Tony Siqi Yun, piano
Einojuhani Rautavaara: Cantus Arcticus (1974)
Schumann: Piano Concerto in A Minor
Haydn: Symphony No. 96 in D Major (“Miracle”)
7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 1 Robert Mann Chamber Music Series: Members of the Colorado Music Festival Orchestra
Beethoven: String Trio in C Minor, op. 9 no. 3
Debussy: Danses sacrée et profane (Sacred and profane dances)
Dvořák: Piano Quintet No. 2 in A Major, op. 81
7:30 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 3 Festival Orchestra, Peter Oundjian, conductor With Joshua Bell, violin
The Elements: Suite for Violin and Orchestra (commissioned by Joshua Bell) —“Fire” by Jake Heggie —“Ether” by Jessie Montgomery —Water” by Edgar Meyer
Debussy: La Mer
6:30 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 6: Festival Finale Concert Festival Orchestra, Peter Oundjian, conductor With Joshua Bell, violin
The Elements: Suite for Violin and Orchestra (commissioned by Joshua Bell) —“Air” by Jennifer Higdon —“Earth” by Kevin Puts
CORRECTION: The original version of this article listed the soloist in the Schumann Piano Concerto on July 30 as Lisa de la Salle. She had to cancel here appearance at CMF; the correct soloist for the Schumann Concerto is Tony Siqi Yun. I apologize for the error.
Kiss Me Kate, Roméo et Juliette, Otello comprise a Shakespearean trifecta
By Peter Alexander July 21 at 7:10 p.m.
Cole Porter’s racy Kiss Me Kateis the apotheosis of the ‘40s musical: spicy, jazzy, witty, full of spiffy dance and raucous fun.
It is also a work filled with the stereotypes of the era that in 2023 push the bounds of taste and acceptability. The current production at Central City Opera, under the direction of veteran Ken Cazan, certainly conveys the style and fun of the ‘40s musical. Whether it avoids all of the pitfalls will be a matter of taste.
Kiss Me, Kate at Central City Opera. All images by Amanda Tipton Photography
The production is flawlessly cast with Broadway-style performers. Cazan’s direction takes the show as it is and capitalizes on all its strengths. The pit orchestra, under the direction of Adam Turner, plays smoothly and with a natural sense of style. The set, by Matthew S. Crane, serves the script well, moving easily between scenes onstage and backstage.
Kiss Me, Kate at Central City Opera.
This is no mean accomplishment, as the stage at the Centra City Opera House is really small. A few well chosen items, easily moved in and out, convey the superficial glamour of the stage setting and the contrasting shabbiness of the backstage. Especially noteworthy is choreographer Daniel Pelzig’s staging of the ensemble number “Too Darn Hot” which opens the second act and manages to offer a full production number in spite of the cramped quarters for dancers.
My only real complaint is the use of amplification for the sung numbers. I assume this is done to balance the singers with the orchestra, but the transition from natural speaking voices onstage to disembodied singing voices coming from everywhere and nowhere is jarring. When they happen, naturally sung choral numbers are a relief.
The leading couple of Jonathan Hays as Fred Graham/Petruchio and Emily Brockway as Lilli Vanessi/Kate sparred delightfully. If anything, Hays, all smooth baritone and pleasant crooning, could be more obnoxious. His “Were Thine That Special Face” was a musical highlight, but there were times I wanted more disdain toward Lilli. He is supposed to be a jerk.
Emily Brockway as Lilli Vanessi/Kate and Jonathan Hays as Fred Graham/Petruchio in Kiss Me, Kate
Brockway embellished her light and lovely voice well with a snarling rage, particularly in her showstopper “I Hate Men.” The fight scene between her and Hays is a hilarious highlight, as it should be, with neither holding back. Special credit should go here to fight choreographer Matt Herndon, although I have it on good authority that the sound was deafening in the orchestra pit below the stage.
Lauren Gemelli as Lois/Bianca was just the kind of brassy dame—to adopt the sexist language of the time—that every ‘40s musical needs. Her hit number “Always True to You in my Fashion” was an ideal representation of her loose but lovable character. Jeffrey Scott Parsons was an audience favorite as Bill/Lucentio, for both his smooth tenor and his fluid dance moves, especially the tap dance at the top of Act II.
General Harrison Howell is one of the show’s most obvious stereotypes, brought up to date with a few script additions. Matthew Cossack fulfilled the stereotype of the Southern military martinet and sang his one number, “From This Moment On,” well. Likewise Adelmo Guidarelli and Isaiah Feken as the central-casting gangsters, who found individual ways to personify the dim-witted and swaggering thugs. Their in- and comically out-of-character “Brush up Your Shakespeare” was perfectly enjoyable.
On the subject of stereotypes, it is the sexist tropes that are the most troubling. The relationship between a man-hating harridan and the man who will dominate her, the kernel of so much stale humor, is unavoidable as it is built into the script. In defense of book authors Sam and Bella Spewack, and with a nod to Shakespeare, this show brings a deft touch to the old story. Cazan and Brockway did what they could to make Lilli/Kate more than a doormat, and at the end the traditional obsequious groveling submission to Fred/Petrucchio was reversed, with Fred raising her back up and kneeling at her feet.
Is that enough to redeem a fundamentally misogynist premise? I guess it depends on your own ratio of laughs to cringes. I enjoyed the show, but not without reservations.
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Central City’s production of Gounod’s Roméo et Julietteis set in the crypt of the Capulet family, where Juliette’s body will be placed and where she and Romeo will both die.
This unit set designed by Matthew S. Crane serves the entire opera, with two large, raised catafalques that double as serving tables and beds in other scenes. The setting serves a symbolic purpose: with its high walls on the small Central City stage, it portrays physically the claustrophobia of living in a society where hatred seals off half of your neighbors, and it represents how the hatred between Capulet and Montague has turned all of Verona into a boneyard.
Madison Leonard as Juliette and Ricardo Garcia as Roméo in Matthew S. Crane’s effectively claustrophobic set. All images by Amanda Tipton Photography
But it barely contains a French Grand opera. The intimate scenes worked best, while larger scenes became so full of singers that they were almost static. The Capulet ball in Act I and the Act III fight were especially challenging. The latter was a directorial tour de force, with the combatants swirling around the stage so fluidly one almost forgot how small the space is. Fight choreographer Matt Herndon has his hands full.
Fight scene from Act II
Director Dan Wallace Miller adheres closely to Shakespeare’s characters, notably the fact that Roméo and Juliette are young teens—she explicitly not yet 14, he probably about 17. Miller writes in his Director’s Note about the “teenagers’ hurricane of uncontrollable emotion,” which makes more sense to them than the curdled adult world of hatred and violence they see around them.
This sounds exactly right, and the singers—Madison Leonard as Juliette and Ricardo Garcia as Roméo—do a remarkable job of acting like teens. Particularly revealing were the moments right after their balcony scene when they couldn’t tear themselves apart. Likewise, the wedding scene is an appropriate mixture of joy, impatience and reverent wonder. The point was well made that they were adolescents who had known each other less than a day and were at the mercy of their abruptly aroused lust.
But the fundamental problem with the opera (and many others from the 19th century) is that the music written for young characters requires mature adult artists. No 13-year-old can sing Juliette’s music. So while the singers performed admirably as young lovers, the musical performances revealed their age and experience.
Madison Leonard as the teenaged Juliette at the Capulet’s ball
Still, the music is gorgeous. Leonard as Juliette has a full voice that commands the stage and fills the house. The first act Waltz was graceful if not quite girlish. Her singing throughout was bright and focused. Her performance of the poison scene was particularly effective, with mercurial mood changes, terror, and beautifully sung lyric outbursts.
As Roméo, Garcia has an expressive, soaring tenor that was occasionally strained on top. In an opera largely defined by its duets, he was a worthy partner for Leonard. Their duet concluding the balcony scene was especially beautiful.
Sable Stout as Stéphano
In the smaller roles, Skyler Schlenker brought a big voice to his portrayal of Count Paris. As Tybalt, Kameron Alston sang with a penetrating, edgy tenor, while his opponent from the Montagues, Shea Owens as Roméo’s pal Mercutio, sang with power and a nice ring at the top. Boulder’s Wei Wu lent his fine, rich bass to a slightly tipsy Frère Laurent.
Soprano Sable Stout had fun in the trousers role as Roméo’s page Stéphano, in spite of a moment or two of unsettled pitch. Mezzo-soprano Sarah Neal was sympathetic as Juliette’s nurse, Gertrude. Bass Adam Cioffari made Juliette’s father, Count Capulet, a benevolent host in Act I and a vengeful head of the Capulets after Tybalt’s death.
Brandon Eldredge led the orchestra, which had been conducted by CCO Music Director John Baril in earlier performances, with sensitivity to the emotional sweep of the score. The chorus, which Eldredge prepared, was ragged in the prologue that lays out the hatred between families, but offered a rich and homogenized sound afterward.
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Long before “The Three Tenors” became a world-wide phenomenon, there was Rossini’s Otello.
Composed in 1816, Rossini’s opera—based loosely on Shakespeare’s play as translated into French—was premiered in Naples, where the company apparently had a surplus of strong tenors. Rossini obligingly wrote highly decorated tenor parts for three of the characters: Otello, his nemesis Iago, and Rodrigo, his rival for Desdemona’s love.
Christopher Bozeka (Rodrigo) and Bernard Holcomb (Iago) sing one of the many tenor duets in Otello. All images by Amanda Tipton Photography
This casting is both the glory and the curse of Rossini’s Otello. The score is filled with stirring arias and duets for tenors in the elaborate style Rossini’s early tenor roles, but finding three tenors up to the challenges in not easy. This is one reason that this opera is not heard often today. The other is that it was surpassed in drama, music and popularity 71 years after its premiere by Verdi’s masterpiece on the same subject.
Nonetheless, Rossini’s three-tenor Otello remains a great opera, full of musical fireworks and potent drama. On that basis, Central City’s production is a welcome opportunity to hear a genuine rarity. It does not quite tell the story that is familiar from Shakespeare’s play and Verdi’s opera. For one thing, it all takes place in Venice; for another the marriage between Otello and Desdemona is secret, opposed by her father who prefers the White Rodrigo to the Black Otello as a match. And Rodrigo is promoted to a major character, one of the three tenors.
Elmiro (Federico de Michelis)tries to persuade his daughter Desdemona (Ceciia Violetta López) to marry Rodrigo
But the biggest difference is that Otello’s downfall comes not from jealousy but racism. Both the text, where Otello is referred to repeatedly as “The African,” and the staging, where characters repeatedly wash their hands after contact with Otello, point to the pervasive racism of the world in which he lives. Stage director Ashraf Sewailam explains that Otello himself came to “believe the narrative” of his own inferiority.
An extra layer is provided by the coincidence that in CCO’s cast, Otello and Iago are performed by Black singers. Sewailam does not fail to make use of this opportunity: action during the Overture make it clear that Iago has been rejected, romantically and otherwise, because of his skin color, which fuels his hatred of Otello. At the same time, his skin color enables him to feign friendship with Otello. He also pretends to help Rodrigo, while laying a trap for Otello to believe that Desdemona has betrayed him.
In the production it is all much clearer than my synoptic outline. Sewailam does an excellent job of keeping actions and motivations clear. He also faces down the opera’s greatest difficulty—the large number of musical numbers where the actors sing but no action takes place. He finds various ways of keeping attention on the stage, some quite successful and others looking more like busywork designed to disguise the static action.
The setting is moved from Venice to Imperial Rome. Done on the basis that the Empire allowed peoples of all nations to succeed on merit, this is a distinction that makes no difference. Matthew S. Crane’s unit set is perfectly serviceable. Plot twists are carefully laid out in performance, both by Sewailam’s thoughtful direction and by the three tenors, who are all capable singing actors.
In the title role Kenneth Tarver is a figure of strength, vocally and dramatically, who is twisted into turning that strength against himself. With his lightning-fast roulades he handles Rossini’s lines comfortably. As a character, he is never less than dignified and controlled.
Kenneth Tarver as Otello, shortly after his murder of Desdemona (Cecilia Violetta López)
Christopher Bozeka (Rodrigo) sings with ease into his highest registers, not always cleanly but with great feeling. He effectively uses facial expressions to connect with the audience and announce his rarely failing hopes—illicitly encouraged by Iago—to turn Desdemona to his wishes. Bernard Holcomb as the treacherous Iago has at times the cleanest execution, and always projects the cunning ease of the true villain. The various duets featuring two of the tenors—a distinguishing feature of Otello—are rousing highlights.
Desdemona has her own spectacular moments that she carries off comfortably, to the top of her range. She delivers the “Willow Song,” the one aria sung outside of full performances, affectingly. Federico de Michelis’s well rounded bass lends weight to Elmiro, Desdemona’s father, making him so convincing a racist enemy of Otello that his conversion at opera’s end—part of a rapid turn of events that also unmasks Iago’s treachery—is scarcely credible. Hilary Ginther is a warm and sympathetic Emilia.
Under John Baril, the orchestra gives a sprightly and stylish performance of Rossini’s score. Special credit goes to the sparkling woodwinds and horn players for their solo turns.
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All three productions on the summer schedule—Kiss Me Kate, Roméo et Juliette, Otello —are presented in attractive productions, their stories cleanly told and well sung. Any one of them makes for a good summer excursion to the mountains, but if you can only make one trip to Central City, see Otello. It is a true rarity that is worth hearing, and its story of the harm done by thoughtless racism still resonates. And where else outside reruns can you hear three tenors?
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Central City Opera Remaining performances of the 2023 Season All performances in the Central City Opera House
Roméo et Juliette By Charles Gounod, Jules Barbier and Michel Carré John Baril, conductor, and Dan Wallace Miller, stage director
Performed in French with English supertitles
2 p.m. Friday July 28; Sunday, July 30; Wednesday, Aug. 2; Saturday, Aug. 5
Kiss Me, Kate By Cole Porter, Samuel and Bella Spewack Adam Turner, conductor, and Ken Cazan, stage director Performed in English with English supertitles
7 p.m. Saturday, July 29; Saturday, Aug. 5 2 p.m. Wednesday, Saturday, July 22; Wednesday, July 26
Otello By Gioachino Rossini and Francesco Berio di Salsa John Baril, conductor; Ashraf Sewailam, stage director Performed in Italian with English supertitles
7 p.m. Saturday, Friday, Aug. 4 2 p.m. Wednesday, July 23; Saturday, July 29; Sunday, Aug. 6
CORRECTION: The original version of this review inadvertently omitted the name of tenor Kameron Alston, who sang the role of Tybalt in Roméo at Juliette. I apologize for the oversight, which has been corrected as of 7.27.23.
Central City Opera House. Photo by Ashraf Sewailam.
Two of the three stage directors who helped produce this summer’s performances at Central City Opera (CCO) have given comments on the recent departure of CEO Pamela Pantos and the future of Central City Opera. (See: CEO Pamela Pantos’ employment at Central City Opera has ended.)
Ken Cazan
Ken Cazan, professor of opera and resident stage director at the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music, is the senior director of the three. He has been a feature of the CCO artistic community for many years. Last December when CCO was embroiled in a contract dispute with the American Guild of Musica Artists (AGMA), he wrote a letter to Pantos stating his unwillingness to work for the company until the dispute was resolved. Subsequently the two other directors signed the letter as well. The dispute was resolved at the last minute.
For the 2023 season, Cazan directed the production of Cole Porter’s classic musical Kiss Me, Kate. After yesterday’s surprise announcement that Pantos was leaving CCO, he wrote the following: “I’m glad it’s over. Now, hopefully, the company will wipe the slate clean and start from the ground up to recreate itself.
“At the moment it is totally up to the board and I pray that they have the fortitude to look at the company and its mission through a very fresh, clear lens. It is the perfect time to reimagine who and what they are and how they fit into the Colorado, American and international arts landscapes. I have so many thoughts on the huge potential for the company to move forward and grow artistically in this moment. It just takes guts and trusting a new artistic mentality—whoever that may be.
“Let the Managing Director and the new Artistic Director (a must position and one that was sorely missed this summer) create a new world within and around CCO, one that hopefully reaches out and invites in a new, fresh audience while being grateful for the guidance and support of current and past generations.”
Ashraf Sewailam
Ashraf Seawilam was the most junior of the three stage directors. Although he has sung at Central City and around the world, the CCO production of Rossini’s Otello was his first fully professional directing job. He wrote: “To me—and many of my colleagues share this sentiment—the priority now is to concentrate on performing the rest of the festival not only successfully, but brilliantly.
“I won’t speak about the circumstances under which we put this excellent season together. The company and its great history will move on from this episode. The tremendous efforts put together by the artists, creatives, and crew in order to produce this season in spite of the ‘obstacles’ should be what’s in the limelight now, not what we left behind. In the end it’s why we’re here: The art and artists who make it happen.
“Come and see the shows! You will not be disappointed.”
Details of the remaining performances and access to ticket sales may be found here.
Meeting held Tuesday morning, June 18; name removed from Web page
By Peter Alexander July 18 at 5:55 p.m.
The Central City Opera Company (CCO) called all members of the company, administrative staff and festival personnel, to meetings held simultaneously at the Teller House in Central City and the company’s office in Wheat Ridge at 9:30 a.m. this morning (July 18).
Central City Opera House. Photo by Ashraf Sewailam
According to the internal message that was passed to Sharpsandflatirons anonymously, board co-chairs Roopesh Aggarwal and Heather Miller had the following update for all CCO personnel: “Effective immediately, Pamela Pantos’ employment with the Opera has ended and we thank her for her work. We wish her the best in her future endeavors and will begin a search immediately for a new President and CEO.“
The announcement comes in the middle of the company’s summer season of three operas in the Central City Opera House. The three productions—Cole Porter’s Kiss Me, Kate, Charles Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette and Rossini’s Otello—will continue in rotating repertory through the originally announced final date, Sunday, Aug. 6.
The board’s announcement indicates that members of the administrative staff will take on additional duties. Scott Finlay will be Chief External Affairs Officer and Margaret Williams will be Interim Operations Officer. Both will report directly to the board of directors.
Opera House interior
Pantos’ name has been removed from the “Who Are We” listing on Central City Opera’s Web page, and the updated assignments have been posted.
Although no one said so on the record, it was widely believed that the previously reported dispute between the opera company and the American Guild of Performing Artists (AGMA) was a result of Pantos’ administrative style and reflected her wishes. Central City Opera and AGMA subsequently signed a contract that resolved the dispute.
Tickets for remaining performances this summer may be purchased here. Three productions have been announced for summer 2024—Gilbert & Sullivan’s Pirates of Penzance, Puccini’s La fanciula del West and Kurt Weill’s Street Scene. Menotti’s Amahl and the Night Visitors will be presented in Denver Dec. 23 and 24.
NOTE: The original version of this story said that upcoming seasons had not yet been announced for Central City Opera. In fact, the listing in the final paragraph above is correct.
All comments on this article must be approved before they will be posted. Personal attacks and name calling against anyone currently or formerly employed at Central City Opera will not be allowed. There are varying opinions on what has unfolded at CCO, but in this context personal attacks serve no purpose.
Michael Christie is looking forward to being back at Chautauqua this week.
Michael Christie
Christie, who was music director of the Colorado Music Festival (CMF) 2000–13, will lead the Festival Orchestra in a pair of concerts Thursday and Friday (7:30 and 6:30 p.m. respectively in the Chautauqua Auditorium; see program below). Since leaving CMF at the end of the 2013 festival, Christie spent eight years at the Minnesota Opera, conducted at the Santa Fe Opera, and is now music director of the New West Symphony in Los Angeles.
Among other world premieres, he has conducted Manchurian Candidate by Kevin Puts and Mark Campbell, and The Shining by Paul Moravec and Campbell at Minnesota Opera; The Gospel of Mary Magdalene by Mark Adamo at San Francisco Opera; and The ( R)evolution of Steve Jobs by Mason Bates and Campbell at the Santa Fe Opera.
Now designated CMF Music Director Laureate, Christie returned as guest conductor once before, in the summer of 2016. “It was really wonderful to see all those faces again and inhabit that space,” he says. The Chautauqua Auditorium “is so unique and full of so many memories and such a great place to have a musical experience.
Michael Christie at the Minnesota Opera. Photo by Michael Daniel
“(The hall) is one of the truly great aspects of the CMF—the enduring part that transcends all of us, audience members or performers. There’s still that auditorium—it’s just always there.”
One of his most recent appearances around the world was as a conductor for the 2023 “Singer of the World” contest in Cardiff, Wales. A biennial contest for classical singers that was established in 1983, the Singer of the World has launched many great careers including those of Finnish soprano Karita Mattila, Welsh baritone Bryn Terfel and Russian baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky.
You may see Christie conducting the final concert with this year’s prize winner on the OperaVision Website.
The diversity of his career post-CMF, including both opera and symphonic performances, is not an accident. “I have been working very hard to escape the pigeon holing that can happen to people,” Christie says. “I love both opera and symphonic music, and they speak to each other so clearly.
“I feel strongly that to conduct a symphonic work when a composer has also composed a lot of ballet or a lot of opera, and not to have done those pieces, you’re missing a huge part of the story. There is a different kind of emotion that composers are able to express with the voice.”
The New West Symphony is a regional orchestra, equivalent in size and scheduling to the Boulder Philharmonic. It has the advantage of drawing on the pool of freelance musicians in Los Angeles, but Christie chose that job for another reason. “I thought it would be a wise choice to have an orchestra that had a lean schedule, so that I could take the longer periods for opera,” he says. “That’s worked out quite well.”
Working over a period of years with a smaller orchestra has also been an educational experience. “With smaller orchestras, the conductor really has to be way more involved,” he says. “I have learned a huge amount.
Michael Christie with the New West Symphony
“The conductor is much more hand-on about community engagement that in bigger orchestras is handled by the general manager. I found with the smaller orchestra that I’m having way more specific conversations about what (community partners’) needs are. It’s been really eye-opening and very immediately engaging every day.”
Christie has a list of favorite things about Chautauqua concerts that he’s looking forward to. “I’m looking forward to how the audience spills out of the hall afterward, and that moment where folks are sharing with each other and talking to the musicians. I’m looking forward to seeing that.
“I love the auditorium just before the concert starts. People are milling about, there’s this lovely energy that happens—a very friendly energy that happens among everybody in the hall. The musicians gathering near the green room, standing around and chatting before the concert starts—there’s always a special human easiness about things before and after those concerts.
“I always treasure those moments.”
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COLORADO MUSIC FESTIVAL
Festival Orchestra, Music Director Emeritus Michael Christie, conductor With Michelle Cann, piano
Ravel: Piano Concerto in G Major
Florence Price: Piano Concerto in One Movement
Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 4 in F Minor, op. 36
7:30 p.m. Thursday, July 20, and 6:30 p.m. Friday, July 21 Chautauqua Auditorium
Peter Oundjian led an all-Corigliano program by the CMF Festival Orchestra
By Peter Alexander Jan. 14 at 12:24 a.m.
There are several reasons that John Corigliano is an important composer, and many of them were on display last night (July 13) at the Colorado Music Festival.
The Festival Orchestra under music director Peter Oundjian played an all-Corigliano program—a rare honor for a living composer that Oundjian has made a feature of his annual “Music of Today” programming. The three pieces on the program spanned not only 50 years of Corigliano’s work, as Oundjian pointed out from the stage; they also displayed some of the breadth and diversity of his creativity.
John Corigliano. Photo by J. Henry Fair
That breadth is certainly one of the reasons the Corigliano in important. For last night’s concert, the CMF Orchestra played two pieces that are great entertainment—the Gazebo Dances of 1974, and his recent Triathlon for saxophone and orchestra (2020), played by virtuoso saxophonist Timothy McAllister.
The third piece on the program, One Sweet Morning for voice and orchestra (2011), reaches for greatness, and find it though both texts and their settings. The expressive depth of this piece, commission for the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, clearly signals Corigliano’s importance. Grammy award winning mezzo-soprano Kelley O’Connor was the soloist.
Opening the program, Gazebo Dances seemed like a continuation of the Tuesday program by the JACK Quartet, titled “New York Stories.” The Dances come straight out of the 1970s New York and Broadway milieu that inspired Leonard Bernstein and others of the times.
Oundjian and the Festival Orchestra captured well the buoyant energy and sweet sentimentality of the Overture movement. The Waltz was just humorous enough, and the dreamy Adagio movement, played with careful attention to balance among the instruments, provided a comforting moment of relaxation before the jolly Tarantella.
Multi-saxophonist Timothy McAllister
Triathlon requires a saxophonist who is a virtuoso on the soprano, alto and baritone saxes—the three events of the athletic triathlon the concerto represents—and the CMF certainly had that in McAllister. Apparently comfortable in every possible range—and some impossible ones, too—of each instrument, he was unquestionably the medalist of this Triathlon.
The first movement is filled with incredibly virtuosic passages all over the soprano sax. Sadly the balance was not always well judged, but when the soloist emerged from the brassy orchestral texture, blisteringly fast things were going on. McAllister played with silky smoothness on the alto sax for the second movement, even over passages of riverine rapids.
The baritone sax is the boisterous cousin of the other instruments, ideal for all kinds of playful hijinks—and all kind of playful hijinks is what Corigliano asks for and McAllister provided, from loudly slapped keys to slap-tongue blasts. The only thing missing was a return to the screaming heights of the soprano instrument, which is exactly what the score calls for at the end. With a soloist like that, who wouldn’t have fun at the concert?
Mezzo-soprano Kelley O’Connor
But it is One Sweet Morning that provided the emotional depths of the evening. Corigliano made inspired decisions picking four poetic texts that lament the horrors of violence and hope for a world without war. The poets could not be more diverse—Polish poet Czesław Miłosz foreseeing the end of the world in 1944, Homer describing the man-to-man brutality of the Trojan War, 8th-century Chinese poet Li Po revealing the anguish of wives and mothers, and pop-song lyricist E.Y. “Yip” Harburg (“Wizard of Oz”) dreaming of a world when “the rose will rise . . . (and) peace will come.”
The texts make an eloquent progression from anguish to brutality to hope, and here is where Corigliano reaches for greatness. Not only has he selected deeply moving poems, he matches each with music that powerfully captures in turn the deep melancholy of Miłosz’s words, the concentrated barbarity described by Homer and Li Po, and the healing grace suggested by Harburg.
Oundjian has a profound grasp of this music, and brought it out through the players. O’Connor sang with control and expressive precision, with no audible strain from the lowest notes to the highest. If she could not be heard during the scenes of war, that was not her fault; the orchestral sound there was as loud as I have heard at Chautauqua, but never uncontrolled.
These three pieces—fun dances, a fervent memorial and a splashy concerto—made up an optimal concert program, and it is one that I will remember as one of my favorite evenings at CMF.
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NOTE: The title of John Corigliano’s piece was corrected in the 10th paragraph on 7/14. The correct title is One Sweet Morning, not One Fine Day. We apologize for the error.
Five pieces form the 20th and 21st centuries dazzle audience
By Peter Alexander July 12 at 12:46 a.m.
Last night (July 11) was a wonderful evening for a concert in Boulder: moderating temperatures, gentle breezes, and a late lingering dusk.
Afternoon on the grounds outside the Chautauqua Auditorium.
If you were fortunate enough to be at the Chautauqua Auditorium, only a single helicopter overflight disturbed the mood of an equally wonderful performance of music composed since 1950. The program was played by the JACK Quartet, a group known for their exemplary performances of contemporary concert music.
Last night’s program, titled “New York Stories,” was part of the Colorado Music Festival’s Robert Mann Chamber Music Series. The performances lived up to JACK’s reputation and then some. The five pieces they played were strikingly varied, but the character of every piece emerged powerfully. Every transition was precise and controlled, and the unity of interpretation across the group was magical.
JACK Quartet. Photo by Shervin Lainez.
The concert opened with the only piece not by a living composer, Morton Feldman’s Structures for String Quartet from 1951. No recording can do justice to Feldman’s score, which is marked “as softly as possible.” You have to hear it live in a large hall, where you can physically feel the intimacy of the sound and let yourself be pulled into the world of Feldman’s music. The concentration of the players, and the balance they managed at such low volume was electrifying.
This performance would have pleased John Cage—he of 4’33” of silence—as it requires the listener to acknowledge the sound world around him. The cries of children in Chautauqua Park, the rustling of leaves outside and the murmuration of people inside, all became part of the experience, and served to elevate the music the more intently one listened.
Caleb Burhans. Photo by Liz Linder
Contritus by Caleb Burhans was composed in 2010 to a commission from the quartet. The piece comprises three prayers of contrition that flow together in a single movement. It starts at about the volume of the Feldman, and you realize how intently you are attending to the music when it rises from just audible to a thunderous medium soft (mp).
The control of volume and the emotional ebb and flow here was remarkable, proving again the JACK’s finesse in music of the greatest delicacy. Indeed, if all caps represents shouting, maybe they should rename themselves “jack.” For me, and others I heard from, this was the most moving piece of the evening.
The music of Philip Glass is so well known to followers of new music—from tours by the Philip Glass Ensemble, to movie scores and operas—that his Fifth String Quartet (1991) was the least captivating piece on the program. Yet JACK found entirely the character of Glass’s music, the throbbing pulse, the surge and flows with in energized texture, and the sudden shifts in character.
As ever the music was at time hypnotic, conducive to reflection, always pleasing. But with Glass, I am never sure how much it adds up to. As section follows section, it’s hard to identify an overall structure, even when musical ideas return for the end. But if you enjoy Glass, this was a performance to be prized.
After an intermission, JACK returned to play Caroline Shaw’s appealing Entr’acte. Shaw is one of the most interesting composers working today, one who keeps the listener enough off balance that you never know what could be next. And whatever it is, it usually wears a smile and takes you by surprise.
John Zorn
Entr’acte was inspired by Haydn minuets, and indeed contains Haydnesque moments of gentle humor as the music fades into and out of silence (silence again!). The more you think about Haydn while listening, the more you enjoy the piece. I could not imagine it played with more care , delicacy, or effectiveness.
The program closed with the most “New York” of the five pieces, John Zorn’s The Remedy of Fortune (2016). Here, it helps to know what the piece was composed for the Met Cloisters museum of medieval art and architecture in Upper Manhattan. In this score you can hear the bustle and cacophony of the streets of New York, with moments that recall the calm of the museum and the music of the Middle Ages.
As difficult and disordered as the music sometimes sounds, it was all under the fingers of the JACK Quartet players. One should listen beyond the frantic surface to hear the streams within in the notes. When heard in that spirit the performance was dazzling, and worthy of the cheers and standing ovation from the faithful audience of contemporary music fans. One wishes that more people had heard such a consummate performance, before strolling out into the cooling twilight at Chautauqua Park.
Peter Oundjian leads All-Corigliano program, world premieres for ‘Music of Today’
By Peter Alexander July 7 at 12:10 p.m.
The next two weeks of the Colorado Music Festival (CMF) will see the 2023 season in full swing.
The Robert Mann Chamber Music Series—named in honor of the founding first violinist of the esteemed Juilliard String Quartet—gets underway with performances by the JACK Quartet (July 11; program details below) and the Brentano Quartet (July 18). The performance by JACK also initiates a week of “Music of Today” featuring an all-John Corigliano program by the Festival Orchestra with saxophone soloist Timothy McAllister (July 13) and a program with three world premieres by Carter Pann of CU, his former student Jordan Holloway, and Adolphus Hailstork (July 16).
The festival’s third week embraces more familiar repertoire, with some excursions. The Brentano Quartet embellishes a program of Mozart and Beethoven with works by Scottish composer James MacMillan (July 16). CMF Music Director Emeritus Michael Christie marks his return to Chautauqua Auditorium with Tchaikovsky’s familiar Fourth Symphony and an interesting pairing of piano concertos by Ravel and Florence Price performed by Michelle Cann (July 20 and 21). The week closes with an all-Mozart program led by guest conductor François López-Ferrer and featuring violinist Grace Park (July 23).
JACK Quartet. Photo by Shervin Lainez
Known for their committed performances of new music, the JACK Quartet is the musical heir of the mold-breaking Kronos Quartet. “Kronos really paved the way,” first violinist Austin Wulliman says. “They were role models for people in our generation, and JACK modeled the way we commission (new works) after the way Kronos did it.”
Titled “New York Stories,” the July 11 concert features works by five composers: Morton Feldman, Caleb Burhans, Philip Glass, Caroline Shaw and John Zorn. The program came from “an intuitive feeling about New York, which is a place that is so now,” violist John Richards explains. “Cultural changes begin or are reflected very early on in New York, and I feel the longing for ‘before’ as a part of the experience of ‘now’ in New York.
Caroline Shaw. Photo by Kait Moreno
“This program gets into that, through a beautiful, melancholic longing that’s in Caroline Shaw’s (Entr’acte, which is) also filled with the kind of playful experimentation with form and instrumental techniques that can only be done today. It’s a beautiful marriage of those things.”
The players find the same duality in Zorn’s Remedy of Fortune, which they compare to standing in the Cloisters, a museum of medieval art in upper Manhattan, and hearing the sound of visitors’ cell phones alongside the echoes of medieval music.
Zorn is known for pieces inspired by the frenetic pace of early cartoons, but his latest pieces are more varied. “He draws on so many interesting influences now,” Wulliman says. “I hear the music of Alban Berg at the same time that I hear Art Tatum and Beethoven and medieval music.”
Wulliman suggests that when listening to Feldman’s Structures for String Quartet, you think of a painting rather than a narrative. “That’s a helpful inroad to how to listen to it,” he says. “It’s a visual arts approach to the page, where he’s filling our auditory field with splotches, textures and patterns that weave together.”
The least known composer on the program is probably Burhans, whom the JACK players knew as undergraduates at the Eastman School of Music. “The beauty and the emotional catharsis of that piece is a real lynchpin of the program,” Wulliman says. Richards adds that Burhans “joined the choir at Trinity Church Wall Street (in New York), and this music draws from that experience. There’s a beautiful middle section that grows and grows into a prayerful, ecstatic feeling of release.”
John Corigliano. Photo by J. Henry Fair
The most distinctive program of the summer is the concert devoted entirely to works by composer John Corigliano. That almost never happens with living composers, conductor and CMF Music Director Peter Oundjian says, but he also likes to remind people that new music today is not as daunting as it once was.
“I remember a time when if you presented one piece of contemporary music you could loose half your audience,” he says. But Corigliano is from “a generation that got a language that was astonishingly contemporary but acceptable at the same time.”
Oundjian wanted to present works from different parts of the composer’s career. “I said to John, ‘I want to do a piece from each of your periods’,” Oundjian says. “’I want to make you into Beethoven, (with) early, middle and late’.”
From the early period, he chose the Gazebo Dances (1972), which was likely inspired by the music of Leonard Bernstein. A suite in four contrasting movements, it has a Bernstein-like energy and flirtation with popular/Broadway idioms, which is not surprising since Corigliano’s father was concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic under Bernstein.
Next is One Sweet Morning (2010), written to commemorate the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in New York. “Oh boy is it ever incredibly profound and moving,” Oundjian says. “It’s music of staggering beauty and depth, so it’s a fantastic contrast to the Gazebo Dances.”
The concert will conclude with Corigliano’s most recent concerto, Triathlon for saxophone and orchestra (2020). The soloist will be Timothy McCallister, who was featured last summer. “It’s a complete masterpiece,” Oundjian says. “I don’t know how these brilliant composers get their ideas, but it’s an honor to study the works and prepare to conduct them.”
Adolphus Hailstork. Photo by Jin Hailstork.
The centerpiece of the July 16 concert of world premieres will be JFK: The Last Speech, a work for orchestra, soprano and narrator by Adolphus Hailstork. The soloists will be soprano Janice Chandler-Eteme and bass-baritone Eric Owens as narrator.
The libretto incorporates parts of a speech President John F. Kennedy gave at Amherst College Oct. 26, 1963, 27 days before his assassination in Dallas. Kennedy’s speech was given in honor of poet Robert Frost, who had died nine months before. Neil Bicknell, who heard the speech as an Amherst senior, crafted the libretto combining Kennedy’s words, which will be spoken by the narrator, and Frost’s poetry, which will be sung by the soprano.
A project of the Amherst Class of 1964, JFK: The Last Speech will be performed around the country and at Amherst College this fall. Hailstork writes in his program notes, “My writing will reflect the autumn season, the solemnity of the moment, and the unique oratorical gifts of Kennedy the president and the profound literary gifts of Frost the poet.”
Holloway’s Flatirons Escapades was composed for the 125th anniversary of Boulder’s Colorado Chautauqua. A graduate of CU, Holloway recalls in his program notes both his positive experiences in the Chautauqua Park that served as an inspiration for his score, and the healing quality of the space during times of “anxiety and internal chaos” that “are woven into the piece as well.”
Pann was Holloway’s composition teacher at CU. He writes that his Dreams I Must Not Speak “emerged from a cathartic attempt to realize, in music, three dreams I experience during sleep with noticeable regularity. These are not nightmares nor are they pleasant images, but rather odd and somewhat psychedelic scenes that have remained distinct in my awakened conscience over the years.”
Michael Christie. Photo by Eugene Yankevich
For his return to Chautauqua Auditorium, CMF Music Director Emeritus Michael Christie will team up with pianist Michelle Cann to present concertos by Ravel and the remarkable African-American composer Florence Price. A graduate of the New England Conservatory, Price is recognized as the first African-American woman to have a work played by a major orchestra. “Price is one of these people that when an audience member hears the music, people are just bowled over by the inventiveness, by the grandness of it,” Christie says.
Price played her Piano Concerto in One Movement once in 1934, after which it was thought to be lost. However, some parts were found in 2009 at her former summer home, shortly before it was to be demolished, and other fragments turned up later. The score has been reconstructed, and the concerto has had real success in recent years. Curiously, the Concerto in One Movement actually has three movements, played without break
Florence Price
The combination of Price’s African-American heritage and her classical training led to what Christie calls “this wonderful blending of American and European traditions speaking to each other.” And he finds a parallel for that combination in the Ravel Concerto. “You have Maurice Ravel just oozing with American jazz throughout this piece,” he explains.
“You’re looking Florence Price being influenced by Europe and having her own American language, and then Ravel on the other side of the Atlantic, looking at America through the lens of his own language. So the concertos kind of cross each other, over the ocean.”
The Tchaikovsky Symphony that closes the program is a great showpiece for the orchestra, and it’s also one of the most familiar pieces on the summer program. Christie remembers that when he was music director at CMF, he would “throw lots of new things at the orchestra, and they were just exhausted by the end of the summer. I realized over time that balance (between familiar and unfamiliar pieces) is not only for the audience, it’s for the orchestra too.
“It’s always a relief for an orchestra to be able to kick back and play something that they know inside and out.”
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COLORADO MUSIC FESTIVAL Performances July 11–23 All performances at Chautauqua Auditorium
7:30 p.m. Tuesday, July 11 Robert Mann Chamber Music Series: JACK Quartet
Morton Feldman: Structures for String Quartet (1951)
Caleb Burhans: Contritus (2010)
Philip Glass: String Quartet No. 5 (1991)
Caroline Shaw: Entr’acte (2011)
John Zorn: The Remedy of Fortune for String Quartet (2016)
7:30 p.m. Thursday, July 13 Festival Orchestra, Peter Oundjian, conductor With Timothy McAllister, saxophone
John Corigliano: Gazebo Dances (for orchestra) (1974) —One Sweet Morning for voice and orchestra (2010) —Triathlon for saxophone and orchestra (2020)
6:30 p.m. Sunday, July 16 World premieres: Festival Orchestra, Peter Oundjian, conductor With Janice Chandler-Eteme, soprano, and Eric Owens, narrator
Jordan Holloway: Flatiron Escapades (world premiere commission)
Carter Pann: Dreams I Must Not Speak (world premiere commission)
Adolphus Hailstork: JFK: The Last Speech (world premiere)
7:30 p.m. Tuesday, July 18 Robert Mann Chamber Music Series: Brentano String Quartet
Mozart: String Quartet in D Major, K499
James MacMillan: Memento for string quartet (1994) —For Sonny for string quartet (2011)
Beethoven, String Quartet No. 13 in B-flat Major, op. 130
7:30 p.m. Thursday, July 20, and 6:30 p.m. Friday, July 21 Festival Orchestra, Music Director Emeritus Michael Christie, conductor With Michelle Cann, piano
Ravel: Piano Concerto in G Major
Florence Price: Piano Concerto in One Movement
Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 4 in F Minor, op. 36
6:30 p.m. Sunday, July 23 Festival Orchestra, François López-Ferrer, conductor With Grace Park, violin
Mozart: Overture to The Impresario K486 —Violin Concerto No. 3 in G Major, K216 —Adagio and Fugue in C Minor, K546 —Symphony No. 36 in C Major, (“Linz”) K425
Sharps & Flatirons 