Returns to a place “full of so many memories”

By Peter Alexander July 17 at 10:20 p.m.

Michael Christie is looking forward to being back at Chautauqua this week.

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.

“(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.

“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

TICKETS

NOTE: Minor typos corrected 7/18