Boulder Opera part of collaboration presenting Colorado Sky in Broomfield and Boulder
By Peter Alexander May 31 at 2:00 p.m.
It’s one of those “only in Boulder” things.
The re-introduction of wolves in Colorado, advanced by the narrow passage of Proposition 114 in 2020, led to the composition of an opera. Not just an opera, though: a puppet opera about wolves for families with children ages three and up.
The world premiere production of the new work, Colorado Sky, will be presented Saturday at the Broomfield Auditorium in Broomfield and Sunday at the Dairy Arts Center in Boulder as part of what is billed as “the first Colorado Puppet Opera Festival” (June 3 and 4; details below). The music for Colorado Sky was composed by recent CU grad Ben Morris to a libretto by playwright Laura Fuentes.
The story of the opera is about Sky, a re-introduced wolf cub who must make new friends and adapt to his new home. It is presented through shadow puppetry and brought to musical life by three singers, Claire MaCahan, Brandon Tyler Padgett and Sabina Balsamo. The performance will accompanied by the Lirios Strung Quartet, the current string quartet in residence at the CU College of Music.
Conductor Nicholas Carthy, opera music director at CU, wrote about Colorado Sky, “It encompasses everything that opera and modern music need to be. It’s tuneful, it’s accessible, the words are wonderful, the story’s great.”
The opera is 35 minutes in length. Following each performance there will be a 30-minute puppet-making workshop. The production is presented by Art Song Colorado, working in collaboration with the Sohap Ensemble, Boulder Opera, and the Broomfield Council on the Arts and Humanities.
A jazz pianist a well as composer, Ben Morris is assistant professor of composition at Stephen F. Austin University in Nacogdoches, Texas. His Hill of Three Wishes was premiered by Pro Musica Colorado Chamber Orchestra and conductor Cynthia Katsarelis last November.
Librettist and playwright Laura Fuentes lives in Baltimore. She has had a commission from Washington National Opera and participated in College Light Opera Company’s New Works program, and her plays have been recognized in several new works programs and festivals.
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Colorado Puppet Opera Festival Art Song Colorado, in collaboration with Sohap Ensemble, Boulder Opera, and the Broomfield Council on the Arts and Humanities Nicholas Carthy, conductor
Ben Morris and Laura Fuentes: Colorado Sky (world premiere; puppet opera)
6 p.m. Saturday, June 3, Broomfield Auditorium, Broomfield TICKETS
1 and 3 p.m. Sunday, June 4, Dairy Arts Center, Boulder TICKETS
Folkish new piece by UC grad Ben Morris, “utterly enjoyable” concerto by Florence Price
By Peter Alexander Nov. 20 at 12:15 a.m.
Last night (Nov. 19) conductor Cynthia Katsarelis and the Pro Musical Colorado Chamber Orchestra opened their 2022-23 concert season in the newly-renovated sanctuary of the Mountain View Methodist Church in Boulder.
Cynthia Katsarelis and the Pro Musica Colorado Chamber Orchestra
Venue renovations often bring gains and losses, and this was no exception. This is worth noting, because the Mountain View church is being used more as a concert venue. It is a visually attractive space, and offers about the best parking of any venue in Boulder.
The carpet has been removed and replaced with a hard wood floor, and the pews have been replaced with reasonably comfortable chairs, which is all to the good. The sound is much more lively than before, and it may take performers a while to adjust to the new acoustic. Balance is problematic, as the strings had a hard time being heard over the boosted wind sounds. The wood floor certainly beefed up the bass, although not always in a helpful way. In time performers will likely adjust to the increased resonance.
Ben Morris
The concert opened with the world premiere of The Hill of Three Wishes by Ben Morris, winner of the 2021 CU composition Competition. Reflecting the legend of Helgafell , a magical hill in Iceland that grants three wishes to anyone who can walk to the top without looking back, the score has an attractive folkish quality. It is written in a modal style that avoids harsh dissonance and welcomes listeners.
Morris makes great use of instrumental sounds to create a mythic quality that Katsarelis compared to The Lord of the Rings. Opening brass gestures establish the setting. An ancient Icelandic folk song adds a sense of timelessness, and at the end the music drifts atmospherically into silence. From the score I couldn’t tell if Morris was granted his wishes—did he, like Orpheus, submit to the temptation to look back?—but the hike is clearly a pleasant one. The brief score should find willing performers and audience enjoyment.
Another rare adventure was provided by the Piano Concerto in One Movement by Florence Price, whose music from the early 20th century was once forgotten but is being rediscovered. The first African American woman to have her music performed by a major orchestra when her First Symphony was premiered by the Chicago Symphony in 1933, Price was a skilled and accomplished composer. The concerto is symbolic of her fate: the full orchestral setting was lost and only rediscovered in 2019. Pro Musica is among the first to perform it as originally written.
The concerto is, however, misnamed as it is not truly in one movement. There is a clear cadence and break between the first and second movements, and the dramatic transition from the slow movement to the lively finale parallels many classical concertos. Like many of Price’s works, the score draws on her African American heritage, from the bluesy trumpet and trombone riffs at the outset, to the slow movement that channels dozens of great spirituals, and the juba dance finale that could easily be mistaken for a Joplinesque rag. This is a unique and valuable part of our country’s musical history.
Jennifer Hayghe
Pianist Jennifer Hayghe gamely tackled the difficult solo part—Price herself was a virtuoso pianist—but while she started with a resounding first entrance, at other times balance issues prevented her playing from being clearly heard. Moments of lighter orchestration, with the piano against one or two winds, worked best. As well as I could hear, Hayghe carried off the solo part handily. Special notice should go to flutist Michelle Stanley, oboist Miriam Kapner and cellist Carole Whitney (if the program is to be trusted) for their solos in the second movement.
The finale had compelling energy, but as performed it was essentially an orchestral dance movement with the piano playing along. This is an utterly enjoyable movement, whether it shows off the pianist to full advantage or not. Katsarelis, Hayghe and the Pro Musica deserve our gratitude for bringing a valuable but rarely heard piece to the Boulder audience. Now that the original score has been reassembled, others should take up this concerto.
The concert concluded with a spirited reading of Beethoven’s powerful, popular Seventh Symphony. Audiences are used to hearing it played by larger ensembles, but a smaller orchestra like Pro Musica can bring a welcome muscularity and clarity to this and other classical scores. Once again, however, the lively acoustic was sometimes problematic. The fast rhythmic figures of the first movement and rapid passages in the strings were sometimes obscured by the punctuating chords or lost in the general resonance of the space.
Katsarelis followed all the road signs of Beethoven’s score, outlining both the structure and the drama of the piece. While some dynamic differences were swallowed in the overall resonance, she kept the tempo and maintained the thrust all the way to the end. That’s just what Beethoven calls for, and it provided a rousing culmination for the concert.
Conductor Cynthia Katsarelis and the Pro Musica Colorado Chamber Orchestra will present the world premiere of The Hill of Three Wishes by former CU composition student Ben Morris on their next concert, Saturday at Mountain View Methodist Church in Boulder (7:30 p.m. Nov. 19).
The score was selected last year as the winner of an annual competition that Pro Musica holds in collaboration with the CU composition department. The department gives Katsarelis works by several composers, and she selects one composer to receive a commission from a fund that was financed by the late Thurston Manning. Normally the new works are premiered in the spring, but last year’s planned performance was postponed.
The concert, titled “Apotheosis of the Dance,” opens the Pro Musica 2022–23 season of three concerts. Other works on the program are Florence Price’s Piano Concerto in One Movement, which concludes with an African American juba dance; and Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony in A major, which has such exuberant rhythmic movement that Richard Wagner once called it “the apotheosis of the dance.”
Pianist Jennifer Hayghe, the chair of the CU Roser Piano and Keyboard Program, will be the soloist for Price’s concerto.
“Ben Morris is a wonderful emerging composer,” Katsarelis says. “First of all he really knows what to do with an orchestra. His orchestration is superb, and his colors, and the textures.
“He has two major influences: a jazz background, but also a Scandinavian (Norwegian) background. And so he gets this Nordic folk music aspect into his music, sometimes with extended jazz chords.”
Helgafell, Iceland. Photo by Ben Morris.
The Hill of Three Wishes is based on Helgafell, a site in Iceland that Morris visited. The legend about Helgafell is that if you can hike to the top without looking back, you will be granted three wishes. He incorporated an ancient Icelandic song into the score, which gives the music “a medieval sound,” Katsarelis says. “He weaves it in nicely, and you can really imagine the climb up the hill.”
Price, whose career spanned the first half of the 20th century, was a composer, pianist and organist trained at the New England Conservatory. She was the first African American woman to have music presented by a major orchestra, when her First Symphony was played by the Chicago Symphony in 1933.
For many years, the original score of her Piano Concerto in One Movement was lost, and the piece was known only from a two-piano version. Some orchestral parts were found in Price’s former summer home, and others turned up recently at an auction, allowing the assembly of the original orchestration. That original version has been published and will be used by Pro Musica.
Florence Price. Photo by G. Niledoff.
“Although it’s a piano concerto in one movement, it does have three sections that correspond to a fast first movement, a slow second movement, and then a jolly finale,” Katsarelis says. “The finale is a juba dance, and the whole thing clearly draws on her African American background.
“The second movement is reflective (and) has a call and response aspect to it. The first movement has melodies that you can associate with spirituals, or maybe a blues. It’s quite virtuosic for the piano, which I think speaks to Florence Price’s (skills as a pianist).”
Price was born in Little Rock, Ark., but she and her family joined the Great Migration of Southern Blacks to the north and settled in Chicago. There she became part of what is called the “Chicago Renaissance,” which was akin to the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and ‘30s. “She was incredibly active,” Katsarelis says.
“She belonged to two women’s music clubs, she was playing recitals all the time, she got her symphony performed by the Chicago Symphony, (and) her other symphonies were done by the Women’s Symphony in Chicago and Detroit. She got excellent reviews for the piano concerto and her symphony, and then it all disappeared. Her music is re-emerging, and rightfully so: it’s such a wonderful, authentic, American voice and we owe a great debt of gratitude for her.”
The program concludes with Beethoven Seventh Symphony, which Katsarelis selected for several reasons. “It’s one of his most beloved symphonies for good reason,” she says. “I could have picked a couple of other Beethoven symphonies, but I thought (the Seventh) went so well with the Florence Price, with the juba dance. It’s an incredibly joyful and energetic piece, with long (melodic) lines and moments of insanity—it takes you on a journey!”
Another reason is that she thinks that the symphony, with its joyful ending, speaks to our current time in an important way. “Beethoven’s music is perceived as coming out of that enlightenment philosophy of the common man who can rise above with his achievements,” she says. “That’s something that we always admire.
“Given the challenges of our time, I think it’s an inspirational and hopeful message.”
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“The Apotheosis of the Dance” Pro Musica Colorado Chamber Orchestra, Cynthia Katsarelis, conductor With Jennifer Hayghe, piano
Ben Morris: The Hill of Three Wishes (world premiere)
Florence Price: Piano Concerto in One Movement (restored original version)
Sharps & Flatirons 