Boulder Phil to premiere a new work about the solar system Sunday
By Peter Alexander Nov. 6 at 2:55 p.m.
Gustav Holst’s seven-movement orchestral suite The Planets is one of the best known and most popular pieces in the orchestral repertoire. But did you know there is a new piece about the moons in our solar system to go with it?
That new piece, Moons of the Giants by Colorado composer John Heins, will receive its world premiere from the Boulder Philharmonic on a program that includes Holst’s score at 4 p.m. Sunday (Nov. 10; details below). The performance will be led by guest conductor Scott O’Neil, who is staff orchestrator and conductor for the Colorado Symphony. He replaces the Boulder Phil’s music director Michael Butterman, who will be out for the remainder of 2024 for health reasons.
John Heins
Heins wrote the piece without a commission, just from his own inspiration, and then hoped to find an orchestra that would play it. Butterman said he liked the score as soon as he took a look at it, and even though he won’t be able to conduct in it Boulder he plans to perform it with the Shreveport Symphony in Louisiana, which he also directs, in January.
“I’m just sorry that I won’t get to conduct the premiere,” he wrote in an email.
In an online interview, Heins said “I’ve always been really interested in astronomy and space exploration. The Holst (Planets) is one of my favorite pieces, and I’ve thought about writing some type of piece like that. I came up with the idea to write about some of the moons of some of the planets.
“I narrowed it down to the so-called ‘gas-giant’ planets—Neptune, Uranus, Jupiter and Saturn—and picked one or two moons of each of these planets. . . . I picked six of the moons. Each one has a different character and mood. (The score is) pretty programmatic and moody, just trying to bring across the impression that the moons had on me when I researched them.”
In his written communication, Butterman noted that “Heins’ work will be presented along with video prepared by CU’s Fiske Planetarium.”
Gustav Holst
The second half of the program, comprising Holst’s Planets, is presented in honor of the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth. Holst wrote The Planets over a three-year span from 1914 to 1917. Each movement describes not the physical nature of the planet but its astrological significance and the mythological character for which it is named.
The first performance, given in London in 1918, was initially met with hostility from some critics, due to Holst’s imaginative use of color and harmony. Nevertheless, the suite quickly gained popularity with audiences. Today it is one of Holst’s most widely performed pieces, and has been recorded more than 80 times.
Sarah Gillis and violin on the Polaris Dawn spaceship
The concert will be preceded by a pre-performance talk starting at 3 p.m. featuring SpaceX astronaut Sarah Gillis who is a Boulder native. She studied Suzuki violin and played in the Youth Orchestra in Boulder, went to CU-Boulder, and even babysat for Butterman’s daughter during his first years with the orchestra.
While on the recent Polaris Dawn mission, Gillis played her violin in orbit and completed a space walk. She will be onstage with conductor Scott O’Neil, and will be joined virtually by Butterman from Shreveport.
Guest conductor Scott O’Neill
O’Neil recently completed a nine-year tenure as Resident Conductor with the Colorado Symphony in Denver. During his time there he performed with renowned soloists, including Itzhak Perlman, Joshua Bell, Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, Pinchas Zukerman and Van Cliburn. O’Neil has also created and developed a series of educational concerts titled “Inside the Score” that combined art, entertainment and enlightenment to engage audiences.
As an arranger/orchestrator, O’Neil has created and orchestrated numerous works for the Colorado Symphony. He continues to guest conduct and to lead his own ensemble, the Rosetta Music Society, in Denver.
Heins’s compositions have been performed throughout the United States, Canada and Europe. His works include music for symphonic band and orchestra as well as solo piano works and chamber music. He received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Montana and a master’s degree from the University of Colorado, Boulder. He has taught at Rocky Mountain College in Billings, Montana.
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“Moons and Planets” Boulder Philharmonic Orchestra, Scott O’Neil, guest conductor
John Heins: Moons of the Giants (world premiere)
Gustav Holst: The Planets
4 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 10 Macky Auditorium
3 p.m.: Pre-performance discussion in the Macky Auditorium with O’Neill and SpaceX astronaut Sarah Gillis
The Central City Opera (CCO) has announced its 2025 summer season—or at least two thirds of it.
As in recent years, there will be two operas and a Broadway musical performed in the historic opera house in Central City. For 2025 the two operas will be Rossini’s enduring comic masterpiece The Barber of Seville, and a new work by Serbian-American composer Aleksandra Vrebalov, The Knock.
The Broadway musical has not been announced, although a recent news release from CCO says, coyly, “We won’t be shy about announcing the title of the Golden-Age musical comedy after it ends its limited run on Broadway in January.” I won’t speculate, but you can fuel your imagination by looking up the shows currently on Broadway.
The French playwright Pierre Beaumarchais wrote three plays about the cagey character of Figaro, starting with The Barber of Seville. It was adopted several times as an opera, including a popular version by Giovanni Paisiello. When Rossini’s version premiered in Rome in 1816 it was booed on opening night but—thanks to the brilliant score—soon vanquished all previous versions.
In the play and opera, Figaro cleverly outwits the elderly Dr. Bartolo, who has designs on his young ward, Rosina, and arranges her marriage to her lover, Count Almaviva. In addition to several comic ensemble scenes, the score includes Figaro’s famous entry aria “Largo al factotum” and Rosina’s virtuosic showpiece “Una voce poco fa.”
Aleksandra Vrebalov
Born in Serbia, Vrebalov came to the United States to study in 1995 and became a U.S. citizen in 2005. She holds a doctorate in music from the University of Michigan. Her works have been performed by the Kronos Quartet, Glimmerglass Opera with Cincinnati Opera, the English National Ballet and the Belgrade Philharmonic, among others.
A patriotic story of military wives awaiting news of their deployed husbands, The Knockis Verbalov’s third opera. It was commissioned by the Cincinnati Opera, but due to the COVID pandemic the stage premiere was postponed. The first performance was recorded on film with the Glimmerglass Festival Orchestra. That performance was directed by Alison Moritz, now the artistic director of Central City Opera.
The CCO production will represent a regional premiere, following sold-out onstage performances in Cincinnati.
Prize-winning quartet from Japan will play Haydn, Ligeti and Brahms
By Peter Alexander Oct. 30 at 4:55 p.m.
Quartet Integra, the 2024 guest ensemble on the Takács Quartet’s campus concert series at CU Boulder, will perform in Grusin Music Hall Sunday afternoon and Monday evening (4 p.m. Nov. 3 and 7:30 p.m. Nov. 4; details below).
Following a traditional program format of classical-contemporary-Romantic works, they will perform Haydn’s String Quartet in B minor, op. 33 no. 1, György Ligeti’s String Quartet No. 2 and Brahms’s String Quartet No. 3 in B-flat major. Tickets are available for both in-person and online attendance.
Quartet Integra
The Quartet Integra—violinists Kyoka Misawa and Rinato Kikuno, violist Itsuki Yamamoto and cellist Ye Un Park—formed in 2015 and began their studies at the Toho Gakuen School of Music in Tokyo. They continued their academic work as a quartet as Fellows at the Suntory Hall Chamber Music Academy. They are currently enrolled in the Chamber Ensemble-in-Residence Program at the Colburn School in Los Angeles.
The Quartet won Second Prize and the Audience Award at the 2022 ARD International Music Competition, First Prize at the 2021 Bartók World Competition, and First Prize, the Prize of Beethoven and Grand Prix Award at the 2019 Akiyoshidai Music Competition. Upcoming performances include a New York debut at the Schneider Concert series at the New School, a contemporary recital at Boston Court, a recital as part of the Discovery Series at the La Jolla Music Society and the ECHO Chamber Music Series in El Cajon, California, among others.
Past festival performances include the Suntory Chamber Music Garden Festival, the Kanazawa, Hukuyama and Takefu International Festivals. Quartet Integra has commissioned many new works from Japanese composers and given more than a dozen world premieres.
In 1779 Haydn’s employer, Prince Nicolaus Esterhazy, granted the composer the right to sell his works to publishers. One of the first sets of works where Haydn took advantage of that freedom was his set of six string quartets, composed in 1781 and known as Op. 33. Haydn wrote to a number of amateur musicians inviting them to subscribe to manuscript copies of the quartets, which he said were written “von einer Neu, gantz besonderer Art” (a new and entirely special way).
There is disagreement whether the six quartets truly represent a “new way” of composition, or the phrase was just salesmanship by Haydn. Either way, the set is regarded as one of Haydn’s major works defining the classical style. In addition to the manuscript parts Haydn offered, the quartets were published separately in Vienna, Berlin and London. Consequently, they were widely known, and may have been the inspiration for the six quartets Mozart wrote 1782–85 and dedicated to Haydn.
György Ligeti
The second of Hungarian composer György Ligeti’s four string quartets was written in 1968 and dedicated to the La Salle Quartet, who played in the premiere in 1969. The five movements share related material but represent five different styles of musical motion, from gentle lyricism to mechanical pizzicato to fast and aggressive, and other stops in between.
Brahms composed three string quartets that have survived, as well as a large number of early quartets that he destroyed. The one known as his Third Quartet, composed in 1875, was dedicated to Theodor Wilhelm Engelmann, an amateur cellist, in spite of which it contains no major themes or solos for the cello. Later Brahms wrote to Engelmann, “This quartet rather resembles your wife—very dainty but brilliant.”
It is one of Brahms’s most animated and cheerful works. The first and fourth movements are particularly playful, full of bouncing, propulsive rhythms. The central movements—a wistful slow movement and an agitated waltz movement—are move serious in mood.
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Quartet Integra
Haydn: String Quartet in B minor, op. 33 no. 1
György Ligeti: String Quartet No. 2
Brahms: String Quartet No. 3, op. 67
4 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 3 and 7:30p.m. Monday, Nov. 4 Grusin Music Hall
Boulder Symphony celebrates Día de los Muertos; BCO presents Vivaldi and Pergolesi
By Peter Alexander Oct. 29 at 9:40 p.m.
“The Creative Spirit,” the Fall Curiosity Concert of the Boulder Symphony, will be presented Saturday (3 p.m. Nov. 2) at Grace Commons.
The Boulder Symphony and director Devin Patrick Hughes will present two Curiosity Concerts as part of their 2024–25 season, one each in the fall and the spring. Curiosity Concerts are designed as interactive, educational experiences for family audiences. They typically use humorous characters, trivia and original stories to entertain as well as educate the audiences.
Statue of La Llorana at Xochimilco, Mexico. Photo by KatyaMSL.
The Fall Curiosity Concert, lasting 45 minutes, will celebrate La Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead). Joining the Symphony for portions of the concert will be the Niwot High School Mariachi Ensemble and the Longmont Youth Symphony.
The performance will tell the tale of a ghostly composer who reunites with a musical partner for the premiere of their final composition, only to discover that the piece was never finished. They turn to the audience for help completing the song before the ghostly composer vanishes again.
The program will feature not only the imaginary composer’s new work but also familiar tunes including Radiohead’s “Creep,” Kate Bush’s “Running up the Hill” and “La Llorana” (The weeping woman), a Mexican folk song based on the legend of a woman weeping over the loss of her children, or her lover. The song has often been used for Día de los Muertos festivities.
The performance will also include music from the standard classical orchestra repertoire, including Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony and Arturo Márquez’s Dánzon No. 2.
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Fall Curiosity Concert: The Creative Spirit Boulder Symphony, Devin Patrick Hughes, conductor With the Niwot High School Mariachi Ensemble and Longmont Youth Symphony
The Boulder Chamber Orchestra (BCO) will present an all-Baroque program Saturday featuring violinist Zachary Carrettin, director of the Boulder Bach Festival playing concertos by Vivaldi, for violin solo and with other strings (7:30 p.m. Nov. 2 at the Boulder Adventist Church; details below). Other soloists for two of the concertos will be members of the BCO.
Also featured on the program are soprano Jennifer Ellis Kampani and mezzo-soprano Gabrielle Razafinjatovo performing the Stabat Mater of Giovanni Battista Pergolesi. The concert will be conducted by Bahman Saless, music director of the BCO.
Published as Op. 3, L’estro armonico is a set of 12 concertos by Vivaldi for stringed instruments. The set was published in Amsterdam in 1711, making it the first set of Vivaldi’s concertos to be printed. The concertos are organized in four sets of three concertos each, with each set containing first a concerto for four violins with strings; second for two violins, cello and strings; and third for solo violin and strings.
Zachary Carrettin
The concertos were probably written for performance by students at the Ospedale della Pietà, the orphanage/music school where Vivaldi was employed as music teacher. Later the published edition was widely circulated in Europe and the concertos were performed as both church music and secular chamber pieces. At least six of the concertos were arranged in various settings by J.S. Bach.
The BCO performance will present two of the solo violin concertos with Carrettin as soloist, as well as one each for two violins and cello, and for four violins, with Carrettin joined by members of the orchestra as additional soloists.
Pergolesi wrote his Stabat Mater in 1736, weeks before his untimely death at the age of only 26. The manuscript was preserved at the Benedictine Abbey of Monte Cassino in Italy, which was the site of brutal battles in World War II. After being nearly destroyed, the abbey was rebuilt after the war.
While many works attributed to Pergolesi were in fact written by others, due to the survival of the original manuscript the Stabat Mater is known to be his. The title literally means “The mother was standing.” The text is a 13th-century hymn to the Virgin Mary, describing her suffering during the crucifixion of Jesus. The hymn has been set by many European composers from the 15th century to the current day.
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“L’estro armonico“ Boulder Chamber Orchestra, Bahman Saless, conductor With Zachary Carrettin, violin; Brune Macary, Annamaria Karacson, Kina Ono, and Ava Pacheco, violins; Joey Howe, cello; Jennifer Ellis Kampani, soprano; and Gabrielle Razafinjatovo, mezzo-soprano
Vivaldi: Four concertos from L’estro armonico (The harmonic inspiration) —Concerto No. 9 in D major for violin, RV230 —Concerto No. 11 in D minor two violins and cello, RV565 —Concerto No. 6 in A minor for violin, RV 356 —Concerto No. 10 in B minor for 4 violins, RV580
Pergolesi: Stabat Mater
7:30 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 2, Boulder Adventist Church
Boulder Concert Chorale and Boulder Phil perform weekend concerts
By Peter Alexander Oct. 24 at 2 p.m.
The Boulder Concert Chorale will present a work celebrating peace, with texts from more than a dozen authors, to start its 2024–25 season.
The concert, at 4 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 26, at the First United Methodist Church in Boulder, will feature The Peacemakers by Sir Karl Jenkins, a Welsh composer whose music is widely performed. Authors of texts for the 17 movements of The Peacemakers include Percy Bysshe Shelley, Gandhi, the Dalai Lama, Terry Waite, Mother Teresa, Albert Schweitzer, St. Francis of Assisi, Rumi, Nelson Mandela and Anne Frank.
Known principally as a jazz and jazz-rock musician, Jenkins plays baritone and soprano saxophones, keyboards and oboe. He has written music for advertising, winning prizes for work in that field, as well as a series of crossover albums under the title Adiemus. Originally written for a Delta Airlines advertisement, the original song Adiemus and the subsequent albums contributed to the growth of Jenkins’s recognition as a composer.
The Peacemakers was premiered in Carnegie Hall in 2012. Jenkins dedicated the score “to the memory of all those who lost their lives during armed conflict: in particular innocent civilians.” The composer has written that one line from Rumi summarizes the underlying idea of the piece: “All religions, all singing one song: Peace be with you.”
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Boulder Concert Chorale Vicki Burrichter, artistic director and conductor
Sir Karl Jenkins: The Peacemakers
4 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 26 First United Methodist Church, Boulder
The Boulder Philharmonic Orchestra presents “Bewitching,” a Halloween Extravaganza, Saturday in Northglenn and next Wednesday in Macky Auditorium (Oct. 27 and 30; details below).
Aiming to start “a new tradition,” the Boulder Phil added the Halloween concert this season to their usual schedule of masterworks concerts and special events including the annual Holiday performances of The Nutcracker. Along with the “Shift” series of informal concerts featuring players in unique venues, “Bewitching” represents a populist trend in programming running parallel to the more traditional orchestral concerts.
Billed as “a spine-tingling evening filled with haunting melodies and thrilling orchestral arrangements, perfect for audiences of all ages,” “Bewitching” features film music along with light classical music with magical or eerie associations. Concertgoers are encouraged to wear costumes.
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“Bewitching: Halloween Extravaganza” Boulder Philharmonic Orchestra, Gary Lewis, conductor
Events presented by The Academy, Boulder Bach and Boulder Chamber Orchestra
By Peter Alexander Oct. 16 at 10:33 a.m.
The Academy, University Hill will present pianist Eugene Gaub and violinist Nancy McFarland Gaub performing in their Chapel Hall Friday evening (7 p.m. Oct. 18; details below).
Their performance of works by Beethoven and César Franck will be free, but audience members are asked to RSVP in advance. Eugene Gaub will perform Beethoven’s late Piano Sonata No. 28 in A major op. 101, and together they will perform Franck’s Sonata in A major for violin and piano.
Eugene Gaub is emeritus professor of music at Grinnell College in Iowa, where he taught music theory and courses in music history from 1995 to 2022. A graduate of the Juilliard School, he holds a doctorate and performer’s certificate from the Eastman School of Music.
The manuscript of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 28
Throughout her career, violinist and composer Nancy McFarland Gaub has performed as a soloist, chamber and orchestral musician in the U.S., Europe and Africa. She also was an artist-in-residence and taught violin and chamber music at Grinnell College for 25 years.
Composed in 1816, Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 28 is considered the beginning of his third and final period of composition. The composer himself called the sonata “a series of impressions and reveries.” When he wrote the sonata he was almost totally deaf, only able to communicate with friends through the notebooks that he kept for the remainder of his life. This isolation may be the reason that, like the other late sonatas, No. 28 creates a sense of intimacy.
Franck wrote his Violin Sonata in 1886 as a wedding gift for the violinist Eugène Ysaÿe. The public premiere of the sonata, given by Ysaÿe with the pianist Marie-Léontine Bordes-Pène has become something of a legend. It was the last piece on a long program given at the Museum of Modern Painting in Brussels. By the time the performers started the Sonata, it was already dusk, but the museum did not allow artificial light. Ysaÿe and Bordes-Pène had to complete the performance from memory in the darkened room.
From that auspicious beginning, the Sonata has become one of the most revered sonatas for violin and piano, and one of Franck’s best known works.
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Eugene Gaub, piano, and Nancy McFarland Gaub, violin
Beethoven: Piano Sonata No. 28 in A major, op. 101
César Franck: Sonata in A major for violin and piano
7 p.m. Friday, Oct. 18 Chapel Hall, The Academy University Hill, Boulder
The Boulder Bach Festival will present its COmpass REsonance (CORE) ensemble and guest artists in a program of music by relatively little known Baroque composers Saturday at the Dairy Arts Center (4 p.m. Oct. 19 in the Gordon Gamm Theater; details below).
Featured artists will be the festival’s director, violinist Zachary Carrettin and 10-string guitarist Keith Barnhart, a member of the CORE ensemble. They will be joined by Chris Holman, harpsichord; Joseph Howe, cello; and guest artist soprano Mara Riley.
With little known composers, the program provides an opportunity to explore an intriguing and idiosyncratic segment of music history. The performers will play and sing music of the early Baroque period, in a style known as the stile moderno (modern style) that represented a striking departure from the music of the late Renaissance.
Many of the composers included on the program were themselves virtuoso performers, and their works expanded the possibilities of both instrumental and vocal music. The composers on the program are Alessandro Stradella, Nicola Matteis, Marco Uccellini, Johann Heinrich Schmelzer, Giuseppi Maria Jacchini, Silvia Leopold Weiss and Tarquinio Merula.
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“Passion and Poetry“ Boulder Bach Festival CORE Ensemble, Zachary Carrettin, music director/violinist With Keith Barnhart, 10-string guitar; Chris Holman, harpsichord; Joseph Howe, cello; and Mara Riley, soprano
Works by Alessandro Stradella, Nicola Matteis, Marco Uccellini, Johann Heinrich Schmelzer, Giuseppi Maria Jacchini, Silvia’s Leopold Weiss and Tarquinio Merula
4 p.m. Saturday, October 19 Gordon Gamm Theater, Dairy Arts Center
Boulder Chamber Orchestra’s Mini-Chamber I, their first concert of chamber music for the 2024–25 season, will feature music by Beethoven, British composer Frank Bridge, and French composer Lili Boulanger Saturday (7:30 p.m. Oct. 19 at the Boulder Adventist Church; details below).
The program is the first in a series of four Mini-Chamber performances that will be presented by the Boulder Chamber Orchestra (BCO). Three of the performances, including Oct. 19, will feature the BCO’s artist in residence for the current season, pianist Jennifer Hayghe. For the first program she will be joined by orchestra members Sarah Whitnah, violin, and Andrew Brown, cello, for a program of music for piano trio.
English composer Frank Bridge is remembered today mostly as the teacher of Benjamin Britten, who honored the older composer with his “Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge” for strings. Bridge wrote three sets of miniatures for piano trio, from which Hayghe has chosen four pieces for this program. They were written for one of Bridge’s violin students, but critics have suggested that they are too sophisticated to be considered “student works.”
The younger sister of the music teacher Nadia Boulanger, Lili died at the tragically young age of 24. The first female winner of the Prix de Rome composition prize, Lili showed precocious musical talent as young as four, when she accompanied her older sister to classes at the Paris Conservatoire. Her music has recently become better known.
Jennifer Hayghe
Written in 1918, D’un matin de printemps (Of a spring morning) was one of the last works she completed. It was written in versions for solo violin, flute, and piano, for piano trio, and for orchestra.
One of the most tuneful and frequently performed of Beethoven’s works, the Piano Trio Op. 97 is known as the “Archduke Trio.” It was dedicated to Archduke Rudolph of Austria, later the Archbishop of Olomouc (Olmütz) and a Catholic Cardinal. An amateur pianist, Rudolph was a patron and composition student of Beethoven, who dedicated several major works to him, including his Piano Concerto No. 5 (“Emperor”) and the Missa Solemnis.
The Trio was composed 1810–11, toward the end of Beethoven’s so-called “heroic” middle period of compositions. Written at a time when the composer was in unusually good spirits, the Trio has none of the angst or fierce drive of his Fifth Symphony and other music we associate with the more rebellious aspect of his character. It is composed in a traditional but expansive four-movement sonata form.
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Mini-Chamber I Jennifer Hayghe, piano, with members of the BCO
Frank Bridge: Miniatures for Piano Trio, Nos. III–IV–V–VIII
Lili Boulanger: D’un matin de printemps (Of a spring morning)
Beethoven: Piano Trio in B-flat major, op. 97 (“Archduke”)
7:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 19 Boulder Adventist Church
Longmont Symphony, Ars Nova Singers launch 2024-25 seasons
By Peter Alexander Oct. 1 at 4:55 p.m.
The Longmont Symphony Orchestra (LSO)and conductor Elliot Moore open “Sound in Motion,” their 2024–25 concert season, Saturday evening (7 p.m. Oct. 5; details below) with two American works and a orchestral showpiece.
Breaking from the pattern of previous seasons, the opening night concert will be held at the Longmont High School Auditorium. An abbreviated version of the same program will be presented Sunday afternoon at 4 p.m. at Frederick High School.
All remaining LSO concerts during the season, including the Christmas-season Nutcrackers, will be held in the usual venue of Vance Brand Civic Auditorium.
Pianist Spencer Myer
Soloist for the Longmont HS performance will be pianist Spencer Myer, a faculty member at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, who will play George Gershwin’s Concerto in F for piano. The program begins with the Overture to another American masterpiece, Bernstein’s musical stage work Candide. Ending the program is Ravel’s familiar orchestration of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition.
Bernstein’s Candide was originally composed in 1956 for Broadway, although today it is considered an operetta rather than a musical. The original show was not a success on dramatic grounds, in spite of the brilliant music Bernstein wrote, including the popular coloratura soprano aria “Glitter and Be Gay.” Various revisions of the original show have included textual contributions by lyricist Richard Wilbur plus Lillian Hellman, Stephen Sondheim, Dorothy Parker, John LaTouche and Bernstein himself.
Today the operetta is gaining ground among opera companies, but regardless of its fluctuating fate, the Overture has been a popular program number from the beginning. Full of brilliant flourishes, delightful tunes and heady syncopations, it is the ideal concert opener.
Gershwin’s Piano Concerto was commissioned by the conductor Walter Damrosch, who attended the Feb. 12, 1924 premiere of Rhapsody in Blue. The very next day Damrosch contacted Gershwin to ask him for a piano concerto, which he was able to complete over a period of three months in the summer of 1925.
Audiences have always liked the concerto, which is today considered one of the essentials of the American music repertoire. The score incorporates jazz elements, but is much closer to the traditional format of a concerto with orchestra than is the Rhapsody. It appears on concert programs, has been featured in films, has been recorded by numerous pianists, and has even been featured in ice skating routines.
The program closes with the Mussorgsky/Ravel Pictures at at Exhibition, one of the best known and most loved showpieces for orchestra.
The program for the performance in Frederick will include the Overture to Candide and Pictures at an Exhibition only.
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Opening Night Longmont Symphony Orchestra, Elliot Moore, conductor With Spencer Myer, piano
Leonard Bernstein: Overture to Candide
George Gershwin: Piano Concerto in F
Mussorgsky: Pictures at at Exhibition (arr. Ravel)
7 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 5 Longmont High School Auditorium
Encore performance: 4 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 6 Frederick High School Auditorium (same program minus the Gershwin Concerto)
Boulder’s Ars Nova Singers embark on a season of “Contrasts” this weekend with a concert titled “Here/There.”
The opening concert, “Here/There,” will be presented Sunday at the Diary Arts Center in Boulder (4 p.m. Oct. 6; details below). The program features music from here and there not only geographically—that is, from different parts of the world—but also chronologically, from both the present (here) and the past (there). Featured composers include Henry Purcell, Anton Bruckner, Benjamin Britten, and György Ligeti, as well as contemporary women composers Sheena Phillips and Dale Trumbore.
Ars Nova Singers. Conductor Thomas Morgan kneeling front left.
Conductor Tom Morgan wrote in a news release, “Dark and light, motion and stasis, intimate and universal, deeply familiar and refreshingly new—our season searches for the balance point in all of these.” In addition to “Here/There,” the season includes concerts titled “Light/Shadow,” “Lost/Found,” “Science/Fantasy” and “Time/Eternity” (see the full season HERE).
Although the choir’s name—Ars Nova, or “new art”—refers in history to a musical style from the 14th century, the group has specialized in a broader range of music, specifically the Renaissance and the 20th and 21st centuries. For this program there is no music from the Renaissance, but the old is represented by “Music for a While” by the English Baroque composer Henry Purcell (1659–1695).
There is a rare—for Ars Nova Singers—piece from the late Romantic period, Anton Bruckner’s Os justii (The mouth of the righteous) composed in 1879. A sacred motet setting of a text from Gregorian chant, it was written for the choirmaster at St. Florian Abbey, one of the largest monasteries in Austria.
Other works on the program range from the early 20th century—Ravel’s Trois beaux oiseaux (Three beautiful birds)— right up to today with works by the living American composers Frank Ticheli, Jake Runestad and Dale Trumbore, among others (full program listed below).
The performance, a benefit celebrating the past and future of Ars Nova Singers, will be preceded by a 3 p.m. reception in the Dairy Arts Center lobby.
Ars Nova Singers bill themselves as “an auditioned vocal group specializing in a cappella music of the Renaissance and the 20th/21st centuries” that aims “to delight, inspire, and enlighten our audiences.”
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Here/There Ars Nova Singers, Thomas Morgan, conductor
Henry Purcell: “Music for a While”
Dale Trumbore: “Love is a sickness”
Bruckner: Os justi (The mouth of the righteous)
Ravel: Trois beaux oiseaux (Three beautiful birds)
Luigi Denza: “Call Me Back” (arr. Morgan)
György Ligeti: Lux aeterna (Eternal light)
Sam Henderson: “Moonswept”
Sheena Philips: “Circle of Life”
Sarah Quartel: “Sing, My Child”
Frank Ticheli: “Earth Song”
Jake Runestad: “Let My Love Be Heard”
Britten: “Advance Democracy”
4 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 6 Gordon Gamm Theater, Dairy Arts Center
BCO launches 20th anniversary season that will take them to Carnegie Hall
By Peter Alexander Oct. 1 at 2:50 p.m.
About 20 years ago, Bahman Saless was standing in a church basement, getting ready to conduct his first concert ever.
“We started with just an idea, and I had never conducted before. We only had two professional players (in the orchestra) and didn’t know who was going to come. It was a complete surprise—it was standing room only!”
Bahman Saless leading the Boulder Chamber Orchestra
That successful idea, which became the Boulder Chamber Orchestra (BCO), celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, starting with a concert at the Boulder Adventist Church Sunday (7:30 p.m. Oct. 6; details below) and culminating with with a concert at Carnegie Hall in New York May 18 (7:30 p.m.; details HERE).
To open the anniversary year, Saless decided to write a piece celebrating Colorado, titled Ode to the Rocky Mountains. Although he has rarely programmed his own music before, he had several years of experience writing and scoring film music in Hollywood before he started the BCO. “I did a lot of (uncredited) trailers for Hollywood films at Universal Studios,” he says.
To start the season, “I thought what’s better than something that celebrates Colorado?” Saless says. “I wrote a little piece that’s based on the two Colorado state songs, ‘Where the Columbine Grow’ and ‘Rocky Mountain High.’ It has five episodes that represent our own experience every time we go to the mountains.”
In the space of about five and half minutes, its five episode are: “Entering the Boulder Valley off Highway 36, heading West to the Mountains,” “Resting by the Brook in the Meadow,” “Playful Wildlife Amidst the Columbine,” “The Grand Landscape is to Behold,” and “Homeward Bound.”
The remainder of the opening concert program is all Beethoven: The Violin Concerto, featuring Edward Dusinberre of the Takács Quartet as soloist, and the Seventh Symphony. The concerto was chosen because Dusinberre had played with the orchestra before, and he suggested Beethoven for this concert. “He did the Brahms Concerto with us last year, and he did Mozart the previous year, so he’s going through the concerti,” Saless says.
Violinist Edward Dusinberre
Saless is especially thrilled to perform the Beethoven Concerto with Dusinberre. “It’s one of these pieces that I am very picky about who I would perform it with,” he says. “I think it requires a certain amount of maturity, no matter how good technically someone is. To play it with Ed is like a dream come true!”
As for the Seventh Symphony, Saless selected it to go on the Carnegie Hall program and then decided to open the season with it as well. “I wanted to do something (in New York) that I thought we could do really well, and would fit the programming (for the opening concert),” he says. “I thought, what could we do that I would feel comfortable, because I connect to it. If I’m going to go to Carnegie Hall and my legs are going to be shaking of nervousness, I need something that I could literally do in my sleep. So I picked Seven.”
He also wants the players to be comfortable. “If you’re going to perform in Carnegie Hall, you want a piece that you’ve already done during that season,” he says. “(That means) a smaller amount of preparation (later), and everybody feels less nervous.”
He also thinks you have to be a little bit crazy to perform the Seventh Symphony, but, he says, “I qualify!” Often noted for its dance-like rhythms, the Seventh Symphony is almost obsessive in repeating those rhythms. Saless calls it “borderline personality disorders in music, obsessive and frenetic.”
The powerful slow movement alternates a series of chords that underlay a mournful melody in a minor key with a bright theme in major. “It’s like (Beethoven) is trying to write a piece that is not a funeral march but sounds like one,” Saless says. “It’s kind of conflicted, and I find that very interesting.”
Saless faced a logistical complication in planning the season. As much as possible, he wanted to have the same players during the season as in New York. But he had to schedule around rehearsals and performance of the Colorado Ballet, because so many of his best players were also in their orchestra.
“I have to literally set up my schedule based on Colorado Ballet,” he says. BCO’s musicians, like all orchestras in Boulder, are free-lance players and Colorado Ballet pays very well. And every ballet production has numerous rehearsals and performances, all of which had to be scheduled around.
The New York appearance was made possible by a sponsor who was willing to underwrite both the orchestra and piano soloist Adam Żukiewicz playing in New York. Żukiewicz, who appeared on one of the BCO’s Mini-Chamber Concerts in January, and returns for another chamber concert Nov. 23 (7:30 p.m.; see the BCO season schedule HERE) will play a concerto with the orchestra in Carnegie Hall.
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“Titanic Journey” Boulder Chamber Orchestra, Bahman Saless, conductor With Edward Dusinberre, violin
Bahman Saless: Ode to the Rocky Mountains
Beethoven: Concerto in D major for violin and orchestra —Symphony No. 7 in A major
Symphony by Florence Price is the “American anchor” of programs Saturday and Sunday
By Peter Alexander Sept. 25 at 11:25 a.m.
The Boulder Symphony opens a new season this weekend with what conductor Devin Patrick Hughes calls “a very America-centric concert.” Performances at the Gordon Gamm Theater of the Dairy Arts Center will be at 2 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday (full program and details below).
Boulder Symphony and conductor Devin Patrick Hughes
The most obviously American work on the program—in effect the American anchor to the concert—is the Symphony No. 1 by Florence Price. A prodigy who gave her first piano performance at the age of four and later attended the New England Conservatory, Price was the first African American woman to have music played by a major symphony.
Completing the program are two works by European composers with American connections: The Slavonic Dance No. 1 by Dvořák, who lived in the United States in the 1890s and whose “New World” Symphony inspired Price and other African American composers at the turn of the 20th century; and Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1, which was premiered in the U.S.
Soloist for the concerto will be Artem Kuznetsov, 2024 winner of the the International Keyboard Odyssiad & Festival in Ft. Collins. The Boulder Symphony has maintained a close relationship with the competition for a number of years by annually presenting the winner on one of their concerts.
Born in Arkansas, Price moved north during the “great migration” of the 1920s and settled in Chicago. She studied composition and organ and worked as an organist for silent films. In 1933 her First Symphony was premiered by the Chicago Symphony at the Century of Progress World’s Fair.
Florence Price (photo colorized)
“Florence Price is the quintessential American composer,” Hughes wrote in an email. “Her music takes from the melting pot of our culture, from spirituals and gospel, and blends them with the great European masters to create a unique American voice.”
Her total output includes four symphonies, a piano concerto, two violin concertos, and other works for orchestra, in addition to choral, vocal and piano pieces. In 2009 dozens of works by Price were discovered at her summer home, which had been abandoned for many years. Among this collection were the two violin concerto and the Fourth Symphony—works that would have been lost had the manuscripts not been found.
The First Symphony is in the traditional four movements. Price drew on her African-American heritage with pentatonic, spiritual-like melodies and a lively, syncopated third movement. Titled “Juba Dance,” it evokes a dance and rhythmic accompaniment performed by African slaves throughout the New World.
Another important influence is Dvořák’s Ninth Symphony, “From the New World.” Not only are both works in E minor, Price scholar Rae Linda Brown wrote that “an examination of Price’s symphony reveals that she had thoroughly studied Dvorak’s score.”
Among the most popular of Dvořák’s works, the two sets of Slavonic Dances were originally composed for piano four hands and later set for orchestra by the composer. It was the publication of the first set for piano four hands in 1878, facilitated by Brahms, that established Dvořák as an important and recognized composer. The first dance is a Furiant, an energetic Bohemian dance marked by shifting accents and alternating duple and triple time.
Dvořák’s connection to the American theme of the concert is through his years living in New York and his 1893 visit to the Czech village of Spillville in Iowa. His interest in African American and other American musical styles was very influential at the time.
As Hughes wrote, “Dvořák is at the crossroads of European and American voices. His symphonic work and educational initiatives in America in the 1890s paved the way for a new American school that recognized the importance of African American folk music as the future of an American school.”
Pianist Artem Kuznetsov
Tchaikovsky wrote his First Piano Concerto in 1874-75. He hoped that the great Russian virtuoso Anton Rubinstein would play the premiere, but Rubinstein criticized the score when he saw it. As a result the premiere was played by the German pianist Hans von Bülow in Boston. Rubinstein later took back his criticism of the concerto and promoted it through performances. Today it is one of the best known piano concertos.
Continuing the American connection among the composers, Tchaikovsky came to the United States and conducted on four concerts in Carnegie Hall, including the hall’s opening night May 5, 1891—shortly before Dvořák arrived in the U.S.
A native of Balashov, Russia, Kuznetsov has won several international competitions in addition the International Keyboard Odyssiad. He holds Master of Music degree and Artist Diploma from the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University. He has performed across the United States, in Russia, Germany and the Netherlands.
The weekend’s concerts are the first in a series of three orchestral programs to be performed by the Boulder Symphony at the Dairy Arts Center, each including a work by an American composer. The season culminates in May with performances of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, presented in collaboration with Kim Robards Dance; you may see details on the orchestra’s Web page, along with information on their Curiosity Concerts for young people.
The Boulder Symphony also offers a music academy that is open to all talented students regardless of ability to pay. “Boulder Symphony created our Music Academy so every child could have access to musical instruments and instruction,” Hughes wrote. “Those who contribute to our scholarship program give the dream and promise of a lifetime of music-making to all kids in Boulder County.”
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Boulder Symphony, Devin Patrick Hughes, conductor With Artem Kuznetsov, piano
Dvořák: Slavonic Dance No. 1 in C major, op. 46 no. 1, “Furiant”
Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor
Florence Price: Symphony No. 1 in E minor
2 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 28 2 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 29 Gordon Gamm Theater, Dairy Arts Center
Programs outside the norm, from the 18th to the 21st centuries
By Peter Alexander Sept. 18 at 10:05 p.m.
The Boulder Bach Festival (BBF) and guest artists will take audiences back to 18th-century Venice in a program entitled “Anonimo Veneziano” (Anonymous Venetian) 4 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 21, at the Dairy Arts Center in Boulder.
The program, with the BBF’s music director/violinist Zachary Carretin and the COmpass REsonance ensemble (CORE Ensemble), will feature violinist Nurit Pacht from NewYork, harpsichordist Chris Holman from Cincinnati, and theorbist Keith Barnhart, an historical plucked instruments specialist who is also the BBF’s educational coordinator.
Nurit Pacht
The program opens with the famous Adagio attributed to 18th-century Italian composer Tomaso Albinoni and featured in many film scores. In fact, the Adagio was composed by 20th-century Italian musicologist Remo Giazotto. A scholar of Albinoni’s music Giazotto claimed that the Adagio was based on a fragment of an Albononi trio sonata that he found on a manuscript that has since mysteriously disappeared.
The remainder of the program will be filled out with genuine Albinoni works, the complete Sinfonie e Concerti a cinque (Sinfonias and concertos for five instruments), op. 2, that were published in Venice in 1700. This important collection is rarely performed complete. The BBF performance, which will be played without intermission, is expected to take approximately 75 minutes.
Pacht holds a degree in historical performance from the Juilliard school and is known as a specialist in both music by living composers, including works written for her, and music of the Baroque. She was a top prize winner in the Irving Klein International Music Competition in California, the Tibor Varga International Violin Competition in Switzerland, and the Kingsville International Music Competition in Texas. She has toured widely in Europe and the United States. She teaches privately in New York City.
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“Anonimo Veneziano” Boulder Bach Festival CORE Ensemble, Zachary Carrettin, conductor/violinist With Nurit Pracht, violin, Chris Holman, harpsichord, and Keith Barnhart, theorbo
Remo Giazotto: “Adagio in G minor by Tomaso Albononi”
Tomaso Albinoni: Sinfonie e Concerti, op. 2
4 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 21 Dairy Arts Center Gordon Gamm Theater
The Boulder Chamber Orchestra’s (BCO)chamber concert titled “Mixed Timbres,” postponed from last April due to the power outage caused by high winds, will be presented at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 21, in the Boulder Seventh-Day Adventist Church.
The concert will feature the BCO’s 2023-24 artist-in-residence, pianist Hsing-ay Hsu, performing with two members of the orchestra—cellist Julian Bennett and clarinetist Kellan Toohey. All four works on the program use the ensemble of piano, clarinet and cello, a mix of timbres that has a limited but interesting repertoire.
Hsing-ay Hsu
Beethoven’s Op. 11 is one of the earliest works for the combination. It is sometimes known as the “Gassenhauer Trio,” taken from the popularity of the theme that Beethoven uses for variations in the final movement. In Vienna, a Gassenhauer (from Gasse, an alleyway) referred to a simple song that was so popular that it was heard all over town. The theme Beethoven used was taken from a popular music theater work, L’amor marinaro (Seafaring love) by Joseph Weigl.
Brahms’s Trio op. 114 is one of four chamber works the composer wrote for the clarinetist Richard Mühlfeld in the last years of his life. Brahms’s admiration for Mühlfeld’s playing was reflected in the comment of one of the composer’s friends who wrote that in the Trio, “it is as though the instruments were in love with each other.”
Like Brahms’s Trio, Fauré’s D minor Trio was one of his last compositions. Although Fauré originally planned the Trio for piano, clarinet and cello, it was published as a traditional piano trio, with violin in place of the clarinet. The BCO performance of the first movement restores the instrumentation that Fauré first imagined for the trio.
Emily Rutherford’s “Morning Dance” for piano, clarinet and cello was commissioned by Toohey in 2017. A native of Colorado, Rutherford is a graduate of Westmont College in Santa Barbara, Calif., and the Longy School of Music in Los Angeles.
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“Mixed Timbres” Hsing-ay Hsu, BCO Artist in residence, piano With Boulder Chamber Orchestra members Kellan Toohey, clarinet, and Julian Bennett, cello
Gabriel Fauré: Piano Trio in D minor, I. Allegro ma non troppo
Beethoven: Trio in B-flat major for piano, clarinet and cello, op. 11
Brahms: Trio in B-flat for piano, clarinet and cello, op. 114
The Sphere Ensemble, a 14-member string ensemble, will celebrate the 100th anniversary of the premiere of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue in 1924 with performances of their own all-strings arrangement of the Rhapsody.
The program, presented Saturday in Boulder and Sunday in Denver (Sept. 21 and 22; details below), will also include works by other jazz musicians including James P. Johnson, Hazel Scott and Winton Marsalis. Also on the program are arrangements of music from the Squirrel Nut Zippers, The Turtles and Andrew Bird; and pieces by Shostakovich, Stephen Foster and the classical-era composer Christoph Willibald Gluck, among others.
Sphere Ensemble
In addition to the live performances, a live stream will be available from 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 21 through 10 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 29.
This kind of eclectic programming, mixing sources and genres, is typical of the Sphere Ensemble, often in arrangements made by members of the ensemble. The “About” page on their Website explains, “We prioritize music by composers that are often overlooked in classical music programs. . . . From classical to classic rock, from baroque to hip hop, Sphere always chooses music that excites us.”
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“Bridges” Sphere Ensemble
Aldemaro Romero: Fuga con Pajarillo
Dmitri Shostakovich: Prelude and Fugue in D-flat Major (arr. Chris Jusell)
Stephen Foster: “Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair” (arr. Alex Vittal)
Squirrel Nut Zippers: The Ghost of Stephen Foster (arr. Sarah Whitnah)
Andrew Bird: Orpheo Looks Back (arr. Sarah Whitnah)
C.W. Gluck: Orfée et Eurydice, Danses des Ombres Heureuses
Brenda Holloway: You’ve Made Me So Very Happy (arr. David Short)
The Turtles: Happy Together (arr. Dave Short)
James Price Johnson: Charleston (arr. Alex Vittal)
Hazel Scott: “Idyll” (arr. Sarah Whitnah)
Wynton Marsalis: “At the Octoroon Balls” —“Rampart St. Rowhouse Rag”
George Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue (arr. Alex Vittal)
The Boulder Philharmonic Orchestra will have a new series of intimate performances during the 2024-25 season, designed to bring their musicians into more informal spaces and give audiences the opportunity to hear them in smaller groups.
The repertoire will be a little different from the Macky concerts, too, featuring music by pop sensations from Lizzo to Taylor Swift alongside pieces by living composers including Philip Glass and Jessie Montgomery. And just for fun, they might throw in some Vivaldi as well.
These concerts, collectively the “Shift” series, will feature several different programs, each presented first at Planet Bluegrass in Lyons and then taken to small venues in Longmont and Boulder. The first program, played by a string quartet of principal players from the orchestra, opens next Wednesday at Planet Bluegrass (7 p.m. Sept. 25; details below). Titled “Groove,” it will be repeated at the Dickens Opera House in Longmont at 6:30 p.m.Monday, Nov. 25.
Wildflower Pavilion at Planet Bluegrass, Lyons
The second program, also for string quartet, is titled “Americana: Redefined” and will be presented in October and February. A third program featuring a brass quintet from the orchestra, “Brass & Brews,” will be presented in October and April; see the Boulder Phil Web page for details on all currently scheduled performances.
Mimi Kruger, the Boulder Phil’s executive director, said, “The idea is that people can get to know our musicians and these composers and connect in a different way. These are obviously smaller venues, but also a little bit more casual.”
She said that discussions about ways to showcase the individual musicians of the orchestra led them to look for new venues. “The idea came up to launch it through Planet Bluegrass (because) they have a series at the Wildflower Pavilion,” she said. “We’re doing all three there, but we also wanted to take them to other venues, so the first two will get repeated at Dickens Opera House in Longmont—that’s a great little place!”
The Phil’s Web page says pretty much the same thing, in more promotional language: “The Shift Series lifts the facade of the stereotypical orchestral concert . . . in unique venues along the Front Range.”
Kruger recommends watching for future announcements, as further performances are under consideration, featuring the orchestra’s woodwind players.
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“GROOVE” Boulder Philharmonic string players: Ryan Jacobsen and Hilary Castle-Green, violin; Stephanie Mientka, viola; and Amanda Laborete, cello
Takashi Yoshimatsu: Atomic Hearts Club Quartet, Movement I
Justin Bieber: “Peaches” (arr. Alice Hong) 3’
Dinuk Wijeratne:Two Pop Songs on Antique Poems: “Letter from the afterlife”
Carlos Simon: “Loop”
Michael Begay: “Forest Fires”
Lizzo: “Good As Hell” (arr. Alice Hong)
Jessie Montgomery: “VooDoo Dolls”
Philip Glass: String Quartet No. 3: VI “Mishima/Closing”4’
Taylor Swift: “All Too Well” (arr. Alice Hong)
Wijeratne: Two Pop Songs on Antique Poems: “I will not let you go”
Ed Sheeran: “Shape of You” (arr. Alice Hong)
Due Lipa: “Dance the Night” (arr. Zack Reaves)
Jessica Meyer: “Get into the NOW”: III. “Go Big or Go Home”
Sharps & Flatirons 