Symphony Spring 2011

symphony SPRING 2011 n $6.25

S Y M P H O N Y

THE MAGAZINE OF

THE LEAGUE OF AMERICAN ORCHESTRAS

Orchestras

al Fresco

How technology is changing the festival experience

SPRING 2011

Plain Talk About Challenging Times Spring for Music: 7 Orchestras, 9 Days, 1 Mission Complete Guide to 2011 Summer Music

“ The decadent cinematic acoustics flattered the orchestra, which sounded terrific.”

– The New York Times

LIVE

WITH

GUSTAVO DUDAMEL

FROM

WALT DISNEY CONCERT HALL

Win tickets to the June 5 simulcast at LAPhil.com/SymphonyMagazine!

The LA Phil sizzles on screen with Dudamel at the helm!

Go beyond the performance with LA Phil LIVE’s “backstage pass” feature — exclusive to in-theatre audiences — including never-before-seen rehearsal footage and live interviews with Dudamel and world-renowned guest artists.

IN MOVIE THEATRES Sun JUN 5 Dudamel conducts Brahms 5pm ET / 2pm PT

Go to FATHOMEVENTS.COM for participating theatres and ticket information.

Join us in Minneapolis for

Orchestra Leadership Academy Get the most out of Conference Sign up now for pre-Conference learning from the best —then stay for Conference, June 7– 9.

For more information on all of these great Orchestra Leadership Academy Seminars and what’s in store for Conference 2011, visit

americanorchestras.org/conference_2011.

June 6 Pops Programming

June 6 – 7 Maximizing and Sustaining Leadership Impact Patron Growth and Advancement: A Crash Course in Fundamentals

June 7 Bold Leadership: Seizing Opportunity in Times of Change Developing Ensemble Programs for Children in Your Community Digital Strategies for Your Orchestra Making Smart Strategic Choices The Role of the Board Chair Seminar for Women Conductors

Orchestra Leadership Academy seminars are made possible by grants from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Argosy Foundation, The Hearst Foundation, Inc., and National Endowment for the Arts.

Orchestra Leadership Academy seminars developed in partnership with the Nonprofit Finance Fund are made possible by a generous grant from MetLife Foundation.

PRELUDE

VO LU M E 6 2

symphony SPRING 2011

P

oor Pyotr Ilyich. In all the fuss about Black Swan—the Oscar for Natalie Portman, the worried essays about obsessive female ballet dancers, the overheated interviews with director Darren Aronofsky—no one thought to give a shout-out to Tchaikovsky. He is, of course, the composer who wrote the music for Swan Lake, from which the film takes its storyline, eerie subtext, and plangent metaphor. Tchaikovsky’s score tells a fantastic tale while deploying the full range of what late-19th-century orchestras can do. But in Black Swan, the score is reduced to aural wallpaper for the lurid visuals. It’s great to see a classical art form in a movie, but sometimes classical music feels like the Rodney Dangerfield of popular culture.

This issue of Symphony puts orchestras and their efforts to connect with their communities center stage. Orchestras and classical-music festivals nationwide are using digital technology to bring the music up close in the great outdoors. Some is technology writ large—hi-def projections and enhanced audio—and some is small enough to fit on your cell phone: program notes tweeted live. J.S. Bach might not seem cutting-edge, but festivals revolving around him are beloved annual traditions in wide-ranging communities, galvanizing entire towns of fans. The new Spring for Music festival brings seven orchestras to Carnegie Hall over nine days in May for a remarkable showcase of innovative programming. Not only is the music unusual, so is the price: no ticket is more than $25.

Like everyone else, orchestras continue to face substantial challenges from the recession. But an uneven recovery has revealed some sharp clefts in culture, where classical music may have less of a role. How to cope with that? In a wide-ranging essay, League President and CEO Jesse Rosen looks at the big picture.

THE MAGAZINE OF THE LEAGUE OF AMERICAN ORCHESTRAS

symphony®, the award-winning, bimonthly

magazine of the League of American Orchestras, discusses issues critical to the orchestra community and commun­icates to the American public the value and importance of orchestras and the music they perform.

EDITOR IN CHIEF Robert Sandla

SENIOR EDITOR Chester Lane

MANAGING EDITOR Jennifer Melick

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PRODUCTION MANAGER Michael Rush

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PUB Symphony

symphony

SPRING 2011

symphony SPRING 2011

THE MAGAZINE OF THE LEAGUE OF AMERICAN ORCHESTRAS

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4 Prelude by Robert Sandla

Courtesy Wolf Trap

6 The Score Orchestra news, moves, and events

18 At the League This year’s League Conference offers creative approaches to the extraordinary challenges orchestras face today.

by Russell Jones

Alex Irvin

12 Critical Questions Orchestras respond to the difficult cultural and economic climate.

by Jesse Rosen

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Orchestras al Fresco in the Digital Age How is technology changing the way we experience music outdoors?

by Chester Lane

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Spring Forward Over nine days in May, seven orchestras head to Carnegie Hall for the inaugural Spring for Music festival. Oh, and the tickets are $25.

by Rebecca Winzenried

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Back to Bach With roots deep in their communities, festivals devoted to Johann Sebastian Bach aren’t just for fans of the Baroque. by Melinda Bargreen

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Summer Festivals 2011 A musical overview of what’s on this summer

Jon Meyers

Both Sides Now Two festival-style training programs offer a different perspective for conductors. by Judith Kogan

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61 Advertiser Index 64 Coda Soprano Dawn Upshaw’s love of new music is taking her to festivals and orchestras all around the country.

28 about the cover

Throughout this issue, text marked like this indicates a link to websites and online resources that can be accessed by visiting SymphonyOnline at symphony.org.

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Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre, where the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra performs every summer, is just one of the outdoor venues where orchestras are increasingly making technology part of the festival experience. See page 22.

Cover photo by Chris Lee

Brooke Irish

62 League of American Orchestras Annual Fund

SCORE News, moves, and events in the orchestra industry THE

Detroit Dreams Put On Hold It was the news everyone had been waiting for but no one wanted to hear. On Saturday, February 19, musicians of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, having been on strike for

Dave Krieger

OC x 3

When the Pacific Symphony in California dubbed its 2010-11 season “The Year of the Piano,” it didn’t stop with concerts.

As part of its “OC Can You Play?” initiative, the orchestra installed 20 pianos in public spaces throughout Orange County, painted by local artists, available for the public to play during January and February. Pianos were then auctioned off at biddingforgood.com, an online charity auction site, to benefit the orchestra. In March, the Pacific Symphony rolled out “OC Can You Sing?,” a competition for amateur singers living in Orange County, with finalists to be judged by the public at the orchestra’s pops concerts from May 17 to 19 at the Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall. Finally, for the Pacific’s “OC Can You Play With Us?” program, amateur musicians over the age of 24 have the opportunity to perform side-by-side with orchestra members on May 16, when an hour-long rehearsal will be followed by a mini-performance of movements from Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition in Segerstrom Hall, led by Music Director Carl St.Clair.

20 weeks, voted to reject a contract proposal that management had characterized as its “final” offer, prompting the latter to suspend the remainder of the concert season. The proposed contract, which would have lowered musician salaries to a base of $80,200 over a 36-week season, down 23 percent from the $104,650 base that musicians made last season, fit a $36-million framework outlined by Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm and U.S. Senator Carl Levin. But musicians and management remained divided over pay, scheduling of community-engagement work, and compensation for internet broadcasts, Courtesy Pacific Symphony

radio, and recordings. The lengthy negotiation process, which saw several proposals offered by both sides, had pitted management’s goal of addressing a $9 million budget shortfall and some $54 million in back debt against concerns among musicians that significant changes to their contract would lower the orchestra’s national stature and undermine its tradition of excellence. While the DSO’s financial troubles can be chalked up to a very specific set of circumstances, they are also indicative of a broader economic climate that recently forced the Louisville Orchestra and Honolulu Symphony to file for bankruptcy.

As part of the Pacific Symphony’s “Year of the Piano,” San Juan Capistrano was home to one of 20 outdoor pianos in Orange County, California.

Throughout this issue, text marked like this indicates a link to websites and online resources that can be accessed by visiting SymphonyOnline at symphony.org.

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symphony

SPRING 2011

The Pennsylvania Ballet’s Julie Diana and Francis Veyette rehearse Jorma Elo’s Pulcinella, scheduled for a world premiere with the Philadelphia Orchestra at PIFA in April.

MUSICAL CHAIRS has been named executive director of the National Repertory Orchestra in Breckenridge, Colorado.

DOUGLAS W. ADAMS

The Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra has appointed AMY ADKINS president and CEO to succeed ANN KOONSMAN , who will retire July 31 after nearly three decades with the orchestra.

MARILYN BAILEY has been appointed press and publications manager of the FWSO.

americanorchestras.org

On January 31 in Stern Auditorium at Carnegie Hall, principals and other instrumentalists from 39 organizations, including 27 orchestras, donated their services for Beethoven for the Indus Valley, a benefit event whose cause was “life and renewal in Pakistan after the 2010 floods.” Sponsored by Music for Life International and the American Pakistan Foundation, it was the fourth in a series of global humanitarian concerts at Carnegie led by conductor George Mathew, whose previous efforts have benefited Pakistani earthquake relief, Darfur, and the children of AIDS victims. Proceeds from Indus Valley support work in Pakistan by the Acumen Fund, a nonprofit dedicated to entrepreneurial solutions to global poverty.

Georgia’s Symphony Orchestra Augusta has appointed AMY BRANDENBURG director of education and community engagement, and CAROLANN WEBSTER director of marketing and public relations.

The Pacific Symphony in California’s Orange County has named BETH BROOKS vice president of marketing and public relations. has been named communications coordinator, and JULIA FRANTZ donor relations manager, at the Eugene Symphony in Oregon.

LISA RUBENSTEIN CALEVI

has been appointed vice president of artistic administration at the Rochester (N.Y.) Philharmonic Orchestra. SARAH GOLDSTEIN POST has been promoted to director of development.

RICHARD DECKER

The Burlington-based Vermont Youth Orchestra Association has appointed JEFFREY DOMOTO music director.

Shaq Attack

Michael Lutch

has been named executive director of California’s Monterey Symphony.

EDMUND FEINGOLD

Conductor PAUL FREEMAN , who founded the Chicago Sinfonietta in 1987 and has led it since its inception, Feingold will step down as music director at the end of May. His successor is MEI-ANN CHEN .

Attorney DOUGLAS M. HAGERMAN has been elected chairman of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra Board of Trustees, succeeding CHRIS ABELE .

ALEXANDER KERR has been named concertmaster, and NATHAN OLSON co-concertmaster, of the Dallas

Symphony Orchestra.

Boston Celtics star Shaquille O’Neal (“Shaq”) made his conducting debut on December 20, leading the Boston Pops and the Tanglewood Festival Chorus in Sleigh Ride, the Jackson 5’s “Can You Feel It,” and Queen’s “We Are the Champions.” It was apparently pretty hard work for the 7-foot-1 center, who claimed his arms were “shot” after rehearsal.

The Hartford (Conn.) Symphony Orchestra has appointed CAROLYN KUAN music director, effective in September 2011. GRANT MEACHUM has been named director of artistic operations, and ELSJE KIBLERVERMAAS director of community engagement and education.

Charlie Schuck

Philadelphia is home to the ambitious new Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts, whose inaugural outing this April 7 to May 1 will be devoted to Paris between 1910 and 1920. PIFA will feature programs focusing on classical music, hip-hop, jazz, dance, and film, with nearly 140 regional arts and cultural partner organizations participating. The Philadelphia Orchestra and the Pennsylvania Ballet open the festival on April 7 with Stravinsky’s Pulcinella (world premiere, Paris 1920), newly choreographed by Jorma Elo. Among the other participating groups are the Black Pearl Chamber Orchestra, the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, Orchestra 2001, Peter Nero and the Philly Pops, Kennett Symphony of Chester County, the Curtis Institute of Music, Opera Company of Philadelphia, and the Philadelphia Youth Orchestra. The festival incorporates exhibits at children’s events, French-themed trolley tours of the city, and aerial/acrobatic/ comedy hybrid presentations by the Philadelphia School of Circus Arts.

stepped down as executive director of the Duluth Superior (Minn.) Symphony Orchestra effective April l. At press time, a successor had not been announced.

Musical Chairs

Allô Paris? Ici Philadelphia

South Carolina’s Charleston Symphony Orchestra has appointed DANIEL BECKLEY executive director.

ANDREW BERRYHILL

Stu Rosner

Alexander Iziliaev

After the Flood

has been named public relations manager of Utah Symphony| Utah Opera. Her title was listed incorrectly in the Winter 2011 issue.

HILARIE ASHTON

Chris Lee

George Mathew conducts an orchestra headed by New York Philharmonic Concertmaster Glenn Dicterow in Beethoven’s Ninth.

Adkins

Kuan

has been named director of communications at the Seattle Symphony.

MARY LANGHOLZ

The Naples (Fla.) Philharmonic Orchestra has announced that JORGE MESTER will step down as

7

On Fleischmann Square

music director at the end of the 2011-12 season. has been promoted from associate conductor to resident conductor at the Colorado Symphony in Denver.

SCOTT O’NEIL

California’s San Bernardino Symphony has appointed VALERIE PEISTER executive director. has been named administrative director of the Illinois Council of Orchestras.

Arts Consulting Group has appointed GREG PHILLIPS as a vice president in its San Francisco and Portland (Ore.) offices. has been named director of communications at the Dallas Symphony Orchestra.

CHRISTY CRYTZER PIERCE

The Brooklyn (N.Y.) Philharmonic has appointed ALAN PIERSON artistic director. The orchestra’s new chairman is JACK W. RAINEY. has been appointed principal pops conductor at the National Symphony Orchestra, effective in September 2011.

STEVEN REINEKE

has been appointed executive director of Orchestra 2001 in Philadelphia.

WILLIAM GATTI has been named administrative director, and ADAM LESNICK marketing and education director.

CHRISTINA S. RUSNAK

Rusnak

North Carolina’s Brevard Music Center has appointed MARGARET RYAN president and CEO.

has been named music director and principal conductor of the Niagara Symphony in St. Catherines, Ont. He will step down as associate conductor of the Fort Wayne (Ind.) Philharmonic at the end of this season.

BRADLEY THACHUK

The American Symphony Orchestra has appointed ROBIN THOMPSON artistic consultant.

has been named principal viola in the Amarillo (Tex.) Symphony, where he will also serve as violist in the orchestra’s Harrington String Quartet.

VESSELIN TODOROV

Michigan’s Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra has appointed JONATHAN TYMAN operations manager, and LINDSAY BLACKWELL administrative assistant.

Attorney JOHN H. WARREN has been elected president of the Charleston (S.C.) Symphony Orchestra Board of Directors.

has stepped down as CEO of the Walla Walla (Wash.) Symphony.

MICHAEL WENBERG

The Amarillo Symphony in Texas has appointed SUSAN WHITE executive director.

has been named youth and family concerts conductor at the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

THOMAS WILKINS

Canton (Ohio) Symphony Orchestra President and CEO STEPHEN WOGAMAN will step down from that post on April 30 to become president of the Chamber Music Society of Detroit.

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50 Years Young

The New York-based nonprofit management firm Young Concert Artists has helped launch an impressive number of musical careers in its first half century, and the 2010-11 season has seen a string of celebratory performances by current and former members of the YCA roster. Close to 100 musicians—including such past YCA artists as Emanuel Ax, the Borromeo String Quartet, Sasha Cooke, Ani and Ida Kavafian, Ursula Oppens, Christopher O’Riley, and Eugenia Zukerman—appeared February 19 in an all-day Musical Marathon at New York’s Symphony Space. Other anniversarycentered events this season included a January 31 concert at Merkin Concert Hall (above) featuring two former YCA artists, violinist Anne Akiko Meyers and cellist Robert Martin; flutist Aleksandr Haskin, a member of the current YCA roster making his New York debut; and pianist Steven Beck.

Musical Chairs

The Fargo-Moorhead Symphony Orchestra has announced that BERNARD RUBENSTEIN will step down as music director at the end of the 2011-12 season.

Matt Dine

KENDRIA PERRY-MADDEN

On March 29, the Los Angeles Philharmonic hosted a free concert at Walt Disney Concert Hall honoring the memory of Ernest Fleischmann, its longtime executive vice president and managing director, who passed away on June 13, 2010 at the age of 85. Among those appearing were Conductor Laureate Esa-Pekka Salonen, composer Pierre Boulez, Associate Conductor Lionel Bringuier, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group.

“This concert celebrates the visionary spirit and elegant taste of a giant upon whose shoulders we all stand,” said LA Phil President and CEO Deborah Borda. The same day, the City of Los Angeles named the intersection of 1st and Grand Avenue, adjacent to the Music Center, Fleischmann Square.

Robert Millard

MUSICAL CHAIRS

Then-music director Esa-Pekka Salonen (left) and Ernest Fleischmann at a 1995 Los Angeles Philharmonic press conference

Look for: SymphonyNOW

Symphony has been reporting on orchestras practically since the League’s founding some 70 years ago, and the magazine has racked up a mantelful of awards for writing and design. But in an era when expectations for constant updates and new media for delivering them are changing, many fast-moving stories simply can’t be covered in a publication with a long lead time.

Starting this spring, we will launch SymphonyNOW, a new, online-only publication.

SymphonyNOW will provide timely, topical reporting about orchestras; the articles will be short, quick takes on events, personalities, and current developments rather than the bigger, survey-type stories or analysis in Symphony. Content will be updated weekly. In addition to original reporting, look for videos, audio interviews, photos, social networking components, and other widgets. Advertising will make the products and services you need just a click away. And SymphonyNOW will feature an interactive section where you can have your say in lively discussions.

In order to provide this new benefit, we will no longer offer the two online-only issues of Symphony. We will continue to publish the four printed and online issues of Symphony, which will come out in winter, spring, summer, and fall. Here’s how things will happen: The Hub’s Media View, Industry Buzz, Who’s In, and Help Yourself columns will continue to be updated daily; SymphonyNOW content will be refreshed weekly; and Symphony will be published quarterly. This spring, look for SymphonyNOW. symphony

SPRING 2011

Courtesy Akron Symphony and Orlando Philharmonic

Milton Babbitt 1916-2011

Catfish Row Comes to Akron Alvy Powell and Marquita Lister (above) will sing the title roles in Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess on April 19, when the Akron Symphony under Music Director Christopher Wilkins presents the work at the University of Akron’s E.J. Thomas Hall with a cast comprising primarily community performers. In addition to four professional soloists, the production will feature the Gospel Meets Symphony Choir—a 200-voice volunteer gospel choir that performs in the orchestra’s annual gospel program—and teens from the Akron-based Youth Excellence Performing Arts Workshop. Auditions for the adult chorus and many solo roles were limited to local residents. The Porgy and Bess performance is made possible by a $150,000 grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Akron is one of eight U.S. cities designated as Knight resident communities, which receive support from the foundation for arts projects that engage communities in collective cultural experiences.

At the League Five orchestras received 2010-11 MetLife Governance Grants for Board Development from the League of American Orchestras: the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra, Berkeley Symphony Orchestra (Cal.), Rhode Island Philharmonic, Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, and Grand Junction Symphony Orchestra (Colo.). The grants, ranging from $4,000 to $7,500, provide financial support to strengthen board governance practice; orchestras were selected through a competitive process that assessed their plan for board development, its long- and short-term impact, and measurement of results.

“Strong governance is essential to the functioning of nonprofit organizations, and we are proud to partner with the americanorchestras.org

League of American Orchestras to develop and strengthen orchestra boards,” said Dennis White, president and CEO of MetLife Foundation.

For anyone who has contemplated working in the field of orchestra administration, now is your time. This fall, for the first time the League of American Orchestras is offering a day-long gathering designed exclusively for busy professionals from outside the orchestra field to learn about life in an orchestra. You’ll join like-minded colleagues for networking and critical exposure to a possible new career path.

To learn more, contact Jessica Balboni at jbalboni@americanorchestras.org and visit the Learning and Leadership section of americanorchestras.org.

Composer Milton Byron Babbitt, whose complex explorations of atonality, serialism, and metrical variation over a career spanning nearly seven decades made him an iconic figure in the music world, died January 29 at the age of 94. His gift for mathematics, early instrumental talent (violin, clarinet, saxophone), and lifelong interest in jazz and popular music first surfaced during a boyhood spent in Jackson, Mississippi. Trained in composition at New York University, and privately with Roger Sessions, he would go on to wield considerable academic influence, chiefly through his writings and his association with Princeton University, where he joined the composition faculty in 1938 and was professor emeritus at the time of his death. A 1958 essay in High Fidelity famously titled “Who Cares if You Listen?”—Babbitt’s intended title had been “The Composer as Specialist”—unfairly caused many to associate him with inaccessibility and a disregard for audiences. In a catalogue rich in acoustic and electronic music, his orchestral output was small but greatly championed by the likes of Pierre Boulez, James Levine, and Orchestra 2001 Music Director James Freeman. Babbitt’s students included such diverse composers as Mario Davidovsky, Donald Martino, Tobias Picker, and Stephen Sondheim.

Milton Babbitt, pictured in Arizona ca.

1990 with his former Juilliard student Laura Karpman, is the subject of the documentary Portrait of a Serial Composer, begun by the late Robert Hilferty and completed by Karpman after Hilferty’s death in 2009.

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Talk to Us

Symphony is the magazine of the League of American Orchestras, and the only publication that reports on the orchestra world regularly and in depth. Symphony goes to orchestras, organizations, and businesses when they become members of the League.

If you’re on the board of directors of an orchestra that is a League member, for example, you receive Symphony as a benefit of membership.

It’s a great way to keep up with everything that’s happening in the orchestra field as well with League programs and services.

Visit americanorchestras.org for complete information about the League. If you have questions, here’s how to get in touch.

Advocacy • 202-776-0214 Development • 646-822-4066 Executive Office • 646-822-4062 Marketing & Membership Development • 646-822-8080 Learning and Leadership Development • 646-822-4091 Public Relations • 646-822-4077 Symphony • 646-822-4041

Lydia Danmiller

Composer Mason Bates

“...Sunday, July 27 may go down in local music history as the day Taipei learned to swing. The audience of nearly 2,000 people found themselves cheering, clapping their hands, and up on their feet during the pops concert by the Taipei Philharmonic Orchestra.”

The China News, Karen Richardson “Ronnie Kole is a living legend in jazz and a New Orleans icon. He is the consummate musician. His charts are amazing and always a hit with our audiences. If you want to put patrons in the seats, Ronnie Kole is your answer.”

Dennis G. Assaf, Artistic Director and Conductor, Jefferson Performing Arts Society Orchestra “When you look up piano in the dictionary, you’ll see a picture of Ronnie Kole. He’s one of the great players of our time. I can only aspire to be as great as him one day.”

For a demo DVD contact Morrow Management, Inc P.O. Box 5519 Slidell, LA 70469 Phone 504-524-5716 Fax 985-643-4859 E-Mail MorrowMgt@aol.com www.RonnieKole.com

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Harry Connick, Jr.

YouTube Reboot

The YouTube Symphony, inaugurated in 2009 as a way for amateur musicians from around the world to come together for a week of music making under top-notch professional guidance, gave it another go this spring. The 97 orchestral musicians— ranging in age from 14 to 49 and hailing from more than 30 countries—descended on Sydney, Australia for a week of rehearsals that culminated in a March 20 performance at the Sydney Opera House led by San Francisco Symphony and New World Symphony Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas. On that program was Mason Bates’s Mothership for orchestra and electronics, which also featured four additional musicians improvising on electric guitar, violin, guzheng, and electric double bass. A panel of experts chose 300 finalists from audition videos posted on YouTube last fall, and the final round was decided by a week-long popular vote in December. symphony

SPRING 2011

Levine Steps Down at Boston Symphony

New New Haven Sound Two years into a worldwide recession might seem a surprising time to form a new ensemble, but the New Haven Symphony Orchestra recently took the plunge with the launch of the New Haven Symphony Contemporary Youth Orchestra. Led by NHSO Music Director William Boughton, high-school musicians mentored by NHSO members perform multicultural, improvisational, world, jazz, pop, and rock music by living American composers, who work with the musicians. The youth orchestra’s inaugural March 20 concert featured Prayer and Celebration by Augusta Read Thomas.

Courtesy NHSO

In March, the Boston Symphony Orchestra announced that James Levine will relinquish his role as music director, effective September 1, 2011. The announcement followed a few years during which health issues forced Levine to cancel concerts with the orchestra.

Managing Director Mark Volpe said, “We look forward to continuing our conversation with Jim about defining a new role where he can focus solely on the music and defining artistically stimulating projects that would be meaningful to him and the orchestra, building upon his BSO legacy thus far.” The BSO has formed a search committee to begin the process of appointing the next music director. Levine will continue as music director of the Metropolitan Opera.

Cellists Niles Luther and Samuel Taubl rehearsing with the New Haven Symphony Contemporary Youth Orchestra

Bill Lively to Head Dallas Symphony The Dallas Symphony Orchestra has tapped Bill Lively, one of the city’s premier fundraisers and community leaders, as president and chief executive officer, effective June 1. He began working with the orchestra on a part-time basis following his service this winter as president and CEO of the North Texas Super Bowl XLV Host Committee.

Paul Stewart, who has been serving as interim president of the orchestra, called Lively “a fabulous addition to the DSO.” Prior to heading the Super Bowl Host Committee Lively served for eight and a half years as president and CEO of the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts, now known as the AT&T Performing Arts Center. americanorchestras.org

ClassicalKidsLive.com

Pictured: Natalie Berg with the renowned Cleveland Orchestra.

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QUESTIONS

CRITICAL

What is the current state of our field?

Orchestras are breaking down walls to expand access while making tough choices for the long term. There’s also renewed urgency to justify the arts as worthy of public support.

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experience continues to grow, evolve, and remain essential to our audiences and communities.

A little over a year ago our field was sobered by findings from the National Endowment for the Arts and League research showing serious declines in audience participation. Since then we have seen a crescendo of activity as orchestras work hard to counter the trend. A recent issue of Symphony highlighted several of the dozens of new pricing strategies being employed to grow attendance. And, building on the learning from the Audience Growth Initiative (aka the “Churn” study), dozens of orchestras continue to develop

Jesse Rosen, president and CEO, League of American Orchestras

and refine audience-retention strategies.

A recently completed study, the Patron Growth Initiative, undertaken by many of the original “Churn” orchestras, attempts to understand the dynamics of converting more ticket buyers into becoming new and increased donors throughout their lifetime of concert attendance. After this work is presented at the League’s National Conference in June, we expect it will also trigger a new round of experiments throughout the field.

Scott Ferguson

I

n my last column I interviewed some colleagues about their reactions to a 1969 Time magazine story that talked about the mounting financial crisis for orchestras. The story mentioned a 36-week Detroit strike near the top, but also problems in Cincinnati, Buffalo, and Rochester, as well Cleveland, Boston, Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York.

The circumstances described in that Time article were so similar to today’s that we actually received angry letters to our editor correcting its facts, telling us that the strike in Detroit has not been that long and that Cincinnati is doing just fine.

These readers had managed to overlook the several places where we explained that the Time story was printed in 1969!

I found that article fascinating for two reasons. One is that so many of the problems we face today also existed forty years ago. The other reason is that we can now look back and see that not only did orchestras figure out ways to solve their problems, but they also ushered in one of the most successful periods in our history.

Clearly, 2011 is a far cry from 1969.

Our world is different and our response to it is different. To me what is most promising is that orchestra leaders are looking further downstream as they plan; they are increasingly concerned with getting results that lead to long-term sustainability, even in the face of tough choices today. I also see orchestras widening their visions to take in more of the rich, varied, and expanding creative currents running through our culture, ensuring that the orchestra

Klaus Lucka

by Jesse Rosen

The Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra emerged from a difficult situation by refocusing on artistic goals as well as community engagement. In photo: Principal Cello Daniel Lee, Concertmaster David Halen, and Music Director David Robertson.

symphony

SPRING 2011

Tomas Loewy

americanorchestras.org

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Tomas Loewy

One of the themes in this important work is access.

Orchestras are working to expand access in multiple ways. In January I attended the opening of the New World Symphony Center in Miami Beach. The entire front of the new hall, in all its breadth, width, and height, is a wall of glass. The public can see right into the studios and practice rooms.

Next to this wall of glass is a white wall of equal size, but this one is for Wallcasts. It is the largest outdoor screen in the U.S., and the New World Symphony will use it to show high-definition projections of its concerts to audiences gathered in an adjacent pub- The recently opened New World Symphony Center in Miami Beach invites the public in, through walls of glass, and sends the music out, through large-scale Wallcasts of live concerts. An adjacent park welcomes the public. lic park, with state-of-the-art sound. We used to think of walls as means to separate—but these walls serve to both invite the public in and send the music out. What a change from what we used to think mattered most about concert halls!

I am really inspired by all the creative activity I see in orchestras. And when I speak to reporters always looking for signs of our demise, I point out these and countless other examples of vitality in our field.

But we also know that for some orchestras there are urgent challenges that call for immediate action, tough decisions, and enormous sacrifice. The situations at Kentucky’s Louisville Orchestra, which faced significant financial challenges and This is not completely new territory clear plan, strong leadership, and solid bankruptcy this winter, and the Detroit for our field. In 2000, critically acclaimed support. A few months ago the orchestra Symphony Orchestra, where disagreement for its quality but mired in deficits, announced its highest ticket revenues in a about contract terms led to a lengthy the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra decade, increased sponsorship, and strong strike by the musicians and the eventual recognized that the community could progress toward reducing the old deficit. cancellation of the season, are only the no longer sustain its musical activity at (Symphony reported on the turnaround at most visible examples of strains being felt the same level. After a painful downSaint Louis in July-August 2010.) by many orchestras across the country. sizing that included a musicians’ work The League, too, is responding difOn the face of it, these two orchestras stoppage, the musicians, administrators, ferently to the challenging environment. are confronting serious resource chaland their creative leaders refocused the Like many of you, we have less resource— lenges. And, as far as I can tell, musicians, organization on community engagement and yet there is great need. So we decided managers, and boards all understand this as well as on artistic goals. They have a to leverage our resources to achieve greatand have sacrificed. But it’s not simply er impact. We saw that several orchestras Even in the face of tough about having less money. It’s about decidwere working on very similar issues, issues choices today, orchestra leaders that affect large numbers of our members. ing what orchestras need to do differently are increasingly concerned in order to adapt to the changing market Among them are sustainability, pension for classical music and the needs of their contributions, and challenges to orcheswith getting results that lead individual communities. tras’ public value. We have invited these to long-term sustainability.

All over the country questions are being raised by funders and policy makers about how the arts, and orchestras in particular, contribute to the public good. orchestras to form “working groups” that would not only exchange ideas, but would also agree to have their experiences documented. That way, whatever they learn can eventually be shared for the benefit of their colleagues. We are encouraged by their willingness to do this, and we think it is a good sign for the future.

At our recent Mid-Winter Managers’ Meeting we heard sobering reports about one of these issues. All over the country questions are being raised by funders and policy makers about how the arts, and orchestras in particular, really contribute

americanorchestras.org

to the public good. There is no better example than the recent Congressional proposal to abolish the NEA. The challenge is on both sides of the aisle.

As always, the League’s Heather Noonan, our vice president for advocacy, is helping to lead the mobilization of arts advocates on Capitol Hill and locally where these challenges are growing.

Heather and Judith Kurnick, our vice president for strategic communications, will be developing approaches with our working group that will be shared with our entire field.

This issue, like the news on audience participation, deserves the immediate attention of all orchestras. And I know we will confront this challenge with the same energy, ingenuity, and commitment that characterize our many other responses, and that enable us to continue making exciting progress.

ReheaRsal space RecoRding studio state of the art acoustics competitive Rates Musicians lounge, café and Resource center convenient Midtown location From Small Studios to Full Orchestra and Chorus Rehearsal Spaces

BooK noW! opening apRil, 2011 Reservations & information diMennacenter.org or call 212.594.6100 450 West 37th street, new York city

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The Campaign for a New Direction is the League of American Orchestras’ $25 million, five-year, comprehensive campaign to fund critical programs and services identified in the League’s Strategic Plan. Since its inception, the Campaign has raised $23.8 million—over 95% of the Campaign goal.

Inspiration Advocacy Leadership Vitality

Help us complete the Campaign!

Add your name to this list of supporters by contacting Robin J. Roy, vice president for development, at 646 822 4009 or rroy@americanorchestras.org.

All of us at the League of American Orchestras are deeply grateful to the following visionaries for their generous Campaign support: Christopher Seton Abele, on behalf of the Argosy Foundation Douglas W. Adams W. Randolph Adams Nancy & Ellsworth Alvord, Jr., M.D. Alberta Arthurs Brent & Jan Assink Audrey G. Baird Karen Baker Elena Bales & Steven Bronfenbrenner Allison Ball Jennifer B. Barlament Lisa & Miles Barr Cecilia Benner Marie-Hélène Bernard Andrew Berryhill & Melinda Appold William P. Blair III Nancy Blaugrund Richard J. Bogomolny David Bohnett Fred & Liz Bronstein Steven R. Brosvik Dr. & Mrs. Malcolm Brown Mr. & Mrs. Thomas M. Brown Wayne S. Brown & Brenda E. Kee Trish Bryan Michelle Miller Burns & Gary W. Burns Frank Byrne Catherine M. Cahill Andrew K. Cahoon & Erin R. Freeman John & Janet Canning Katherine Carleton Nicky B. Carpenter Judy Christl Richard & Kay Fredericks Cisek Katy Clark Melanie Clarke Bruce & Martha Clinton, on behalf of The Clinton Family Fund Robert Conrad Bruce Coppock Marion Couch Julie F. & Peter D. Cummings Gloria dePasquale Amy & Trey Devey Mr. & Mrs. Richard M. DeVos, on behalf of The Richard & Helen DeVos Foundation Lisa Dixon Samuel C. Dixon James R. Dodd Bret Dorhout Heidi Droegemueller Darlene A. Dreyer Emma E. Dunch & Elizabeth W. Scott Patricia C. Dunn Lois Robinson Duplantier D.M. Edwards Jack W. Eugster

Scott Faulkner & Andrea Lenz Aaron Flagg & Cristina Stanescu Flagg Ryan Fleur & Laura Banchero Henry & Frances Fogel Rachel & Terry Ford Michele & John Forsyte Mr. & Mrs. F. Tom Foster, Jr. James M. Franklin Catherine French Susan & Bill Friedlander Karen Gahl-Mills & Laurence MillsGahl Mr. Kareem A. George Douglas Gerhart John Gidwitz L. Timothy Giglio Ellen & Paul Gignilliat Edward B. Gill Clive Gillinson Alfred R. Glancy III Joseph B. Glossberg & Madeleine Condit Glossberg Marian A. Godfrey Luella G. Goldberg John & Marcia Goldman Foundation Kathie & Ken Goode Paul D. Grangaard The CHG Charitable Trust as recommended by Carole Haas Gravagno Erica F. Hansen Gary Hanson & Barbara Klante Mark & Christina Hanson Daniel & Barbara Hart Jeffrey P. Haydon Shirley Bush Helzberg Michael Henson Jeanne & Gary Herberger Cristina & Carlos Herrera Jennifer Higdon & Cheryl Lawson Marilyn P. and Joseph W. Hirschhorn Fund of The Greater Cincinnati Foundation Lauri & Paul Hogle James C. Hormel Mr. & Mrs. Michael J. Horvitz Holly H. Hudak A. J. Huss, Jr. Mrs. Martha R. Ingram Kendra Whitlock Ingram James D. Ireland III James M. Johnson Russell Jones Paul R. Judy Loretta Julian Mark A. Jung Art & Martha Kaemmer Fund of HRK Foundation Polly Kahn Atul R. Kanagat The Joseph P. & Nancy F. Keithley Foundation

Erwin Kelen Gloria S. Kim Joseph H. Kluger Catherine & John Koten Judith Kurnick Anna Kuwabara & Craig S. Edwards Camille & Dennis LaBarre Michael Lawrence & Rachael Unite David Lebenbom Robert L. Lee & Mary Schaffner The Lerner Foundation Fred Levin & Nancy Livingston, The Shenson Foundation Robert & Emily Levine Jan & Daniel R. Lewis Peter B. Lewis Dr. Virginia M. Lindseth Mr. & Mrs. Phillip Lyons Jim & Kay Mabie Alex Machaskee Annie & William Madonia Eleanor H. Marine Lee R. Marks & Lisl Zach The Steve Mason Family Shirley D. McCrary Judy & Scott McCue Ashleigh Milner McGovern Robert McGrath Paul Meecham Zarin Mehta LaDonna Meinders Stephen Millen Linda Miller Phyllis J. Mills Beth E. Mooney Michael Morgan Thomas Morris Diane & Robert Moss Catherine & Peter Moye Emma Murley J.L. Nave III & Paul Cook James B. & Ann V. Nicholson Brenda Nienhouse Carolyn Nishon Heather Noonan Lowell & Sonja Noteboom Stephanie Oberhausen Rebecca Odland Charles & Barbara Olton Cathy & Bill Osborn James W. Palermo John & Farah Palmer Anne H. Parsons Peter Pastreich Teri E. Popp Luther K. Ranheim Mrs. Alfred M. Rankin Mr. & Mrs. Alfred M. Rankin, Jr. The Albert B. & Audrey G. Ratner Family Foundation Vicky & Rick Reynolds Patricia A. Richards Melody Sawyer Richardson

Peggy & Al Richardson Glenn Roberts Bernard Robertson Barbara S. Robinson Mi Ryung Roman Vanessa Rose-Pridemore Jesse Rosen Barbara & Robert Rosoff Mr. & Mrs. Herbert Rossmeisl Don Roth Deborah F. Rutter Sage Foundation Jo Ellen Saylor Ann H. Santen Cynthia M. Sargent Fred & Gloria Sewell Louis Scaglione Drs. John & Helen Schaefer Paul Schwendener Martin L. Sher George & Charlotte Shultz Marcie Solomon & Nathan Goldblatt Ari Solotoff Barbara J. Soroca Joan H. Squires Connie Steensma & Rick Prins Mr. & Mrs. Thomas Stegman M.S. Stude Rae Wade Trimmier Jeff & Melissa Tsai James Undercofler Lora Unger Alan D. & Connie Linsler Valentine Jamie Broumas van der Vink Dr. Jane Van Dyk Penelope Van Horn Matthew VanBesien & Rosie Jowitt Mr. Brandon VanWaeyenberghe Allison Vulgamore Robert J. Wagner Christina Walker Edward Walker Tina Ward Clark & Doris Warden Ms. Ginger B. Warner Dr. Charles H. Webb Mr. & Mrs. Albert K. Webster Sandra Weingarten Franz Welser-Möst Melody Welsh-Buchholz Stacey Weston Adair & Dick White Jan Wilson Richard B. Worley Rebecca & David Worters Kathryn Wyatt The Simon Yates & Kevin Roon Foundation Edward Yim Anonymous (5) —Campaign support as of Feb. 11, 2011

LEAGUE

AT THE

All Aboard discussions of the opportunities and challenges for orchestras today and tomorrow. The Conference is co-hosted by two great orchestras: the Minnesota Orchestra and The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra.

The Twin Cities are a national leader in “supercitizenship”: the volunteers who come forward, via contributions of energy, resources, and ideas, to build vibrant communities. Simply put, everyone invests in the overall health of the city. What are

M

y annual article about the League’s National Conference is usually aimed at all the constituencies that attend.

And indeed, all are welcome at the 2011 Conference, which takes place June 6 to 9 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. There is literally something for everyone who cares about orchestras. But this year I want to focus on just one constituency: the thousands of generous men and women who volunteer to serve as board members of our orchestras. In any era, it is a constant challenge for board members to govern the affairs of their orchestras. In the current climate of falling donations, sluggish ticket sales, and less staff, it is even harder for board members to know what issue to tackle next and where best to focus their time and energy. And they do this because of their extraordinary commitment to musicians and the music they create.

In these pages last year, League Board Chair Lowell Noteboom, in an interview with Symphony Editor in Chief Robert Sandla, said, “A number of executive directors have raised questions that seem to have two themes. One is that as their board members and board leaders are understandably preoccupied with the financial challenges in their own business and personal lives, executive directors are finding it a challenge to get the requisite time, attention, investment, and energy from their boards and board leaders. The other dimension is that executive directors

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are looking for other ways to be effective in supporting their board leaders and making more efficient use of their time in addressing today’s challenges.”

The 2010 Nonprofit Governance Index, produced by BoardSource—the “go-to” organization for comprehensive information on best practices in nonprofit governance, with which the League has built a partnership—shows that many organizations, not only orchestras, are still struggling to recover from the recession: 41 percent cut or froze staff salaries, 29 percent laid off staff members, and 28 percent dipped into their reserves or endowments. The BoardSource survey of 978 nonprofit CEOs and 780 board members revealed that executives and trustees alike agreed that fundraising was the area of board governance most in need of improvement.

We know that orchestra board members want to improve their skills in many areas.

I encourage board members to attend the League’s 2011 Conference. Being a board leader can be a very lonely occupation, and the preparation for such a role is never easily defined, so the Conference is the ideal vehicle for board members from all backgrounds to come together and share their worries, talk about their experiences, and consider and suggest solutions. You’ll find that your problem is not unique, and others will have navigated the same choppy waters before.

Conference 2011 is focused around the theme of Creative Orchestras, Strong Communities, and will continue our field’s

Ann Marsden

Board members at orchestras face many tough situations right now. But as Russell Jones, the League’s vice president for marketing and membership development, points out, the League’s National Conference can help you navigate the challenges and keep the music playing.

The Minnesota Orchestra led by Music Director Osmo Vänskä will perform works by Kernis, Beethoven, and Sibelius on June 7 during the League’s National Conference.

the lessons from St. Paul and Minneapolis that we can take back to our own communities?

The Twin Cities also represent a remarkable convergence of cultural opportunities. There are two exciting and very different orchestras; thriving groups devoted to new music, including the symphony

SPRING 2011

Rat Race Studios

Conference 2011 focuses on the theme of Creative Orchestras, Strong Communities, and will continue our field’s discussions of the opportunities and challenges for orchestras today and tomorrow.

The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, seen here with Concertmaster Steven Copes as soloist, will perform on June 9 under the direction of Thomas Zehetmair, one of the SPCO’s five artistic partners.

americanorchestras.org

to have input from external sources, which sets creative juices flowing in so many directions. And of course there will be lots of opportunity for members to reflect and respond.

Sharing Infrastructure: A Good Idea or Not? Many orchestras are exploring backof-house efficiencies by partnering with other organizations. The assumption is that doing so will achieve financial savings and greater efficiency. We will examine the evidence to see if this proves to be true.

apolis Minne Meet

Among the many attractions in the Twin Cities available to Conference delegates are Hennepin Avenue’s theater district (above) and great biking on the landmark Stone Arch Bridge (right).

Meet Minn eapolis

American Composers Forum; a premier public-radio venue (American Public Media and Minnesota Public Radio are headquartered here); and a vibrant youthand community-orchestra scene. In addition, Minneapolis and St. Paul stand at the forefront of innovation and entrepreneurship in their for-profit sector. The Conference will take full advantage of all of this, and board members can be of greater value to their orchestras by attending it—ideally along with their executive directors—and improving their skills and making new contacts. The Conference offers networking, learning, and exchange of ideas in such areas as artistic vitality, community engagement, the challenges of leadership, and in-depth explorations of emerging operational and business models.

So what’s particularly hot for board members this year? Throughout the Conference numerous plenary sessions, peerto-peer meetings, and practical hands-on “toolbox” sessions will be available. The following are just the highlights of what this year’s Conference has to offer.

Creating an Environment for Innovation will bring together a dynamic panel that includes a compelling entrepreneurial perspective from Larry Wendling, vice president for the Corporate Research Lab at 3M. Previous Conference attendees have frequently told us how valuable it is

The Art and Science of Ticket Pricing: Everyone has to sell more tickets in order to flourish in the current market, and our field has been watching two emerging trends over the past several years.

One model suggests that dropping ticket prices increases audience participation and loyalty. Another model advocates for stepwise growth to increased ticket pricing and donor contributions. What’s working, and where are the lessons for orchestras struggling with earned and contributed income, as well as audience size?

Where Mission and Money Meet: This session will cover a topic familiar to many board members! It’s oh-so-easy to allow financial constraints to drive institutional decision-making. This session will focus on creating alignment between your orchestra’s mission and the financial realities within which you must operate.

Today’s Philanthropy: New Trends/New Expectations: It seems realistic to assume it will be many years before we return to the pre-2008 model of giving—if

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Online Resources The League has long recognized the need for more tools to help board members do a better job. Full information on what’s available for board members from orchestras of all budget sizes can be found at americanorchestras.org. Our many offerings include:

Mentoring Circles These virtual gatherings bring individuals at similar points in their board careers together with a highly experienced, field-based professional. Now there is no longer any reason to feel isolated and at a loss for where to turn for advice.

Learning Online The League’s distance-learning area features webinars, e-books, and audio interviews, many available free of charge. Recent topics have included governance, finance, and innovative ideas and practices at orchestras.

Board Self-Assessment Tool Developed with BoardSource to inform and support the specific work of your board, this unique tool helps you determine the effectiveness of your board.

session will reveal what you need to know, and what new skills you must develop to increase effectiveness with the donor community.

Learning from and Listening to Your Community: This one is front and center for board members, since you are your communities. Orchestras are investing heavily in projects that are deepening their engagement with, and learning from, non-traditional audiences, in order to be a core element of a thriving community.

Board and Volunteers: The Next Generation: The emerging generation of board and volunteer leadership is essential for an orchestra’s sustainability. What does it take to recruit and retain leaders under 40?

Finally, orchestras—and all nonprofits—are under increased pressure to make the case for their tax-exempt status. We must improve our communication about the good work we do for our communities in order to present a solid case to civic leaders and others who make a difference when it comes to policy decisions. At the Conference we will unveil a new League tool kit to help you in your own community.

Asher Ke lman

y graph Photo offman Jeff R

indeed we ever do. Philanthropic trends have changed dramatically with greater programmatic oversight, funderdriven priorities, and new standards of accountability. This

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The League’s National Conference offers myriad opportunities for learning, networking, and more.

If that is not enough, there are also three exclusive blocks of meeting time set aside just for board members to discuss issues among themselves in a private and safe environment. Such frank, thoughtful discussions are among the most successful and popular events of the entire Conference.

And of course the most important incentive of all to be a part of the League Conference, the reason board members work so hard on behalf of orchestras: the chance to hear more great music. This year there will be two concerts demonstrating the richly contrasting talents of our super co-hosts, the Minnesota Orchestra and The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra.

If you have never experienced a League Conference before, or you want to be better equipped to help your orchestra and your community, then be sure to check the League’s Conference website at americanorchestras.org and start planning your trip.

But don’t just take my word for it.

Listen to one of your own. Cate Moye, board member of the Spokane Symphony in Washington, says: “As a board member, it’s easy to think that Conference is really meant for our orchestra staff members. I can honestly say, though, that with each League Conference I’ve attended since 2002, I have come home with inspiring information and ideas that have benefited both my organization and my trustee skills. Yes, it is a cost but I see it as an invaluable investment, and at $450 for a first-timer it’s an investment that can’t be beat!”

See you in the Twin Cities!

RUSSELL JONES is vice president for marketing and membership development at the League of American Orchestras.

League of American Orchestras 2011 National Conference June 6-9 in Minneapolis, Minnesota Co-hosted by the Minnesota Orchestra and The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra.

To register and for more information, visit americanorchestras.org. symphony

SPRING 2011

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Norman U. Timonera

Orchestras

Technology is changing the way we see, hear, and experience orchestral music outdoors. But a revolution isn’t right around the corner.

IN

his sixteen years with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Director of Concert Operations Christopher Ruigomez has witnessed the evolution of Tanglewood into a modern summer venue serving visually oriented, text-messaging, iPhonewielding, yet still nature-loving and musically discriminating audiences of up to eighteen thousand. Patrons who flock to the BSO’s famous getaway in the Berkshire hills can enjoy superb acoustic music-making either from the “Shed”—Tanglewood’s unique moniker for the structure that covers the stage and some 5,000 seats in its main venue—or from their chosen spots on an expansive, leafy lawn. Depending on the program, up to seven screens are in use for viewing the action, some of them project-

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ing HD images. But Ruigomez recalls that as Tanglewood was entering the video era around ten years ago, there was controversy over how best to serve the visual needs of patrons who had little or no view of the stage. “Did they want to view the orchestra on screens, or just look at the stars and listen to music?”

Stars and music—celestial and acoustic—have always been integral to the experience of an evening orchestral concert outdoors. And in smaller venues without walls, orchestral concerts can be appreciated without artificial enhancement, whether in the form of image magnification or sound reinforcement. A natural concert environment can be found, for example, at the Whittington-Pfohl Auditorium of Brevard Music Center, a summer camp-cum-festival in the spectacular Blue Ridge Mountains of

western North Carolina. The WhittingtonPfohl seats 1,800 under the roof and another 500 on lawns adjacent to the open sides of the structure. “There’s no place without line of sight,” says Bruce Murray, BMC’s dean and artistic administrator. Murray also notes that for orchestral concerts at the facility—there will be eighteen this summer, performed by the faculty-anchored BMC Orchestra, the college-aged and pre-professional Brevard Sinfonia, and the Transylvania Symphony Orchestra, consisting of high-school students—no sound reinforcement is needed. Only the auditorium’s opera productions have traditionally been miked, and for Brevard’s 75th-anniversary season this summer these will move to the Porter Center, an indoor facility at Brevard College that requires no amplification.

But the visual appeal of music-making— symphony

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The audience at Chicago’s Pritzker Pavilion hears the Grant Park Orchestra through speakers suspended from a trellis structure designed by Frank Gehry.

Fresco

by Chester Lane

in the Digital Age

americanorchestras.org

Screens at the back of Tanglewood’s “Shed” bring views of the Boston Symphony Orchestra to large crowds on the lawn.

Hilary Scott

not to mention the carrying power of unamplified sound—can be lost in a festival venue serving audiences several times larger than those in a typical concert hall. For these audiences, delivering a satisfactory outdoor concert experience requires at least that sound reinforcement be used. Video is increasingly coming into play as well. (The most dramatic example to date is the New World Symphony’s newly opened concert hall in Miami Beach, not an outdoor festival venue but one featuring a 7,000-square-foot exterior projection space on its front wall; the inaugural “wallcast” January 28 brought gigantic views of the New World Symphony to thousands in SoundScape Park.)

A third way that technology is transforming the festival experience is through social media. Cellphones—nearly ubiquitous today, and liberally in use at large outdoor venues where they would not be indoors—are giving festival presenters a variety of extramusical ways of reaching their audience. This is happening before, during, and after concerts, adding new dimensions not only to the marketing and presentation of concerts but to the social aspects of concertgoing.

Today all of these technologies are being embraced at festivals that present orchestral concerts to large audiences. As the following sampling suggests, there is significant variation in the ways they are used, in what combinations, and with what levels of commitment.

Sound Planning

Tanglewood delivers sound to the lawn area through speakers installed on the rear of the Shed roof. (Large speakers also hang above the Shed audience, but these are used only for the atypical non-acoustic concert, or for BSO concerts involving a narrator.)

Like many large outdoor venues, Tanglewood employs a sound-delay system. As Ruigomez explains, the natural sound “rolls from the stage to the back of the Shed, and there’s a delay on the speakers on the Shed roof—they pick up the sound when it would get there naturally, so you don’t have an echo effect. If you walk back from

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the Shed, you will go from natural sound A socially networked to amplified sound without really hearing Ravinia patron out on anything strange. From the lawn you can the lawn pretty much tell that sound is coming from the speakers. But if you’re looking towards the stage, it’s coming from the way you’re be employed for the orchestra’s concerts at looking, just higher.”

Verizon—through rings of speakers out on Sound delay is also employed at Ravinia the lawn, placed at intervals “so the sound Festival, where the Chicago Symphony Orwas appropriate no matter how far out you chestra plays seven weeks of concerts in a were”—but Sells says that “we’ve made venue that seats 3,200 inside the pavilion some enhancements to our stereo arrays and more than 11,000 on the lawn. Nick and have been able to do away with the dePullia, Ravinia’s director of communicalay rings. They actually got in the way more tions, says that “no matter where you are than they helped. Which is great, because in the park, the sound reaches you as live setting those up was quite labor-intensive.” sound and appears to be coming from the Another Verizon Wireless Amphithedirection of the stage.” In California’s Oratre, this one in Encore Park north of Atange County, the Pacific Symphony perlanta, is owned and operated by the Atlanta forms five concerts each summer at Verizon Symphony Orchestra, which performs Wireless Amphitheater, a there from early July to midOutdoor venue formerly known as August and also brings in pop festivals are not Irvine Meadows. Also used artists—Stone Temple Pilots, only bringing for Live Nation rock preRush, Kenny Chesney— the action to sentations, it can accomthrough ASO Presents. (Like thousands modate 10,000 in reserved the Verizon Wireless Amphiof audience seats, with space for about theater in Orange County, it members via 6,000 more on the lawn. Jeff large screens, but has an area near the stage that Sells, the Pacific Symphocan serve as a mosh pit for through the tiny ny’s director of artistic and rock concerts. For orchestra screens of their orchestra operations, says concerts at both venues, the mobile devices. that speakers, some of them pit functions as a high-end, a fixture of the venue, some owned by the Boston Pops-style dining area.) Verizon orchestra, “are flown in two arrays, left and Wireless Amphitheatre in Encore Park right of the stage, and there’s a center clusopened in 2008 as a second summer venue ter as well.” A sound-delay system used to for the Atlanta Symphony, whose Delta symphony

spring 2011

Russell Jenkins Patrick Gipson

Ravinia Festival Music Director James Conlon leads the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on stage and on screen.

americanorchestras.org

of the local critic who, soon after the pavilion opened in 2004, “spent a lot of time on the lawn for the first few concerts talking to people about the sound system. She told me that quite a few of them said, ‘the sound is great on the lawn, except I think the speaker above me isn’t working.’

“They didn’t realize that it actually was working. They were hearing it, and it was just blending in.”

Oh Say, Can You See?

The initial impetus for installing screens at Tanglewood wasn’t audience demand for a view of the orchestra. It was Film Night with John Williams. Beginning in the 1990s, Ruigomez says, the BSO would put up a screen the week before Film Night, and it would remain up for two weeks. “As sort of an experiment, because we knew we needed a screen for that event, we also started using image magnification, bringing in a team to put cameras on the orchestra.” At first the orchestra used a roll-down screen near the stage, but a desire to bring the Film Night experience to people on the lawn led Tanglewood to put up two permanent screens on the rear of the Shed roof.

In 2000 the orchestra began showing every evening concert on those screens. Starting two summers ago an additional three screens, slightly smaller (9 x 16 feet) but

compatible with high-definition projectors, went up inside the Shed for people closer to the stage. A sixth screen has been installed on the side of the Shed, stage left, aimed at the large crowds that gather on that part of the lawn. And for Film Night a seventh screen goes up at the edge of the stage, bringing the film to patrons in the front rows but hung high enough to afford them a view of the orchestra.

“When we installed the two screens on the roof,” Ruigomez explains, “we put them at either side, and if you didn’t want to see a screen you would sit in the center front part of the lawn. Now that we have three screens inside the Shed you can see screens from that part of the lawn, unless you’re looking up at the stars. But I don’t think we’ve gotten any complaints from people who don’t want to see a screen. There are places on the lawn where people can go and not see anything except trees.”

Large screens also bring orchestral closeups to audiences at Ravinia and the Verizon venues in Orange County and Atlanta. At the Pacific Symphony, Jeff Sells works with a score reader to choreograph the close-ups, which are beamed to two LED jumbotrons on either side of the Verizon stage and up to six 42- to 60-inch plasma screens viewable from the front rows. Nick Pullia describes the Ravinia operation as a “live video feed,

Audiences at Orange County’s Verizon Wireless Amphitheater view the Pacific Symphony on two LED jumbotrons and up to six portable plasma screens on or near the stage.

Mindy Schauer

Classic Chastain series continues to take place at Atlanta’s Chastain Park Amphitheater; this season will be the ASO’s 38th at Chastain, a city-owned facility operated jointly by the orchestra and Live Nation.

The Encore Park venue has numerous features specifically tailored to the orchestra, including an acoustical design by Kirkegaard Associates. “The sound is absolutely amazing,” says ASO Senior Director of Communications Melissa Sanders.

“Performers from our ASO Presents shows come in and they’re like, ‘holy cow!’ The orchestra has certain acoustical demands and needs, and other groups benefit from that.” This being a summer venue in the Deep South, comfort is an issue, and since air conditioning is not a real option in a hall without walls, Verizon’s 7,000 covered seats are kept comfortable with huge ceiling fans.

(The company that supplies them is in fact called Big Ass Fans.) “The noise from the fans is minimal,” says Sanders. “During an ASO Presents show you’d never hear them.

And you don’t really hear them during an orchestra concert either.”

At Chicago’s Jay Pritzker Pavilion, where the Grant Park Music Festival presents about 30 orchestral concerts on Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday evenings for an average audience of 9,000, quality sound is assured through engineering from Talaske, another firm noted for excellence in indoor acoustics. Here the sound technology is married to world-class architecture by Frank Gehry. Tony Macaluso, Grant Park’s director of marketing and patron services, says that Gehry’s objective in designing the pavilion—where about 4,000 enjoy season seats as a benefit of membership (minimum donation $135) and lawn seating is free— was to create a venue that not only had unobstructed sightlines, but would “give people on the lawn a sense that they were in the same space, visually and emotionally, as the performers and the people sitting up closer.” The resulting steel trellis structure “wraps over the lawn and sort of encloses the audience.” It also holds the speakers, which receive signals through a sound-delay system.

“Sitting on the lawn,” says Macaluso, “you don’t really feel that you’re hearing the music from a speaker above you. Directionally it sounds like it’s coming from the stage, because you’re also hearing speakers closer to the stage.” Macaluso likes to tell

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with the director—an independent consands more on the lawn, is “not really under tractor experienced in television—calling consideration. It’s a costly endeavor, and we the shots. It’s very well crafted, almost like have plenty of places in our pavilion where you’re watching a film, but it’s done on the you can see the orchestra easily.” spot. There are two very large screens right The Mann Music Center in Philadelon the pavilion stage, and you can see them phia’s Fairmount Park presents The Philafrom about 40 percent of the lawn. They’ve delphia Orchestra in nine concerts each been up for about four years, and prior to summer for up to 13,500 patrons, many of that we experimented with them for this them attending for free through an Access show or that show. They were embraced the Arts program in cooperation with local across the board immediately, and we kind churches and social-service agencies. One of had our directive. People love close-ups of the special events for the venue’s 75th of the orchestra, but even more they love anniversary last summer was a Planet Earth seeing the expression on the conductor’s screening accompanied by the orchestra. face. You really feel like an insider. [Ravinia The orchestra itself is not yet on screen, but Music Director] James Conlon loves it, the Mann President Catherine Cahill says the orchestra loves it. There have been a couple center is “embracing a campaign to raise of critics who didn’t love it; they felt that money over the next two to three years to it somehow marred the experience. But by improve the sound, enhance the lawn exand large the audience loves it. It’s been a perience, and install large state-of-the-art hands-down success.” high-definition video screens.

Orchestras are More commonly at outWhen we do visual activiusing technology door festivals, screens are ties now we put them up and to connect used only for film-with-mutake them down. We want audiences with sic events. At Wolf Trap in to put them in permanently the music—and Northern Virginia, where the so we can deliver more visual the musicians— National Symphony Orchessatisfaction for all of the auat large outdoor tra plays about ten concerts dience. We’re behind on that, venues. each summer, the orchestra is no question.” Cahill says that not on camera. But last summer it could be acquiring capacity for showing close-ups heard performing Holst’s The Planets as HD of the orchestra is “in the plan. We’ve just images from NASA appeared on a huge raised $2.5 million from the state so I can at screen at the back of the stage; the previous least put the infrastructure in.” day the NSO had provided live accompaniment for a screening of the video-game Socially Connected symphony Final Fantasy. Chicago’s Grant Outdoor festivals today are not only bringing Park Orchestra is one of several that perthe action to thousands of audience memformed the George Fenton score to Planet bers via large screens, but through the tiny Earth last summer as clips from that BBC screens of their mobile devices. Nick Pulnature series ran on screen. Grant Park’s lia says that Ravinia has 130,000 people on Macaluso says that greater use of video at its email list and is “extremely active” with that venue has been discussed, “but we’ve such social media as Facebook and Twitter. surveyed people out on the lawn and there’s “We post updates and pictures from previous not a strong clamoring for it. I think the maconcerts. We don’t do too many straight-out jority find it more of a distraction.” advertising/marketing things [through social The Cleveland Orchestra does not roumedia] because that’s kind of a turnoff, but tinely employ video for its eighteen to we do promotions like last-minute ticket oftwenty concerts each summer at Blossom fers. We also play some games with people Festival, but last summer it provided live in the park. At a Chicago Symphony concert accompaniment to clips from Disney films, last year we had a picnic contest, with people and in 2009 George Daugherty conducted on the lawn letting us know where they were the orchestra in his Bugs Bunny at the Symthrough Twitter.” The picnic spreads were phony suite as the madcap rabbit hammed it “judged in five categories, including appearup on screen. Ana Papakhian, the orchesance and originality” by a panel that included tra’s director of communications, says that HGTV celebrity Monica Pederson, and a putting the musicians on screen at Blossom, prize was awarded at intermission. which seats 5,700 under cover and thouCahill reports that the Mann Center is

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symphony

SPRING 2011

Courtesy Wolf Trap

For the National Symphony’s 2009 performance of Beethoven’s ”Pastoral” Symphony under Emil de Cou, real-time program notes went out via Twitter from backstage at Wolf Trap.

actively engaged in “building a larger fan base on Facebook and Twitter.” For last year’s Tchaikovsky concert by The Philadelphia Orchestra, the Mann’s Facebook page posed trivia questions like “What stringed symphonic instrument has a pedestal and crown?” and “Which of his compositions did Tchaikovsky describe as very loud and noisy?” The first to answer all questions correctly received free lawn tickets to the show.

Also last summer, the Mann used Twitter during a Philadelphia Orchestra rehearsal with the Broadway vocalist Idina Menzel.

“A Mann staff member sat in on the rehearsal,” says Cahill, “and fans could follow the hashtag #IdinaAtTheMann for inside details on what was going on during the rehearsal. This built excitement and engaged fans even before the actual performance.”

For this coming season Ravinia is launching a marketing campaign using Quick Response (also known as QR code or 2D barcode) technology. “When you shoot the barcode with the camera on your smartphone,” Pullia explains, “it automatically loads a website or a special offer. Several of our staff members have volunteered to drive around with giant magnets on their cars.

The magnets have no text, just this intriguing barcode. Those in the know can shoot it and be led to special offers, such as two-forone pavilion seats to CSO concerts. We will also have the mysterious symbol printed up on business cards left around the city.”

Boston Symphony Orchestra Web Direcamericanorchestras.org

tor Rich Bradway says that the BSO uses its iPhone app to “leverage marketing for people who sign up for our mobile alerts about upcoming programs and incentives.” Tanglewood patrons who have joined its “mobile club” can text in five-dollar donations from the lawn, paying through their phone bill. (A similar program was launched last summer at the Mann on a trial basis.) The BSO has stayed away from texting program notes to patrons during concerts, Bradway says, “because we felt it was a bit distracting. We just send an alert saying ‘visit here,’ and that little URL will take them to our Media Center.”

At Ravinia, program notes and performer bios actually appear on the large screens prior to concerts. “Once the concert starts,” says Pullia, “depending on the piece we’ll say, ‘here’s the Allegro’ or whatever. Only the names of pieces and parts of symphonies will be listed during the concert.”

And at Atlanta’s Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre, both the large screens used for image magnification and the small ones operated by thumbs are powerful tools for social interactivity. Live on-screen intermission interviews are a regular feature of ASO concerts at Verizon, and concertgoers are invited to text in their questions.

“It’s not meant to cull phone numbers so we can turn around and market to these people,” Sanders says. “It’s 100 percent about audience engagement.” Last summer the orchestra held a YouTube singing competition, asking people to submit videos of themselves singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” A panel of judges—including ASO President Stanley Romanstein, a trained singer—selected three finalists, who came to Verizon and sang that song with the orchestra on stage. “We webcast it live,” says Sanders. “Twelve hundred people voted by text, or online if they were watching the live stream. The winner traveled to New York this year to hear the orchestra at Carnegie Hall.”

CHESTER LANE is senior editor of Symphony.

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Spring Forward

by Rebecca Winzenried

I

n a perfect world, orchestras everywhere would feel free to be as creative with concert programs as they desired, without a second thought to budgets, ticket sales, or anything other than purely artistic choices; they would perform those concerts at home, but also in the great concert halls of the world. Audience members, for their part, would be able to buy any seat in the house for one budgetfriendly price, and they could choose from a number of adventurous programs over the course of a single week.

The new Spring for Music festival, debuting this May at Carnegie Hall, offers North American orchestras a chance to experience that ideal. Spring for Music presents seven orchestras in seven concerts over a nine-day period, with the roster of participants—the Albany, Dallas, Montreal, Oregon, and To-

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Jeff Goldberg/Esto

The new Spring for Music festival brings seven North American orchestras to Carnegie Hall for nine intensive days of innovative programming—and everyman ticket prices. ledo symphonies, the Orpheus and Saint Paul chamber orchestras—selected solely on the basis of proposed programs and artistic philosophy. Tickets for every concert from May 6 to 14 are priced at $25, whether for a box or the balcony (and some balcony seats go for $15). Tickets are sold not by subscription, but for individual concerts.

“It would be silly to say we’re trying to reorganize the concert business, because we’re not trying to do that necessarily. But we are trying to see if maybe there is another way it could work,” says Festival Director David Foster, who is handling production elements for the nonprofit Spring for Music organization. Foster, president and CEO of the artist management firm Opus 3 Artists, is credited with originating the concept, which he has nurtured since strolling past Carnegie Hall one day about five years

ago. Gazing at a poster for a self-produced concert by a visiting U.S. orchestra, Foster wondered what were the odds that the orchestra, having placed a significant financial bet on appearing at Carnegie Hall, would reap the hoped-for rewards of positive critical notice, greater audience appreciation, and enhanced reputation on the national (or international) stage. “The fact is,” says Foster, “that when one orchestra, from wherever it may be, comes to Carnegie Hall, there’s no guarantee that anybody will write about it.

There’s no guarantee that anybody will pay any attention. If you rent Carnegie Hall, the public doesn’t come with it.”

What if, Foster thought, such organizations could be featured in a way that they are not currently in New York, with a festival specific to North American orchestras, focused solely on their artistic philosophies? symphony

spring 2011

t

t

Dallas Symphony Orchestra

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Oregon Symphony/Leah Nash

Musicians of the Oregon Symphony, which performs a program designed as a meditation on the theme of war at Carnegie Hall on May 12

The Dallas Symphony Orchestra in performance with Music Director Jaap van Zweden. The orchestra performs the New York premiere of Steven Stucky’s August 4, 1964 at Carnegie Hall on May 11.

Gary D. Gold Photography

Music Director David Alan Miller will lead the Albany Symphony Orchestra in “Spirituals Re-Imagined” at Carnegie Hall on May 10.

The program includes new interpretations of traditional spirituals by contemporary composers commissioned by the orchestra, as well as works by Tsontakis and Copland.

Orchestre symphonique de Montréal

Music Director Kent Nagano will lead the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal’s “Historical Perspectives on the Symphony” program at Spring for Music on May 14.

front. Each will have access to 1,000 tickets for hometown supporters, and each will have its concert broadcast and streamed live by New York classical radio station WQXR, featured on American Public Media’s Classical Live series, and available at the Spring for Music website.

Those concrete details are enabling some participants to make their Carnegie Hall debuts—this year it’s the Albany, Toledo, and Oregon symphonies. Until Spring for Music, a Carnegie appearance was not a real possibility for the Oregon Symphony, which was founded in 1896 but has never toured to the East Coast. “Not many people make the journey out to Portland to hear our orchestra, but I think they are going to be surprised at how good it is,” says Oregon Symphony President Elaine Calder.

Oregon Symphony Music Director Carlos Kalmar says the Spring for Music program reflects the kind of concert that is offered regularly to Portland audiences: Ives’s Unanswered Question; Adams’s The Wound Dresser; Sinfonia da Requiem by Britten; and Vaughan Williams’s Symphony No. 4. Kalmar designed that program as a meditation on war. “We wanted to show a program that is not put together with ‘war music’ like military marches,” Kalmar wrote in an email earlier this year. “We were more interested in how composers (artists) reflect

Carnegie Hall was also considering how to spotlight the diversity and quality of American orchestras, and the often not-sotraditional performances they offer. “We hadn’t come up with an answer for how to do that yet, but it was very much a central issue for us,” says Clive Gillinson, Carnegie Hall’s executive and artistic director. “I can’t think of any other country where there are so many fine-quality orchestras, and many of them truly world-class,” he notes. “So we’re a very committed host. We genuinely believe in the vision and the purpose of this project.”

For the orchestras, Spring for Music relieves some of the financial burden of a New York appearance, and it puts participants on equal footing. Each orchestra will share equally in the total box-office take for the festival (minus Carnegie credit card commissions), with each having a $50,000 guarantee up

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The Spring for Music team (left to right): Festival Director David V. Foster, Public Relations Director Mary Lou Falcone, and Artistic Director and CEO Thomas W. Morris

Henry Grossman.

Toledo Symphony

The Toledo Symphony, led

by Principal Conductor Stefan Sanderling, performs Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 6 as well as the André Previn/Tom Stoppard work Every Good Boy Deserves Favor at Spring for Music on May 7.

upon something as big as this. That is why the program starts with a piece that in my point of view leaves more questions open than it offers answers.”

Spring for Music was conceived as an annual event. Plans have been made for festivals through 2014, with major multi-year funding for the first three seasons coming from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Daniel and Jan Lewis, and Gerry and Marguerite Lenfest. Additional funding for the first season is being provided by the MetLife Foundation, Irving Harris Foundation, and The Edgemer Foundation. Participants were drawn from League of American Orchestras Groups 1 and 2 and from recent Group 3 and 4 winners of ASCAP Awards for Adventurous Programming. Eligible orchestras were invited to submit prospective programs that reflected their artistic vision, without restriction.

“Orchestra programing has been changing steadily in recent years, but we’re in the midst of it, so it’s hard to see clearly what’s going on,” says League of American Orchestras President and CEO Jesse Rosen.

“Spring for Music offers an amazing snapshot of many of these changes: a look into composition itself, creative partnerships, the voice of the community, and local context.

As a concert-going New Yorker I’m also just thrilled that the imagination and creative diversity of these concerts will be available to us, and at affordable prices. The Fall for Dance programs, which I attend, have become a staple of the season, and I expect Spring for Music will be an equal success.”

Spring for Music Artistic Director and CEO Thomas W. Morris, who is artistic director of California’s Ojai Music Festival and former executive director of The Cleveland Orchestra, made the final selections.

Morris was knocked out by what he saw. “I think what has been proven already is that there is, in fact, a lot of creativity out there.

And when you unleash it, it’s fascinating to see how people respond,” he says. A guiding principle was to give orchestras freedom to program beyond the kind of meat-andpotatoes repertoire that can be governed by the economics of presenting a concert in New York. “What’s amazing is that this is not about contemporary music only, or theme programs,” Morris says. “One of the things is, how do people mix styles in a program? How can you, in fact, present pieces that are well-known in a fresh context? symphony

SPRING 2011

How can you present major new works?”

He points to programs such as the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra’s “The New Brandenburgs.” It features nary an actual Bach piece, but rather works by Aaron Jay Kernis, Melinda Wagner, Peter Maxwell Davies, Christopher Theofanidis, Stephen Hartke, and Paul Moravec that are each inspired by one of the familiar Brandenburg Concertos. The works were commissioned

by Orpheus, and though the project has been gestating for a while, Spring for Mu-

The program was designed by Principal Conductor Stefan Sanderling, who grew up in East Germany and saw the parallels clearly, according to Toledo President and CEO Kathleen Carroll.

Spring for Music attempts to draw back the curtain on the artistic process by starting conversations about the somewhat mysterious method through which works are selected and combined. “Programming in the orchestra world is kind of a secret.

Very few people talk about it,” says Morris.

In contrast, proposals for the 2013 schedule were posted on the Spring A guiding principle for Spring for Music is to for Music website last November; give orchestras freedom to program beyond comments were invited, and visitors could see how the various prothe kind of meat-and-potatoes repertoire grams ranked with the online pubthat can be governed by economics. lic. Those who didn’t like what they saw were invited to submit their own fantasy program in an online contest. sic will mark the first time all of the “New The winner, as selected by online votes, will Brandenburgs” will be performed on the be interviewed, and recorded excerpts from same program. The Toledo Symphony prohis or her program will be played on NPR’s gram pairs Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 6 Performance Today. Orchestras were not with the André Previn/Tom Stoppard work identified online, but had a chance to review Every Good Boy Deserves Favor. The latter the public feedback and amend programs. is a play set in a Russian gulag and features Orchestras and concerts for the 2011, the orchestra as a character in the mind of 2012, and 2013 seasons were revealed Feba possibly insane inmate. “Just the idea of ruary 17, when tickets for the current festival that particular Shostakovich work being went on sale. Ticketbuyers could get in line paired with this play is pretty interesting,” at the virtual box office by registering sevsays Morris, since the Sixth “is one of those eral hours before general sales opened; those Shostakovich symphonies that is very much correctly answering questions on a classicalthe same story—the very dark first movemusic quiz could buy tickets a day earlier. ment, and then it really goes into burlesque.”

Spring for Music’s Inaugural Festival Season at Carnegie Hall Friday, May 6, 2011 Orpheus Chamber Orchestra Saturday, May 7, 2011 Toledo Symphony Tuesday, May 10, 2011 Albany Symphony Orchestra Wednesday, May 11, 2011 Dallas Symphony Orchestra Thursday, May 12, 2011 Oregon Symphony Friday, May 13, 2011 The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra Saturday, May 14, 2011 Orchestre symphonique de Montréal Tickets are $25, with a limited number of tickets at $15. For tickets and complete program information, visit springformusic.com.

Virginie Blachere

Orpheus Chamber Orchestra in performance on October 14, 2010 at Carnegie Hall. The group performs “The New Brandenburgs,” commissioned by Orpheus from a variety of contemporary composers, at Carnegie Hall on May 6.

americanorchestras.org

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Getting to $25

The online ticketing option might prove to be an advantage when $25, first-come, first-served tickets to even a box seat at Carnegie Hall are at stake. Price point was an essential component of the festival from the start, with organizers taking their cue from such successful initiatives as New York City Opera’s $25-per-ticket Opera for All program. Indeed, the Spring for Music name is derived from the immensely popular Fall for Dance festival, which brings together a number of celebrated dance companies each year for performances at New York’s City Center. With tickets priced at $10, the annual dance festival sells out in a New York minute.

In a break with tradition, supporters and fans of particular orchestras will be seated together in color-coded sections of the hall.

And don’t be surprised to see them waving their own colored team handkerchiefs. No disrespect to orchestra traditions is meant, says Festival Public Relations Director Mary Lou Falcone, who heads M L Falcone Public Relations: “We don’t wish to turn it into a football field. At the same time we want it to be user-friendly, pushing out from the norm, saying you can be free to be proud of what’s coming out from the stage, and you can be free to express your emotions.”

It’s all intended to build a sense of community around the festival, to foster the local pride that’s so much a part of an appearance, especially a debut, at America’s most venerated concert hall. Alan Valentine, president and CEO of the Nashville

Symphony, understands that connection completely. His orchestra, which will take part in the 2012 Spring for Music festival, made its Carnegie Hall debut in 2000 in a self-produced concert. “While performing at Carnegie Hall was wonderful to make an impression on everybody else—and that was the goal—it also did a lot of other things for us at home,” Valentine says. “It helped us cement our relationship with the community. It helped the leadership understand the things we said we needed. It helped the community understand just how good the orchestra had gotten. And it really pushed us onto the national stage in a way that’s had lasting repercussions.”

This year’s Spring for Music participants express similar sentiments, and most are playing up their participation back home with “Countdown to Carnegie Hall” events and updates. The Oregon Symphony created a video with heartfelt comments from musicians and boosters like Thomas Lauderdale, leader of the genre-busting, Portland-based ensemble Pink Martini, on the meaning of playing Car­negie. Lauderdale, whose band is a regular guest with orchestras, helped obtain a countdown clock that sparkles away in the lobby of Portland’s Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall as a reminder to visitors of where the orchestra is heading.

“Ultimately we’re here for this community, and I’m hoping that this is just one more thing that will boost awareness and support,” says Elaine Calder.

The Toledo Symphony has its own digital clock winding down on a separate “Countdown to Carnegie” web page. The

The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra in performance at SPCO Center in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

In photo: Concertmaster Steven Copes, Associate Concertmaster Ruggero Allifranchini, and Principal Cello Ronald Thomas. The orchestra performs works by Stravinsky, Maria Schneider, Bartók, and Haydn at Carnegie Hall on May 13.

Ji Won Kim, 2009 ABC Symphony Australia Young Performer of Sarah Rubinstein

the Year

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orchestra went full-bore in connecting the community to its Carnegie Hall debut, positioning the event prominently in the 2010-11 season brochure and starting this year with a concert of music that had world premieres at Carnegie. By late January, the buzz had lured 1,000 Toledo Symphony supporters to snap up the entirety of the orchestra’s ticket allotment, with additional tickets being sold to groups from Toledo.

“One thousand people who didn’t even know what they were going to hear” bought

and wrapping up with Beethoven’s Fifth. to lure newcomers to a night at the sym“We thought that in one evening it would phony, even if they don’t really know much be interesting to go through all those piecabout the orchestra that will be performes, showing that symphony music is not aling. That includes jaded New Yorkers. ways a big orchestra,” says Careau. “Some“I’ve always said that Manhattan’s Upper times it is more intimate.”

West Side is not waiting for our orchestra The Spring for Music box office has two to turn up at Carnegie Hall,” says Oregon’s potential targets: hometown patrons of parElaine Calder. “But a weeklong festival at ticipating orchestras, and New York City $25 a ticket? I think the Upper West Side and regional ticketbuyers. What the balwill buy some tickets. Personally, I’m going ance will be is anyone’s guess, although it is to stay and go to all of the concerts.” a given that the festival, by its very nature, is a New York-centric concept.

REBECCA WINZENRIED, a New York CitySpring for Music’s innovative programs “Spring for Music, by encouragbased writer and editor, is former editor in chief ing orchestras to take some risks, is of Symphony. More of her work on arts, culture, might be just the thing to lure newcomers doing a tremendous service to the and new-media issues is available at www. to a night at the symphony. field,” says Alan Valentine, adding rwinzenried.com. tickets in advance, says Toledo’s Carroll, that the Nashville Symphony took organizGot an opinion? Join the discussion! noting that the program had not yet been ers at their word about programming works announced at that point. The feeling, she it otherwise wouldn’t do, “or you might If you could put together an innovative says, was, “I definitely have to be there. It’s consider doing but you’d get heartburn just concert program with no concern for our home team.” The orchestra plans to thinking about.” That includes Ives’s rarely budget, what works would you include? keep the Carnegie connection going after performed Universe Symphony, along with How might the ideas behind Spring for returning home by performing the Oregon the new Nashville Symphony-commisMusic be applied to your orchestra?

Symphony’s Spring for Music program. It’s sioned Concerto for Electric Violin by TerClick on the Discussions tab below to a way to put an exclamation point on Tolery Riley, with Tracey Silverman as soloist. comment. do’s participation on the national stage. “We Such programs might be just the thing went to New York, we listened, we had this experience, and now we’re bringing it back to you,” says Carroll.

Madeleine Careau, CEO of the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, hopes the $25 tickets will draw not only big audiences, but new audiences. “At that price, it’s not a big risk for someone who never comes to a concert to give it a try,” she says.

“We thought Spring for Music was a good occasion for that with a new audience—a Kendal’s diverse and younger audience, hopefully.” The orchestra appealing community has already made connections with a group invites you to reach for the of young Canadians who work in New high notes with a retirement York’s financial markets, including them in score offering a coordinated special meet-and-greet events. system of residential and Carnegie Hall is not new territory for health care choices. Minutes the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal. from Oberlin College and its The orchestra has performed there some 25 times, according to Careau, usually Conservatory of Music.

Rehearsal (det) by Paul Arnold, Kendal resident playing the bigger orchestral repertoire. and Oberlin College Professor Emeritus.

But this appearance is a chance for audi® ences to see the orchestra in a new light.

The program created by Music Director Kent Nagano is a mini-history of the symTogether, transforming the experience of aging.SM phony, interspersing Gabrieli’s Symphonia Sacrae for trumpets and trombones, WeOberlin, Ohio 800.548.9469 bern’s Symphony Op. 21, and Stravinsky’s www.kao.kendal.org Symphonies of Wind Instruments with Bach Sinfonia (Inventions) for solo piano,

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Baldwin-Wallace College

Back to

Bach

by Melinda Bargreen

With deep roots in their host communities, Bach festivals are a source of pride and inspiration and education all at once—serving not just devoted fans and musicians but also curious newcomers.

F

rom Winter Park, Florida, to Lake Chelan, Washington; from Peoria and Kalamazoo to the otherworldly serenity of Mount Angel Abbey in St. Benedict, Oregon, the sounds of Johann Sebastian Bach rise each year to eager audiences. In small towns, cities, and college communities from New England to the Wild West, more than 60 Bach festivals of every variety draw in patrons and performers to experience the music of the immortal master. Even the perennially popular Mozart takes a back seat to Bach when it comes to American festivals, although there’s a respectable representation of the great Amadeus in festivals from New York to Vermont, Oklahoma, and California.

Some of the festivals are relatively new: the CONCORA Bach Festival in Connecticut debuted this year, and the Arizona Bach Festival, held in Phoenix, had its second season this January. Some have long,

34

illustrious histories, most notable of which are Pennsylvania’s 112-year-old Bethlehem Bach Festival and the collegiate festival it inspired, the Baldwin-Wallace Bach Festival in Ohio. Some festivals offer a vast array of Bach and non-Bach programming featuring major masses and oratorios over several weeks. Others present a weekend of smaller-scale concerts. There are festivals in all four seasons: festivals in tiny venues, ones performed in vast cathedrals and major concert halls. Some present pick-up orchestras of local musicians; others feature dedicated “festival orchestras” whose members are drawn from the local professional orchestras, augmented by guest players. At the Oregon Bach Festival, the orchestra is made up of professionals from American and European orchestras and from academia.

Despite all this diversity, there are many common threads. Bach festivals are deeply rooted in their host communities, a source

Lobby of the Hult Center for the Performing Arts in Eugene, Oregon, home to Oregon Bach Festival concerts

Bill Bontemps

of pride and inspiration and education all at once. Visitors overwhelmingly return year after year, sometimes evolving from performers into donors and administrators. Performers and attendees alike point to the tremendous variety of works Bach composed in almost every genre as a reason to focus on Bach. Scott Hagler, director of Colorado’s weeklong Durango Bach Festival, contends that “we’re better able to really ‘hear’ and understand the music

Jon Meyers

Attired as J.S. Bach, Co-director Martin Dicke gives a talk at the Peoria Bach Festival in Illinois.

when we listen to many pieces at a time rather than a smattering here and there.”

The same argument could be made about other themed festivals, but with Bach there is something deeper and more spiritual at work as well—something that guitarist and Bach specialist Eliot Fisk once observed.

“Bach is not just music to those of us who love him,” said Fisk. “He is the quintessential expression of the meaning and sense of our existence on this planet.” Perhaps it is this indefinable quality that continues to inspire the performers and listeners who flock to Bach festivals.

It is not hard to sense the tremendous admiration and enthusiasm the festival artists and audiences feel for this composer and his music. You see it in the welldressed cyclists zooming toward the concert hall in bike-friendly Eugene, Oregon, on their way to an Oregon Bach Festival cantata program. You see it in the intense faces of the aspiring conductors in conductor Helmuth Rilling’s master classes at the Oregon Bach Festival; in the heartfelt choral singing of the “Kyrie” of the B Minor Mass, and in the audience members who lean forward to catch every note. Everyone has a different way to explain the undying appeal of this music. Ken Nafziger, the

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Looking for the “Harp” Quartet: An Investigation into Musical Beauty

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The performers of Ohio’s Baldwin-Wallace Bach Festival at the festival’s 75th anniversary in 2007

founding director nineteen years ago of the Shenandoah Valley Bach Festival in Harrisonburg, Virginia, understands Bach as a sort of “perfect circle” uniting aesthetics, workmanship, and spirituality. This, he believes, is music everyone can appreciate on one level or another.

“Even if you are not classically trained, you have probably performed or at least heard Bach pieces,” says Diane Wright, executive director of California’s Sonora Bach Festival. Sandra Gerster Lisicky, Shenandoah’s principal oboist, agrees: “Many people remember a Bach piece from church or childhood piano lessons,” she says. “And from an oboe player’s point of view, there is nothing that beats playing Bach!”

Each Bach festival seems to have its own special charm and brings something a little different to the community. Gertrude Harvey, executive director of Spokane, Washington’s Northwest Bach Festival, notes that her performers “offer the community the only opportunity to hear the large Bach masterworks in live performances.” Theater and culture critic Terry Teachout, an annual visitor at Florida’s Bach Festival Society of Winter Park, cites the “wonderfully unpretentious” vibe there. “I’ve spent a lot of time in my life going to high-priced big-city concerts, and I’ll be the first to tell you that they’re more obviously finished and virtuosic than a Bach Festival concert in Winter Park. If I want to hear slick, note-perfect performances of the classics, all I have to do is fire up my iPod. What I hear at Winter Park, on the other hand, are homegrown performances that are deeply rooted in the life of the surrounding community. There’s something uniquely and inexpressibly moving about that kind of

music-making.” Winter Park’s auditioned all-volunteer chorus of 160 sang with the London Philharmonic Orchestra during two Florida residencies (2007, 2009); the orchestra members, drawn from all over central Florida, are professional musicians and teachers who return annually for their dose of the Baroque master.

Close Connections

Most festivals bring in musicians from far afield—the musicians of the Bethlehem Bach Festival congregate from eleven states. For most such orchestras, the start of the rehearsal period is often “a wonderful reunion of friends,” notes Shenandoah’s executive director and flutist Mary Kay Adams. Several festival presenters compare the experience they offer to a pilgrimage, with typical return rates of 95 percent among musicians and upwards of 70 percent among audiences. Audience members often inquire after players’ spouses and children; Shenandoah’s Lisicky cites “an incredible connection between the audience and the musicians.”

“Not only are people proud of this festival,” says Shenandoah’s Nafziger, “they feel they own it.” That sentiment is precisely echoed in tiny Chelan, Washington (pop.

4,105), where Ruth Rogers, director of the Lake Chelan Bach Fest, says the town’s intensely involved network of volunteers, donors, and Bach fanatics all feel deeply invested in, and proud of, the festival: “The town of Chelan ‘owns’ the annual Bach Fest.” For the Chelan festival, the board members secure permits, venues, sound equipment, and provide meals and snacks for the performers. Local churches provide some venues at no cost, and they borrow symphony

SPRING 2011

Rebecca Bowers performs at the Durango Bach Festival’s annual student recital in Colorado.

Paul Boyer S. Harvey

Artistic Director Gunther Schuller leads a Northwest Bach Festival rehearsal for Bach’s St. Matthew Passion in Spokane, Washington.

Junior Bach Festival students rehearse in Kensington, California, March 2010.

But people like the salon concerts, where the artists talk about the music. The vibe is very comfortable.” Out in Carmel, on the California coastline, “There is particular synergy between the stunning natural and architectural beauty of the area, the intimate, small-town feel, and inspired, joyful musical expression,” says Carmel Bach Festival Executive Director Camille Kolles.

The Bethlehem Bach Festival, inaugurated in 1900, is the country’s longestrunning Bach fest, and it thrives by meeting many needs: spiritual, musical, social.

Executive Director Bridget George explains: “The [performers’] sense of family, investment in a great tradition, and devotion to musical excellence has transferred itself to our audience. So when you come to the Bethlehem Bach Festival, you are surrounded by people who are transported by the music, and it becomes a joy to listen to the music with them even if it is your very first time listening to Bach.”

And Winter Park’s festival, which Principal String Bass Tye Van Buren terms “low on the uptightness meter,” involves many sectors of its Floridian host community. As Terry Teachout puts it, “Even if you’re not performing in a Bach Festival concert, you probably know some of the people who are, from the conductor all the way down to the second alto in the back row of the chorus. Because of this, Winter Park is ‘vested’ in the Bach Festival—the townspeople feel that they have a personal stake in it, and that makes all the difference in the world.” Van Buren notes further that Winter Park has “a strong conservative, spiritual base for which Bach provides an expressive outlet.”

In Texas, Victoria Bach Festival Executive Director Nina Di Leo smiles when she sees longtime audience members showing up with their 1982 festival T-shirts. “Musicians and visitors like that Texas hospitality,” she observes, and the atmosphere of “warmth and humanity.” Di Leo enjoys reading the comments (“I didn’t know choral music could be like this!”) in kids’ letters she receives after distributing free student tickets.

Programming Perspectives

Helmuth Rilling, artistic director of the Oregon Bach Festival since its inception in the 1970s, is virtually the patron saint of this three-week festival, his quiet but americanorchestras.org

penetrating wisdom infusing every rehearsal and each performance.

“It is important for someone like me, with so much “From an oboe experience, to pass this on to player’s point the next generation. It is a of view, there goal for me,” explains Rilling, who delights in finding “gift- is nothing that ed young people” as far afield beats playing as Taipei, and inviting them Bach!” says to Eugene for the festival’s conducting master class. Not Shenandoah surprisingly, many younger Valley Bach Bach-festival conductors have Festival worked with Rilling (including Greg Funfgeld, artistic di- Principal rector since 1983 of the Bach Oboist Sandra Choir of Bethlehem, which Gerster presents the venerable Bethlehem Bach Festival). John Lisicky.

Jost, co-founder (in 2003) of the Peoria Bach Festival, cites a Rilling master class fifteen years ago as “the impetus for our festival.”

At the 33-year-old Northwest Bach Festival in Spokane, it is Gunther Schuller—a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and recipient of a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant—whose artistic vision has shaped the festival for the past eighteen years, changing its tone by bringing in high-profile visiting artists to work alongside local musicians. “Gunther’s very good at putting in programming that’s not exactly garden-variety,” observes Travis Rivers, a correspondent for The Spokesman-Review in Spokane.

Over time, most festivals evolve by widening their vision; in fact, much of the “Bach festival” repertoire around the country isn’t Bach. Paul Goodwin, music director and conductor of the Carmel Bach Festival in California, has kept Bach as its cornerstone but has incorporated what he calls “pepper and spice” as a way to “give the festival a wider appeal that will interest people from all walks of life.” One new feature for 2011: a “Carmel Commission” for new compositions inspired by Bach. First up is composer John Corigliano’s new orchestral arrangement of his own Fancy on a Bach Air, originally written for solo cello and inspired by the Bach cello suites.

There is no one answer to the question of why festivals catering to devoted followers of Bach do not limit themselves to just Marguerite Close

chairs and musical equipment from the local high school, which is also used as a rehearsal venue; the local print shop provides banners, posters, and festival programs at no cost.

The issue of intimacy comes up again and again when concertgoers discuss their favorite festivals. At the Peoria Bach Festival in Illinois, musicians invite children and adults onto the stage after concerts to peer into the inner workings of the harpsichord.

Everyone mingles with the players. A volunteer corps sells tickets, welcomes guests, prepares food, and helps give the festival a family feel.

Diane Wright describes Sonora, California, as “very rural, more of a cowboy town with a lot of farming and ranchers.

37

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38

Bach. Ken Nafziger says the Shenandoah festival has paired Bach with other composers and themes “from the beginning year” of the festival, including “Bach with Handel, Mozart, Haydn, Mendelssohn, Schubert, turn of the millennium, Cuba, Latin America, the U.S., Russia, 2010 anniversaries.… It’s an idea that always ensures that next year’s festival will differ from preceding ones.” Winter Park’s Tye Van Buren says his festival has branched out to everything from Bernstein’s Mass (“that stirred some controversy!”) to Verdi and Beethoven’s Ninth. Many festivals include non-Bach works as a way to show “influence of Bach,” but often it’s the performers themselves who suggest these pieces, and feel they’ll be well received by audiences who like Bach.

At the Oregon Bach Festival this summer, you’re just as likely to encounter YoYo Ma as soloist in Osvaldo Golijov’s Azul, or Marin Alsop conducting a staged concert of Honegger’s oratorio Jeanne d’Arc au Bûcher. At Shenandoah, they’re pairing Bach with jazz, Cuban music, American folk, and music of several other cultures.

Michigan’s Kalamazoo Bach Festival started in 1946 with a week of sacred music for the Lenten season. Inspired by the Carmel Bach Festival, Kalamazoo Music Director James Turner says the focus now is “Bach and Beyond.” History lectures and Germanlanguage coaching link “town and gown” (the festival has rehearsal and performance space at Kalamazoo College, where Turner teaches). Even at the venerable Bethlehem, Artistic Director and Conductor Funfgeld notes that the repertoire is “no longer exclusively Bach, but a vast array of music from the Renaissance to world premieres.”

Leaps of Faith—Artistic and Financial

Starting a Bach festival takes a visionary or two—or several. It takes people who are hard to say “no” to, like Dene Denny and Hazel Watrous, the two art-gallery owners who founded Carmel Bach Festival in 1935. It takes a passion for Bach, like that of Bill and Barbara Meissner, choral singers who helped organize the Peoria Bach Festival in 2003. In this era of bank failures and galloping debt, creating a festival might seem an impossible task. But the Connecticut Choral Artists—known by the acronym CONCORA—are undaunted. After a his-

tory of successful summer choral festivals with other foci, they presented the firstever eight-day CONCORA Winter Bach Festival with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra in February of this year. They were deluged by requests to participate.

Richard Coffey, CONCORA’S founder and artistic director, explains the new format: “Our participants”—singers from the local community and colleges—“will be trained to become a Lutheran ‘congregation’ as in the time of Bach himself, and, during the concert, when the beautiful and beloved chorales (German hymns) appear within the cantatas, our festival participants, having been rigorously trained during the festival, will stand and sing these chorales with CONCORA and the orchestra. The impact will be monumental.”

Coffey points out that there is financial risk in every event undertaken by a nonprofit performing arts organization. But one practical factor that may help Bach festivals survive in financially tough times is that there seem to be a fair number of singers willing to pay to perform Bach.

“The participants will be paying a stipend or ‘tuition’—not uncommon in such festivals,” says Coffey. “That income will help us pay the bills for the event. The real ‘payoff,’ of course, comes at the concert itself.

And when all of these performers begin to offer their musical gifts, thoughts of a balance sheet will vanish.”

Bach for New Generations

The Baldwin-Wallace Bach Festival in Berea, Ohio boasts a remarkable record of community involvement by a single family: the descendants of founder Albert Riemenschneider, an organist who served as head of the music department at BaldwinWallace College. Fifteen family members are now active in the festival. Inspired by a Bethlehem Bach Festival performance, Riemenschneider and his wife raised $300 to fund the first festival in 1932 at Baldwin-Wallace College. Riemenschneider’s 33,000-item personal collection of Bachrelated manuscripts and first editions later formed the backbone of the Bach Institute that bears the founder’s name at BaldwinWallace College. The college’s quarterly journal, Bach, goes out to 671 scholars in 29 countries.

After Albert Riemenschneider’s death, in 1950, subsequent generations got insymphony

SPRING 2011

Marguerite Close

volved in the festival, and four years ago 84 family members came to Cleveland’s Severance Hall Executive (about twelve miles from Director Diane Berea) to attend the festival’s 75th-anniversary Wright says festivities. Outside the Sonora Bach family, the commitment also runs deep: in addiFestival’s salon concerts tion to endowments and major gifts, more than have a “very 220 individuals have served as festival guarancomfortable tors, many for more than vibe” in her 20 years—and one for 78 community, “a years. “It is very fulfilling,” says grandson Thomas cowboy town Riemenschneider, “to see with a lot of the generations of kids farming and and parents coming to the festival. It’s a celebration ranchers.” of excellence. People are looking for this.”

The teaching mission is central to nearly every Bach festival, and another way to forge links to the community. The Kalamazoo Bach Festival is particularly serious about education, holding a statewide high-school choral festival, a middleschool community-engagement program, and an annual Young Vocalists’ Competition whose winners are featured during the Bach Festival Week held each spring. From Sonora to Peoria, educational programs are a major focus of this country’s festivals.

And education is the raison d’être for the junior Bach festivals, the longest running of which is Berkeley, California’s Junior Bach Festival, founded in 1953 for instrumentalists 21 and under.

John Mark, the JBF’s secretary and longtime volunteer, reports that 223 young people aged four to twenty auditioned this year, with about one-third advancing to perform in the annual Bach marathon festival each March. Mark’s pianist son Steven, now a journalist in Hawaii, performed in the JBF in the 1970s and has often returned as a listener, hearing such artists as cellist Matt Haimovitz and pianists Adam Neiman and Jon Nakamatsu.

“I think having Bach as the one and only focus helps kids develop a ‘vocabulary’ in Bach, which obviously is a great fundamental building block of musicianship,” says Steven Mark. “They hear Bach at their americanorchestras.org

level, at levels above, and levels below. They get inspired to learn the more challenging repertoire.”

One measure of the resilience of the nation’s Bach festivals is their ability to thrive even in a recessionary era. Although economic times are tough, at Oregon Bach’s 40th festival last summer ticket sales were up 18 percent over the previous year. “I think it proves that if you are ambitious in programming classical music, the community will come along with you,” says President and Executive Director John Evans.

Beyond the necessity for any modernday music festival to stay rooted in its community, there is the reality that now one must offer something extraordinary that today’s iPad-sated, BlackBerried consumers can’t get anywhere else. And that is indeed what Bach gives them. When The New York Times’s Anthony Tommasini recently named Bach the top classical composer of all time, he wrote that late-career Bach was surely aware that his music was by then considered old-fashioned, but that he “reacted by digging deeper into his way of doing things. In his austerely beautiful ‘Art of Fugue,’ left incomplete at his death, Bach reduced complex counterpoint to its bare essentials, not even indicating the instrument (or instruments) for which these works were composed.” Is it possible that Bach’s defiance—his refusal to adapt, to follow the trends of his day—is itself something that speaks to us today? Whether this great and endlessly adaptable music is performed on period instruments, a modern piano, a quartet of guitars, or jazz artists inspired by the Baroque master, Bach continues to offer something that speaks to us strongly while simultaneously connecting audiences with the past.

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39

Both Sides Two festival-style training programs offer a different perspective for conductors.

40

by Judith Kogan

Now symphony

SPRING 2011

orchestra. The approach of the fermata dents, when not on the podium, play in the in the measure of eighth notes now holds training orchestra. other terrors. As a violist, he knows all too In 1943, when the esteemed French well how hard it is to coordinate thirty vioconductor Pierre Monteux opened his conlins and a dozen violas in this unison pasducting school on the shores of Taunton sage. Mahler writes accel., rubato, rit., accel., Bay in Hancock, Maine, lessons were givand riten. in that order over just twelve en in the limited space of his home. Two measures here, not to mention “nicht Bogen pianists—one of them a teenaged Leon abziehen” (don’t lift the bow), “mit grossem Fleisher—playing four-hands at one piano Ton” (with a big sound), and “nur ein kurz functioned as the “substitute orchestra.” But Einhalten” (just a short hold) on the fermata in 1946-47, while Monteux was on tour, a itself. These twelve measures, which conconcert hall that could accommodate a tain the achingly beautiful second theme of 50-piece orchestra was built near his propMahler’s First Symphony, also have seven erty, and the school expanded enormously. hairpins and five different dyStudents came from all over the From inside the namics. It must be romantic, country and abroad—young orchestra, one rhapsodic, passionate, free. But and old, inexperienced and listens beneath all the musicians have to play it seasoned, students and profesthe obvious, together, and getting that little sionals. Everyone was expected calibrating lift of the shoulder and flick of to play an instrument; together, inner voices, the wrist just right will make or they’d create the school’s oranalyzing break it. chestra. Playing abilities were balance, and The scene played out above as varied as the students were refining color. would be highly atypical at diverse. most conductor-training programs, but it’s Among Monteux’s students in the early the norm at a couple of summer academies.

1960s was the violinist/conductor David Most conductor-training programs require Zinman, who for several summers funcstudents, when not on the podium, to tioned as Monteux’s assistant. To this day, watch other conductors from the sidelines.

Zinman considers Monteux his primary The philosophy, of course, is that, unlike mentor. So it came as no surprise when in instrumentalists, who spend practice hours 2000, as director of the Aspen Music Festimolding an actual sound, conductors learn val and School, Zinman created the Amertheir craft in large part by observing other ican Academy of Conducting at Aspen conductors—what works, and what doesn’t. based on the Monteux School model. The But two conductor-training programs—the AACA is part of the Aspen Music Festival Monteux School and the American Acadand School in Colorado, where conducting emy of Conducting at Aspen (AACA)— students receive a full fellowship and are adopt a different strategy that may yield active with the 55-member Academy Orconsiderable benefits: the conducting stuchestra.

Monteux School

At the Monteux School, Wesley Schulz (left) conducts the student orchestra as Music Director Michael Jinbo provides guidance, 2008.

T

americanorchestras.org

James Feddeck with former Aspen Music Festival and School Music Director David Zinman at the American Academy of Conducting at Aspen

Alex Irvin

he rehearsal is underway, and the inside fourthstand violist is concentrating hard. Not only is the passage written in five flats, there is a notorious fermata coming up, right in the middle of a measure of eighth notes. His muscles tighten as he tries to focus on the page of music and get a good peripheral angle on the conductor and his section leader’s bow. The conductor, whose beat is somewhat vague, is giving directions over the music in broken English.

Fifteen minutes later, that inside fourthstand violist is on the podium, leading the

continued on page 44 >>

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In the summer of 2010, Eric Owens, a noted bass-baritone who has sung lead roles at opera houses worldwide, studied at the American Academy of Conducting at Aspen, where he trained as a conductor (as seen here) and played oboe in the AACA Orchestra.

Alex Irvin

continued from page 41 When not on the podium, conducting students at both the Monteux School and Aspen are required to play in the orchestra.

The number of students who don’t play orchestral instruments is strictly limited; those who are admitted cover keyboard and percussion parts. During rehearsal, in the half hour before getting their turns on the podium, student conductors in the orchestra put down their instruments to get into what might be termed “conductor head,” transitioning from thoughts about a single part to consideration of the totality of the piece.

Stepping off the podium and returning to one’s orchestral chair usually happens without break.

All of this is, of course, not the traditional way to teach conducting—most conducting teachers find greater value in watching from outside the training orchestra. Kenneth Kiesler, who teaches conducting at the • Active engagement. No matter how University of Michigan and the Conducinvested you are in conducting, you pay tors Retreat at Medomak (Maine), among better attention when seated in the orchesother schools, says that although playing in tra. For orchestra players, the exposure to ensembles and developing empathy for orconducting frequently begins in youth orchestra players is vital, he generally prefers chestras. But for a conducting student sitthat the conducting students observe the ting among the rank-and-file, there’s extra orchestra from the outside. When one of thought given to the direction needed at a his conducting students is on the podium, given moment. As Murry Sidlin, associate the others watch from seats in the house or director of the Aspen program, observes: from behind the orchestra, facing the con“Sitting in the orchestra as a conductor/ ductor. “This gives a sense of structure and player—with the mind, ear, and heart of the develops a view of the bigger picture,” he conductor—students learn about what to do says. Watching the conductor from outside and what not to do. When they are excited, the orchestra refines awareness of the use impassioned and guided toward the beauty, of the body—how eyes, arms, and shoulthese are immediately translatable lessons.” ders communicate or impede clear comConductor/violinist Sean Newhouse, curmunication of a musical idea. rently an assistant conductor at A conductor’s Two other conducting pedathe Boston Symphony Orchesawareness gogues—Otto Werner Mueller tra, is an alumnus of both the of orchestra and Shinik Hahm, teachers at Monteux School and Aspen, issues from Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute as well as one of six conducevery angle is of Music and the Yale School of tors who participated in this critical; learning Music, respectively—also prefer year’s Bruno Walter National conducting from that conducting students obConductor Preview, organized the inside can serve from outside the training by the League of American have unique orchestra, though from time to Orchestras and hosted by the value. time, with their teachers’ blessLouisiana Philharmonic. New­ ings, conducting students at those schools house says that these teaching programs play in the schools’ orchestras. have given him a visceral understanding of Still, the merits of the back-and-forth the impact that good, bad, and indifferent system, which Michael Jinbo, music direcconductors can make on the ability of playtor of the Monteux School, calls a “simple, ers to make music at a high level. elegant educational model,” range from • Respect for the other side. “When practical concerns to intellectual enlightenconductors are also members of the orchesment and spiritual succor. Here, a considertra,” says Michael Jinbo, “they don’t spend ation of some of them. all their energy thinking about themselves.

44

They become more aware of the pulse of the entire orchestra, both literally and figuratively.” Newhouse found that sitting among the rank-and-file deepened his appreciation of the flexibility and artistry of orchestral musicians, who regularly make music with a large variety of conductors of different styles and levels of proficiency.

• A rare opportunity. For pianists, singers, and composers who seldom play in an orchestra, the opportunity to do so affords a vital immersion in orchestral sound and orchestra rehearsal issues.

• Understanding the psychology of leading orchestra musicians. It has been said that 99 percent of leadership on the podium is psychological. Sitting among orchestra musicians, you react on a gut level to the direction from the podium. You notice the effect of extramusical factors. You’re reminded of the needs and desires of players and look for ways to empower the orchestra. Still, without leadership, artistic anarchy emerges, and the score can be pushed, pulled, and distorted by too many viewpoints. One learns the downside of authority demanded but not earned.

• Becoming part of an ensemble. Conductors who’ve never played in orchestras or who have not done so recently are reminded that their artistic impulses need to be subjugated to those of the person on the podium.

Mark Gibson, who teaches conducting at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, calls this “a lesson in collaborative ensemble and humility.”

• Immediate application of lessons symphony

SPRING 2011

learned. Conductor-players go from the group to the podium with fresh insights, lessons potentially lost in a more protracted learning situation.

• The ear’s perspective. Going back and forth makes you realize how much easier it is to hear the whole orchestra from the podium—and how difficult it is to gauge the full sound from a player’s chair, notes David Loebel, former music director of the Memphis Symphony Orchestra and now associate director of orchestras at New England Conservatory, who has played piano in orchestras. One may not clearly hear the full sound from the player’s chair, but the player has a unique and useful perspective from which a conductor can learn. From the inside, one listens beneath the obvious, calibrating inner voices, analyzing balance, and refining color. It’s the sound into which a player positions him- or herself—the puzzle piece that needs to find its place in the whole. As observed by Alejandra Urrutia, a conducting student and violinist at Aspen last summer, the perspective is different for each violinist on stage. It was “amazing,” she says, “to realize how my perspective as a player changed when I sat close to the conductor or far from the conductor.”

• Solidarity with other conductors. In a profession where conductors seldom interact, emotional bonds between them are forged by having to play for each other.

Conductors tend to lack collegial friendships that other musicians have. “Every conductor needs colleagues with whom to discuss music, conducting, problems in certain scores,” says Sidlin, as well as issues of contracts, programming, audience communication, and board relationships.

think of conducting in the context of ‘what would I need from a conductor if I were playing this?’ ” A conductor’s awareness of orchestra issues from every angle is critical, and learning conducting from the inside has unique value. How to sum it up? Tito Muñoz is winner of the Robert Harth Conducting Prize and Aspen Conducting Prize at the Aspen program and a former League of American Orchestras Conducting Fellow; he is currently music director of the Opéra national de Lorraine and the Orchestre symphonique et lyrique de Nancy. Muñoz comments, “A conductor’s physical reflection of the music is incredibly personal and multi-faceted—personal to the conductor and changing with each orchestra and situation a conductor is faced with. Being part of that community and understanding all aspects of it is really essential to the growth of a conductor.”

JUDITH KOGAN is a harpist and journalist who writes frequently about the performing arts, with a focus on classical music.

If Orchestras Have Enriched Your Life…

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Monteux School

Founder Pierre Monteux with his wife, Doris, at the Monteux School in Hancock, Maine circa 1950

• Solidarity with orchestra members.

The model allows conductors and orchestra members to develop relationships and friendships on a level playing field. It removes the barriers that the us-versus-them mindset generates. “While there is much debate over whether conductors should fraternize with players,” notes Aram Demirjian, a conducting student and cellist at Aspen last summer, “this model enables the creation of a healthy foundation for future collegial relationships.” It’s a two-way street: orchestral musicians also enjoy the camaraderie of playing next to conductors, notes Michael Jinbo. For leaders of any sort, conductors included, a degree of empathy helps. Sidlin believes that young conductors should “ride the bus” with orchestra musicians—staying out of discussions about music directors, but listening in on their world, their concerns, their perspectives. It adds up to “learning the orchestra,” he says. At UCLA’s Herb Alpert School of Music, it’s not only the conducting students who learn about the orchestra by playing in it. Adding a special dimension to the notion of leveling the playing field, even the conducting teacher, Neal Stulberg, plays viola in the orchestra.

• Tactile music-making. The euphoria of conducting an orchestra is different from that of playing in one. Creating the sound from a chair in the orchestra is different from “bringing it about” on the podium. The more the former is brought into the latter, the better the conducting; doing one shortly after the other maximizes the chance that this will happen.

Do alums from the Monteux and Aspen programs perceive any long-term impact from playing in the conducting-training orchestra? Conductor and oboist James Feddeck, who spent four summers at Aspen and is now an assistant conductor at the Cleveland Orchestra, says: “At first, playing in the AACA orchestra seemed like just a matter of functional necessity—we needed a full orchestra. But from the very first day, I realized the benefits of seeing things from within. One can directly experience what works and what doesn’t in a way that merely observing from the sidelines would not. This has had a long-term impact on my work because I have been encouraged to

americanorchestras.org

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Summer

Festivals

2011 ALASKA

Sitka Summer Music Festival Sitka, AK June 3 to 24 The Sitka Summer Music Festival invites you to celebrate our 40th anniversary this June. Enjoy the finest in chamber music performed in one of Alaska’s oldest and most picturesque communities.

Artistic Direction: Paul Rosenthal, artistic director; Zuill Bailey, artistic director designate Festival Artists: Evan Drachman, Tony Elliot, Godfried Hoogeveen, Mark Kosower, Armen Ksajikian, Nathaniel Rosen, Jeffrey Solow, cello; David Brown, double bass; Lorna McGhee, flute; Jack Sanders, guitar; Edward Auer, Kyoko Hashimoto, Sungmi Im, Yukiko Kurakata, Jerome Lowenthal, Ursula Oppens, Doris Stevenson, Jee Won-Oh, piano; Pamela Goldsmith, David Harding, Kathryn Plummer, Francien Schatborn, Jennifer Stumm, Marcus Thompson, viola; IkHwan Bae, Christiaan Bor, Charles Castleman,

Roger Mastroianni

Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival Fairbanks, AK July 17 to 31 Study and performance opportunities that encourage personal enrichment regardless of skill level. Under the Midnight Sun, 1,000 study with 100 guest artists in 150 workshops in music, dance, visual, literary, theater, and healing arts, with 60 performances.

Artistic Direction: Terese Kaptur Festival Conductors: JoAnn Kulesza, opera conductor; Robert Franz, orchestra conductor; Greg Harper, wind ensemble; Patrick Tillery, brass choir Festival Artists: Paul Sharpe, bass; David Muller, bassoon; Pamela Frame, cello; Jun Watabe, clarinet and saxophone; John Barcellona, Dorli McWayne, flute; Fritz Foss, horn; Mark Fink, oboe; Bob Becker, Morris Palter, percussion; Greg Harper, trombone; Patrick Tillery, Linn Weeda, trumpet; Stephen Dombrowski, tuba; Linda Rosenthal, Mary Dooley Weeda, Lee Wilkins, violin Orchestra Affiliation: Festival Orchestra For Information: Terese Kaptur, director P.O. Box 82510, Fairbanks, AK 99708 907 474 8869 festival@alaska.net fsaf.org

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Fireworks are a sure sight this summer at the Blossom Music Center, fair-weather home of The Cleveland Orchestra.

Agnes Gottschewski, Ronald Hoogeveen, Diane Monroe, William Preucil, Linda Rosenthal, violin For Information: Bobi Rinehart, executive director P.O. Box 3333, Sitka, AK 99835 907 747 6774 907 277 4852 (fax) director@sitkamusicfestival.org sitkamusicfestival.org

ARKANSAS

Hot Springs Music Festival Hot Springs, AR June 5 to 18 The Spa City overflows with music as 200 international musicians create 19 concerts and 250 open rehearsals of symphonic, chamber, piano, and early New Orleans dance music, plus masterclasses and multi-disciplinary events.

Artistic Direction: Peter Bay Festival Conductors: Peter Bay, Michael Morgan Featured Groups: Avalon String Quartet, Hot Springs Music Festival Brass Ensemble, Hot Springs Music Festival Chamber Players, Hot Springs Music Festival Chorus, Hot Springs Music Festival Orchestra, MANA Saxophone Quartet For Information: Laura Rosenberg, general director 468 Prospect Avenue; Hot Springs AR 71901 501 623 4763 festival@hotmusic.org hotmusic.org

CALIFORNIA

Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music Santa Cruz, CA July 31 to August 14 “The Cabrillo Festival has made the contemporary repertoire sound urgent, indispensable and sexy” (The Financial Times).

Thirteen composers-in-residence will join the Cabrillo Festival orchestra to celebrate Marin Alsop’s 20th anniversary season.

Artistic Direction: Marin Alsop Festival Conductor: Marin Alsop Festival Artists: Mason Bates, Margaret Brouwer, Chiayu, Anna Clyne, Michael Daugherty, Tina Davidson, Zosha DiCastri, Elena Kats-Chernin, Pierre Jalbert, Shuko Mizuno, Behzad Ranjbaran, Christopher Rouse, Dan Welcher, composersin-residence; D.J. Sparr, electric guitar; Kristin Jurkscheit, horn; Jean-Yves Thibaudet, piano For Information: Ellen M. Primack, executive director 147 S. River Street, Suite 232, Santa Cruz, CA 95060 831 426 6966 831 426 6968 (fax) info@cabrillomusic.org cabrillomusic.org Festival Mozaic San Luis Obispo, CA July 14 to 24 Festival Mozaic is a celebration of five centuries of music held year-round in spectacular venues on California’s picturesque Central Coast. The festival presents dynamic international artists in intimate chamber performances and orchestral concerts. americanorchestras.org

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Artistic Direction: Scott Yoo Festival Conductor: Scott Yoo Orchestra Affiliation: Festival Mozaic Orchestra For Information: Bettina Swigger, executive director P.O. Box 311, San Luis Obispo, CA 93406 805 781 3009 or 877 881 8899 (toll free) 805 781 3011 (fax) office@festivalmozaic.com festivalmozaic.com Hollywood Bowl 2011 Season Hollywood, CA June 17 to September 24 One of the largest natural amphitheaters in the world, with a seating capacity of nearly 18,000, the Hollywood Bowl has been the summer home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic since its official opening in 1922.

Artistic Direction: Gustavo Dudamel Festival Conductors: Lionel Bringuier, Joana Carneiro, Gustavo Dudamel, Jack Everly, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, John Mauceri, Nicholas McGegan; Juanjo Mena, David Newman, Itzhak Perlman, Vasily Petrenko, Michael Riesman, Leonard Slatkin, Perry So, Bramwell Tovey, Thomas Wilkins, John Williams.

Festival Artists: Iain Patterson, bass-baritone; Christian Poltéra, cello; Kari Kriikku, Paul Meyer, clarinet; Moulin Rouge Dancers; Robert Cray, Javier Limón, Marcus Miller, John Oates, guitar; Jennifer Johnson, mezzo-soprano; Alexander Gavrylyuk, Olga Kern, Katia Labèque, Lang

Summer

Festivals

2011

Lang, Sergio Tiempo, Yuja Wang, André Watts, Joyce Yang, piano; Dave Koz, David Sanborn, David Sanchez, saxophone; Christine Brewer, Leah Crocetto, soprano; Garrett Sorenson, tenor; Chris Botti, Wynton Marsalis, Hugh Masekela, Christian Scott, trumpet; Stefon Harris, vibraphone; Joshua Bell, Martin Chalifour, Jennifer Koh, Itzhak Perlman, Pinchas Zukerman, violin; Ceci Bastida, Beck, Buika, Harry Connick Jr., Rocky Dawuni, China Forbes, Daryl Hall, Florence Henderson, Toots Hibbert, Cheyenne Jackson, Gladys Knight, Ziggy Marley, Sarah McLachlan, Bobby McFerrin, Charlotte Kemp Muhl, Omara Portuondo, Mavis Staples, Dick Van Dyke, Vanessa Williams, voice; George Benson, Sean Lennon, Keb’ Mo’, Dolly Parton, voice and guitar; Stevie Wonder, voice and keyboard; George Duke, Michael Feinstein, voice and piano Featured Groups: Cibo Matto; Hollywood Bowl Orchestra; Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra; Los Angeles Children’s Chorus; Los Angeles Master Chorale; Los Angeles Philharmonic; Mighty

8 Weeks of Marvelous Music Orchestra Masterclasses Opera: Barber of Seville Chamber Music THE MUSIC ACADEMY OF THE WEST

20 June- 13 August Santa Barbara, California

GUEST ARTISTS TO INCLUDE: Glenn Dicterow • Daniel Hege • Nicholas McGegan • Peter Oundjian • Larry Rachleff • Leonard Slatkin

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805.969.8787 musicacademy.org

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Diamonds; Mujeres De Agua; Ninety Miles; Orquesta Buena Vista Social Club; Philip Glass Ensemble; Paris Combo; Rodrigo & Gabriela; Spyro Gyra; The Global Gumbo All-Stars; The Quincy Jones Band; USC Trojan Marching Band; Yellowjackets; Yellow Magic Orchestra Orchestra Affiliation: Los Angeles Philharmonic For Information: Arvind Manocha, chief operating officer 2301 N. Highland Avenue, Hollywood, CA 90068 323 850 2000 hollywoodbowl.com Music Academy of the West 2011 Summer School and Festival Santa Barbara, CA June 20 to August 13 The Music Academy annually hosts one of the nation’s preeminent summer schools and festivals for gifted young classical musicians.

Festival Conductors: Daniel Hege, Warren Jones, Nicholas McGegan, Peter Oundjian, Larry Rachleff, Leonard Slatkin Festival Artists: Christine Brewer, Glenn Dicterow, Bruce Donnell, Takács Quartet Featured Groups: Academy Chamber Orchestra, Academy Festival Orchestra For Information: Tim Dougherty, communications manager 1070 Fairway Road, Santa Barbara, CA 93108 805 969 4726 805 969 0686 (fax) festival@musicacademy.org musicacademy.org/festival See our ad this page.

Music@Menlo Menlo Park, Atherton, Palo Alto, CA July 22 to August 13 Founded by David Finckel and Wu Han, Music@ Menlo is the San Francisco Bay Area’s premier chamber music festival. Now in its eighth year, Music@Menlo is renowned for engaging thematic programming performed by a roster of world-class artists.

Artistic Direction: David Finckel and Wu Han Festival Artists: Kelly Markgraf, baritone; Timothy Eddy, David Finckel, Eric Kim*, Laurence Lesser, Paul Watkins, cello; Carey Bell, David Shifrin, clarinet*; Sooyun Kim, flute; Sasha Cooke, mezzo-soprano; Alessio Bax, Lucille Chung, Wu Han, Gilbert Kalish, Jon Kimura Parker*, Juho Pohjonen, Menahem Pressler, piano; Erin Morley, soprano*; Paul Appleby, tenor*; Yura Lee*, Paul Neubauer, Steven Tenenbom viola; Yehonatan Berick, Jorja Fleezanis, Daniel Hope*, Ani Kavafian, Yura Lee*, Cho-Liang Lin*, Elmar Oliveira, Daniel Phillips,Todd Phillips, Philip Setzer, Arnaud Sussmann, Ian Swensen, violin; Bruce Adolphe, Patrick Castillo*, Ara Guzelimian, Michael Parloff*, encounter leader. *Music@Menlo debut Featured Groups: Orion String Quartet For Information: Edward P. Sweeney, executive director 50 Valparaiso Ave, Atherton, CA 94027 650 330 2030 650 330 2016 (fax) info@musicatmenlo.org musicatmenlo.org

symphony

SPRING 2011

Ojai Music Festival Ojai, CA June 9 to 12 World renowned for adventurous programming, Ojai welcomes alumna Dawn Upshaw as music director. World premieres of Peter Sellars’s staging of George Crumb’s Winds of Destiny and commissioned work by Maria Schneider highlight the 65th festival, which also features Richard Tognetti and the Australian Chamber Orchestra.

June 2011 marks the reopening of Ojai’s home, the Libbey Bowl, and launches Ojai North! in partnership with Cal Performances Berkeley.

Artistic Direction: Thomas W. Morris Festival Conductors: Maria Schneider, Richard Tognetti Festival Artists: Peter Sellars, director; Gilbert Kalish, piano; Dawn Upshaw, soprano; Richard Tognetti, violin Featured Groups: Australian Chamber Orchestra; red fish blue fish percussion ensemble; Maria Schneider Orchestra For Information: Jeffrey P. Haydon, executive director P.O. Box 185, Ojai CA 93024 805 646 2094 805 646 6037 (fax) info@ojaifestival.org Pacific Symphony’s Summer Festival 2011 Irvine, CA July 4 to September 10 Five perfect nights under the stars… Elvis lives! Five siblings play Steinways! Bugs Bunny conducts! Big Band is back! And fireworks light up the sky!

Festival Conductors: Music Director Carl St.Clair, Principal Pops Conductor Richard Kaufman, Assistant Conductor Maxim Eshkenazy Festival Artists: George Daugherty, creator and conductor; The 5 Browns; Alexander Korsantia, piano; Kraig Parker, voice Featured Groups: Bugs Bunny at the Symphony; Duke Ellington Orchestra; Huntington Beach Band Orchestra Affiliation: Pacific Symphony For Information: Jayce Keane, director of public relations Verizon Wireless Amphitheater 8808 Irvine Center Drive, Irvine, CA 92618 949 789 0667 ext. 8206 714 755 5789 (fax) jkeane@pacificsymphony.org pacificsymphony.org Summer & the Symphony San Francisco, CA June 30 to July 29 San Francisco Symphony’s summer series features the orchestra with some of today’s most inspiring musicians. From the music of Tchaikovsky and Beethoven to Piazzolla and Gershwin to the film Casablanca, concertgoers experience music in a casual and inviting environment.

Festival Conductors: Donato Cabrera, Michael Francis, Sarah Hicks Festival Artists: Sara Davis Buechner, Valentina Lisitsa, Ian Parker, Gilles Vonsattel, piano; Chris Botti, trumpet; Lara St. John, violin Featured Groups: ARRIVAL, the music of ABBA; Pink Martini americanorchestras.org

Summer

Festivals

2011

Orchestra Affiliation: San Francisco Symphony For Information: San Francisco Symphony Box Office 201 Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94102 415 864 6000 info@sfsymphony.org sfsymphony.org/summer Ventura Music Festival Ventura, CA April 28 to May 7 For 12 days in the spring, the Ventura Music Festival brings the world’s leading performers of classical, jazz and crossover music to the beautiful coastal town of Ventura, CA. Artistic Direction: Nuvi Mehta Festival Artists: Chris Botti, Roby Lakatos, Mark O’Connor, Arturo Sandoval; Martina Filjak, Cleveland Piano Competition winner; Yeol Eum Son, Van Cliburn Competition Silver medalist Featured Groups: Ensemble Muzica, Lakatos Ensemble, Roberto Prosseda with the Festival Orchestra, The Roby, Tea & Trumpets For Information: Nuvi Mehta, artistic director 472 E. Santa Clara Ave., Ventura, CA 93001 805 648 3146 805 648 4103 (fax) contact@venturamusicfestival.org venturamusicfestival.org

COLORADO

Aspen Music Festival and School Aspen, CO June 29 to August 21 One of the world’s premier classical music festivals. Each summer the festival presents more than 350 events featuring solo, chamber, and orchestral music, opera, and lectures.

Festival Conductors: Jeffrey Kahane, Nicholas McGegan, Peter Oundjian, Larry Rachleff, David Robertson, Leonard Slatkin, Robert Spano, Hugh Wolff Festival Artists: Inon Barnatan, Vladimir Feltsman, Marc-André Hamelin, Jeffrey Kahane, John O’Conor, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Joyce Yang, piano; Adele Anthony, Sarah Chang, Robert McDuffie, Gil Shaham, violin Featured Groups: American Brass Quintet, American String Quartet, Emerson String Quartet, Jupiter String Quartet For Information: Laura Smith, director of marketing and public relations 2 Music School Road, Aspen, CO 81611 970 925 9042 festival@aspenmusic.org aspenmusicfestival.com

Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival Vail, CO June 26 to August 3 Nestled in the Colorado Rocky Mountains, Bravo is today’s leading musical festival and there’s a reason why—the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, The Philadelphia Orchestra, and world-class ensembles entertain 60,000 annual guests.

Artistic Direction: Anne-Marie McDermott Festival Conductors: Alan Gilbert, Carl Topilow, Bramwell Tovey, Jaap van Zweden, Stéphane Denève, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Giancarlo Guerrero, Rossen Milanov, Ludovic Morlot, Steven Reineke, Jeff Tyzik Festival Artists: Mortarotti, alto saxophone; Dannel Espinoza, baritone saxophone; Carter Brey, Eric Byers, Peter Wiley, cello; David Shifrin, clarinet; Gabriel Kahane, composer-in-residence; Brian Asawa, countertenor; Edgar Meyer, double bass; Tara O’Connor, flute; Chris Thile, mandolin; Theodora Hanslowe, mezzo-soprano; Robert Breithaupt, Ted Levy, percussion; JeanEfflam Bavouzet, Kirill Gerstein, Anne-Marie McDermott, Stephen Prutsman, Alexander Romanovsky, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Yuja Wang, Joyce Yang, piano; Heidi Grant Murphy, soprano; Michael Hernandez, soprano saxophone; Paul Neubauer, Zach Borichevsky, tenor; Michael Eric Barreto-Maymi, tenor saxophone; Byron Stripling, trumpet; Andrew Bulbrook, Veronika Eberle, Augustin Hadelich, Benjamin Jacobson, Ida Kavafian, Michelle Kim, Henning Kraggerud, Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, Gil Shaham, violin; Paul Neubauer, Cynthia Phelps, viola; Carmen Bradford, Ashley Brown, Debbie Gravitte, Jan Horvath, Christiane Noll, Ryan Silverman, voice Featured Groups: Calder Quartet, Mana Saxaphone Quartet, Miami String Quartet Orchestra Affiliation: Dallas Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, The Philadelphia Orchestra For Information: Meredith Richards, public relations and marketing director 2271 North Frontage Road West, Suite C Vail, CO 81657 970 827 5700 970 827 5707 (fax) bravo@vailmusicfestival.org vailmusicfestival.org See our ad on page 50.

The Colorado College Summer Music Festival Colorado Springs, CO June 6 to 26 International faculty and advanced student musicians participate in small chamber ensembles, orchestra, master classes, concerto readings, and private lessons. Concert series includes three festival orchestra concerts and numerous small ensemble performances Artistic Direction: Susan Grace Festival Conductor: Scott Yoo Festival Artists: Virginia Barron, associate director and viola; Michael Kroth, bassoon; John Rojak, bass trombone; Bion Tsang, David Ying, cello; Bil Jackson, Jon Manasse, clarinet; Susan Cahill, double bass; Elizabeth Mann, Susan Rotholz,

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flute; Michael Thornton, horn; Jon Nakamatsu, John Novacek, William Wolfram, piano; Robert Walters, oboe and English horn; Kevin Cobb, trumpet; Phillip Ying, viola; Toby Appel, viola and violin; Mark Fewer, Stefan Hersh, Daniel Phillips, Stephen Rose, violin For Information: Bonnie Clark, Summer Music Festival secretary 14 East Cache La Poudre Street Colorado Springs, CO 80903-3294 719 389 6010 719 389 6955 (fax) festival@coloradocollege.edu artsfestival.coloradocollege.edu/musicfestival Colorado Music Festival Boulder, CO June 25 to August 5 Led by internationally renowned Music Director Michael Christie, the Colorado Music Festival entertains audiences of all ages by presenting classical and world music performed by extraordinary professional musicians at historic Chautauqua Auditorium.

Artistic Direction: Michael Christie Festival Conductors: Michael Christie, Lawrence Golan Festival Artists: Kelley O’Connor, mezzo-soprano; Jessica Rivera, soprano; James Ehnes, Karen Gomyo, Chad Hoopes, Henning Kraggerud, violin Featured Groups: Apollo’s Fire, Hapa, Marcus Roberts Trio, Mark O’Connor Quartet, Time for Three

Summer

Festivals

2011

For Information: Catherine Underhill, executive director 900 Baseline Road, Cottage 100 Boulder, CO 80302 303 449 1397 303 440 7666 (fax) underhill@comusic.org comusic.org Music in the Mountains Durango, CO July 9 to 31 One of the longest running classical music festivals in the southwest celebrates its 25th anniversary season. Orchestra, chamber and conservatory performances are held at different venues in and around Durango.

Artistic Direction: Gregory Hustis Festival Conductors: Arkady Fomin, conservatory artistic director; Mischa Semanitzky, Carl Topilow, guest conductors; Guillermo Figueroa, music director and conductor Festival Artists: Gregory Hustis, horn; David Korevaar, Aviram Reichert, Angela Yoffe, piano;

Vadim Gluzman, Philippe Quint, violin Featured Groups: Stringfever, “the world’s first genetically modified string quartet” For Information: Susan Lander, executive director 1063 Main Avenue, P.O. Box 3751 Durango, CO 81302 970 385 6820 970 382 0982 (fax) info@musicinthemountains.com musicinthemountains.com National Repertory Orchestra Breckenridge, CO June 18 to August 5 The National Repertory Orchestra is a preeminent intensive fellowship that equips young musicians for orchestral music careers while providing the highest level of musical experience for all stakeholders.

Artistic Direction: Carl Topilow Festival Conductors: JoAnn Falletta, Peter Oundjian For Information: Douglas W. Adams, executive director P.O. Box 6336, Breckenridge, CO 80424 970 453 5825 970 453 5833 (fax) karen@nromusic.com nromusic.com Strings Music Festival Steamboat Springs, CO July 1 to August 22 Strings Music Festival presents more than 70 performances of chamber music, orchestra, jazz, Americana, and world rhythms every summer since 1988. Artists include Grammy winners and nominees, competition winners, and principal players from major orchestras.

Artistic Direction: Andrés Cárdenes and Monique Mead Festival Conductor: Andrés Cárdenes Festival Artists: David Hardy, Anne Williams, cello; Joseph Hallman, David Stock, Marilyn Taft Thomas, composers-in-residence; Angela Cheng, Alvin Chow, David Deveau, piano; Rebecca Albers, Aloysia Friedmann, viola; Andrés Cárdenes, Soovin Kim, Monique Mead, Marie Rossano, violin For Information: Elissa Greene, director of artistic administration P.O. Box 774627, Steamboat Springs, CO 80477 970 879 5056 970 879 7460 (fax) strings@stringsmusicfestival.com stringsmusicfestival.com

CONNECTICUT

Hartford Symphony Orchestra Talcott Mountain Music Festival Simsbury, CT June 24 to July 22 The HSO annouces the 2011 Talcott Mountain Music Festival, featuring classical, patroitic, jazz, rock and roll, and more. Pack a picnic and join us for the sounds of summer!

Artistic Direction: Carolyn Kuan Festival Conductors: Brent Havens, Carolyn Kuan Festival Artists: James Delico, voice Featured Group: Big Bad Voodoo Daddy Orchestra Affiliation: Hartford Symphony

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symphony

SPRING 2011

Orchestra For Information: Hartford Symphony Ticket Services Performing Arts Center at Simsbury Meadows Iron Horse Boulevard, Simsbury, CT 06070 860 244 2999 info@hartfordsymphony.org hartfordsymphony.org

FLORIDA

Summerfest Ft. Lauderdale, FL and locations in Central & South America July 5 to August 5 Annually hosts an international string orchestra (Remenyi Ede Chamber Orchestra from Hungary in 2011) joined by selected Symphony of the Americas musicians for performances throughout South Florida and Central and South America, including Panama, Brazil, and Argentina.

Artistic Direction: James Brooks-Bruzzese Festival Conductor: James Brooks-Bruzzese For Information: Renee LaBonte, VP and executive director 2425 E. Commercial Blvd., #405 Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33308 954 335 7002 954 335 7008 (fax) sympamer@aol.com symphonyoftheamericas.org

GEORGIA

Delta Classic Chastain at Chastain Park Amphitheater Atlanta, GA June to October 2011 Consistently hailed as one of the South’s favorite concert experiences, Delta Classic Chastain will once again be held at the beautiful Chastain Park Amphitheater, a perennial choice in Pollstar magazine’s annual listing of top U.S. outdoor venues located in the leafy suburb of Buckhead in Atlanta, Georgia.

Orchestra Affiliation: Atlanta Symphony Orchestra For Information: 4469 Stella Drive, Atlanta, GA 30327 404 733 4949 (Concert Hotline) classicchastain.com Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre at Encore Park Alpharetta, GA March to December 2011 The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s fourth season at its summer home, Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre at Encore Park, will include an all-American Fourth of July celebration, Cirque de la Symphonie, Turner Classic Movie night, and more. ASO Presents will welcome an array of popular entertainers to the Amphitheatre in summer 2011.

Orchestra Affiliation: Atlanta Symphony Orchestra For Information: 2200 Encore Parkway, Alpharetta, GA 30009 404 733 5010 vzwamp.com

Summer

Festivals

2011

IDAHO

Sun Valley Summer Symphony Sun Valley, ID July 24 to August 16 Now in its 27th season, the Sun Valley Summer Symphony presents free orchestra and chamber music concerts in the Sun Valley Pavilion.

Artistic Direction: Alasdair Neale Festival Conductors: Alasdair Neale; Michael Krajewski, pops conductor Festival Artists: Yefim Bronfman, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, piano; Vadim Gluzman, violin Featured Group: Quartetto Gelato For Information: Jennifer Teisinger, executive director P.O. Box 1914, Sun Valley, ID 83353 208 622 5607 208 622 9149 (fax) jennifer@svsummersymphony.org svsummersymphony.org See our ad this page.

ILLINOIS

Grant Park Music Festival in Millennium Park Chicago, IL June 15 to August 20 In its 77th season, the Grant Park Music Festival is committed to providing free classical music to all in the Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park and features the Grant Park Orchestra and Chorus.

Artistic Direction: Carlos Kalmar Festival Conductors: Christopher Bell, chorus director/conductor; Alondra De La Parra, Andrew Grams, Hannu Lintu, Krzysztof Penderecki, Kwamé Ryan, William Spaulding, guest conductors; Carlos Kalmar, principal conductor Festival Artists: Kyle Ketelsen, Albert Pesendorfer, bass; Julie Albers, Kira Kraftzoff, Amit Peled, cello; David Russell, guitar; Alexandra Petersamer, Christa Ratzenbock, mezzo-soprano; JeanPhilippe Collard, piano; Edith Lienbacher, Maire O’Brien, Amber Wagner, Tamara Wilson, soprano; Christian Elsner, Robert Kunzli, Brendan Tuohy, tenor; Regina Carter, Jennifer Koh, violin Featured Group: Singers from the Lyric Opera’s Ryan Opera Center Orchestra Affiliation: Grant Park Orchestra For Information: Tony Macaluso, director of marketing and patron services 205 E. Randolph, Chicago, IL 60601 312 742 7638 312 742 7662 (fax) tony.macaluso@cityofchicago.org grantparkmusicfestival.com Maud Powell Music Festival Mendota, IL June 20 to July 31

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The Maud Powell Music Festival brings top-quality performances and educational opportunities to the Midwest. Special events include a children’s musical and a three-state recital tour by festival staff.

Artistic Direction: Dr. Kevin R. McMahon Festival Conductors: Michael Alexander, David E. Becker, David Leibowitz, Dr. Kevin R. McMahon, Shawn Weber McMahon, Chris Sheppard Festival Artists: Richard Beyers, bells; Michael Allen, Bennett Randman, cello; Kevin McMahon, composer/violin; Li-Shan Hung, Mary Schallhorn, piano; Loren McMahon, Carol Shamory, soprano; William Farlow, stage director; Shawn Weber McMahon, stage director/soprano; Larry Glenn, stage director/tenor; Allison Fleck, Katie Roy, viola; Robert McNally, violin Featured Groups: Marquette County Chamber Chorale, Marquette Male Chorus, Maud Powell Children’s Chorus, Maud Powell Quartet, Maud Powell Trio For Information: Kevin McMahon, artistic director P.O. Box 501, Peru, IL 61354 608 692 9185 mpmf@hughes.net powellfest.com Ravinia Festival Highland Park, IL June 9 to September 10 Ravinia Festival presents more than 130 events from June to September including a performance of Puccini’s Tosca, a celebration of the Franz Liszt bicentennial, and the 75th anniversary of the summer residency of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Artistic Direction: James Conlon, Welz Kauffman Festival Conductors: James Conlon, Christoph von Dohnányi, Christoph Eschenbach, Jeffrey Kahane, Nicholas McGegan, Itzhak Perlman, Michael Stern, Ludwig Wicki Festival Artists: Jonathan Beyer, Nathan Gunn, Vasily Ladyuk, Brian Mulligan, baritone; Wolf Matthias Freidrich, Morris Robinson, bass; Bryn Terfel, Dale Travis, Yohan Yi, bass-baritone; Zuill Bailey, Frans Helmerson, Yo-Yo Ma, cello; Diana Moore, Ekaterina Semenchuk, mezzo-soprano; Emanuel Ax, Tzimon Barto, Kevin Cole, Cipa Dichter, Misha Dichter, Vladimir Feltsman, Leon Fleisher, Katia Labèque, Marielle Labèque, Lang Lang, Anton Nel, John O’Conor, Christopher O’Riley, Garrick Ohlsson, Jorge Federico Osorio, Julien Quentin, Alexander Romanovsky, Craig Rutenberg, Noam Sivan, André Watts, Brian Zeger, piano; Keri Alkema, Dominique Labelle, Patricia Racette, Susanne Rydén, Kara Shay Thomson, Deborah Voigt, soprano; Rodrick Dixon, Gary Lehman, Salvatore Licitra, Mandy Patinkin, Rodell Rosel, tenor; Atar Arad, Paul Biss, viola; Joshua Bell, Paul Biss, Ray Chen, Robert Chen, Miriam Fried, Anne Akiko Meyers, Itzhak Perlman, Gloria Schmidt, Don Weilerstein, violin; Sylvia McNair, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Kelli O’Hara, Rufus Wainwright, voice Featured Groups: Afiara Quartet, Apollo Chorus of Chicago, Artists from Ravinia’s Steans Music Institute, Chicago Children’s Choir, Chicago

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2011

Chorale, Chicago Symphony Chorus, Chorus of The National Opera of Ukraine, Emerson String Quartet, The 5 Browns, Harlem Quartet, Indiana University Festival Orchestra, Juilliard String Quartet, The Knights, The Lakeside Singers, Lincoln Trio, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Takács String Quartet, Zukerman Chamber Players.

Orchestra Affiliation: Chicago Symphony Orchestra For Information: Ravinia Festival Box Office 418 Sheridan Rd., Highland Park, IL 60035 847 266 5100 847 266 0641 (fax) ravinia@ravinia.org ravinia.org Southern Illinois Music Festival Carbondale and surrounding communities June 5 to 25 Artistic Direction: Edward Benyas Festival Conductors: Edward Benyas, Michael Wheatley Festival Artists: Boja Kragulj, clarinet; Sandra Shen, piano Featured Groups: SIFest Dance Company, Winter Opera St. Louis Orchestra Affiliation: Chicago Chamber Orchestra For Information: Edward Benyas, artistic director Southern Illinois Music Festival SIU School of Music, MC 4302 Carbondale, IL 62901-4302 618 453 2776 618 453 5808 (fax) benyas@siu.edu SIFest.com Woodstock Mozart Festival Woodstock, IL July 30 to August 14 Celebrating 25 years, the festival offers an opportunity to enjoy works of Mozart and others in an environment reminiscent of their day in the charming, intimate 1880s Woodstock Opera House.

Artistic Direction: Anita Whalen Festival Conductors: Arthur Arnold, Peter Horr, Istvan Jaray Festival Artists: Peter Horr, cello; Mykola Suk, piano; Rose Armbrust Griffin, viola; Karina Canellakis, violin For Information: Anita Whalen, general director 89 Drendel Lane, Naperville, IL 60565 630 983 7072 630 717 7782 (fax) mozartfest@aol.com mozartfest.org

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INDIANA

Marsh Symphony on the Prairie Fishers, IN June 25 to September 4 The Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra’s 29th season of outdoor summertime concerts features eleven weeks of orchestral and pops performances under the stars at the Conner Prairie Amphitheater.

Festival Conductors: Jack Everly, Alfred Savia, Eugene Tzigane Festival Artists: Ranaan Meyer, contrabass; Arlo Guthrie, guitar and voice; Michael Cavanaugh, piano and voice; Zach De Pue, Nick Kendall, violin; Steve Lippia, voice Featured Group: Classical Mystery Tour Orchestra Affiliation: Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra For Information: Dave Allen, manager of patron services 13400 N. Allisonville Rd., Fishers, IN 46038 317 639 4300 dallen@indianapolissymphony.org indianapolissymphony.org South Shore Summer Music Festival Lake County, IN July 16 to 31 Summer under the stars! Join the Northwest Indiana Symphony Orchestra for its fourth annual summer music festival with free concerts in towns across Lake County, performing a mix of patriotic and contemporary music for the whole family.

Artistic Direction: Kirk Muspratt Festival Conductor: Kirk Muspratt Orchestra Affiliation: Northwest Indiana Symphony Orchestra For Information: Tammie Miller, marketing coordinator 1040 Ridge Road, Munster, IN 46321 219 836 0525 x200 info@nisorchestra.org nisorchestra.org

MAINE

Bar Harbor Music Festival Bar Harbor, ME July 1 to 31 Hailed as “one of New England’s great music festivals,” now in its 45th season in a spectacular setting. Highlights will include The Barber of Seville, and the 28th Annual “New Composers” concert “Cross Currents,” featuring Maureen Hurd Hause, clarinetist, performing music by Elliott Schwartz, Evan Hause, Jonathan Kramer, Alan Shulman, and Francis Poulenc. Composer Edmund Cionek is the “New Composers” concert coordinator.

Artistic Direction: Francis Fortier Festival Conductors: Cara Chowning, music director, Festival Opera Theatre; Francis Fortier, conductor, Bar Harbor Festival String Orchestra Festival Artists: Jimmy Mazzy, banjo; Chad Sloan, baritone; Jason Hardy, bass; John Clark, Maureen Hurd Hause, clarinet; Jessica Hull Dambaugh, flute; Frank Jacobson, harpsichord; Fenlon Lamb, mezzo-soprano; Gerard Reuter, oboe; Cara Chowning, Christopher Johnson, Inesa Sinkevych, piano; Carrie Kahl, soprano; Chuck

symphony

SPRING 2011

Hudson, stage director; Timothy Culver, tenor; Jeffrey Ellenberger, Francis Fortier, violin Featured Groups: Bar Harbor Festival String Orchestra, Brass Venture, Festival Opera Theatre, Kent State Choristers, Wolverine Jazz Band Orchestra Affiliation: Bar Harbor Festival String Orchestra For Information: Deborah Swanger Fortier, artistic administrator Before June 20: 741 West End Avenue, Suite 4-B, New York, NY 10023-6222 After June 20: The Rodick Building, 59 Cottage Street, Bar Harbor, ME 04609-1800 212 222 1026 (before June 20) or 207 288 5744 (after June 20) 212 222 3269 (before June 20) or 207 288-5886 (after June 20) (fax) info@barharbormusicfestival.org barharbormusicfestival.org

M A RY L A N D

Montgomery Philharmonic 4th Annual Summer Reading Sessions Gaithersburg, MD May 16 to July 25 Still free! Always fun! Embodying our spirit of volunteerism, Summer Reading Sessions musicians romp through major works in a relaxed atmosphere. Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, El Amor Brujo, Schumann’s Symphony No. 3, Die Fledermaus, and Romero and Juliet. Join us!

Artistic Direction: Sandra Ragusa Festival Conductors: Andrew Green, Sandra Ragusa Orchestra Affiliation: Montgomery Philharmonic For Information: Amanda Laudwein, strings manager Gaithersburg Presbyterian Church 610 South Frederick Avenue Gaithersburg, MD 20877 240 398 8870 info@montgomeryphilharmonic.org montgomeryphilharmonic.org Montgomery Philharmonic Youth Chamber Music Festival Gaithersburg, MD June 13 to July 25 Free. 3rd annual. Held Monday evenings. YCMF ensembles, divided by ability and instrumentation, will receive professional coaching and are invited to the Montgomery Philharmonic Summer Reading Sessions, culminating in a concert and ice cream social! Auditions are June 13.

Artistic Direction: Jim Bensinger Festival Conductors: J. Daniel Ashton, Andrew Green, Morgan Jenkins Orchestra Affiliation: Montgomery Philharmonic For Information: Amanda Laudwein, strings manager Gaithersburg Presbyterian Church 610 South Frederick Avenue Gaithersburg, MD 20877 240 398 8870 info@montgomeryphilharmonic.org montgomeryphilharmonic.org

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Festivals

2011

River Concert Series St. Mary’s City, MD June 17 to July 29 River Concert Series provides award-winning free outdoor concerts to audiences of more than 40,000. The Chesapeake Orchestra and Jeffrey Silberschlag, music director, host renowned performers. Festival includes Orchestra Academy of musicians aged 16-22.

Artistic Direction: Jeffrey Silberschlag Festival Conductors: Jeffrey Silberschlag, Larry Vote Festival Artists: William Sharp, baritone; Suzanne Orban, cello; Giuseppe Nova, flute; Brian Ganz, Eliza Garth, piano; Jeffrey Silberschlag, trumpet; Cynthia Phelps, viola; John Carney, Jose Cueto, violin; Melissa Errico, voice Orchestra Affiliation: Chesapeake Orchestra For Information: Barbara Bershon, executive director St. Mary’s College of Maryland 18952 E. Fisher Road St. Mary’s City, MD 20686 240 895 4107 240 895 2201 (fax) blbershon@smcm.edu riverconcertseries.org See our ad this page.

Ransom, Russell Sherman, Gilles Vonsattel, piano; David Alpher, piano and composer; Yinzi Kong, viola; Stephen Jackiw, Anne Akiko Myers, Todd Reynolds, Arnaud Sussman, violin Featured Groups: A Far Cry, Anderson & Roe, Borromeo String Quartet, Calmus Ensemble Leipzig, Daedalus String Quartet, Ikarus Chamber Ensemble, Jupiter String Quartet, New Century Saxophone Quartet, Red Priest, St. Petersburg String Quartet For Information: Gregg Sorensen, director of marketing P.O. Box 312, Rockport, MA 01966 978 546 7391 978 546 8351 (fax) gregg@rockportmusic.org rockportmusic.org Tanglewood Music Festival Lenox, MA June 28 to September 4 The 2011 Tanglewood season offers a kaleidoscopic array of many of the world’s great musicians performing an impressive range of music from classical to jazz, pop, and rock, with near-daily performances at the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s acclaimed summer home located in the beautiful Berkshire Hills, between Lenox and Stockbridge, MA. Artistic Direction: James Levine Festival Conductors: Stefan Asbury, Lionel Bringuier, Christoph Eschenbach, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, Miguel Harth-Bedoya, Pablo Heras-Casado, Bernard Labadie, James

MASSACHUSETTS

Landmarks Festival at the Shell Boston, MA July 13 to August 31 The Landmarks Orchestra’s 2011 season will be the Charles Ansbacher Legacy Season, dedicated to founder Charles Ansbacher, who died in September 2010.

For Information: Samantha Wade, operations coordinator DCR Memorial Hatch Shell 47 David G Mugar Way, Boston, MA 02114 617-520-2200 sw@landmarksorchestra.org landmarksorchestra.org Rockport Chamber Music Festival Rockport, MA June 9 to July 17 The Rockport Chamber Music Festival, under the artistic direction of David Deveau, celebrates its 30th anniversary with more than 30 concerts and events in its new home, the Shalin Liu Performance Center.

Artistic Direction: David Deveau Festival Artists: Ashley Bathgate, Andres Diaz, David Finckel, cello; Eran Egozy, Rane Moore, Marc Nuccio, clarinet; Evan Ziporyn, clarinet and composer; Charles Albright, Wendy Chen, Vicky Chow, David Deveau, Marc-André Hamelin, Wu Han, George Li, Vassily Primakov, William

River Concert Series Festival & Orchestra Academy

Jeffrey Silberschlag music director

Chesapeake Orchestra

Summer 2011

www.riverconcertseries.org

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Levine; Keith Lockhart, Lorin Maazel, Kurt Masur, Nicholas McGegan, Sean Newhouse, John Oliver, Itzhak Perlman, Bramwell Tovey, Jaap van Zweden, Christoph von Dohnányi, John Williams Festival Artists: Elliot Madore, Wolf Matthias Friedrich, baritone; Evan Hughes, James Morris, Eric Owens, José van Dam, Alfred Walker, bass-baritone; Norman Fischer, Lynn Harrell, Yo-Yo Ma, Alisa Weilerstein, cello; Mark Morris, choreographer; Anthony McGill, clarinet; Clint van der Linde, countertenor; Pepe Romero, guitar; Stephanie Blythe, Margaret Gawrysiak, Susan Graham, Kristine Jepson, Diana Moore, mezzo-soprano; Saleem Abboud Ashkar,

Summer

Festivals

2011

Emanuel Ax, Leon Fleisher, Martin Helmchen, Benedetto Lupo, Brad Mehldau, André Previn, Peter Serkin, Alan Smith, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Yuja Wang, piano; Nicole Cabell, Joyce El-

june 25 – sept 4 between lenox and stockbridge

Khoury, Dominique Labelle, Marquita Lister, Angela Meade, Susanne Rydén, soprano; Joseph Calleja, Garrett Sorenson, tenor; Joshua Bell, Sarah Chang, Andrew Jennings, Gil Shaham, Arabella Steinbacher, Nikolaj Znaider, violin; Jason Danieley, Garrison Keillor, Kidjo, Jessica Molaskey, Kelli O’Hara, John Pizzarelli, Dianne Reeves, James Taylor, Lizz Wright, voice Featured Groups: A Prairie Home Companion, Earth Wind and Fire, Emerson String Quartet, James Taylor, Mark Morris Dance Group, Mark O’Connor String Quartet, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Radio Deluxe with John Pizzarelli and Jessica Molaskey, Steely Dan, Train, Tanglewood Festival Chorus, Jazz Weekend, Angelique Coast to Coast Sextet featuring Jimmy Cobb, Federico Britos Sextet, Jazz Inspired with Judy Carmichael, John Santos Sextet, Michael Kaeshammer Quintet, Mingus Orchestra conducted by Gunther Schuller, Robin McKelle Quartet Orchestra Affiliation: Boston Symphony Orchestra For Information: Bernadette Horgan, director of public relations 297 West St., Lenox, MA 01240 888 266 1200 sbrewer@bso.org tanglewood.org See our ad this page.

MINNESOTA

Minnesota Beethoven Festival Winona, MN June 26 to July 17 The fifth annual Minnesota Beethoven Festival, held in the beautiful bluff country of Winona, Minnesota, includes nine different concerts showcasing orchestral, choral, and chamber music performed by some of the great artists of our time.

Artistic Direction: Ned Kirk Festival Conductors: Osmo Vänskä, Dale Warland Festival Artists: Thomas Hampson, baritone; Leon Fleisher, André Watts, piano; Qian Zhou, violin Featured Groups: Cecilia String Quartet, Los Angeles Guitar Quartet, Minnesota Beethoven Festival Chorale, Minnesota Orchestra For Information: Caroline Kirk, marketing and public relations director P.O. Box 1143; Winona, MN 55987 507 474 9055 info@mnbeethovenfestival.org mnbeethovenfestival.org

james levine music director

Tickets On Sale Now The Bank of America Charitable Foundation is proud to support Tanglewood and its education initiatives for Massachusetts students.

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888-266-1200 tanglewood.org

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Sommerfest Minneapolis, MN July 8 to 23 Artistic Director Andrew Litton launches his ninth summer with the Minnesota Orchestra’s Sommerfest, which offers performances of Stravinsky’s Firebird, Beethoven’s Ninth, and Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier in concert.

Artistic Direction: Andrew Litton Festival Conductors: Sarah Hicks, Andrew Litton, Osmo Vänskä Festival Artists: Gina DiBello, Philippe Quint, violin; Ragnhild Hemsing, hardanger fiddle; Kevin Cole, piano; Eric Cutler, Philip Cutlip, Angela Meade, voice Featured Groups: Minnesota Chorale, Minnesota

symphony

SPRING 2011

Orchestra Orchestra Affiliation: Minnesota Orchestra For Information: Robert Neu, general manager Orchestra Hall, 1111 Nicollet Mall Minneapolis, MN 55403 612 371 5656 info@mnorch.org minnesotaorchestra.org

M O N TA N A

Festival Amadeus 2011 Whitefish, MT July 31 to August 6 Festival Amadeus 2011 is a week of the finest classical music by Mozart, Beethoven and others in chamber and orchestra concerts. Guest artists Roberto Plano, piano, and Ashu, classical saxophone, join the festival orchestra.

Artistic Direction: John Zoltek Festival Conductor: John Zoltek Festival Artists: Roberto Plano, piano; Ashu, saxophone Featured Groups: Bridger String Quartet; Glacier String Quartet Orchestra Affiliation: Glacier Symphony and Chorale For Information: Alan Satterlee, executive director 1 One Central Ave., Whitefish, MT 59937 406 257 3241 406 257 5507 (fax) info@gscmusic.org gscmusic.org

N EW H A M P S H IRE

New Hampshire Music Festival Center Harbor, NH July 5 to August 12 Celebrating our 59th season, the festival brings the finest in classical, pops, and chamber music concerts to the New Hampshire Lakes Region.

Artistic Direction: Benjamin Loeb Festival Conductor: Benjamin Loeb Orchestra Affiliation: New Hampshire Music Festival Orchestra For Information: Nancy Vaughan, general manager 52 Symphony Lane, Center Harbor, NH 03226 603 279 3300 603 279 3484 (fax) nancyvaughan@nhmf.org nhmf.org

N EW J E R S E Y

Ocean City POPS Ocean City, NJ June 26 to September 18 35 Summer Concerts at the historic and airconditioned 1000-seat Music Pier over the Atlantic Ocean in Ocean City, NJ. Celebrating Artistic Director William Scheible’s 25th year as conductor and the Ocean City Pops’s 83rd year of continuous summer concerts. Broadway Shows Annie, The Music Man & Cats Artistic Direction: William Scheible Festival Artists: Lucie Arnaz, Broadway POPS International; Broadway Pops International Show “Oh What a Night!”; Nitzan Haroz, The Philadelphia Orchestra principal trombone; Elena

americanorchestras.org

Summer

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2011

Urioste, violin Featured Groups: Boston Brass, DePue Brothers Band For Information: William Scheible, director Music Pier at Moorlyn Terrace & the Boardwalk Ocean City, NJ 08226 609 525 9248 oceancitypops@aol.com oceancitypops.org

NEW MEXICO

Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival Santa Fe, NM July 17 to August 22 Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival presents performances of more than 90 works by 68 artists and five ensembles. New commissions by Rouse, Dalbavie, and Shepherd are just a few reasons not to miss the 39th season!

Artistic Direction: Marc Neikrug Festival Artists: Michael Ward-Bergeman, accordion; Matthew Worth, baritone; Marji Danilow, Mark Dresser, Ranaan Meyer, bass; Stefanie Przybylska, Theodore Soluri, bassoon; Mark Brandfonbrener, Nicholas Canellakis, Felix Fan, Joseph Johnson, Eric Kim, Peter Stumpf, Ronald Thomas, Peter Wiley, cello; Todd Levy, David Shifrin, clarinet; Marc-André Dalbavie, Christopher Rouse, Sean Shepherd, composers; Bart Feller, Tara Helen O’Connor, Joshua Smith, flute; Claudio Ragazzi, guitar; Julie Landsman, horn; Bridget Kibbey, Yolanda Kondonassis, harp; Kathleen McIntosh, harpsichord; Robert Ingliss, Allan Vogel, Liang Wang, oboe; Victor Santiago Asuncion, Inon Barnatan, Frédéric Chaslin, Jeremy Denk, Gilbert Kalish, KuokWai Lio, Anne-Marie McDermott, Yuja Wang, Shai Wosner, Joyce Yang, piano; Jeffrey Milarsky, David Tolen, percussion; Dawn Upshaw, soprano and artist-in-residence; Choong-Jin Chang, Lily Francis, L.P. How, Cynthia Phelps, Carla-Maria Rodrigues, Steven Tenenbom, Michael Tree, Tien-Hsin, Cindy Wu, viola; Kathleen Brauer, John Dalley, Zachary De Pue, Harvey de Souza, Guillermo Figueroa, Lily Francis, Jennifer Gilbert, Daniel Hope, L.P. How, Bella Hristova, Ida Kavafian, Nicolas Kendal, Benny Kim, Soovin Kim, Jessica Lee, Daniel Phillips, Todd Phillips, William Preucil, Giora Schmidt, violin Featured Groups: Calder Quartet, Johannes String Quartet, Orion String Quartet, Shanghai Quartet, Time for Three For Information: Steven Ovitsky, executive director P.O. Box 2227, Santa Fe, NM 87504 505 983 2075 505 986 0251 (fax) sovitsky@sfcmf.org santafechambermusic.com

NEW YORK

Bard SummerScape Annandale-on-Hudson, NY July 7 to August 21 Presenting the Bard Music Festival featuring composer Jean Sibelius, Richard Strauss’s opera Die Liebe der Danae, Noël Coward’s chamber opera Bitter Sweet, Henrik Ibsen’s classic drama The Wild Duck, and dance by Finland’s Tero Saarinen Company.

Festival Conductors: Leon Botstein For Information: Irene Zedlacher, executive director Bard Music Festival Fisher Center for the Performing Arts Bard College P.O. Box 5000 Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504 845 505 0769 845 758 7043 (fax) zedlache@bard.edu fishercenter.bard.edu Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival Bridgehampton, NY July 28 to August 21 Now in its 28th Season, the festival presents distinctive programs that highlight chamber music masterworks, exciting new works, and festival commissions. Concerts take place in the intimate Bridgehampton Presbyterian Church.

Artistic Direction: Marya Martin Festival Artists: Peter Kolkay, bassoon; Edward Arron, Eric Bartlett, Michael Nicolas, Fred Sherry, Peter Stumpf, cello; Jose Franch-Ballester, Anthony McGill, clarinet; Jeffrey Beecher, double bass; Paolo Bordignon, harpsichord; Stewart Rose, horn; John Snow, oboe; Rieko Aizawa, Inon Barnatan, Jeremy Denk, Jeewon Park, Gilles Vonsattel, Orion Weiss, piano; Misha Amory, Nicholas Cords, Hsin-Yun Huang, Richard O’Neill, Daniel Panner, viola; David Bowlin, Daniel Chong, Steven Copes, Ani Kavafian, Jessica Lee, Yura Lee, Jesse Mills, Arnaud Sussmann, violin For Information: Derek Delaney, executive director Sept – mid-July: 850 Seventh Avenue, Suite 700 New York, NY 10019 Mid-July – August: Bridgehampton Presbyterian Church 2429 Montauk Highway Bridgehampton, NY 11932 212 741 9073 212 741 9403 (fax) info@bcmf.org bcmf.org Bronx Arts Ensemble – SummerMusic 2011 Bronx, NY July 1 to August 31 Ten free Sunday concerts in Van Cortlandt Park and at Fordham University.

Artistic Direction: William Scribner Festival Artists: Mathew Fieldes, bass; William Scribner, bassoon; Mitchell Kriegler, clarinet; Bruce Wang, cello; Theresa Norris, flute; Sharon Moe, horn; Marsha Heller, oboe; Lorraine Cohen, trumpet; Veronica Salas, Sally Shumway, viola;

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Jorge Avila, Francisca Mendoza, violin Featured Groups: Bronx Arts Ensemble For Information: Maggie Krupka, publicist 80 Van Cortlandt Park South, Suite 7D-1 Bronx, NY 10463 718 601 7399 718 549 4008 (fax) events@bronxartsensemble.org bronxartsensemble.org Chautauqua Institution Chautauqua, NY June 25 to August 28 Founded in 1874 as a lifelong learning center for the arts, education, religion, and recreation, this summer destination is located on beautiful Chautauqua Lake presenting over 2,000 events for all ages.

Artistic Direction: Marty W. Merkley Festival Conductors: Stuart Chafetz, Mei-Ann Chen, Joseph Colaneri, Grant Cooper, Dean Williamson, Timothy Muffitt Festival Artists: Alexander Gavrylyuk, piano; Augustin Hadelich, Joan Kwuon, violin Featured Groups: Audubon Quartet, Calmus, Chautauqua String Quartet, Chautauqua Wind Quintet, New Arts Trio, North Carolina Dance Theatre Orchestra Affiliation: Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra/Music School Festival Orchestra For Information: Marty W. Merkley, vice president & director of programming P.O. Box 28, Chautauqua, NY 14722 716 357 6217 716 357 9014 (fax) mmerkley@ciweb.org ciweb.org

Summer

Festivals

2011

and violin; Elizabeth Pitcairn, violin Featured Groups: Canadian Brass, Calder String Quartet, Imani Winds, Luzerne Chamber Players, Members of the NYC Ballet Orchestra, Members of The Philadelphia Orchestra For Information: Elizabeth Pitcairn, artistic diretor 203 Lake Tour Road, Lake Luzerne, NY 12846 877 267 8919 or 518 696 2771 info@luzernemusic.org luzernemusic.org

Gateways Music Festival Rochester, NY August 10 to 14 The Gateways Music Festival creates a nurturing and enriching experience for classicallytrained musicians of African descent. Festival activities include chamber music and orchestra performances in homes, churches and the Eastman School of Music.

Festival Conductors: Michael Morgan For Information: Lee Koonce, chair, artistic programs committee Eastman School of Music, 26 Gibbs Street Box 58, Rochester, NY 14604 585 232 6106 info@gatewaysmusicfestival.com gatewaysmusicfestival.com

Maverick Concerts Woodstock, NY June 25 to September 04 Maverick Concerts has been presenting chamber music, jazz, World Music and family concerts since 1916. Known for its adventurous programming and world premieres, the festival takes place in a woodland hall, listed as a National Historic Treasure.

Artistic Direction: Alexander Platt Festival Conductor: Alexander Platt Festival Artists: Phillip Cutlip, Andrew Garland, Kerry Henderson, baritone; Robert Osborne, Lou Pappas, bass; Peter Kolkay, bassoon; Zuill Bailey, cello; Jason Vieaux, guitar; Perry Beekman, guitar and vocals; Uri Caine, Bill Charlap, jazz piano; Frederic Chiu, Joel Fan, Stephen Gosling, Babette Hierholzer, Justin Kolb, Simon Mulligan, Jon Nakamatsu, Bright Sheng, Peter Tomlinson, Ilya Yakushev, piano; Nancy Allen Lundy, soprano; Terry Blaine, Bar Scott, voice Featured Groups: Amernet String Quartet, Daedalus String Quartet, Ethel String Quartet, Leipzig Quartet, Maverick Chamber Players, Miró Quartet, The Phoencia Festival of the Voice, St. Petersburg Quartet, Shanghai Quartet, Tokyo Quartet, Trio Solisti For Information: David F. Segal, vice chairman P.O. Box 9, Woodstock, NY 12498 845 679 8217 maverickmusic@aol.com maverickconcerts.org

Luzerne Chamber Music Festival Lake Luzerne, NY July 3 to August 22 Luzerne Chamber Music Festival has been offering an intimate venue featuring members of the New York City Ballet Orchestra, The Philadelphia Orchestra, resident faculty, guest artists, and featured groups on the campus of Luzerne Music Center for 30 years.

Artistic Direction: Elizabeth Pitcairn, artistic director Festival Artists: Jacob Braun, Fred Zlotkin, cello; Toby Blumenthal, piano; Arturo Delmoni, viola

Summertime Classics New York, NY June 28 to July 9 The New York Philharmonic’s festival of popular masterpieces hosted and conducted by Bramwell Tovey, whose sparkling wit and fascinating musical insights make him a perennial audience favorite.

Artistic Direction: James Mangum Festival Conductor: Bramwell Tovey Orchestra Affiliation: New York Philharmonic For Information: 10 Lincoln Center Plaza, Avery Fisher Hall

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New York, NY 10023 212 875 5656 nyphil.org Summit Music Festival at Manhattanville College Purchase, NY July 24 to August 14 Each year students from all over the world assemble for concentrated study with these preeminent artists. We offer an instrumental and chamber music program for high school, college, and young professionals (ages fourteen and up).

Artistic Direction: Efrem Briskin Festival Conductors: Eduard Schmieder, Yoram Youngerman Festival Artists: Stephen Isserlis, Nathaniel Rosen, cello; Pavel Nersessian, Vladimir Viardo, piano; Roberto Diaz, viola; Victor Danchenko, Ida Haendel, Mikhail Kopelman, Aaron Rosand, violin For Information: David Krieger, executive director 270 Washington Ave, Pleasantville, NY 10570 914 747 2020 914 630 0463 (fax) info@summitmusicfestival.org summitmusicfestival.org

NORTH CAROLINA

Brevard Music Center Brevard, NC June 24 to August 7 Located in the Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina, Brevard Music Center summer institute and festival offers programs in orchestra, piano, composition, opera, and voice.

Artistic Direction: Keith Lockhart Festival Conductors: Matthias Bamert, JoAnn Falletta, Julian Kuerti, Ken Lam, Keith Lockhart, Lucas Richman, Thomas Wilkins Festival Artists: Yo-Yo Ma, cello; Peter Serkin, piano; Mark Hughes, trumpet; Robert McDuffie, violin For Information: Dorothy Knowles, admissions coordinator 349 Andante Lane, P.O. Box 312 Brevard, NC 28712 828 862 2100 828 884 2036 (fax) bmcadmissions@brevardmusic.org brevardmusic.org

OHIO

Blossom Festival Cuyahoga Falls, OH July 2 to September 10 The Cleveland Orchestra presents its annual Blossom Festival in the beautiful setting of its summer home, Blossom Music Center, including symphonic repertoire, acclaimed guest artists, and performances by the Blossom Festival Band, among others.

Artistic Direction: Franz Welser-Möst, Cleveland Orchestra music director Festival Conductors: Hans Graf, Jahja Ling, Nicholas McGegan, Franz Welser-Möst, David Zinman Festival Artists: Jeffrey Kahane, piano; Leila Josefowicz, Christian Tetzlaff, violin Featured Groups: Blossom Festival Band, The

symphony

SPRING 2011

Joffrey Ballet Orchestra Affiliation: The Cleveland Orchestra For Information: 1145 West Steels Corners Road Cuyahoga Falls, OH 44223 216 231 1111 info@clevelandorchestra.com clevelandorchestra.com Lancaster Festival Lancaster, OH July 21 to 30 The 27th season for this world-class music and arts festival features Gary Sheldon and the Lancaster Festival Orchestra, winners of the 2010 American Prize for Conducting and Orchestral Performance (professional orchestra division).

Artistic Direction: Gary Sheldon Festival Conductors: Gary Sheldon Festival Artists: John Sant’Ambrogio, cello; Judith Lynn Stillman, piano; Dmitri Pogorelov, Stephanie Sant’Ambrogio, violin Featured Groups: Beach Boys, Lancaster Chorale, Veronika String Quartet Orchestra Affiliation: Lancaster Festival Orchestra For Information: Lou Ross, executive director P.O. Box 1452, Lancaster, OH 43130-6452 740 687 4808 740 687 1980 (fax) lanfest@lanfest.org lancasterfestival.org May Festival: America’s Premier Choral Festival Cincinnati, OH May 20 to 28 The 2011 season is devoted to the relevance of the artistic and spiritual qualities of choral music. Choral works by Dvořák, Haydn, Janácek, Mahler, Mendelssohn, Stravinsky, and Verdi.

Artistic Direction: James Conlon Festival Conductors: James Bagwell, director, May Festival Youth Chorus; James Conlon, music director; Christopher Eanes, director, Cincinnati Boychoir; Robert Porco, director of choruses, Cincinnati May Festival Festival Artists: William McGraw, Morris Robinson, Shenyang, bass; Stephanie Blythe, Ekaterina Semenchuk, mezzo-soprano; Paul Jacobs, organ; Keri Alkema, Christine Brewer, Julianna Di Giacomo, Hana Park, Kara Shay Thomson, soprano; John Aler, Lawrence Brownlee, Rodrick Dixon, Stephano Secco, tenor Featured Groups: Cincinnati Boychoir, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, May Festival Chorus, May Festival Youth Chorus Orchestra Affiliation: Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra For Information: Lauren Hess, marketing & communications manager Music Hall, 1241 Elm Street Cincinnati, OH 45202 513 381 3300 (tickets); 513 621 1919 (office) 513 744 3535 (fax) lhess@mayfestival.com mayfestival.com

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OREGON

Britt Festival Jacksonville, OR August 2 to 21 The 49th season of extraordinary music under the stars. Moonlit evenings, intimate amphitheater, historical setting, hillside seating beneath ponderosa pines, professional 90-member symphony, world-class artists—the incomparable Britt experience!

Artistic Direction: Peter Bay Festival Conductors: Peter Bay, Wesley Schulz Festival Artists: Sharon Isbin, guitar; Christopher O’Riley, Muza Rubackyte, piano; James Decker, trombone; Natalie Dungey, trumpet; James Ehnes, violin Featured Groups: Arianna String Quartet, Time for Three For Information: Angela Warren, director of performing arts 216 West Main St., P.O. Box 1124 Medford, OR 97501 541 779 0847 541 776 3712 (fax) angela.warren@brittfest.org brittfest.org Chamber Music Northwest Portland, OR June 20 to July 24 The 41st summer festival offers 30 concerts performed by internationally renowned artists and ensembles in works ranging from Haydn, Brahms, and Mahler to a world premiere by Marc Neikrug.

Artistic Direction: David Shifrin Festival Artists: Gary Hoffman, Fred Sherry, Ronald Thomas, Peter Wiley, cello; David Shifrin, clarinet; Tara Helen O’Connor, Ransom Wilson, flute; Julie Landsman, horn; Sasha Cooke, mezzosoprano; Stephen Taylor, oboe; Anne-Marie McDermott, Jon Kimura Parker, Anna Polonsky, André-Michel Schub, André Watts, Shai Wosner, piano; Hsin-Yun Huang, Paul Neubauer, Cynthia Phelps, viola; Steven Copes, Jun Iwasaki, Ani Kavafian, Ida Kavafian, Cho-Liang Lin, Elmar Oliveira, violin Featured Groups: Brentano, Emerson, Miro, and Orion String Quartets; Edgar Meyer & Chris Thile; Yale Percussion Group For Information: Rebekah Phillips, communications & marketing director 522 S.W. Fifth Avenue, Suite 920 Portland, OR 97204 503 223 3202 593 294 1690 (fax) info@cmnw.org cmnw.org Oregon Bach Festival Eugene, OR

June 23 to July 10 Highlights are a new staged version of Honegger’s Joan of Arc, Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, Osvaldo Golijov’s Azul, the Brahms Requiem, Bach’s Magnificat, and Beethoven’s Ninth. Chamber music, workshops, and family events are among the 50 events.

Artistic Direction: Helmuth Rilling Festival Conductors: Marin Alsop, Anton Armstrong, Maria Guinand, Matthew Halls, Miguel Harth-Bedoya, Monica Huggett, Jeffrey Kahane Festival Artists: Anja Schlosser, alto; Rod Gilfry, baritone; Alban Gerhardt, Yo-Yo Ma, cello; Jamie Bernstein, emcee; David Higgs, organ; Shai Wosner, piano; Christine Brandes, Robin Johannsen, Golda Schultz, Tamara Wilson, soprano; James Taylor, tenor; Gernot Sussmuth, violin Featured Groups: Caminos del Inka, Portland Baroque Orchestra, Schola Cantorum de Venezuela For Information: George Evano, director of communications 1257 University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403 800 457 1486 541 346 5669 (fax) bachfest@uoregon.edu oregonbachfestival.com Soundwaves Music Festival Lincoln City, OR June 12 to 19 This is a festival that incorporates chamber and orchestral music with varied programs that include classical, jazz and musical theater with renowned international artists. This year’s special guest artist is Dick Hyman, jazz pianist.

Artistic Direction: Yaacov Bergman Festival Conductor: Yaacov Bergman Festival Artists: Rocky Blumhagen, baritone; Lorna Griffitt, Dick Hyman, Gerald Robbins, piano; Sarah Parnicky, soprano; Eric Shumsky, viola; Lindsay Deutsch, Haroutune Bedelian, violin Orchestra Affiliation: Soundwaves Music Festival Orchestra For Information: Sue Parks-Hilden, managing director P.O. Box 731, Gleneden Beach, OR 97388 541 764 5408 541 764 5438 (fax) sparkshi@charter.net lettherebearts.com Sunriver Music Festival Sunriver, OR August 7 to 17 A nine-day pops and five classical concerts music festival in August. Classical musicians from all around the U.S. come to Sunriver to make up our highly skilled orchestra. The 2009 Van Cliburn Gold medalist Haochen Zhang will be performing in recital and with orchestra.

Artistic Direction: Lawrence Leighton Smith Festival Conductor: Lawrence Leighton Smith Festival Artist: Haochen Zhang, piano For Information: Vicki Udlock, executive assistant P.O. Box 4308, Sunriver, OR 97707 541 593 1084 541 593 6959 (fax)

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Summer

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vicki@sunrivermusic.org sunrivermusic.org

P E N N S Y LVA N I A

Endless Mountain Music Festival Wellsboro, PA July 30 to August 14 Surrounded by magnificent mountain scenery and small-town charm, the sixteen-day international music festival offers a lineup of renowned musicians and world-class performances in communities in Northern Pennsylvania and the Finger Lakes Region of New York. Experience our 62-piece orchestra under the baton of renowned conductor Stephen Gunzenhauser on the weekends and enjoy chamber music in unique venues during the week.

Artistic Direction: Stephen Gunzenhauser Festival Conductor: Stephen Gunzenhauser Festival Artists: Gita Ladd, cello; Santiago Rodriguez, Bram Wijands, piano; Robert Bokor, nt: Marlboro Music Sandomirsky, violin; Luis Charles Rex, Gregory Symphony Magazine 2011 Engkelke, trumpet e: 2.25”wAffiliation: x 4.875”h Orchestra Lancaster Symphony Orchestra ign by: the-m.com Information: work contact: Formingfang@the-m.com 347.853.8669 Mary Cogbill, administrative assistant 130 Main Street, Wellsboro, PA 16901 570 787 7800 info@endlessmountain.net endlessmountain.net

RICHARD GOODE & MITSUKO UCHIDA Artistic Directors

MARLBORO MUSIC MARLBORO, VT – 60th Anniversary

CHAMBER MUSIC July 16 – August 14, 2011 Join us in celebrating our 60th anniversary with five exciting weekends of rehearsals and concerts in beautiful southern Vermont.

For tickets, call:

215-569-4690 www.marlboromusic.org

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Steinway Piano • Sony Classical • Bridge Records

“Impeccable ensemble work, unbridled energy and boatloads of virtuosity produced an electrifying performance…” — Washington Post

2011

The Mann Center for the Performing Arts Philadelphia, PA June 23 to July 29 The Mann Center will present The Mormon Tabernacle Choir and orchestra, The Philadelphia Orchestra, The Pittsburgh Symphony and The Russian National Orchestra in a series of classical and popular concerts.

Artistic Direction: Catherine Cahill Festival Conductors: Giancarlo Guererro, Vasily Petrenko, Arild Remmereit, Lucas Richman, Mikhail Tatarnikov Featured Groups: Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra at Temple Square, The Philadelphia Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony, Russian National Orchestra For Information: Catherine Cahill, president and chief executive officer 52nd and Parkside, Philadelphia, PA 19131 215 546 7900 215 546 9524 (fax) jhines@manncenter.org manncenter.org The Philadelphia Orchestra Concert Series at Saratoga Performing Arts Center Saratoga Springs, NY July 27 to August 13 The Philadelphia Orchestra performs three weeks of concerts in upstate New York featuring renowned conductors and guest artists.

Festival Conductors: Marin Alsop, Stéphane Denève, Charles Dutoit, Giancarlo Guerrero, Rossen Milanov, Steven Reineke, Bramwell Tovey Festival Artists: Yo-Yo Ma, cello; Emanuel Ax, Gabriela Montero, piano; Branford Marsalis, saxophone; Sarah Chang, James Ehnes, Gil Shaham, violin Featured Groups: Cirque de la Symphonie For Information: SPAC Box Office Saratoga Performing Arts Center Saratoga Springs, NY 12866-0826 518 587 3330 518 584 0809 (fax) spac.org

TEXAS

Concerts in the Garden Summer Music Festival Fort Worth, TX June 3 to July 4 The 2011 festival features five weekends of outdoor concerts with fireworks every night. Table and lawn seating available and kids 10 and under admitted free on the lawn. Classical to big band to classic rock—true family entertainment.

Artistic Direction: Miguel Harth-Bedoya Festival Conductor: Miguel Harth-Bedoya Orchestra Affiliation: Fort Worth Symphony

SPECIAL ADVERTISING SUPPLEMENT TO SYMPHONY

Orchestra For Information: FWSO Ticket Office, 330 East Fourth St, #200, Fort Worth, TX 76102 817 665 6000 817 665 6100 (fax) ticks@fwsymphony.org fwsymphony.org Great Performances Festival – American Composers Fort Worth, TX August 26 to 28 FWSO’s Great Performances Festival celebrates American composers. Featuring music of Copland, Gershwin, and Bernstein.

Artistic Direction: Miguel Harth-Bedoya Festival Conductor: Miguel Harth-Bedoya Orchestra Affiliation: Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra For Information: FWSO Ticket Office 330 East Fourth St, #200, Fort Worth, TX 76102 817 665 6000 817 665 6100 (fax) ticks@fwsymphony.org fwsymphony.org Immanuel & Helen Olshan Texas Music Festival Houston, TX June 4 to July 2 This four-week intensive orchestral training program for college and young professional musicians offers numerous performing opportunities, private instruction, and chamber music coaching. All participants receive a fellowship that covers tuition, housing and meals.

Festival Conductors: Mei-Ann Chen, Franz Anton Krager, Carlos Spierer, Carl St. Clair Festival Artists: Richard Beene, J. Jeff Robinson, bassoon; Vagram Saradjian, Brinton Averil Smith, Alan Stepansky, cello; Randall Griffin, Michael Webster, clarinet; Eric Larson, Dennis Whittaker, double bass; Leone Buyse, Aralee Dorough, flute; Paula Page, harp; Roger Kaza, Philip Stanton, horn; Robert Atherholt, Anne Leek, oboe; Brian Del Signore, Matthew Strauss, Blake Wilkins, percussion; Allen Barnhill, Phillip Freeman, trombone; Mark Hughes, Susan Slaughter, Jim Vassallo, trumpet; David Kirk, tuba; Wayne Brooks, James Dunham, Rita Porfiris, viola; Andrzej Grabiec, Frank Huang, Kyung Sun Lee, Lucie Robert, Sean Wang, Jun Zuo, violin Featured Groups: Festival Orchestra For Information: Melissa McCrimmon, assistant director Immanuel & Helen Olshan Texas Music Festival The University of Houston Moores School of Music 120 School of Music Building Houston, TX 77204 713 743 7274 713 743 3166 (fax) mfmccrimmon@uh.edu tmf.uh.edu Round Top Festival Institute Round Top, TX June 5 to July 17 The Round Top Festival Institute is a six-week festival for young, talented musicians seeking a

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future professional career. Symphony orchestra, chamber orchestra, chamber music and solo repertoire training are included.

Artistic Direction: Alain G. Declert Festival Conductors: Gregory Vajda ( June 5–12); Pascal Verrot ( June 12–19); Christoph Campestrini ( June 19–26); JoAnn Falletta ( June 26– July 3); Adrian Prabava ( July 3-10); Charles Olivieri-Munroe ( July 10–17); Emilio Colon ( June 14); and Stefan Sanders ( July 3).

For Information: Alain G. Declert, program director P.O. Box 89, Round Top, TX 78954-0089 979 250 3815 979 249 5078 (fax) alaind@festivalhill.org festivalhill.org/summerinstitute

Summer

Festivals

2011

June 30 to July 10 The VSO presents “Symphony Royale,” a musical homage to royalty. The noble procession includes music for kings, queens, princes, and dukes

(Ellington), and is book-ended by Handel’s Fireworks and live fireworks accompanying the 1812 Overture.

Artistic Direction: Jaime Laredo, music director Festival Conductors: Anthony Princiotti, principal guest conductor Featured Groups: Vermont Symphony Orchestra Orchestra Affiliation: Vermont Symphony Orchestra For Information: Alan Jordan, executive director 2 Church Street, Suite 3B, Burlington, VT 05401 802 864 5741 802 864 5109 (fax) info@vso.org vso.org

VERMONT

Marlboro Music Festival Marlboro, VT July 16 to August 14 Celebrating its 60th anniversary this season, Marlboro Music brings together the world’s most distinguished concert artists and promising young professionals to spend seven weeks playing together, exploring chamber music in a way not possible elsewhere.

Artistic Direction: Richard Goode, Mitsuko Uchida Festival Artists: Steve Dibner, Natalya Rose Vrbsky, bassoon; Bronwyn Banerdt, Gabriel Cabezas, Colin Carr, Johannes Goritzki, Bonnie Hampton, Andrew Janss, Angela Park, Judith Serkin, Brook Speltz, Paul Wiancko, Peter Wiley, Matthew Zalkind, cello; Jerry Chae, Tibi Cziger, Moran Katz, Alicia Lee, Charles Neidich, clarinet; Tony Flynt, double bass; Mathieu Dufour, flute; David Cooper, Benjamin Jaber, horn; Hassan Anderson, Nathan Hughes, Mary Lynch, oboe; Nareh Arghamanyan, Michael Brown, Bruno Canino, Gabriele Carcano, Richard Goode, Pallavi Mahidhara, Anna Polonsky, Matan Porat, Cynthia Raim, Thomas Sauer, Mitsuko Uchida, piano; Sally Chisholm, Hélène Clément, Emily Deans, Veit Hertenstein, Hsin-Yun Huang, Rachel Kuipers, Hanna Lee, Vicki Powell, Samuel Rhodes, Michael Tree, Mary Sang-Hyun Yong, viola; Lucy Chapman, Nikki Chooi, Ying Fu, Emilie-Anne Gendron, Caroline Goulding, Viviane Hagner, Bella Hristova, Ida Levin, David McCarroll, Dina Nesterenko, Michelle Ross, Scott St. John, Robin Scott, Arnold Steinhardt, Danbi Um, Elena Urioste, Hiroko Yajima, Itamar Zorman, violin; Lydia Brown, Martin Isepp, Irene Spiegelman, Benita Valente, vocal program; Jennifer Johnson, John Moore, Naomi O’Connell, Susanna Phillips, Matthew Rose, Sarah Shafer, Karim Sulayman, voice For Information: Jennifer Loux South Road, Box K, Marlboro, VT 05344 802 254 2394; 215 569 4690 before June 19 802 254 4307 (fax) info@marlboromusic.org marlboromusic.org See our ad on page 58.

TD Bank Summer Festival Tour Various locations in Vermont americanorchestras.org

SPECIAL ADVERTISING SUPPLEMENT TO SYMPHONY

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VIRGINIA

Shenandoah Valley Bach Festival Harrisonburg, VA June 12 to 19 Orchestral, choral, and chamber music. Three ticketed and six free concerts, Leipzig Service.

Works by JS Bach, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Menotti, and others. Vocal and instrumental soloists. Additional offerings: Baroque performance workshop, youth programs.

Artistic Direction: Kenneth Nafziger Festival Conductors: Marvin Mills, Kenneth Nafziger Festival Artists: Thomas Jones, James Richardson, baritone; Linda Quan, Baroque violin; Douglas Kehlenbrink, bassoon; Paige Riggs, cello; Les Nicholas, clarinet; Arthur Haas, harpsichord; David Wick, horn; Carrie Stevens, mezzosoprano; Sandra Gerster, oboe; Nicolás Pellón, piano; Veronica Chapman-Smith, Christine Fairfield, Sharla Nafziger, soprano; Daniel Buchanan, tenor; Martha McGaughey, viola da gamba; Joan Griffing, violin Featured Groups: Festival Chamber Musicians, Festival Chorus, Festival Orchestra For Information: Mary Kay Adams, executive director 1200 Park Road, Harrisonburg, VA 22802 540 432 4367 540 432 4622 (fax) bach@emu.edu emu.edu/bach Virginia Arts Festival Norfolk, VA April 12 to May 30 Nine Cities, 50 Days, hundreds of world-class artists: a fifteenth-season celebration with unforgettable performances of great music, dance, and theater. New works by Ricky Ian Gordon and Richard Danielpour. Flying PROMS, Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus, From The Top, House and Sinnett: Soul at the Attucks!, Rappahannock County, a new music theater piece about life during the Civil War, “The Music of Michael Jackson,” the Virginia International Tattoo event.

Artistic Direction: Robert W. Cross Festival Conductor: JoAnn Falletta Festival Artists: Chick Corea, piano; Joshua Bell, violin; Lynda Carter, voice; Gary Burton, xylophone Featured Groups: Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, American String Quartet with AndréMichel Schub; Big Bad Voodoo Daddy; Chanticleer; Dance Theatre of Harlem Ensemble; Danza Contemporánea de Cuba (US Debut); Jordi Savall with Tembembe Ensamble Continuo and Hespèrion XXI; Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio; Manuel Barrueco and Beijing Guitar Duo; Mormon Tabernacle Choir with the Orchestra at Temple Square; Parker Quartet; Philadanco; Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys; Septeto Nacional de Igancio Piñeiro; The Wailin’ Jennys; Virginia Symphony Orchestra and Chorus; Virginia International Tattoo For Information: Robert W. Cross, festival director Clay and Jay Barr Education Center Virginia Arts Festival 440 Bank Street, Norfolk, VA 23510 757 282 2800 757 282 2787 (fax)

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SPECIAL ADVERTISING SUPPLEMENT TO SYMPHONY

info@vafest.org vafest.org Wintergreen Summer Music Festival and Academy Wintergreen, VA July 6 to August 7 A 33-day festival in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains featuring the Wintergreen Festival Orchestra, chamber music and solo recitals. In addition to performances, there is an academy program for 40 students.

Artistic Direction: Larry Alan Smith Festival Conductors: Josep Caballé-Domenech, Mei-Ann Chen and others Festival Artists: Franko Božac, bayan; Lawrence Dillon, composer; Dee Moses, Volkan Orhon, double bass; Charlene Farrugia, piano; Gaetano Di Bacco, saxophone Featured Groups: James Piano Quartet, Philomela, Quartetto di Sassofoni Accademia, WinstonSalem Youth Chorus Orchestra Affiliation: Wintergreen Festival Orchestra For Information: Larry Alan Smith, artistic and executive director Wintergreen Performing Arts, P.O. Box 816 Wintergreen, VA 22958 434 325 8292 888 675 8238 (fax) info@wintergreenperformingarts.org wintergreenperformingarts.org

WASHINGTON

Bellingham Festival of Music Bellingham, WA July 1 to 17 Now in its eighteenth season, the Bellingham Festival of Music presents three weeks of orchestral and chamber music concerts. The festival orchestra comprises invited musicians, many of them principals, from the finest North American orchestras.

Artistic Direction: Michael Palmer Festival Conductor: Michael Palmer Festival Artists: Nie Jaiping, cello; Arnaldo Cohen, Jeremy Denk, piano; Richard Clement, tenor; Stefan Jackiw, Chen Xi, violin Featured Group: Bellingham Festival Orchestra Orchestra Affiliation: Bellingham Festival Orchestra For Information: Mary Pat Thuma, chair, board of directors P.O. Box 818, Bellingham, WA 98227 360 201 6621 bellinghamfestival@comcast.net bellinghamfestival.org See our ad on page 59.

Marrowstone Summer Music Festival Bellingham, WA July 24 to August 7 Marrowstone is the leading summer program for young musicians in the Pacific Northwest.

Outstanding musicians aged 13 to 25 come from more than 20 states and several countries to study with our nationally acclaimed faculty at Western Washington University.

Festival Conductors: Dale Clevenger, Ryan Dudenbostel, Stephen Rogers Radcliffe Festival Artists: Diana Gannett, bass; Francine Peterson, bassoon; Joshua Roman, cello; Kenneth

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SPRING 2011

Index

Advertiser Grant, clarinet; Jill Felber, flute; Heidi Lehwalder, harp; Dale Clevenger, horn; Joseph Rodriguez, low brass; Rebecca Henderson, oboe; Marc Reese, trumpet; Roger Myers, viola; Brian Lewis, violin; Matthew Kocmieroski, percussion; Jeffrey Gilliam, piano Orchestra Affiliation: Seattle Youth Symphony Orchestra For Information: Britt Madsen, Marrowstone coordinator 206 362 2300 206 361 9254 (fax) marrowstone@syso.org marrowstone.org The Seasons Fall Music Festival Yakima, WA October 8 to 16 Featuring concurrent workshops for composers and conductors culminating with professionally videotaped concerts of composition fellows’ new works led by conducting fellows. Daily seminars for composers with conductors.

Artistic Direction: Daron Aric Hagen Festival Conductors: Brooke Creswell, Lawrence Golan, Donald Thulean Featured Groups: Finisterra Piano Trio, Yakima Symphony Chamber Orchestra For Information: Brooke Creswell, festival manager 101 North Naches Avenue, Yakima, WA 98901 509 453 1888 509 249 1888 (fax) brooke@theseasonsyakima.com seasonsmusicfestival.org Seattle Chamber Music Festival Seattle and Redmond, WA July 5 to August 12 Celebrating its 30th anniversary season, this sixweek festival in two venues features 19 concerts, 17 pre-concert recitals and 38 internationally acclaimed musicians in chamber-music masterpieces and works from the solo repertoire.

Artistic Direction: James Ehnes, Toby Saks Festival Artists: Edward Arron, Robert deMaine, Bion Tsang, cello; Jon Kimura Parker, piano; Richard O’Neill, Cynthia Phelps, Marcus Thompson, viola; James Ehnes, Augustin Hadelich, Andrew Wan, violin For Information: Nicola Reilly, director of marketing 10 Harrison Street, Suite 306, Seattle, WA 98109 206 283 8710 206 283 8826 (fax) info@seattlechambermusic.org seattlechambermusic.org

WISCONSIN

Birch Creek Music Performance Center Egg Harbor, WI June 20 to July 2 Students are mentored by esteemed faculty during the day and perform with faculty in the 80-member Birch Creek Symphony Orchestra at night in six public concerts. Auditions and residency required.

Artistic Direction: Ricardo Castaneda Festival Conductor: Brian Groner, conductor of Fox Valley Symphony in Appleton, WI Festival Artists: Ricardo Castaneda, oboe; Robert Hanford, violin americanorchestras.org

Featured Groups: Birch Creek Symphony Orchestra For Information: Kaye Wagner, executive director 3821 City Hwy E, P.O. Box 230 Egg Harbor, WI 54209 920 868 3763 920 868 1643 (fax) kaye@birchcreek.org birchcreek.org Peninsula Music Festival Fish Creek, WI August 2 to 20 Nine different symphonic concerts in three weeks with world-class guest artists. Musicians come from orchestras across the country to perform in the state-of-the-art Door Community Auditorium located on Wisconsin’s beautiful Door Peninsula.

Artistic Direction: Victor Yampolsky Festival Conductors: Victor Yampolsky, music director and conductor; Stephen Alltop, associate conductor Festival Artists: Wendy Warner, cello; Jason Vieaux, guitar; Winston Choi, Inna Falicks, Norman Krieger, piano; Kirstin Figard, viola; Tracy Figard, Ilya Kaler, Felicia Moye, Igor Yuzefovich, violin Featured Group: Apollo Chorus of Chicago For Information: Sharon Grutzmacher, executive director 3045 Cedar St., P.O. Box 340 Ephraim, WI 54211 920 854 4060 920 854 1950 (fax) musicfestival@musicfestival.com musicfestival.com

WYOMING

Grand Teton Music Festival Jackson Hole, WY July 2 to August 20 This great American festival celebrates its 50th season at the gateway to Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks with a grand opening gala and culminates with the world premiere of a place-inspired commission by Jennifer Higdon.

Artistic Direction: Donald Runnicles Festival Conductors: Nicholas McGegan, Matthias Pintscher, Donald Runnicles, Ling Tung, Osmo Vänskä Festival Artists: Lynn Harrell, cello; Jennifer Higdon, composer; Tamara Mumford, mezzosoprano; Yefim Bronfman, Brian Connelly, Jeremy Denk, Jason Hardink, piano; Christine Brewer, Leah Crocetto, soprano; Adele Anthony, Sarah Chang, Gil Shaham, violin Featured Groups: Sarah Jarosz, Los Angeles Guitar Quartet, Philadelphia Boys Choir, San Francisco Festival Chorale, Doc Severinsen and the San Miguel Five For Information: Shelly Fuerte, director of artistic planning and operations Grand Teton Music Festival, Walk Festival Hall Teton Village, WY 83025 307 733 1128 307 739 9043 (fax) gtmf@gtmf.org gtmf.org See our ad on page 60.

Bellingham Festival of Music................ 59 Boston University.................................... 4 Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival.......... 50 CHL Artists of Beverly Hills................ 67 Classical Kids Live!............................... 11 Concert Artists Guild............................. 3 Grand Teton Music Festival.................. 60 Dan Kamin Comedy Concertos............ 38 Kendal at Oberlin.................................. 33 Ronnie Kole Productions...................... 10 League of American Orchestras........2, 14, 16-17, 18, 42-43, 45 Los Angeles Philharmonic...................... 1 Marlboro Music Festival....................... 58 Music Academy of the West................. 48 OK Mozart........................................... 66 OnStage Productions............................ 21 Orchestra of St. Luke’s.......................... 11 St. Mary’s River Concert Series............ 53 Sun Valley Summer Symphony............. 51 Symphony Services International.......... 32 Talaske | Sound Thinking..................... 27 Tanglewood Music Festival................... 54 John Tesh (via Hyperion Productions)...c2 University of Rochester Press................ 36 Warner Shelter Systems Ltd................. 26 White Pine Music................................. 39 Word Pros, Inc...................................... 39 Yamaha Corporation of America.......... 65 Correction: The business partner listing in the Winter 2011 issue of Symphony incorrectly listed the contact information for Schiedmayer Celesta GmbH. The correct information is: Mrs. Elianne Schiedmayer Managing Director Schiedmayer Celesta GmbH Schäferhauser Str. 10/2 73240 Wendlingen Germany Phone: 49 7024 5019840 Fax: 49 7024 5019841 schiedmayer.stuttgart@t-online.de celesta-schiedmayer.de

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LEAGUE OF AMERICAN ORCHESTRAS Annual support from individuals, corporations, and foundations helps to sustain the League of American Orchestras and its programs and services. The League of American Orchestras gratefully acknowledges the generosity of the following donors who contributed gifts of $600 and above as of February 11, 2011. To learn more about supporting the League, please call 212 262 5161 or write us at Annual Fund, League of American Orchestras, 33 West 60th Street, 5th Floor, New York, NY 10023.

NATIONAL LEADERSHIP $150,000 and above

Julie F. & Peter D. Cummings, Palm Beach Gardens, FL The Richard & Helen DeVos Foundation, Grand Rapids, MI John & Marcia Goldman Foundation, Atherton, CA Jan & Daniel R. Lewis, Coral Gables, FL The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, New York, NY MetLife Foundation, New York, NY National Endowment for the Arts, Washington, DC The Bruno Walter Memorial Foundation, New York, NY

$50,000 – $149,999

American Express Foundation, New York, NY Argosy Foundation, Milwaukee, WI Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Atlanta, GA ‡ Dr. & Mrs. Malcolm Brown, Winston-Salem, NC Bruce & Martha Clinton, on behalf of The Clinton Family Fund, Chicago, IL Mr. Richard W. Colburn, Northbrook, IL The Hearst Foundation, Inc., New York, NY Shirley Bush Helzberg, Kansas City, MO Mrs. Martha R. Ingram, Nashville, TN John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Miami, FL Cynthia M. Sargent, Northbrook, IL

NATIONAL COUNCIL $25,000 – $49,999

Richard & Kay Fredericks Cisek, North Oaks, MN The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, New York, NY Henry & Frances Fogel, Chicago, IL *† Ford Motor Company Fund, Dearborn, MI The CHG Charitable Trust as recommended by Carole Haas Gravagno, Philadelphia, PA The Irving Harris Foundation, Chicago, IL

$10,000 – $24,999

Nancy Alvord, Seattle, WA Trish Bryan, Cincinnati, OH † John & Janet Canning, Westport, CT Melanie Clarke, Princeton, NJ John Gidwitz, New York, NY *† Ellen & Paul Gignilliat, Chicago, IL The Hyde and Watson Foundation, Warren, NJ Mark Jung, Menlo Park, CA Catherine & John Koten, Barrington Hills, IL † Jim & Kay Mabie, Northfield, IL Shirley D. McCrary, Mooresville, AL Catherine & Peter Moye, Spokane, WA Lowell & Sonja Noteboom, Minnetonka, MN Cathy & Bill Osborn, Chicago, IL

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John & Farah Palmer, Cincinnati, OH Patricia A. Richards, Salt Lake City, UT Mr. David Rockefeller, New York, NY Drs. John & Helen Schaefer, Tucson, AZ † Connie Steensma & Rick Prins, New York, NY † Ms. Ginger B. Warner, Cincinnati, OH The Simon Yates & Kevin Roon Foundation, New York, NY † Anonymous (1)

$5,000 – $9,999

Artsmarketing Services Inc., Toronto, ON, Canada Arup, New York, NY BMI (Broadcast Music, Inc.), New York, NY Mr. David Bohnett, Beverly Hills, CA Mr. & Mrs. William G. Brown, Hobe Sound, FL Nicky B. Carpenter, Wayzata, MN † CCS, New York, NY Classical Movements, Inc., Alexandria, VA Corporation for International Business, Barrington, IL DCM, Inc. – Consulting and Teleservices for the Arts, Brooklyn, NY Patricia C. Dunn, Orinda, CA Ann & Gordon Getty Foundation, San Francisco, CA Francis Goelet Charitable Lead Trusts, New York, NY James C. Hormel, San Francisco, CA Art and Martha Kaemmer Fund of HRK Foundation, Saint Paul, MN Camille & Dennis LaBarre, Cleveland, OH The Lerner Foundation, Highland Heights, OH Peter B. Lewis, Coconut Grove, FL W. Curtis Livingston, Nantucket, MA † Lee R. Marks & Lisl Zach, Philadelphia, PA New York State Council on the Arts, New York, NY James B. & Ann V. Nicholson, Detroit, MI Charles & Barbara Olton, New York, NY † Palomino Entertainment Group, Williamsburg, VA Mary Carr Patton, Orange Park, FL Peter Pastreich, San Francisco, CA *† Sciolino Artist Management, LLC, New York, NY SD&A Teleservices, Inc., Los Angeles, CA Charlotte Shultz, San Francisco, CA TALASKE | sound thinking, Oak Park, IL Penelope Van Horn, Chicago, IL † Mr. & Mrs. Albert K. Webster, New York, NY * Adair & Dick White, Atlanta, GA Richard B. Worley, Conshohocken, PA

NATIONAL FRIENDS OF THE LEAGUE Benefactor ($2,500 – $4,999) ASCAP, New York, NY Bennett Direct, Milwaukee, WI

Richard J. Bogomolny, Gates Mills, OH Bruce Coppock, Mendota Heights, MN Fisher Dachs Associates – Theater Planning and Design, New York, NY Emma E. Dunch & Elizabeth W. Scott, New York, NY · Mr. James M. Franklin, Inverness, IL Jeanne & Gary Herberger, Paradise Valley, AZ A.J. Huss, Jr., Saint Paul, MN IMS, Madison, WI James D. Ireland III, Cleveland, OH Loretta Julian, Oak Brook, IL Joseph H. Kluger, Gladwyne, PA Hugh W. Long, New Orleans, LA Judy & Scott McCue, Evanston, IL + Terje Mikkelsen.com, Oslo, Norway Patron Technology, New York, NY Mr. Seymour Rosen, Valhalla, NY † Tom & Dee Stegman, Cincinnati, OH Rae Wade Trimmier, Birmingham, AL James Undercofler, Philadelphia, PA Alan D. & Connie Linsler Valentine, Nashville, TN Anonymous (3)

Sustainer ($1,000 – $2,499)

Douglas W. Adams, Dallas, TX Alberta Arthurs, New York, NY Brent & Jan Assink, San Francisco, CA Audrey G. Baird, Milwaukee, WI * Frances & Stephen Belcher, Severn, MD · William P. Blair, III, Canton, OH *† James William Boyd, Tucson, AZ Elaine Amacker Bridges, San Angelo, TX Fred & Liz Bronstein, St. Louis, MO · Thomas Brown, Hopkins, MN Wayne S. Brown & Brenda E. Kee, Washington, DC *† Michelle Miller Burns & Gary W. Burns, Chicago, IL · Cabot Creamery Cooperative, South Duxbury, VT Catherine M. Cahill, Philadelphia, PA · Dr. Roland M. Carter, Chattanooga, TN The Elizabeth F. Cheney Foundation, Chicago, IL NancyBell Coe, Santa Barbara, CA Colbert Artists Management Inc., New York, NY Robert Conrad, Cleveland, OH The Cooking Group, Dallas, TX Martha & Herman Copen Fund, New Haven, CT Gloria dePasquale, Narberth, PA John Farrer, Bakersfield, CA Scott Faulkner & Andrea Lenz, Reno, NV Aaron A. Flagg & Cristina Stanescu Flagg, New York, NY Michele & John Forsyte, Santa Ana, CA · Mr. & Mrs. F. Tom Foster, Jr., Brentwood, TN Catherine French, Washington, DC *† Edward B. Gill, San Diego, CA

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SPRING 2011

Clive Gillinson, New York, NY † Joseph B. Glossberg & Madeleine Condit Glossberg, Chicago, IL Ms. Marian A. Godfrey, Philadelphia, PA Michael S. Gordon, Newport Beach, CA Gary Hanson & Barbara Klante, Cleveland, OH Mark & Christina Hanson, Milwaukee, WI · Daniel & Barbara Hart, Buffalo, NY · Jennifer Higdon & Cheryl Lawson, Philadelphia, PA Dr. & Mrs. Claire Fox Hillard, Albany, GA Mr. Michael J. Horvitz, Cleveland, OH Mr. Russell Jones, New York, NY The Jurenko Foundation, Huntsville, AL Paul R. Judy, Northfield, IL Ms. Polly Kahn, New York, NY The Joseph & Nancy F. Keithley Foundation, Shaker Heights, OH Erwin A. Kelen, Minneapolis, MN Mr. & Mrs. Norman V. Kinsey, Shreveport, LA Larry & Rogene Kirkegaard, Chicago, IL Judith Kurnick, Penn Valley, PA Mr. & Mrs. Wilfred J. Larson, Naples, FL † Christopher & Margo Light, Kalamazoo, MI *† Fred Levin & Nancy Livingston, The Shenson Foundation, Mill Valley, CA Robert & Emily Levine, Glendale, WI Mr. & Mrs. Phillip N. Lyons, Newport Beach, CA Alex Machaskee, Cleveland, OH Annie & William Madonia, Cleveland, OH Steve & Lou Mason, Dayton, OH † Paul Meecham, Baltimore, MD Zarin Mehta, New York, NY LaDonna Meinders, Oklahoma City, OK David Alan Miller, Albany, NY Phyllis J. Mills, New York, NY Steven & Donna Monder, Cincinnati, OH † Beth E. Mooney, Cleveland, OH Michael Morgan, Oakland, CA Thomas W. Morris, Cleveland Heights, OH Diane & Robert Moss, Key Biscayne, FL Robert & Judi Newman, Englewood, CO James W. Palermo, Chicago, IL · Graham Parker, New York, NY Anne H. Parsons, Detroit, MI · Mrs. Alfred M. Rankin, Gates Mills, OH Mr. & Mrs. Alfred M. Rankin, Jr., Waite Hill, OH Peggy & Al Richardson, Erie, PA † Ms. Barbara S. Robinson, Cleveland, OH Jesse Rosen, New York, NY Robert & Barbara Rosoff, Glens Falls, NY Mr. & Mrs. H.J. Rossmeisl, Jr., Birmingham, AL + Don Roth, Davis, CA *† Robin J. Roy, New York, NY Deborah F. Rutter, Chicago, IL † Roger Saydack & Elaine Bernat, Eugene, OR † Schiedmayer Celesta GmbH, Wendlingen, Germany Fred & Gloria Sewell, Minneapolis, MN Helen P. Shaffer, Houston, TX Mr. Richard P. Simmons, Sewickley, PA Joan H. Squires, Omaha, NE · TRG Arts, Colorado Springs, CO The J. Stephen Turner Foundation, Nashville, TN americanorchestras.org

Matthew VanBesien & Rosie Jowitt, Houston, TX · Allison Vulgamore, Atlanta, GA · Tina Ward, Saint Louis, MO · Dr. Charles H. Webb, Bloomington, IN Franz Welser-Möst, Cleveland, OH Stacey Weston, New York, NY Neil Williams, Atlanta, GA † Anonymous (2)

Patron ($600 – $999)

AT&T Foundation, New York, NY Lois H. Allen, Columbus, OH Dr. Richard & Janet Barb, Indianapolis, IN L. Henry Beazlie, Cuyahoga Falls, OH Mr. Robert A. Birman, Prospect, KY Mr. Frank Byrne, Kansas City, MO Mr. Chuck Cagle, Franklin, TN Katherine Carleton, Toronto, ON, Canada Judy Christl, Bonita Springs, FL Ms. Katy Clark, New York, NY · Margarita L. Contreni, Brookston, IN Mr. D. M. Edwards, Tyler, TX Susan Feder & Todd Gordon, Irvington, NY Ryan Fleur & Laura Banchero, Memphis, TN †· Natalie Forbes, New Haven, CT Mrs. William A. Friedlander, Cincinnati, OH Karen Gahl-Mills & Laurence Mills-Gahl, Syracuse, NY Michael Gehret, Lawrenceville, NJ Mr. Kareem A. George, Detroit, MI · Kathie & Ken Goode, Cincinnati, OH Richard Gray, Chicago, IL Mr. André Gremillet, Jersey City, NJ Howard Herring, Miami Beach, FL Mr. Robert E. Hoelscher, Cedar City, UT Lauri & Paul Hogle, Atlanta, GA Patricia G. Howard, Cazenovia, NY + Holly H. Hudak, Chicago, IL Mrs. H.T. Hyde, Tyler, TX Ms. Helena Jackson, Duluth, MN James M. Johnson, New York, NY Wendy Kelman, Beverly Hills, CA JoAnne & Don Krause, Brookfield, WI Ann Koonsman, Fort Worth, TX Andrea Laguni, Los Angeles, CA Carolyn & Wayne Landsverk, Portland, OR David Loebel, Lebanon, NH Fred & Lois Margolin, Denver, CO Terri McDowell, Lookout Mountain, TN Charlotte W. McNeel, Jackson, MS Evans Mirageas, Minnetrista, MN Parker E. Monroe, Oakland, CA Heather Moore, Dallas, TX Gerald Morgan Jr., Midlothian, VA J.L. Nave, III & Paul Cook, Fort Wayne, IN · Brenda Nienhouse, Spokane, WA · Ms. Mary Ann & Dr. Thomas Okner, Sunfish Lake, MN Steven C. Parrish, Westport, CT Kristen Phillips & Matt Schreck, Hartford, CT Vicky & Rick Reynolds, Cincinnati, OH Brian A. Ritter, Albany, NY William A. Ryberg, Hailey, ID Mary Jones Saathoff, Lubbock, TX Jo Ellen Saylor, Edina, MN Mr. Louis Scaglione, Philadelphia, PA

HELEN M. THOMPSON HERITAGE SOCIETY The League of American Orchestras graciously recognizes those who have remembered the League in their estate plans as members of the Helen M. Thompson Heritage Society.

W. Curtis Livingston, co-chair, Nantucket, MA Nina C. Masek, co-chair, Sonoita, AZ Janet F. & Dr. Richard E. Barb Family Foundation, Indianapolis, IN Wayne S. Brown & Brenda E. Kee, Washington, DC John & Janet Canning, Westport, CT Richard & Kay Fredericks Cisek, North Oaks, MN Martha and Herman Copen Fund, Mt. Carmel, CT Myra Janco Daniels, Naples, FL Samuel C. Dixon, Morrow, GA Henry & Frances Fogel, Chicago, IL Susan Harris, Ph.D., Ann Arbor, MI Steve & Lou Mason, Dayton, OH Shirley D. McCrary, Mooresville, AL Lowell & Sonja Noteboom, Minnetonka, MN Charles & Barbara Olton, New York, NY Peter Pastreich, San Francisco, CA Rodger E. Pitcairn, Rockville, MD Robert & Barbara Rosoff, Glens Falls, NY Robert J. Wagner, Maplewood, NJ Tina Ward, Saint Louis, MO Mr. & Mrs. Albert K. Webster, New York, NY Anonymous (1) Ms. Rita Shapiro, Arlington, VA R. L. Sias, Oklahoma City, OK † David Snead, New York, NY Mr. Ari Solotoff, Portland, ME · Barbara J. Soroca, Stamford, CT Mr. John Stahr, Corona Del Mar, CA Mr. Gideon Toeplitz, Richmond, MA Melia & Michael Tourangeau, Salt Lake City, UT Jeff & Melissa Tsai, Pittsburgh, PA · Dr. Jane Van Dyk, Billings, MT Robert J. Wagner, Maplewood, NJ Edward Walker, Oklahoma City, OK Linda Weisbruch, Charlotte, NC Melody Welsh-Buchholz, Crestwood, KY Gary & Diane West, West Chester, OH Melinda Whiting & John Burrows, Riverton, NJ Paul Winberg & Bruce Czuchna, Eugene, OR Lisa M. Wong, M.D., Newton, MA Carol Sue Wooten, Fort Smith, AR † Rebecca & David Worters, Fort Worth, TX Edward C. Yim, New York, NY · Paul Jan Zdunek, Pasadena, CA Anonymous (1) * Charter Member † Directors Council (former League Board) · Orchestra Management Fellowship Program Alumni + Includes Corporate Matching Gift ‡ In-Kind Donation

63

CODA

In With the New Soprano Dawn Upshaw is taking her love of contemporary music to festivals and orchestras, where she serves as full artistic collaborator. This June she curates the Ojai Music Festival, and continues her artistic partnership at The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra through 2012-13.

W

hen I performed Osvaldo Golijov’s Ayre at Ojai in 2006, it was an unusually powerful experience.

Who knows why things come together in a special way sometimes? The Ojai audience responded very, very warmly to it, and the staff and administration of the festival were eager to have it back. The setting at Ojai is always really wonderful.

So I was very excited to be asked to be Ojai’s music director, and kind of going wild with ideas. [Artistic Director] Tom Morris and I got together about once every couple of months, and in a relaxed fashion talked about ideas. I had participated in the festival several times, so I felt a deep affection for and kinship with the place, and with what it was about.

Putting together programs at Ojai takes a lot of planning. It was actually Tom Morris’s idea to bring Ayre back to Ojai this season to reopen the Libbey Bowl. At Ojai I’ll be performing a newly

commissioned piece by Maria Schneider for soprano and chamber orchestra, and working again with director Peter Sellars, who will be staging George Crumb’s Winds of Destiny (American Songbook IV). I think Peter’s extraordinary, and I feel like I grow through my work with him.

I’ve been an artistic partner with The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra since the 2007-08 season. The SPCO had been in the middle of their new paradigm in terms of their artistic partners for several years when they first asked me to join—they have five artistic partners at any given time, each with a three-season tenure. The SPCO approached me with the idea of creating programs that would be of interest to me in a larger-picture way.

It’s nice to build on an existing relationship with a small chamber orchestra, an opportunity you don’t get very often. We’re not just talking about a couple of weeks. It represents a commitment on their part and mine to create something with a bit more vision. There are the meetings about programs that I have over the phone or in

64

Robert Millard

Dawn Upshaw performs Osvaldo Golijov’s song cycle Ayre with the eighth blackbird ensemble and guitarist Gustavo Santa­ olalla at California’s Ojai Music Festival, June 2006.

person with the SPCO administration itself. I also have a dialogue with the SPCO musicians—instrumentalists will share ideas they have about certain pieces.

It’s nice to see what creative ideas are out there that I wouldn’t think of myself, the same way that in a song recital pianist Gilbert Kalish will often mention a piece to me that I’m not aware of, or a composer. I enjoy that kind of dialogue.

Every season at the SPCO, I perform in a world premiere.

Since I got involved in classical music, in college, I’ve always been interested in where the music came from: what the composer was trying to say differently from what had been said before. Text and poetry are incredibly important to me. Growing up, I remember my first experience of hearing the music of Joni Mitchell, being so moved by the message, the poetry, the beauty of the music, and the beauty of this combination of words.

Audiences respond to very personal things. I cannot say that audiences don’t respond as well to new music as they do to older music. In this day and age, it’s easier for presenters to use their websites or whatever to describe what they’re offering as clearly as possible. So more often than not, people are coming to concerts knowing what they are going to get, a little bit about what they bought a ticket for.

In getting all this new music out there, I’m simply doing what I love to do.

Singing music of my own time is very gratifying, and it’s a gift to me to be able to work with composers. I’m doing what I find most meaningful.

DAWN UPSHAW, a familiar voice at many of the world’s major opera houses, has forged an equally strong career as song recitalist and concert performer. Her 1992 Nonesuch recording of Gorecki’s Symphony No. 3 with the London Sinfonietta led by David Zinman has sold more than a million copies.

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