2015 Festival Focus Week 6

YOUR WEEKLY CLASSICAL MUSIC GUIDE

FESTIVAL FOCUS

Supplement to The Aspen Times

Tonight!

Season Benefit The Aspen Music Festival and School’s annual season benefit takes place tonight. The benefit, A Feast of Music, honors Chicago-based philanthropists Gael Neeson and Stefan Edlis.

Attendees will travel the world through multiple courses of gourmet fare, each paired with wine and a musical offering presented guest stars including Gil Shaham, Tamara Wilson, and Sharon Isbin.

After the benefit, join in on a not-to-miss after party featuring cabaretstyle performances by students from the Aspen Opera Theater Center, a live jazz combo led by local favorite Mike Facey, late night bites, and signature cocktails.

For information, contact Jenny McDonough at 970-205-5063.

DREAMS OF TRAVEL

Monday, August 3, 2015

Vol 26, No. 6

Music Festival presents Aida at Tent on August 7 TORIE ROSS

Festival Focus writer

It was the day after Christmas and every seat in the house of the Metropolitan Opera was full when soprano Tamara Wilson stepped onto the stage to make her Met debut in the title role of one of the grandest operas of all time: Verdi’s Aida.

Wilson, an Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS) alumna, says her journey to the Metropolitan Opera stage began in September of 2014, two months before her initial performance. “My manager called me and said ‘your family is going to be spending Christmas in New York this year,’” Wilson remembers. Latonia Moore, who had been performing the role of the princess Aida at the Metropolitan Opera since 2012, had announced her pregnancy and her plans to step down from the role.

Because of the late notice, Wilson’s journey was such a whirlwind that the soprano never rehearsed in costume or with a full orchestra before her debut.

However, the enormity of undertaking the role did not escape Wilson.

Aida is the soprano’s most performed role—but never on a stage as enormous as the Met, where the pressure is immense. “It’s not like I was going [to the Met] to debut in this role that had four lines. Aida is one of the biggest roles, in one of the biggest productions, and because it was scheduled around

Christmas, I knew audiences would be packed,” she says.

However, despite all her “worrying and fretting,” once she stepped on stage, audiences, and critics, fell in love.

“Her voice blooms with her palpable involvement with her own story: Her singing is urgent, her physical performance restrained yet powerful,” wrote Zachary Woolfe in his New York Times review, while George Grella of the New York Classical Review said, “her individual presence came through with a consistent, gripping intensity that was clear with every note.”

Aspen audiences will get the chance to see the soprano reprise her celebrated role when the AMFS presents a semi-staged performance of Aida in the Benedict Music Tent this Friday, August 7. The performance will be conducted

by AMFS Music Director Robert Spano and directed by Aspen Opera Theater Center (AOTC) Director Edward Berkeley. “Opera in the Tent is nothing new for us, but every time we do it it’s a very rarefied moment,” says Asadour Santourian, vice president for artistic administration and artistic advisor for the AMFS. He adds, “Although the singers will be in formal concert wear, they can’t help but interact with one another as their characters.”

Berkeley says he hopes the semiSee Aida, Festival Focus page 3

AARON GANG PHOTOGRAPHY

Tamara Wilson delivered a critically acclaimed performance in the title role of Aida at the Metropolitan Opera last winter.

AMFS alumna Sarah Chang returns to perform Sibelius TORIE ROSS

Festival Focus writer

Violinist Sarah Chang can quite honestly say she’s spent almost every summer of her life in Aspen at the Aspen Music Festival and School. “From before I was born until I was five years old my dad was an AMFS student,” Chang explains. “When he was done with that, I became a student at age six. There was absolutely no gap with my family spending our summers in Aspen.”

For Chang, she regards Aspen as another home more than anything else. As an attendee, then as a student, and eventually as a guest artist, Chang has experienced virtually every aspect of the Festival, and has done a lot of growing up in the process.

“Most of my major life experiences involve Aspen, even learning to drive,” Chang says. The violinist remembers one evening, after a concert was done and the Benedict

Music Tent parking lot was empty, the venerated violin instructor Dorothy DeLay asked a young Chang if she would like to give driving a try. “I got behind the wheel of her car while she taught me all the basics,” Chang says, laughing at the memory. “I grew up so much in Aspen, not only as a musician, but as a person.”

The now thirty-four-year-old violinist shot to stardom before she was even a teenager, making her debut at the age of eight with the New York Philharmonic.

Chang is also the youngest-ever recipient of the Avery Fisher Career Grant, was granted the Hollywood Bowl’s Hall of Fame Award, and even got the chance to run with the 2004 Olympic Torch through New York City.

When she returns to the AMFS to perform at the Benedict Music Tent this Sunday, August 9, she will bring with See Chang, Festival Focus page 3

COURTESY OF SARAH CHANG

Sarah Chang has been performing at the AMFS, both as a student and as a guest artist, since she was six.

Buy tickets now! (970) 925-9042 or www.aspenmusicfestival.com

Page 2 | Monday, August 3, 2015

FESTIVAL FOCUS: Your Weekly Classical Music Guide

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Edgar Meyer performs his own work Saturday TORIE ROSS Festival Focus writer

For bassist, composer, and Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS) artist-faculty member Edgar Meyer, music and family have always gone hand in hand.

It all started at a young age, when his father, a fellow bassist, would play recordings of violin concertos from Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms on Sunday mornings before church.

“My father loved music in a wonderful way. It was the center of his existence, and to be around him would cause anyone to become enthusiastic about music,” Meyer says.

Meyer’s earliest bass lessons, too, were from his father, who not only passed down his technical skills but also his passion for the instrument and music in general.

While Meyer continued his exploration of bass playing, his early musical development was enriched even more when he discovered the piano.

“Sometime in my first ten years, we had my grandmother’s piano moved into our house. There was never a more exciting day for me,” Meyer remembers.

It was at this time that Meyer began to discover his second musical love: composing. “I had been playing bass for a while, but the piano offered possibilities of chords and simultaneous lines that took

my breath away,” he explains. Shortly after, Meyer began composing “original pieces,” like one of his earliest works: Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” with three or four notes changed.

In 1982 Meyer and his sister Clara, who played the violin, drove from their home state of Tennessee to Aspen to attend their first summer as students of the AMFS. It was that summer that he met fellow student and violinist Cornelia Heard, whom he eventually married.

Eventually, the two circled back to Aspen, joining the AMFS artist-faculty—first Heard, eleven years ago, with Meyer following a couple years later. Along with their son, the family has spent their summers together in Aspen whenever possible. “Our friends are here. Our history is here,” says Meyer of his family’s connection to the AMFS. However, Meyer’s accomplishments reach far beyond the Festival. An innovative musician who has explored and blended multiple genres, from bluegrass to classical, he was recognized in 2002 with a prestigious MacArthur “Genius Grant.” More recently, in 2012, Meyer, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, mandolinist Chris Thile, and fiddler Stuart Duncan won a Grammy Award for Best Folk Album for their recording The Goat Rodeo Sessions.

In addition to his own career as a performer and recording artist, Meyer’s compositions have been performed with several orchestras throughout Nor-

rth America, including the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl, and the symphonies of Nashville, Toronto, and Alabama.

During his time as an AMFS artist-faculty member, Meyer has also been regularly slated to perform his original compositions in Aspen. Earlier this season, he performed his work “Thanks,” which was written for the memorial service of Marty Flug, a Festival Life Trustee, who passed away in February of this year.

Meyer will perform again when he presents his original work, Double Bass Concerto in E, along with the Aspen Chamber Symphony on August 8 in the Benedict Music Tent.

“From the time I got that piano onward, writing was a main component of my musical exploration,” Meyer says. “The Concerto in E is simply a continuation of that exploration, both of the bass and of music in general.”

Meyer cites the concerto as one of his most technically challenging pieces. “I am interested in creating music outside of my current understanding.

That is, after all, where a lot of the fun is.”

This Saturday’s performance will also include a performance by violinist Veronika Eberle and will be conducted by Frederico Cortese for a program that includes Mozart’s overture to The Abduction from the Seraglio, Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No. 1, and Ginastera’s Estancia Suite.

Buy tickets now: (970) 925-9042 • www.aspenmusicfestival.com

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Aida:

FESTIVAL FOCUS: Your Weekly Classical Music Guide

Monday, August 3, 2015 | Page 3

Includes full Colorado Symphony Orchestra Chorus

Continued from Festival Focus page 1

staged production will allow audiences to experience the opera in a way they’ve never been able to before. “Aida is a very intimate opera, but that fact is often overshadowed by big scenery and staging,” Berkeley says, adding, “I think audiences will have the opportunity to hear, and to focus on, what a truly triumphal score it is.”

The work, which will be presented with the full power of the Aspen Festival Orchestra and the support of the Colorado Symphony Orchestra Chorus led by chorus director Duain Wolfe, will feature AMFS alumni, current AOTC students, and some of the biggest rising stars in the opera world today. Both Wilson and baritone Brian Mulligan, in the role of Amonasro, Aida’s father, are former students of the AOTC program at the AMFS; soprano Pureum Jo, a current AOTC student who played the role of

Juliette in Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette earlier in the season, will return to the stage in the role of the high priestess.

Mezzo-soprano Michelle DeYoung will appear in the role of Amneris, Aida’s rival, tenor Issachah Savage will appear as Aida’s love interest Radamès (his first appearance in the role), and bass Morris Robinson with appear as the high priest Ramfis. “We have major singers with powerful voices singing these principal roles, which will be a big treat for the audience,” Berkeley says.

Wilson says that, in the end, she hopes the audience gets a greater understanding of character relationships and emotion through the semi-staged nature of the performance. “You can focus so much on the music and how the performers convey their characters,” Wilson says, “that even if you’ve seen Aida a million times, you get something new out of it.”

Aspen Music Festival and School Box Office Hours

COURTESY OF TAMARA WILSON

Wilson, center, performs Aida with Opera Australia. Audiences will be able to see the soprano in the role on August 7 at the Benedict Music Tent.

Harris Concert Hall: 9 am through the intermission of the evening concert, daily.

Wheeler Opera House: 9 am–5 pm daily.

John Rojak celebrates twenty-five years CHANG: Returns Continued from Festival Focus page 1

TORIE ROSS

Festival Focus writer

This season marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of teaching and performing in Aspen for Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS) artist-faculty member and bass trombonist John Rojak. Yet despite the multitude of summers he’s spent in Aspen, Rojak says it’s as though no time has passed at all.

“When people ask me where I live, I like to tell them I live in Aspen, but I’m forced to live in New York nine months out of the year,” Rojak jokes. “It just feels like suddenly, I’ve been here twenty-five years, even though it feels like three. Every year it’s just this happy, ‘I’m home’ feeling.”

His teaching career started, as so many do, with friends and family members asking for lessons.

“When I was in my late teens and just starting out, I had a group of three families that were related to one another, and they really got me started in teaching,” Rojak explains. In the mornings, Rojak would go to one household, teach a few lessons, and eat breakfast. Then, on to the next family’s house, with more lessons and lunch. Finally, he would complete his day with a third family, even more lessons, and dinner.

Besides being motivated by the free food, Rojak says that time in his life fueled his passion and drive to become the accomplished musician he is today.

“At that time, I was playing in a lot of amateur bands with people who had ‘real jobs’: auto mechanics, lawyers, doctors, who were playing in the band simply because they loved music. The reason you play any instrument is because you love to make music, not because of the money,” Rojak says. “That really fueled my perspective.”

However, unlike many of his bandmates, Rojak went on to pursue music professionally, first attending the music program at what was then called Lowell State, now known as the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, then transferring to The Juilliard

ALEX IRVIN/AMFS

Bass trombonist and AMFS artist-faculty member John Rojak has been mentoring musicians in Aspen since 1980.

School. “When I was at Juilliard I started to work a little bit, and people heard me, and knew who I was, and started asking for lessons,” Rojak says, “but when I joined the American Brass Quintet [in 1991] they put me on faculty at Juilliard and that opened up a world of teaching opportunities, including at the Aspen Music Festival and School.” The American Brass Quintet, of which Rojak is still a member, is a celebrated group that works to promote brass chamber music around the world. The ABQ has been in residence at the AMFS since 1970 and at The Juilliard School since 1987.

In addition to his teaching responsibilities, audiences can often see Rojak perform in the Aspen Festival Orchestra alongside fellow artist-faculty members and students.

her one of the most beloved works in her repertoire: Sibelius’s Violin Concerto in D minor. Sibelius’s work, which is particularly fitting to play this year, the 150th anniversary of his birth, has been a favorite of Chang’s since she was a little girl.

“I gave my first performance of this Sibelius piece when I was about eight, and even though I was really, really young, I fell immediately in love,” Chang says. “So many pieces I fall in and out of love with. I’ll love it for a year, and then get tired of it and need to put it away for a while. But with the Sibelius, it has been a constant, steady friend since day one.”

Chang notes that over the years, she’s fallen more and more in love with not only Sibelius, but with the Romantic composers in general, adding that honing in on the works that truly resonate with her has helped her exponentially grow as an artist.

“When you first start out you think you have to be this artist who does everything at once, but the truth is, the sooner you find what you really love and what really drives you, everything will be so much easier,” she says.

“We’ve been so privileged to watch Sarah grow into this beautiful musician right before our eyes, in front of all of us here at the AMFS, and I’m sure she will, as always, bring panache and élan to not only her violin playing, but to her presentation as well,” says Asadour Santourian, vice president for artistic administration and artistic advisor for the AMFS. Chang’s performance, which will be presented along with the Aspen Philharmonic Orchestra, will be conducted by Aspen alumnus Josep Caballé-Domenech and will also feature fellow AMFS alumna and mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard, who is coming to Aspen after performing the principal role of Ada in the world premiere of Cold Mountain at the Santa Fe Opera. Leonard was also recently awarded a Grammy for Best Opera Recording for her recording of Thomas Adès’s The Tempest.

“We are so excited to have three of our former students on stage for that special evening,” says Santourian.