Supplement to The Aspen Times
FESTIVALFOCUS | YOUR WEEKLY CLASSICAL MUSIC GUIDE
CONLON RETURNS Continued from Festival Focus page 1 has this been and why have I never heard it,’ which of course, Of Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto, Conlon notes the really is the big question.” undeniability of all of Beethoven’s works. “I do love it,” he Opening the concert is a work by Alvin Singleton, a com- says of the concerto. “And I go back a very long way with poser Conlon has known personally since the 1960s. From Fima [Bronfman] and it’s always an honor and a pleasure to Brooklyn, and steeped in the jazz worlds of Thelonious Monk collaborate with him.” and Charlie Parker, Singleton also Conlon equally loves colholds impeccable traditional laborating with Aspen’s music classical credentials including students who play in the Aspen “I love working with young a degree from Yale, a Fulbright Festival Orchestra alongside Scholarship, and a long period of their preeminent teachers who people. It’s a great time of life. studying and working in Europe. are leading orchestral players in They are fresh, they are open, Singleton’s works are known the world. Notes Alan Fletcher, for touching his own deep AMFS President and CEO, “James they are enthusiastic.” truth, and for a certain amount is ideal for our students because of flair. The work on the July he’s super demanding at a world James Conlon 18 program, 56 Blows (quis level, yet he understands how to Conductor and AMFS alumnus Custodiet Custodes?), referwork with people who are playing ences the Rodney King beating a piece for the first time. He can of 1991. Conlon points out conduct the Berlin Philharmonic, that the Latin translates to “who watches the and also conduct our students.” watchers?”—a perennial question and one especially powerful Notes Conlon, “I love working with young people. It’s a great at this moment. time of life. They are fresh, they are open, they are enthusiastic.”
ASPEN MUSIC FESTIVAL AND SCHOOL BOX OFFICE:
JULY 1 – AUGUST 22:
LAURA E. SMITH
On Friday, July 16, soprano Renée Fleming graces the stage at the Aspen Music Festival and School’s Benedict Music Tent with the Aspen Chamber Symphony, sharing the tender song cycle Winter Morning Walks by acclaimed jazz orchestra leader and composer Maria Schneider. It is a work Fleming deeply loves and has found audiences respond to enthusiastically. “Sometimes you just fall in love with pieces. There are works that I remember where I was when I first heard them and that is true for [Schneider’s] recording, which won three Grammys when it came out. I just so fell in love with it,” she says. Fleming asked Schneider, who is a longtime personal friend, to write a version she could perform with piano. It is this version she performed just weeks ago in Costa Mesa with pianist Inon Barnatan. “It Soprano, AMFS alumna, and cogot a standing ovation,” she artistic director of the AOTVA notes. “It was just five of program, Renée Fleming. the songs, but it resonated with people so much. Her music is beautiful, it’s evocative. She is incredibly fastidious, a perfectionist about every pitch.” Schneider released Winter Morning Walks as a studio recording in 2013, drawing inspiration from the poetry of Ted Kooser and his 2001 collection of 100 poems of the same name. Kooser won the Pulitzer Prize in poetry in 2005, and served as U.S. Poet Laureate from 2004 to 2006. Schneider, who will attend the Aspen concert, has commented that she also fell in love with Kooser’s poetry. She has
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Bronfman: Beethoven and Beyond In addition to his performance of Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto with James Conlon and the Aspen Festival Orchestra on Sunday, July 18, pianist Yefim Bronfman presents a recital on July 20. The program in the Benedict Music Tent will feature Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 11 in B-flat major, as well as Ustvolskaya’s Piano Sonata No. 4, and concludes with Chopin’s Piano Sonata No. 3.
970 925 9042 or ASPENMUSICFESTIVAL.COM Daily, 12 pm – start of the day’s final concert
Fleming Shares Tender Schneider Work Vice President for Marketing and Communications
MONDAY, JULY 12, 2021
said: “His poetry is so expressive, it captures humanity and just the simple things about people. It makes you almost feel like crying.” The poems speak of the quieter aspects of nature— the birds, the moon, the glowing eyes of nighttime creatures. Says Fleming of another element shared by her, Schneider, and Kooser, “Maria and I share this incredible passion for the natural world. She’s an avid birder and has taken me birding in Central Park on many occasions.” Schneider is a creative force acclaimed by critics and audiences alike. She frequently writes for her 18-member jazz collective, tours as a jazz band leader, and is a highly successful recording artist. Her latest double-album, Data Lords (2020), was a Pulitzer Prize finalist, winner of two Grammy Awards, named Jazz Album of the Year by the Jazz Journalists Association and NPR, and won France’s prestigious Grand Prix de l’Académie du Jazz. “I just love her musical Grammy-winning composer language,” Fleming says. It and jazz orchestra leader, Maria Schneider. will be the first time she has sung the version with chamber orchestra. “It’s hard to program,” she comments, “because it needs a jazz trio in addition to the orchestra.” But from a master who knows the full span of music for soprano, she says this piece is worth it. “It really speaks to me,” she says. Also on the program is Michael Abels’s Delights and Dances and Brahms’s Variations on a Theme by Haydn. AMFS Music Director Robert Spano conducts the Aspen Chamber Symphony.
VAUTOUR:
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She is thrilled to be returning to Aspen for her third summer. “It truly is such an inspirational, artistic oasis. The way the mountains clear your head and heart leaves you open to creativity and inspiration. Seeing the mountains every morning reminds me of how awesome it is to be human and living in a world where we connect with each other through vibration and energy.” On studying with Fleming and Summers, Vautour says, “Renée Fleming’s ability to cut through the excess and really hone in on what is important for the singer’s growth and what is crucial for the industry as a whole is such a gift. To learn from her is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.” She adds, “I’m amazed at Maestro Summers’s “The energy we ability to balance striving exchange . . . during for excellence within a deep and compassionperformance is ate acknowledgment of something I really humanity.” felt the lack of during That approach is one Vautour shares. “I think the pandemic, and the most amazing thing something I will never about this job is that take for granted again.” it requires that I wake up every day and ask myself what it looks like Sarah Vautour to be the most authentic AOTVA Fleming Fellow and open-hearted version of myself,” she says. “And from there, how I can bring that to my voice, performance, and audience in a way that expresses our shared humanity. There is a very special bond between performer and audience. The energy we exchange through sound and through silence during performance is something I really felt the lack of during the pandemic, and something I will never take for granted again. It is such a gift to serve the world through connection.”
