Aspen Music Festival and School – Festival Focus, Week 6

FESTIVALFOCUS

McDonald Sings Broadway; Sondheim, Porter, Gershwin

BY SAMANTHA JOHNSTON

Summer evenings in the Benedict Music Tent are always enchanting, but Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS) fans are in for a special treat when Broadway star, six-time Tony, and two-time Grammy Award winning soprano Audra McDonald takes the stage Thursday, August 3 at 7:30 p.m.

McDonald, a Juilliard-trained soprano who is well known not only for her luminous voice, but also for her roles in Carousel, Ragtime, and Porgy and Bess, will perform selections from the Great American Songbook and beloved Broadway shows.

Accompanied by a full orchestra conducted by her Music Director Andy Einhorn, the performance will feature music from composers such as Duke Ellington, Stephen Sondheim, George Gershwin, Harold Arlen, and Cole Porter, among others.

“Audra exudes an absolute and utterly captivating stage presence,” says Patrick Chamberlain, vice president of artistic administration at AMFS. “To hear this music played by a full orchestra—there’s nothing like it. And with a commanding performer like Audra, it’s a treat.”

Einhorn, one of the great conductors of the Songbook, is no stranger to the Aspen

community and is well known for his work throughout the years with Theatre Aspen and as a teacher to students at the AMFS.

“He’s an artist and thinker and conductor who takes the Broadway musical repertoire completely seriously and also pairs that with an infectious joy,” Chamberlain says.

The performance will include very accessible repertoire that is not so much nostalgic for a simpler time as it is a unique and joyful nod to American culture.

“I grew up in love with the Great American Songbook and with Broadway musicals of the Golden Age,” says Einhorn. “You are talking about a canon of work that is as timeless and relevant as ever.”

A canon of the most important and influential American popular songs and jazz standards from the early twentieth century, The Songbook brings audiences on a lifelong journey.

“The most interesting thing about this repertoire is that we will have people in the audience of various ages who have heard the music at various points in their lives,” Einhorn says. “We hear and listen to the music differently after we’ve lived a little. I can’t think of another form of music that transcends time and matures with you as you age.”

McDonald is known for treating her performances as if the audience is sitting in her living room. She has an uncanny ability to connect to individuals through music and to make people in the audience feel as if they truly know her.

“Audra is the quintessential humanitarian entertainer,” Einhorn says. “The magical thing about Audra is that when she walks onto the stage, she finds a way to communicate with the audience in such a direct and beautifully cutting way. She is a person of the moment and everything she does is as genuine as it could ever be.”

AMFS

ARTIST-FACULTY CHAMBER MUSIC

SATURDAY, AUGUST 5 | 7 PM

HARRIS CONCERT HALL

AMFS artist-faculty, all top musicians from renowned orchestras and conservatories, come together for a dynamic program that includes brilliant 19thcentury piano trios by Saint-Saëns and Dvořák, and a new work by American composer Kyle Rivera Among the afternoon’s performers, violinist Adele Anthony will join pianist Anton Nel and cellist Brinton Averil Smith for Dvořák’s Dumky Piano Trio. Anthony says, “they’re very favored and loved colleagues. It’s so easy to make music with them and always such a joy.” Listening to this gorgeous piece, you’ll understand why it’s one of the most popular in the entire chamber music repertoire.

The evening will include many songs that are fun and familiar. Einhorn is particularly proud of an arrangement of John Kander’s Cabaret that he and Audra finished at the end of the pandemic.

“It’s a powerful reminder to get out there

See McDonald, Festival Focus page 3

Gil Shaham, Steven Banks Return for Weekend Concerts

BY JESSICA MOORE Director of Marketing

Fulfilling part of its mission to introduce audiences to brilliant works they may not know, the Aspen Music Festival and School brings Steven Banks and Gil Shaham to the Benedict Music Tent this weekend to perform saxophone and violin concertos, respectively, that Aspen audiences may be hearing for the first time.

Banks will join the Aspen Chamber Symphony on Friday, August 4 for the Aspen premiere of Billy Childs’s Saxophone Concerto—a work that the AMFS co-commissioned. On Sunday, August 6, Shaham—one of the world’s foremost violinists and a regular in Aspen—takes the stage with the Aspen Festival Orchestra to perform the Korngold Violin Concerto in D major, not played in Aspen since 2018.

Banks made his Aspen debut last summer with two appearances in Harris Concert Hall. AMFS President and CEO Alan Fletcher describes Banks as “an amazing talent, a truly

thoughtful person, a truly spiritual person, who brings tremendous emotion to his music-making.”

With regards to the work that Banks selected for his debut in the Benedict Music Tent, AMFS Vice President for Artistic Administration Patrick Chamberlain says: “When we got wind that he wanted a new orchestral work to be written for him, we instantly joined the commission. The work premiered this past spring to tremendous reviews, and we really look forward to presenting that.”

Described as a tone poem that chronicles the African American experience—past, present, and future—listening to this through-composed, three-movement work is “almost like watching a movie,” says Banks. Each movement is inspired by a different poem: “Africa’s Lament” by Nayyirah Waheed, “If We Must Die” by Claude McKay, and Maya Angelou’s “Still I Rise.”

While people may know him primarily as a jazz musician,

See Korngold, Festival Focus page 3

“No matter what else happens in my life, after this concert I will die a happy man.”

Andy Einhorn Audra McDonald’s Music Director

Festival Focus Writer

Gil Shaham performs “pure violin magic” with the Aspen Festival Orchestra on August 6.

CHRIS LEE

Audra McDonald will be joined by a full orchestra for a one-night-only performance.

ALLISON MICHAEL ORENSTEIN

Appalachian Spring and More in Two American Evenings

BY EMMA KIRBY Marketing Coordinator

The first week of August at the Aspen Music Festival and School ushers in two all-American programs featuring 20th- and 21st-century works. On August 1, the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble performs four chamber works in an American Evening featuring Copland’s Appalachian Spring. On August 5, pianist Min Kwon presents a recital entitled “America/Beautiful” with selections from a yearslong project she has championed involving over 70 contemporary American composers.

The program on August 1 features newer works by two composers with deep AMFS connections, sandwiched by two quintessentially American works. The Unanswered Question, a brief work by Charles Ives begins the program, followed by The Auditions a 2019 piece for a small chamber orchestra by AMFS alumna Augusta Read Thomas “designed to appear alongside Appalachian Spring,” according to AMFS Vice President for Artistic Administration Patrick Chamberlain.

AMFS artist-faculty member Christopher Theofanidis’s If falling is a leaf written for strings and harpsichord opens the second half of the program. “The chance to do [Theofanidis’s] music and for him to be part of the preparation and presentation of this work of his is a really special thing for Aspen,” says Chamberlain.

The recital concludes with Appalachian Spring in its original 13-instrument version of the work that is more commonly heard as an orchestral suite (the Aspen Conducting Academy Orchestra performed the suite on July 19). “With 13 players you really sense the transparency of texture that you don’t get in the orchestra version. It’s a little more pure and honest way to experience the music,” says Chamberlain.

The turmoil of early 2020 in America struck pianist Min Kwon deeply. “After the onset of COVID-19 and conflict in America, I felt our country needed some positive force, new energy, and new movement to show that we can be united, not divided,” she says. Hoping to reflect upon the complex beauty of America, Kwon set to work on a project she called “America/Beautiful,” for which over 70 of today’s leading American composers have written a personal variation on the tune “America the Beautiful.”

Each composer has full creative freedom. “It can be pure celebration, pure joy. It can be polemical. It can be spiritual. It can be quiet. It can be loud. It can be anything they want to do with this,” says AMFS President and CEO Alan Fletcher. The result: a fascinating and beautiful melting pot of musical works.

“It is the duty and privilege of artists to express the emotion of people and tell the story of our time,” says

Kwon, who experienced mixed reactions from composers whom she approached for the project. Some were eager, like 91-year-old Sam Adler, whose variation opens Saturday’s recital. He “has lived in and seen America the longest, was the most enthusiastic composer of them all,” says Kwon. A German immigrant, “[Adler] had such strong and unwavering faith and love for his adopted country.” Other composers were wary of creating a work based on a song that celebrates America. “America/Beautiful” explores how these diverse views are represented through music.

Kwon’s Aspen recital features a special selection of variations from 15 composers, all of whom are AMFS alumni or artist-faculty. Fletcher himself is included on Saturday’s program with the world premiere of his contribution to the project, Liberty in Law

Kwon herself has deep ties to the AMFS. Over the course of nine summers in Aspen, she studied with five different teachers, won the concerto competition, and played Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto alongside James Conlon.

“I am so thrilled to return to Aspen after all these years, where I have formed so many precious musical and personal memories. Many sounds and sights from those summers are still so vivid in my mind. It’s a great honor to bring this program to Harris Hall, and I think Aspen audiences can also expect to not only enjoy it, appreciate it, but be greatly provoked and profoundly moved by it. It is a powerful statement of what is great about America: our unique and diverse voice as a nation,” says Kwon.

Pianist Min Kwon presents a recital curated around the well-known tune, “America the Beautiful.”

COURTESY PHOTO

John Luther Adams Brings World Premiere to Aspen

BY SARAH SHAW Festival Focus Writer

“Music can do more than politics to change the world,” says contemporary composer John Luther Adams who returns to the Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS) for a residency that includes a series of signature performances meant to engage audiences in a call to action for the climate and our natural world.

Adams is a perfect fit for this year’s Festival theme, The Adoration of the Earth, says AMFS Vice President for Artistic Administration Patrick Chamberlain: “When we decided to focus on music and the natural world for this season, we all agreed that John Luther Adams had to play a huge role.”

An environmental-activist-turned-composer, Adams lived for almost 40 years in northern Alaska where he discovered a unique musical world grounded in space, stillness, and elemental forces. Ultimately, he dedicated himself entirely to music. Since that time, he has become one of the most widely admired composers in the world, receiving the Pulitzer Prize, a Grammy Award, and multiple other honors.

AMFS President and CEO Alan Fletcher describes Adams’s work as mysterious, delightful, and awe-inspiring: “Audiences are never indifferent to his music. Many people tell me they had no idea what to expect, and afterward, they tell me they will never forget it.”

Throughout his work, Adams—a resident of New Mexico—uses music to uncover the deep emotional connections we all have to this planet that we all call home. The music he will present in Aspen includes the world premiere of a new outdoor work, co-commissioned by the AMFS. Called Crossing Open Ground, the piece will be performed outside the Benedict Music Tent on Sunday, August 6 at 2 p.m., and is free and open to the public.

“John loves to take these site-specific outdoor pieces that involve large forces and a large playing area,” explains Chamberlain. Audiences may remember Inuksuit, an epic 60-musician outdoor percussion piece performed on the Karetsky Lawn in 2016. “This is similar,” he continues. “It’s really about how musicians and the music transform in relation to space and the environment.”

On Sunday, August 13, the Aspen Festival Orchestra under the baton of David Robertson will perform Adams’s newest large-scale orchestral work called An Atlas of Deep Time. Adams scored the piece for a large orchestra, arranged in six instrumental choirs that surround the listeners.

It’s a kind of love letter to time and space which, Adams says, “is grounded in my desire, amid the turbulence of human affairs, to hear the older, deeper resonances of the earth. Like the geologic layers of rocks beneath our feet, the densities and textures, the instrumental and harmonic colors are always changing, yet somehow the substance

always seem to be the same.”

“The earth is 4 billion 570 million years old. An Atlas of Deep Time lasts roughly 42 minutes, which equates to a little under 100 million years per minute.” At that tempo, he continues, “the entire history of the human family is represented in the dying reverberations of the last 25 milliseconds of this music.”

Adams’ ten-day residency will also include one-on-one time with composition students and an Aspen Contemporary Ensemble performance on Saturday, August 12 of his work there is no one, not even the wind

Chamberlain hopes that audiences will immerse themselves in the transformative experience that is Adams’s signature style. “It’s an opportunity to get to know a completely original and distinctive thinker and composer with his own musical language. It’s the kind of music you just have to let happen.”

ASPEN MUSIC FESTIVAL AND SCHOOL BOX OFFICE:

970 925 9042 OR ASPENMUSICFESTIVAL.COM

Now–August 20: Daily, 12–4 PM MT, or concert time, or intermission, if applicable.

Korngold: Pure Violin Magic

Continued from Festival Focus page 1

Banks says, “Billy’s language as a composer to me is truly unique.” What makes this work thrilling for both performer and audience is the demand placed upon the soloist who faces a variety of technical challenges, like making the saxophone sound “like a folk-like flute player and then you go into 12-tone music and then church-like hymns,” describes Banks. As to what he’s most looking forward to on his second visit to Aspen, Banks says: “Sometimes I forget that most people have never even heard a saxophone concerto live before and to be able to introduce people to the genre of classical saxophone through the lens of the Black experience with a great orchestra is very exciting.”

No stranger to Aspen audiences, violinist Gil Shaham also offers something a bit out of the ordinary with the Korngold Violin Concerto in D major, which Chamberlain calls “pure violin magic. It grabs at your heartstrings.”

Austrian composer Erich Korngold was a prodigy along the lines of Mozart and hailed as such by contemporaries Mahler and Strauss. He escaped Vienna before the Nazi occupation, moving to California where he soon became the man behind the music of Hollywood’s golden era of film.

Composed after the conclusion of the Second World War, Korngold’s Violin Concerto weaves musical themes from four of his film scores into a symphonic structure, including the Oscar-winning score for the movie Anthony Adverse “Sometimes people listen to the Korngold Violin Concerto and think, I’ve heard this somewhere before and I just don’t know where and it’s because they’re remembering those great movies,” says Fletcher.

Chamberlain similarly says: “You can imagine a Errol Flynn or Humphrey Bogart figure in the background while the music is played. It’s deeply virtuosic. It’s a lot of fun for the orchestra and it’s a showpiece for Gil’s signature sound, tone, and stage presence.”

“I think it’s wonderful that Korngold is coming back to ‘classical’ concert venues,” says Shaham. “He really was this incredible genius. He became the king of Hollywood but was always hoping to come back to Vienna and the classical stage in general and it’s great that now people are playing a lot more Korngold—the operas, the songs, the symphonic works. The Violin Concerto is one of his most-often performed pieces.”

McDonald: A Vocal Legend

and live your life, to keep going,” Einhorn says. “Coming out of the pandemic, there’s never been a better song to be forced to sing. It is the greatest celebration of life out there.”

Einhorn says that some composers—Ellington, Gershwin, Rodgers and Hammerstein—deserve more than just a piano or a trio, so performing their works with a full orchestra will allow the colors of the music to come to life in the Benedict Music Tent.

“This concert is the reason I believe this Festival exists. For these students to get to perform on stage with an artist like Audra makes this a once-in-a-lifetime experience and the perfect amalgam between student talent and professional educators,” Einhorn says. “No matter what else happens in my life, after this concert I will die a happy man.”

See composer John Luther Adams’s Crossing Open Ground at 2 p.m., August 6. Free.

MADELINE CASS

Steven Banks makes his Benedict Music Tent debut in the Aspen premiere of Billy Childs’s Saxophone Concerto on August 4.

CHRIS LEE

Continued from Festival Focus page 1

Broadway’s Andy Einhorn will lead a full orchestra and small band for Audra McDonald’s August 3 performance.