Festival Focus August 4, 2014

Your weekly CLASSICAL MUSIC GUIDE

Festival Focus

Supplement to The Aspen Times

Percussion Ensemble Tonight!

Don’t miss the Percussion Ensemble’s performance at 6 pm tonight at Harris Concert Hall. The ensemble, directed by Jonathan Haas, will perform works

by Joseph Pereira, Michael Udow, Peter Schickele, and John Harbison.

Tickets are $25 and can be purchased at the box office at Harris Concert Hall or the Wheeler Opera House, or by calling 970-9259042 or visiting www. aspenmusicfestival.com.

Monday, August 4, 2014

Vol 25, No. 7

Opera season closes out with Bizet’s ‘Carmen’ jessica cabe

Don José begs Carmen to choose one man, she refuses to be what she sees Georges Bizet’s wildly popular op- as under someone else’s control. era, Carmen, is being presented in a Carmen’s music, which has earned a new way by the Aspen Opera Theater spot as some of the most beloved in Center (AOTC). The third and final op- opera and even appears in pop culture, era of the season for the Aspen Music will be brought to life by two casts. The Festival and School (AMFS), with per- role of Carmen will be sung by twentyformances scheduled starting August eight-year-old Kelly Hill on August 10 10, is being moved from Spain to Mex- and 14 and twenty-nine-year-old Fleur ico, from the 1800s Barron on August to modern times.

12 and 16. Both “It’s going to be singers are studying a different Carmen,” at the AMFS for the says AOTC Director first time.

Edward Berkeley.

“I remember my “It has to be and first day here, I got will be Spanish in on the RFTA, and it feel, but it’s going was full of students to be more about of the Festival with the American-Mextheir instruments,” ican border than says Barron. “For about the Spanishme, it was like a fullFrench border. The on immersion right police in it are gofrom the get-go, Fleur Barron AMFS student ing to be more like where everyone’s border patrol. The talking music all the presence of a gypsy culture trying to time and so passionate about it.” smuggle things across borders beIn addition to being at the Festival cause they’re sort of an invisible mi- for the first time, this is the first time nority seems to be interesting relative either Hill or Barron will take on the to today’s immigration stories of fami- role of Carmen, although both have lies that are divided.” performed excerpts of the role. Hill Carmen tells the story of the title says what is appealing to her about character, a free-spirited gypsy smug- the character is the melodic music gler who uses seduction to manipulate she sings as well as her strength and men—namely, the soldier Don José and the bullfighter Escamillo. Although See CARMEN, Festival Focus page 3 Festival Focus writer

There’s something about the story and about Carmen as a woman and character that really transcends time and place.

courtesy of fleur barron

First-time AMFS student Fleur Barron is one of the singers taking on the title role in Bizet’s Carmen on August 10, 12, 14, and 16 at the Wheeler Opera House.

Showcase spotlights composers jessica cabe

Festival Focus writer

Four Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS) students will have the rare opportunity this week to showcase their own musical compositions in front of an audience and receive immediate feedback from a panel of international, award-winning composers: Alan Fletcher, Robert Spano, Steven Stucky, George Tsontakis, and Sydney Hodkinson.

This Composer Showcase, at 9 am on August 10 at Harris Concert Hall, is one of the standout elements of the AMFS’s Susan and Ford Schumann Center for Composition Studies, in which eight to ten students study each summer. The students in the program workshop their pieces with its artist-faculty members, visiting composers, and each other, and also have the chance to have their music played by other students at the AMFS, including a full orchestra, as on Sunday’s Showcase.

The composers on the panel at the Showcase will offer advice to the students, in some cases allowing them to make changes right then and there so the audience will be able to hear the improvements.

“The Showcase is a unique idea: to involve the public in the work of young composers and conductors through the expertise of extraordinary composers who offer critiques, often including revisions on the spot,” says composer and AMFS President and CEO Alan Fletcher. “The master class is a tried-and-true format for performers, but I know of no place anywhere that applies this format—in such an engaging way—to composers.”

The Festival’s commitment to these young composers, whether at this event, through the many live readings of their works, or in the engagement of such an illustrious faculty of working composers, is notable. To this, Fletcher See SHOWCASE, Festival Focus page 3

ONLY 14 DAYS LEFT!

alex irvin/amfs

A student composer (standing) has his work critiqued by AMFS Music Director Robert Spano at the 2013 Composer Showcase.

This year, the Showcase will take place at 9 am on August 10.

~ Have you been to the Tent yet?

Page 2 | Monday, August 4, 2014

Festival Focus: Your Weekly Classical Music Guide

Supplement to The Aspen Times

Bicket leads Baroque ensemble in Brandenburg No. 5 “I’m really looking forward to coming back,” says Bicket, who will be in Aspen for the fourth time. “I haven’t been With the 2014 Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS) back in ages. I’m in Santa Fe at the moment, so I’m just season winding up in just fourteen days, the AMFS this down the road, and it’ll be very nice just to come up and weekend presents its third and final special event of the spend a lovely five days in Aspen.”

Bicket’s program at the AMFS consists of two pieces by summer: A Baroque Evening with Harry Bicket.

Bicket, a conductor and harpsichordist partly known for Bach, each on the opposite end of the composer’s style his work in Baroque and early music, is currently chief spectrum, as well as a piece by Rameau.

“The Rameau Suite is a piece very dear to my heart,” conductor of the Santa Fe Opera. He got his start in music says Bicket. “Rameau is a composat three years old when he began er who was hugely influential in his playing piano. day but perhaps not so well-known “I was a part of a big family, and now. But he offers wonderfully inwe all had to learn to play the piano, ventive, clever, brilliant, touching just as a matter of course,” says writing from France.”

Bicket. “And I loved it. I didn’t play The Rameau piece will be folclassical music particularly; I played lowed by Bach’s Brandenburg all kinds of music.”

Concerto No. 5, then his “Coffee His passion for Baroque music Cantata.” developed later in his career when Asadour Santourian “The Bach pieces show very difhe conducted an opera by Handel.

AMFS Vice President for Artistic Administration and Artistic Advisor ferent types of Bach,” says Bicket.

Bicket says once he got started in “The ‘Coffee Cantata’ is a comBaroque music, more and more colic cantata. It was written to be performed in the coffee leagues asked him to conduct work from that period.

“The more I did it, the more I got interested in it, par- house; it was like a kind of contemporary pop music to ticularly the period instrument movement,” says Bicket. be sung and played in a place where people were talking, “Hearing that music with original instruments really chatting, and drinking coffee. But the Brandenburg is writopened my ears and eyes to it, and that was very exciting.” ten for harpsichord—a very virtuosic keyboard part. It’s Now that Bicket is with the Santa Fe Opera, the short one of the great Baroque pieces.”

The pieces themselves are brilliant works, and Asadour distance from Aspen makes it easier for him to make a Santourian, AMFS vice president for artistic administration visit to the AMFS. jessica cabe

Festival Focus writer

Harry Bicket has a very successful place in the music world as the next generation of Baroque and classical conductors.

geraint lewis

Conductor and harpsichordist Harry Bicket will return to Aspen on August 9 to present the music of Bach and Rameau.

and artistic advisor, says the opportunity to hear them performed by an accomplished Baroque expert should not be missed.

“His career, both on the concert stage and in the opera house, tells us that he’s a proponent of this historically informed performance practice,” says Santourian. “Harry Bicket has a very successful place in the music world as the next generation of Baroque and classical conductors.”

A Baroque Evening with Harry Bicket will feature Inon Barnatan on piano, Elaine Douvas on oboe, and Stefan Jackiw and Bing Wang on violin. The concert takes place at 8 pm on Saturday, August 9, at Harris Concert Hall.

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

Supplement to The Aspen Times

Festival Focus: Your Weekly Classical Music Guide

CARMEN: Opera gets updated treatment Continued from Festival Focus page 1

free spirit.

“For mezzo-sopranos, Carmen is definitely one of the dream roles, one of the major iconic characters of our repertoire,” says Hill. “Playing her, for me, is about trying to find the angle that’s not just stereotypical. So many people think of Carmen, and they think immediately she’s dressed in red with her hand on her hip, just swaggering around the stage. What really draws me to her is finding all the truth in her and what she believes in, what she’s fighting for, how she is defending herself, and what means she needs to use in order to preserve her freedom.”

For Barron, Carmen is a still-relevant symbol of feminism.

“There’s something about the story and about Carmen as a woman and character that really transcends time and place,” says Barron. “I think the sorts of struggles that she faces are not specific

to the era in which the opera was written.

In the opera, one of the things that is very important to her is this idea of freedom and liberty. It is still a struggle for women in a lot of parts of the world to really own and claim their freedom and to have it acknowledged.”

For Berkeley, directing this Carmen after many others in his career offers him the chance to explore the story and the music in a new way.

“Part of directing the same opera so many times is you get to know a piece better, and you reinvent it every time,” says Berkeley. “The great joy is that, as you get older, you understand things differently, and what something means is different. So you bring that to the next version.”

Carmen opens at 7 pm on Sunday, August 10, at the Wheeler Opera House.

Additional performances take place on August 14 and 16, with a special benefit performance on August 12 (see sidebar).

Aspen Music Festival and School Box Office Hours

Monday, August 4, 2014 | Page 3

Opera Benefit The Aspen Music Festival and School annual Opera Benefit takes place on August 12.

The black-tie evening begins with an exclusive cocktail party at the home of Benefit Chair Richard Edwards, moves on to dinner at the renowned Caribou Club, and concludes with a dedicated performance of Bizet’s Carmen, performed by rising stars of the Aspen Opera Theater Center.

Opera-only tickets are also available. For more information, call Jennifer McDonough at 970205-5063.

dylan cross

Kelly Hill, pictured here performing an excerpt of Carmen for the Yale Opera Program in 2012, is one of the singers taking on the title role of Bizet’s Carmen on August 10, 12, 14, and 16.

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

Wheeler Opera House: 9 am–5 pm daily.

L.A. Phil violinist inspires AMFS students SHOWCASE jessica cabe

Continued from Festival Focus page 1

Festival Focus writer

Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS) artistfaculty member Bing Wang spends most of her time as associate concertmaster of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, a position she’s held for twenty years.

But for twelve summers, the violinist has also played in the Festival’s orchestras and taught—and inspired— AMFS students.

“When I first started with her, I was one of the youngest students,” says Katie Nakamura, one of the students Wang is working with this summer who has been studying with her for about eight years. This nineteen-year-old, who is attending the AMFS for the second time, says because she started taking lessons from Wang at an early age, she has learned more than just technique from the teacher.

“I feel like she’s taught me a lot—not just violin technique, but she’s also helped me improve as a person and taught me how to act in the professional music world, like in auditions,” says Nakamura. “It’s just really been a great help for me.”

“The students here are fabulous,” says Wang. “They come from all over, and they are at a very high level.

It’s great working with each and every one of them to help them with their individual learning goals. It’s very unique.”

Wang began her own music studies at just four years old when she started piano lessons. Two years later, she switched to violin.

“Both my parents are violinists, as well as my older brother, so I guess it was sort of a natural transition,” says Wang.

Twenty years after playing her first notes on the violin, Wang was appointed to her role at the Los Angeles Philharmonic. She says she has particularly loved her time with the Philharmonic because of its dedication to new music.

“The L.A. Phil is the champion of contemporary

alex irvin/amfs

Violinist and AMFS artist-faculty member Bing Wang is teaching and performing at the Festival for her 12th season. She will perform on August 9 during A Baroque Evening with Harry Bicket at Harris Concert Hall.

music,” says Wang. “So I learned a lot of contemporary music, played a lot of new music, and it’s really very exciting for all of the musicians.”

But this week at the AMFS, Wang will turn her focus from contemporary to early music for her performance with conductor and harpsichordist Harry Bicket on August 9 (see related story on Festival Focus page 2).

Wang will be playing violin on Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 5.

“It’s really exquisite music,” says Wang. “I have worked with Harry Bicket before, and he’s a marvelous specialist in Baroque music. I think it is great for all of us classical musicians to play this early music because we sort of go back to where it all started.”

Between the performance opportunities and the chance to teach bright students, Wang says she’s glad to be back at the AMFS. “The students are really like sponges; they absorb so much from us,” says Wang. “And the students bring such great energy to the music-making. The performances are usually very exciting and full of freshness because the students are so young, and they give all they have. And this energy and virtuosity is very exciting for us professionals.”

says simply, “There is no music without composers, so there should be no music schools without student composers.”

After the Showcase, the panel will choose the winners of two important prizes: the Druckman Prize, the recipient of which will be commissioned by the AMFS to write an orchestral work to be performed next summer, and the Hermitage Prize, in partnership with the Hermitage Artist Retreat in Florida.

The AMFS’s partnership with the Hermitage Artist Retreat began last year, when the School presented its first Composer Showcase. The recipient of the Hermitage Prize will be awarded the gift of time and space to develop his or her work on this retreat, as well as the opportunity to interact with other influential composers.

One of the student composers whose work will be performed at the Showcase is music doctoral candidate Thomas Kotcheff, 25, who is attending the AMFS for the first time. Kotcheff grew up as a pianist, and he started composing when he was eighteen.

Kotcheff’s piece for the Showcase features percussion instruments like wood blocks and tin cans, and he says it “has a little smirk on its face the whole time.”

“I’m so excited to have my work performed,” says Kotcheff. “I’m just really excited to hear the piece and to have my colleagues and the audience hear it and to hear their reactions.”

Kotcheff says his favorite part of the program has been working with the many guest artists and artist-faculty members at the AMFS. He says being around both student and professional composers with such high skill levels has challenged him to become better, even over this short summer.

“I think often when we [composers] get together in groups or seminars, we challenge each other, and we challenge what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, who we’re doing it for, all these different things,” he says, adding, “the things we should be thinking about when we’re writing our music.”

Page 4 | Monday, August 4, 2014

Festival Focus: Your Weekly Classical Music Guide

Supplement to The Aspen Times