sun Hailey
•
Ketchum
•
Sun Valley
•
Bellevue
•
Carey
Page 15
Valley gears up for Relay for Life
ion iss
LEY HAI Ho’S A d I
of
k l a h c Day of Chalk day
this Saturday For the Weekly Sun
T
his Saturday, July 16, Hailey’s Main Street will light up with color during their second annual Day of Chalk. All ages of artists—masters and doodlers alike—are invited to get creative and celebrate summer. The fun starts at 10 a.m. in front of Jane’s Artifacts, and lasts until 2 p.m. The registration fee to join the fun is only $5. Jane’s will supply chalk to the artists and the City of Hailey will supply the sidewalk. Frank You Very Much will also be on site to offer hotdogs, chips and drinks. This community event is presented by the Hailey Arts Commission to celebrate A Month of Art in Hailey. To find out more about the Hailey Arts Commission, visit www.HaileyCityHall.org/ArtsCommission or call 208-788-4221. This event is supported by Jane’s Artifacts, Copy & Print and The Weekly Sun. tws
usan Spelius Dunning is skipping her Masters swim classes this week—she can’t take a chance on one of her hands getting whacked by a hand paddle. Ditto for bicycling since her last bike ride resulted in a scraped arm. The Sun Valley concert pianist’s focus this week is on making her solo debut in the Sun Valley Pavilion Sunday night where she will present a potpourri of classical music, including Debussy’s Clair de Lune” and selections by Mendelssohn, Mozart, Chopin and Rachmaninoff, on her 9-foot Steinway Grand Piano. The concert, which begins at 6:30 p.m., is a benefit for the Sun Valley Artist Series winter concerts and educational outreach programs. Dunning has made the choice between athletics and piano before. At 6 feet, she is a natural athlete whose brother Chris was an Olympics kayaker. Like Chris, Dunning was a competitive swimmer who could have competed on a major level. But her swim coach insisted that she stop playing piano to focus on swimming. And her piano coach insisted that she commit to piano. She picked piano. “It touched my soul. Now I’m grateful because music has brought me so much richness. Every day I get to sit at this magnificent piano with these scores,” she said, spreading dozens of hundred-page scores across the living room floor of her Elkhorn home. “These are my friends. I get to hang out with creative geniuses on a daily basis and they fill me.” Dunning is a Chicago native who studied at the American Conservatory of Music and the University of ColoradoBoulder. She moved to Sun Valley in 1994 at the request of her then teen-aged sons who had grown up on a family tradition of vacationing in Sun Valley that started with Dunning’s parents—Bill and Carol Spelius—on their 1947 honeymoon. Movers pulled umpteen kayaks, several pairs of skis, two Steinway Grand pianos, two upright pianos, a harpsichord and an organ out of their moving van, along with hundreds of musical scores. “I love waking up with the Baroque composers—I find them less emotionally demanding and they possess a meditative quality,” said Dunning, who thinks nothing of practicing eight hours without looking at a score. “Later in the day, I tend to go with the impressionists, Mendelssohn and Chopin. At 2 in the morning you’ll find me banging away on the 97-page
Susan Spelius Dunning plays her harpsichord for fun. But Sunday night she’ll be playing the 9-foot Steinway Grand that she bought for concert pianist Misha Dichter’s performance in Sun Valley last September. Such pianos cost about $100,000, she said. Photo: KAREN BOSSICK
Tchaikovsky piano concerto.” Dunning is inspired by excellence. She watched five young singers perform at Sunday’s Sun Valley Opera concert and promptly went home and practiced into the early morning hours. “Even with an ice skater or some other athlete—I see them excel and it makes me want to go home and practice,” she said. She also is moved by the history of particular pieces. Chopin’s “Military polonaise,” which she will perform Sunday, became a symbol of patriotic defiance during the German invasion of Poland. And that knowledge fuels the emotional intensity with which she plays the piece. The last piece she will play Sunday night pays homage to Franz Liszt, whose 200th birthday anniversary is being observed this year. “He is credited with being the first solo pianist,” Dunning said. “He was a Mick Jagger of piano players--the women swooned when he played. In contrast to Chopin whose music was more intimate, Liszt’s wrote music that was big in conception with big ideas, big technique. He ushered in the Golden Era of piano playing in the late 1800s and early 1900s.” Two years ago Dunning established the Sun Valley Artist Series with Steve Gannon, a Ketchum man so passionate about classical music that he used to play classical selections on piano for his 4-year-old son to eat his Cheerios to. The series has brought such diverse groups as an Italian saxophone quartet and the St. Petersburg Quartet to Sun Valley.
getting to the concert
What: Classical Piano Concert featuring Susan Spelius Dunning When: 6:30 p.m. Sunday, preceded by pre-concert talk at 6 p.m. Where: Sun Valley Pavilion Tickets: $10 for students, $30 general admission, $100 reserved seating and $250 for patrons, including post-concert champagne reception. Tickets are available at www. svwas.org, Chapter One Bookstore and Iconoclast Books in Ketchum or by calling 208-725-5807. Proceeds benefit the Sun Valley Artist Series educational outreach programs and winter concert performances.
Dunning is bent on showing off the versatility of the piano to Sunday’s audience: “Normally the piano is heard in casual settings or as background music. I want to show it off in ways people don’t normally hear it.” Does the thought of playing in the 1,561-seat Pavilion intimidate her? Not in the least. “I played a few notes in the Pavilion when we set up the piano for Misha Dichter last year and the acoustics were so great I couldn’t wait to play there myself. Often we perform in echoing halls where it’s hard to respond to what we’re doing. But the Pavilion is like a cocoon. And the better the sound responds the more dancing I do with the piano. And the physical beauty of the Pavilion—it’s so magical.” tws
Susan Spelius Dunning Sunday, July 17 6:30 PM
Benefit Concert
Preconcert Talk featuring Frederic Boloix 6 PM
Sun Valley Pavilion
COURTESY PHOTO: Sheila Kelley
Page 11
read about it on PaGe 9
for Sun Valley Artist Series Benefit Concert
S
ley Arts Com Hai m
Page 4
Dunning Tickles the Ivories By KAREN BOSSICK
read about it on pages 5 and 6
Sawtooth Botanical Garden Tour this Saturday Mountain Mamas Festival in Stanley this weekend
J u l y 1 3 , 2 0 1 1 • Vo l . 4 • N o . 2 8 • w w w.T h e W e e k l y S u n . c o m
The USA Cycling National Championships roll into town this week.
s t a n l e y • F a i r f i e l d • S h o sh o n e • P i c a b o Wildflowers around the Valley
the weekly
Blazin’ Trails!
•
SVWAS.org (208) 725-5807