Music Director Peter Oundjian opens the 2022 Festival season with special guests: Boulder’s own Takács Quartet. This Grammy Award-winning quartet joins the orchestra for John Adams’ Absolute Jest, which samples, twists, and builds upon Beethoven’s themes, in particular his late string quartets; Adams has referred to his Jest as “Beethoven that has been passed through a hall of mirrors.” Dvořák’s iconic Symphony No. 9, “From the New World,” was written in the “new world” of America but teeming with Bohemian folk influence as well. Composer Carlos Simon’s Fate Now Conquers nods to a notebook entry written by Beethoven and explores “the unpredictable ways of fate” and the uncertainties of life.
Music Director Peter Oundjian opens the 2022 Festival season with special guests: Boulder’s own Takács Quartet. This Grammy Award-winning quartet joins the orchestra for John Adams’ Absolute Jest, which samples, twists, and builds upon Beethoven’s themes, in particular his late string quartets; Adams has referred to his Jest as “Beethoven that has been passed through a hall of mirrors.” Dvořák’s iconic Symphony No. 9, “From the New World,” was written in the “new world” of America but teeming with Bohemian folk influence as well. Composer Carlos Simon’s Fate Now Conquers nods to a notebook entry written by Beethoven and explores “the unpredictable ways of fate” and the uncertainties of life.
Tickets just $10! Vaudeville-inspired musical storytellers Really Inventive Stuff uses comedy, props, and interaction to refresh beloved musical classics and enchant audiences of all ages. Their imaginative Tubby the Tuba follows “the adventures of a red polka-dot yo-yo, a dapper bullfrog puppet, and a small piece of ribbon” as Tubby discovers that dreams can come true. Later, Really Inventive Stuff’s “Orchestra-ologist” introduces the instruments “with wit and a wink” as the troupe reinvents Britten’s classic Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra.
Haydn, String Quartet in F Major; Coleridge-Taylor, Fantasiestücke for String Quartet; Dvořák, String Quartet No. 13 in G Major
V. Williams, Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis; Beethoven, Piano Concerto No. 1; Beethoven, Piano Concerto No. 3
V. Williams, The Wasps Overture; Beethoven, Piano Concerto No. 2; Beethoven, Piano Concerto No. 4
V. Williams, Symphony No. 5; Beethoven, Piano Concerto No. 5
J. Adams, selections from John’s Book of Alleged Dances; Flying Lotus, Clock Catcher; Remind U; Pilgrim Side Eye; Müller, Drifting Circles; Cole, Real Life; Glass, String Quartet No. 3, “Mishima”; Shaw, The Evergreen; Smith, Carrot Revolution
The legendary John Adams, 2022 composer-in-residence and co-curator of this week’s programs, shares the podium with Music Director Peter Oundjian in this can’t-miss concert, beginning with a commissioned work by Timo Andres, an exceptional composer personally selected by Adams. Adams’ own orchestral masterpiece City Noir brims with cinematic lyricism and yearning melodies. “The music should have the slightly disorienting effect of a very crowded boulevard peopled with strange characters,” says Adams, “...the kind who only come out very late on a very hot night.” John Adams’ son Samuel is a formidable composer in his own right, and a 2019 Guggenheim Fellow; his lyrical and haunting Chamber Concerto gives violinist Tessa Lark an opportunity to shine.
Now in its second year, Kaleidoscope brings back and builds upon the theatrical elements that audiences loved: lighting, cinematography, a hint of stage magic, and an atmosphere like no other concert. Kaleidoscope is infused with bold musical color and moments of surprise, pairing energetic (and accessible) contemporary music with mesmerizing soloists. This captivating performance centers around composer-in-residence and co-curator John Adams’ own Road Movies, which shifts through empty desert landscapes and “not unfamiliar roads.” Come experience something unique.
The Festival’s focus on today’s music continues as world-renowned conductor and Festival composer-in-residence/co-curator John Adams takes the podium to lead his off-beat and grooving Must the Devil Have All the Good Tunes? with the extraordinary Jeremy Denk at the piano — listen for a second “detuned honky-tonk piano” to add its voice. Music Director Peter Oundjian conducts the final symphony by Christopher Rouse, which The New York Times called Rouse’s Sixth “a haunting and profound farewell” true to the composer’s character: “all of Mr. Rouse — contemplative elegy, rowdy playfulness, eclectic homage — is in this score.” In her Tumblebird Contrails, composer Gabriella Smith calls to mind the Pacific Ocean and “keening gulls, pounding surf, rush of approaching waves, sizzle of sand, and sea foam in receding tide.”
Borodin, Sextet in D Minor; Glinka, Trio pathétique; Tchaikovsky, Souvenir de Florence
“ Goosby plays like an angel with nothing to prove,” claims the L.A. Times. The youngest recipient ever to win the Sphinx Concerto Competition and an artist dedicated to the dynamic music of Black composers, violinist Randall Goosby joins the Festival to perform a scintillating work by Saint-Saëns and Florence Price’s sweeping Second Violin Concerto, lost to history until 2009. These showpieces are introduced by an orchestral work by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, the arresting and achingly romantic Ballade that made the young composer an overnight sensation. The “energetic yet graceful” Ryan Bancroft (The Guardian), conductor of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, joins the Festival to lead Sibelius’ sonorous Second Symphony; Sibelius once said of its first movement, “It is as if the Almighty had thrown down the pieces of a mosaic for heaven’s floor and asked me to put them together.”
“ Goosby plays like an angel with nothing to prove,” claims the L.A. Times. The youngest recipient ever to win the Sphinx Concerto Competition and an artist dedicated to the dynamic music of Black composers, violinist Randall Goosby joins the Festival to perform a scintillating work by Saint-Saëns and Florence Price’s sweeping Second Violin Concerto, lost to history until 2009. These showpieces are introduced by an orchestral work by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, the arresting and achingly romantic Ballade that made the young composer an overnight sensation. The “energetic yet graceful” Ryan Bancroft (The Guardian), conductor of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, joins the Festival to lead Sibelius’ sonorous Second Symphony; Sibelius once said of its first movement, “It is as if the Almighty had thrown down the pieces of a mosaic for heaven’s floor and asked me to put them together.”
“If you want to hear perfection, this is it,” says Music Director Peter Oundjian of Mozart’s final concerto, performed here by pianist Albert Cano Smit. Mozart is at his most majestic and most beautiful in his Symphony No. 39. Ryan Bancroft conducts this all-Mozart program, which begins with a dark and intense serenade for winds.
Mozart, Flute Quartet in D Major; Perkinson, Movement for String Trio; Dvořák, Terzetto in C Major; Brahms, Clarinet Quintet in B Minor
Mussorgsky, Night on Bald Mountain (arr. Rimsky-Korsakov); Tchaikovsky, Piano Concerto No. 1; Prokofiev, Symphony No. 5
Mussorgsky, Night on Bald Mountain (arr. Rimsky-Korsakov); Tchaikovsky, Piano Concerto No. 1; Prokofiev, Symphony No. 5
Principal Guest Conductor Jean-Marie Zeitouni conducts a special Midsummer Night’s Dream. This performance pairs Mendelssohn’s lush score, which includes the instantly recognizable “Wedding March,” with a dramatic reading by actor John de Lancie (American Shakespeare Festival, TV’s Star Trek The Next Generation) to summon Shakespeare’s fairies, royalty, and fools in love. Mendelssohn penned Midsummer’s overture at age 17; Bizet was the same age when he wrote his Symphony in C, a surprisingly mature work, effervescent and full of contrasts. The program opens with a brand new orchestral arrangement of Jessie Montgomery’s vivid Starburst, which is, in her words, “a play on imagery of rapidly changing musical colors.”
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