Donald Runnicles Opens the 2009 Grand Teton Music Festival with Concerts on July 17 & 18

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Runnicles Conducts Four Pairs of Concerts Over Four Weeks

Donald Runnicles, who has been Music Director of the Grand Teton Music Festival Orchestra since 2006, leads the first of four pairs of concerts he will conduct at Wyoming’s 48th Grand Teton Music Festival on July 17 and 18. The Scottish conductor declares: “The virtuosity and power of the Grand Teton Music Festival Orchestra are as breathtaking as the splendor of the Tetons themselves,” continuing, “The Grand Teton Music Festival deserves to be a compulsory stop on any music lover’s summer itinerary.” Not least because of the region’s stunning beauty, the Festival Orchestra of the Grand Teton Music Festival attracts musicians from top orchestras in the United States, Canada, and abroad. The San Francisco Festival Chorale joins the orchestra and a quartet of soloists – soprano Twyla Robinson, mezzo-soprano Michelle DeYoung, tenor Frank Lopardo, and bass Eric Owens – for Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 under Maestro Runnicles in his first pair of concerts (July 17 & 18). He and the orchestra support pianist Norman Krieger for the great Piano Concerto No. 2 by Johannes Brahms, programmed with John Adams’s delightful Harmonielehre, for the conductor’s second weekend (July 24 & 25). On Wednesday, August 5, in a program to be announced later, Runnicles will be the evening’s pianist, performing with baritone Thomas Hampson and cellist Lynn Harrell. Hampson is the Spotlight Artist for the third weekend (Aug 7 & 8), singing John Adams’s moving Wound-Dresser (to words by Walt Whitman) on a program with Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique and Aaron Jay Kernis’s heavenly Musica Celestis for strings. For the season’s grand finale (Aug 14 & 15), Maestro Runnicles conducts the world premiere of a new work for cello and orchestra by Stephen Paulus, commissioned by the Grand Teton Music Festival, with Lynn Harrell as soloist. The world premiere is preceded by Bedrich Smetana’s beloved musical portrait of his homeland’s river, “The Moldau”, and the final work is Richard Strauss’s dramatic “portrait of an alp”, the Alpine Symphony: a poetic mirroring of the grandeur surrounding the beautiful Grand Teton Music Festival.

About the Grand Teton Music Festival
Jackson Hole, WY, home to the GTMF, is the gateway to Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks. Tickets to all performances are available through the Grand Teton Music Festival Ticket Office by phone at (307) 733-1128 or online at www.gtmf.org, where the complete GTMF schedule is also available. All sales are final. No refunds or exchanges are permitted. All programs, artists, and dates are subject to change.

July 24 & 25 (Friday & Saturday)
8:00pm, Walk Festival Hall: $50, $10 students
Festival Orchestra Concerts: Romance & Harmony
Festival Orchestra / Donald Runnicles, conductor BRAHMS: Piano Concerto No. 2 (Norman Krieger, piano)
ADAMS: Harmonielehre

August 5 (Wednesday)
8:00pm, Walk Festival Hall: $40, $10 students
Spotlight Concert: An Evening with …<br> Donald Runnicles, piano; Thomas Hampson, baritone; Lynn Harrell, cello
Program tba

August 7 & 8 (Friday & Saturday)
8:00pm, Walk Festival Hall: $50, $10 students
Festival Orchestra Concerts: Poetry & Fantasy
Thomas Hampson, baritone
Festival Orchestra / Donald Runnicles, conductor
KERNIS: Musica Celestis for strings
ADAMS / WHITMAN: The Wound-Dresser (Hampson)
BERLIOZ: Symphonie fantastique

August 14 & 15 (Friday & Saturday)
8:00pm, Walk Festival Hall: $50, $10 students
Closing Orchestra Concerts: A Premiere Ending
Lynn Harrell, cello
Festival Orchestra / Donald Runnicles, conductor
SMETANA: “The Moldau” from Má Vlast
PAULUS: Work for cello and orchestra (world premiere)
Commissioned by the Grand Teton Music Festival
STRAUSS: Eine Alpensinfonie

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