Interchanging Idioms

This summer, the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival celebrates its 25th anniversary with more than 60 performances, offering chamber music, jazz, and 19 orchestral concerts from the Festival’s three world-class resident orchestras: the New York Philharmonic, returning under music director Alan Gilbert for its tenth summer; The Philadelphia Orchestra, whose new music director designate, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, makes his Festival debut; and the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and its music director, Jaap van Zweden, Musical America’s Conductor of the Year 2012. Celebrated pianist Anne-Marie McDermott returns for a second term as artistic director, and an impressive guest-star roster boasts more than 30 notable soloists. The anniversary season also marks the final summer for the Festival’s founder and executive director, John Giovando. In an illuminating interview below, Giovando reflects on the Festival’s beginnings, how it has developed, and the impact it has had over the past quarter of a cent...

The Golandsky Institute has announced the performers for its 2012 International Piano Festival , to be held at Princeton University for its ninth consecutive summer, July 8th – 14th. The Festival will feature six recitals by internationally acclaimed artists from the classical and jazz piano music worlds. This year’s season will also feature an Evening of Songs with soloists from Opera New Jersey. The first four of the six concerts will be held in the Berlind Theatre of the acclaimed McCarter Theatre Center, the last two in Richardson Auditorium, Princeton University. On Sunday, July 8th at 8:00 p.m., 15 year old artist Llewellyn Sanchez-Werner makes his Princeton debut at the Golandsky Institute on opening night. The youngest student ever to attend Juilliard’s College with a portfolio of critical accolades from Baghdad to the White House, this young emerging star will dazzle, charm and touch your heart. The performance will be held at the Berlind Theatre, McCarter Theatre Cente...

This summer, Trinity Wall Street will once again participate in the River To River Festival®, lower Manhattan’s free annual summer arts festival, which this year takes place from June 17 – July 15. Trinity will present three events, bringing a breadth of programming – ranging from choral sounds from Indonesia and evocations of ancient Italy to the music of New York’s own rising downtown star Nico Muhly – that illustrates why both church and festival have grown close to New York’s heart. The Trinity series, which forms part of the River To River Festival, begins on June 24 at Trinity’s St. Paul’s Chapel with a performance by the Manado State University Choir, which hails from the province of North Sulawesi in Indonesia. A mixed-voice chamber choir of about 24 singers, the group has been acclaimed for its beautiful sound, its ability to move audiences and its versatility, performing repertoire ranging from early to contemporary Western music, from traditional Indonesian music with ch...

When the Metropolitan Opera’s 2012 Beverly Sills Artist Angela Meade starred in the company’s recent production of Ernani , she gave “a true star-making Met performance” (WQXR) that “showed what this uncommonly gifted rising artist is capable of” (Anthony Tommasini, New York Times ). In May the soprano tackles another Verdi heroine, making her Deutsche Oper Berlin debut as Lucrezia in two concert performances of I due Foscari . More high-profile “firsts” follow in August when Meade makes a trio of major U.S. music festival debuts, headlining “A Night at the Opera” with the Cleveland Orchestra at the Blossom Music Festival; “Italian Opera Night” with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Yannick Nézet-Séguin at Saratoga, and Mahler’s “Symphony of a Thousand” with Robert Spano in Aspen. In June – as a preview of next season’s debut with Washington National Opera – she portrays the title role of Bellini’s Norma in concert at Oregon’s Astoria Music Festival, and in July she sings Leonora in V...

“An indispensable part of the summer operatic landscape.” – Musical America on Bard SummerScape Reviving important but neglected operas is one of the ways the Bard SummerScape festival paints a faithfully-nuanced portrait of each past age, and this year’s exploration of “Saint-Saëns and His World” is no exception. To enrich its immersion in the music of Belle Époque France, with all its trademark opulence and emotional richness, Bard presents the first staged revival of the original 1887 version of The King in Spite of Himself ( Le roi malgré lui ) by Saint-Saëns’s compatriot and contemporary Emmanuel Chabrier. The production, starring the “lyrical, expressive baritone” ( New York Times ) of Liam Bonner, will receive a contemporary treatment from Thaddeus Strassberger, director of SummerScape’s previous hit productions of Les Huguenots and The Distant Sound. The opera’s five performances (July 27 & 29; August 1, 3, & 5) involve the festival’s resident American Symphony Orche...

On May 13th, Leftover Salmon will take over Santa Fe Drive in the heart of Denver’s Arts District for a free block party and performance presented by 97.3 KBCO celebrating the long-awaited release of ‘Aquatic Hitchhiker’ (5.22, LoS), the band’s first album in eight years. Sponsored by Breckenridge Brewery and Renegade Brewery, the event is also a benefit for the non-profit organization Conscious Alliance , which raises money for underprivileged communities. The concert is free and open to the public, food and beverages will be sold and iClips will host an online live stream for viewers at home. iClips is also currently presenting ‘Salmonlandia’, a behind-the-scenes documentary outlining Leftover Salmon’s return to the studio. The show begins at 1pm and will be followed by a ticketed VIP after party at Space Gallery where artist Scramble Campbell will present a retrospective of his Leftover Salmon paintings and the band will be present for a meet-and-greet and signing. Complemen...

Described by the New York Times as “part boot camp for the brain, part spa for the spirit,” the world-renowned Bard Music Festival in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, returns for its 23rd annual season, filling the last two weekends of Bard SummerScape 2012 with a compelling and enlightening investigation of “Saint-Saëns and His World.” Twelve concert programs over the two mid-August weekends, complemented by pre-concert lectures, panel discussions, and expert commentary, make up Bard’s examination of Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921), whose long and remarkable career spanned and helped shape the course of French music from Gounod to Ravel. The twelve concerts offer an immersion in the music of Belle Époque France, with its trademark opulence and emotional richness, presenting masterpieces from all genres of Saint-Saëns’s prodigious oeuvre, including a rare concert performance of his grand opera Henry VIII , alongside a wealth of music from contemporaries and compatriots. Weekend 1 – “Pa...

Festival Runs from Monday, May 7- Saturday, May 12 at 7:30pm WQXR 105.9 FM and WQXR.org are proud to once again live broadcast the annual SPRING FOR MUSIC festival from Carnegie Hall. The festival’s full concert series will air on 105.9 FM in New York and audio webstream on www.wqxr.org . SPRING FOR MUSIC is an innovative festival of North American symphony and chamber orchestras, representing the best in distinctive musical programming and creativity. The 2012 season will include unique performances that demonstrate the vitality of classical music today, from rarely heard works by Varèse and Busoni to New York premieres by Paul Lansky and Avner Dorman, paired with Beethoven. The live broadcasts will be hosted by WQXR’s Elliott Forrest and will include intermission features and interviews. Each night of the festival, Forrest will be joined by a different co-host from WQXR; Q2 Music, WQXR’s online contemporary classical station; or WQXR’s sister station, WNYC. “ Spring For ...

Three-time Grammy award-winning rock group Train is being added to the 2012 Tanglewood season line up, performing on Friday, August 31, at 7 p.m. Up-and-coming pop star Andy Grammer and Nashville-based singer/songwriter Mat Kearney will open for Train. Additional details of the Labor Day Weekend festivities will be announced at a later date. Train made its Tanglewood debut with a concert on August 8, 2011. Tickets for Train range from $22-$88 and go on sale Saturday, April 28. Beginning at 10 a.m., tickets may be purchased online through the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s website at www.tanglewood.org , by calling SymphonyCharge at 617-266-1200 or 888-266-1200, or by visiting the Symphony Hall Box Office. There is a service charge for each ticket purchased on line or by phone.

Tickets for the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival’s 25th anniversary season will be available for purchase from next Monday, April 23. Set in the heart of the Colorado Rocky Mountains, the Vail Music Festival runs for seven weeks from June 25 to August 4. Celebrated pianist Anne-Marie McDermott returns for a second term as artistic director, and once again the Festival boasts not one but three world-class resident orchestras: the New York Philharmonic, returning under music director Alan Gilbert for its tenth summer; The Philadelphia Orchestra, whose new music director designate Yannick Nézet-Séguin makes his Vail Music Festival debut; and the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and its music director, Jaap van Zweden, Musical America ’s Conductor of the Year 2012. Programming highlights for this landmark season include numerous Festival premieres; multi-event immersions in the art of Brahms, Mendelssohn, and Gershwin; a series juxtaposing time-honored classics with trailblazing new music; p...

Works by composers Philip Glass (U.S.), Guo Wenjing ( China ), Jonny Greenwood ( UK ), Tansy Davies ( UK ), Toshi Ichiyanagi ( Japan ), Toshio Hosokawa ( Japan ), Somei Satoh ( Japan ), Hooshyar Khayam ( Iran ), and Stephen Scott ( U.S. ) American premiere of John Cage’s trilogy Twenty-Six, Twenty-Eight, and Twenty-Nine, the last of his works not yet performed in the U.S. Casts announced for new productions of Philip Glass’s Kepler and Guo Wenjing’s Feng Yi Ting Internationally recognized for its adventurous opera and classical music programming, Spoleto Festival USA’s 2012 season features numerous musical premieres from notable American, British, Chinese, Iranian, and Japanese composers. In addition to new opera productions of Philip Glass’s Kepler and Guo Wenjing’s Feng Yi Ting , the season will also include the Spoleto Festival USA Orchestra performing the highly-anticipated U.S. premiere of 48 Responses to Polymorphia by English composer and Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood in...

Primus, Phil Lesh & Friends, Bob Weir & Bruce Hornsby with Special Guest Branford Marsalis, Mickey Hart Band, Sound Tribe Sector 9 & The Avett Brothers Set to Perform July 19th - 22nd Known as the Northeast’s premier music, arts and camping festival, the 17th annual Gathering of the Vibes will deliver a four-day extravaganza featuring a stellar lineup including: Primus, Phil Lesh & Friends, Bob Weir & Bruce Hornsby with Special Guest Branford Marsalis, Mickey Hart Band, Sound Tribe Sector 9, The Avett Brothers, along with Yonder Mountain String Band, 7 Walkers, The Greyboy Allstars, and Steel Pulse. Vibes favorites Dark Star Orchestra, Zappa Plays Zappa, and Bridgeport’s own Deep Banana Blackout will return to the stage in 2012. Over 40 bands will perform on multiple stages located throughout the 370-acre beachfront venue. While Early Bird tickets have sold out, Way Advance ticket pricing has been extended as a token of thanks to the “Vibe Tribe” for their neverend...

Coming to Laguna Beach: dancers and dance companies from across the nation – New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Denver and San Francisco Professional dancers from companies spanning the U.S. will perform in the Laguna Dance Festival’s seventh season April 12-15. The festival will offer audiences three distinctly different shows with four performances at the Laguna Playhouse in Laguna Beach. Festival founder and artistic director Jodie Gates calls this season “a must-see if you love dance.” River Dance North Chicago’s festival debut will open the festival on Thursday, April 12 at 7:30 p.m., offering audiences a jazz-based, contemporary dance show. On Friday, April 13 at 7:30 p.m. Philadelphia’s BalletX will premiere a newly choreographed piece by Jodie Gates that showcases the company’s modern, athletic style of ballet-based dance. New York City Ballet stars Tiler Peck and Joaquin DeLuz will headline the two Stars of Dance performances on Saturday, April 14 at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, April...

“The playing of the British violinist Daniel Hope…is not just distinguished by its tonal beauty, but by its compelling rhetorical quality.” — The Wall Street Journal For his ninth season as a performer and his eighth as Associate Artistic Director at the Savannah Music Festival (March 22-April 7), Daniel Hope has curated an extraordinary array of concerts that make up the classical portion of Georgia’s largest cross-genre musical arts festival. As a violinist, Hope will make nine appearances during the 2012 Savannah Music Festival (SMF), primarily as part of the Daniel Hope & Friends series, presented in the dramatic Rotunda of Savannah’s Telfair Academy. Highlights include Hope’s recital of the complete Brahms violin sonatas with Sebastian Knauer; an evening with old friend and Beaux Arts Trio colleague Menahem Pressler; three performances with keyboard star Kristian Bezuidenhout and the period chamber orchestra l'arte del mondo (which makes its U.S. premiere at SMF 2012); an...

The Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival is delighted to announce the renewal of its contract with The Philadelphia Orchestra for the 2013, 2014, and 2015 seasons. One of its three world-class resident ensembles, The Philadelphia Orchestra enjoys a strong partnership with the Vail Music Festival, having appeared there every summer since 2007. The orchestra’s music director designate, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, makes his Vail Valley debut this July in the Festival’s 25th anniversary season. “We have thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to take our Philadelphia Sound to the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival since 2007,” said Philadelphia Orchestra Association President and CEO Allison Vulgamore. “It offers the orchestra musicians a breathtakingly beautiful setting and venue in which to make music, for audiences that are dedicated and passionate. Our new music director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, is excited to join the orchestra in Vail this summer, and we look forward to continuing our fruitful rela...

Argie Tang, chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival, announced today that James W. Palermo has been appointed as the next executive director of the Vail Music Festival. He succeeds John Giovando, who has held the Festival’s chief executive post since its inception in 1987. James Palermo assumes the position of executive director designate of the Vail Music Festival and will work closely with Giovando in a transitional period through the Festival’s 25th anniversary season this summer in Vail. Palermo begins his tenure as executive director on September 1, 2012. “I thank the search committee and the board of trustees for the opportunity to serve the Vail Music Festival as executive director,” said Palermo. “I look forward to building on the vision and achievements of John Giovando, artistic director Anne-Marie McDermott, and the board, and to move the Festival to the next phase in its service to the community. I have worked my entire career in cla...

Festival to Run Concurrent with American Mavericks Tour Thursday, March 8 – Friday, March 30 WQXR’s online contemporary music station – celebrates America’s great iconoclastic composers this March, as San Francisco Symphony music director Michael Tilson Thomas brings his “American Mavericks” tour to New York and beyond. From March 8-30, as the San Francisco Symphony presents Mavericks concerts around the country, Q2 Music will present a wide range of special programming – from live concerts to composer profiles to treasures from the WQXR and WNYC archives – to further illuminate the concerts happening around the country. The festival’s highpoint will be a live event on March 26, “American Mavericks: Music and Conversation with Michael Tilson Thomas,” taking place at The Jerome L. Greene Performance Space at WQXR, the station’s intimate, acoustically superior event venue. The festival will also include Tilson Thomas hosting a weekday show on Q2 Music, innovators such as David Byr...

From the heart of the Colorado Rocky Mountains, the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival announces its 25th anniversary season, which runs for seven weeks from June 25 to August 4. Celebrated pianist Anne-Marie McDermott returns for a second term as artistic director, and once again the Vail Music Festival boasts not one but three world-class resident orchestras: the New York Philharmonic, returning under music director Alan Gilbert for its tenth summer; The Philadelphia Orchestra, whose new music director designate Yannick Nézet-Séguin makes his Vail Music Festival debut; and the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and its music director, Jaap van Zweden, Musical America’s Conductor of the Year 2012. Programming highlights for this landmark season include numerous Festival premieres; multi-event immersions in the art of Brahms, Mendelssohn, and Gershwin; a series juxtaposing time-honored classics with trailblazing new music; plus chamber music, jazz, and pops galore. New York’s Gabriel Kahane re...

ACO Opens Bold New Festival Next Friday, Oct. 14 at Zankel Hall SONiC – Sounds of a New Century – a brand new festival of 21st century music by composers age 40 and under, will take over New York from Friday, October 14 through Saturday, October 22. SONiC brings together more than 100 composers from six continents in performances by 16 extraordinary ensembles throughout New York City, featuring two dozen world premieres. ACO opens the festival with "21st Firsts" an all world-premiere Orchestra Underground concert. Other events include performances by new music powerhouses eighth blackbird (10/15) and Alarm Will Sound (10/21); a daylong "extended play" marathon hosted by the fearless Jack Quartet with choirs, saxes, guitars, and woodwinds (10/16); plus international ensembles, Brazil's Camerata Aberta (10/18), and the Dutch Ensemble Klang (10/19). Afterhours events range from new composer/choreographer collaborations, to electronica (10/21), singer-songwrite...

Maria Bachmann & Matt Haimovitz performed the World Premiere of Philip Glass' Duos No. 1-5 at the Days and Nights Festival The music for Duos Nos. 1-5 are extracted from Glass' larger work Double Concerto for Violin, Cello and Orchestra , 2010, similar to the Violin Concerto No. 2 where the solo violin became "The American Four Seasons." The program was followed by an early Schoenberg sextet Verklaerte Nacht Op. 4 (1899) and then Philip Glass' String Sextet (1995). The program notes suggests the music for the concert is a return to the music of Glass' youth --music he would listen to with is father during the 40's and 50's. The blend of the newly composed pieces by Philip Glass with the older Schoenberg was delightfully rich and illuminating at how subtle shifts in style can create something entirely new. As a composer, I found it fascinating to take an existing piece apart to create something new, complete with flow an...