Check the schedule
You can view the Colorado Music Festival’s schedule for the 2015 season sometime today at comusic.org.
The Colorado Music Festival’s 38th season, the first under music director Jean-Marie Zeitouni, includes patterns familiar to CMF patrons, including festival orchestra concerts on Thursdays and Fridays, chamber orchestra concerts on Sundays and the mash-up series.
But there also are adjustments and expansions.
Most notable is the expanded chamber music series in a new venue, First Congregational Church. The inclusion of chamber music, long a staple of the Lafayette-based Colorado Music Festival, almost disappeared for a time before being revived by the opening of eTown Hall and its adoption by the festival for small group concerts.
The chamber series has been popular, and eTown is often too small to handle the demand.
Zeitouni, who spoke with the Camera in advance of the schedule announcement, said a larger venue allowed for more diverse music and a greater connection to the festival’s other programs. The series now includes five programs — two of them are “double” events forming part of a “mini-festival” in Week 3. They take place on two Tuesdays, two Saturdays and one Monday.
The other major change is an adjustment of the calendar for the six festival weeks at Boulder’s Chautauqua Auditorium to end, rather than begin, on Sunday. This is partly to fit Zeitouni’s schedule, but it also stems from the occurrence of July 4 on Saturday.
“It proved best to open the season the week before July 4,” Zeitouni said, “but we didn’t want to start my tenure with the traditional patriotic concert, so we are taking a hiatus from that event for this season.”
This means the season will end with a chamber orchestra concert on Aug. 9, which is unusual, but that closing event includes the return of the CMF chorus, absent last season, in a program of Handel and Mozart works with a “royal” theme. Like his predecessor, Michael Christie, Zeitouni is concerned with thematic connections in concerts, weeks and the entire season.
The CMF season will have its usual soft opening with the Young People’s Concert the mornings of June 26-27.
The opening concert with the full Festival Orchestra is scheduled for Wednesday, July 1, and unlike the remaining programs on Thursdays and Fridays, it is not repeated.
Zeitouni said the program reflects his musical personality, including his love for vocal music and his affinity for French music (he is French-Canadian). The guest artist is top Canadian contralto Marie-Nicole Lemieux, who will sing Ravel’s “Shéhérazade” song cycle and opera arias by Rossini. Zeitouni will conduct Debussy’s “La Mer” and Respighi’s showpiece “Pines of Rome.”
Because of the unusual Wednesday opening and the holiday weekend, the chamber orchestra will not play July 5.
Balancing the opening festival orchestra concert is another new addition, the first of two guest recitals by major artists to be played in the auditorium. Superstar pianist Olga Kern, who dazzled CMF audiences with her Rachmaninoff cycle in 2013, plays a program featuring Beethoven, Chopin and Rachmaninoff on July 3.
After this unusual two-event opening week, the festival settles into more regularity.
The first FCC chamber concert (Dvorák and Schumann) is July 6, and the first mash-up, again led by conductor-arranger Steve Hackman, on July 7. Hackman offers a new installment of his signature long-form, classical-pop mash-ups, this one called “Bartók + Bjork.” In this second week, Zeitouni is unavailable, so guest conductor David Danzmayr will lead both orchestral programs.
Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony will headline the July 9-10 concert, which also includes the Colorado premiere of Michael Daugherty’s Grammy-winning concerto “Deus ex Machina” with pianist Terrence Wilson. Danzmayr’s chamber orchestra program July 12 is a traditional Mozart and Beethoven offering with violinist Alexandra Soumm.
Zeitouni returns for the festival’s biggest week, the “Cellobration” mini-festival of Week 3. The conductor said Christie’s mini-festivals were among the most loved aspects of recent seasons, so it was a “no-brainer” to continue them. Based on the availability of great cellists Desmond Hoebig and Julie Albers, the cello theme emerged. Hoebig plays the prominent cello part in “Don Quixote,” the Richard Strauss tone poem, July 16-17. Albers plays a Haydn concerto July 19.
Completing the “Cellobration” are two “double” chamber music programs July 14 and July 18. On the first, CMF cellists Bjorn Ranheim and Guy Fishman split duty on all six solo cello suites by Bach. Three will be heard at 4 p.m. and the other three at 8 p.m. Similarly on July 18, CMF musicians will spread all five Beethoven cello and piano sonatas across the two times.
Week 4 brings another project dear to Zeitouni’s heart — a semi-staged production of Bartók’s two-character opera “Duke Bluebeard’s Castle,” sung in the original Hungarian by native speakers, soprano Krisztina Szabo and bass-baritone Gábor Bretz. The opera is paired with Stravinsky’s “Firebird Suite” on July 23-24. Guitarist Ana Vidovic joins Zeitouni in concertos by Rodrigo and Vivaldi on July 26, a program also featuring Mendelssohn’s “Italian” Symphony. Hackman’s second mash-up, “Copland + Bon Iver,” is July 21.
In the nature-themed Week 5 — after the fourth chamber music concert (Brahms and Schoenberg) July 28 — Zeitouni leads the orchestra in Beethoven’s “Pastoral” Symphony (No. 6) and the Fifth Symphony by Sibelius, with its famous “swan call” motif, July 30-31. Colorado images from photographer John Fielder will be projected and choreographed to the two symphonies. Zeitouni said the concert was designed to celebrate the centennial of Rocky Mountain National Park.
On Aug. 2, the chamber orchestra plays more nature-inspired music, including Haydn’s “Hunt” Symphony, “The Lark Ascending” by Ralph Vaughan Williams and, most notably, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Symphony No. 3 by Charles Ives, a composer not heard at the festival in many years. The second major guest recital, featuring classical music/comedy duo Igudesman & Joo, is set for Aug. 1.
The sixth and final week opens Aug. 4 with the last mash-up, featuring singer-songwriter Storm Large. The last festival orchestra concert, Aug. 6-7, is a mixture of French and American composers “trading places,” including Gershwin’s “An American in Paris” and Milhaud’s “A Frenchman in New York.” Also included are George Antheil’s “Jazz Symphony” and Ravel’s Left-Hand Piano Concerto, played by Marc-André Hamelin.
The last chamber music program (Beethoven and Barber) is Aug. 8, before the choral concert concludes the festival Aug. 9. Soprano Sarah Coburn, whom Zeitouni describes as “perfect for Mozart and Handel,” brings the festival full circle, since it also opens with a vocal soloist.
