Festivalfocusweek4

YOUR WEEKLY CLASSICAL MUSIC GUIDE

Supplement to The Aspen Times

Don’t miss Sylvia McNair! Sylvia McNair Sings Gershwin, Sondheim, and More! Monday, August 5 Harris Concert Hall (970) 925-9042 www.aspenmusicfestival.com

FESTIVAL FOCUS Monday, July 15, 2013

Vol 24, No 5

Alisa Weilerstein Returns to Perform Elgar Weilerstein’s most recent album features Elgar’s Cello Concerto performed Alisa Weilerstein, cello virtuoso and with renowned conductor Daniel Barenalumna of the Aspen Music Festival boim and the Berlin Staatskapelle. Weiand School (AMFS), spent many a lerstein has had numerous professional childhood summer in Aspen while her engagements all over North America parents were on AMFS artist-faculty. since her Cleveland Orchestra début She calls Aspen her “home away from at age 13, but this album marks a new home.” phase of her career. “I grew up going there, every sum“The launch of the CD internationmer of my life until ally heralded the I was 18,” she says. arrival of a major “I made some of new musician on my greatest friendthe world platform,” ships there; I had says Asadour Sansome of the most tourian, AMFS vice insightful master president for artistic classes; I played administration and some of the greatartistic advisor. “The est orchestral repcritical reaction to it ertoire; I had great has been sublime.” experiences in just Perhaps as sigevery way. It was nificant as the rave amazing.” reviews, though, are Weilerstein, now a the recording’s unMacArthur “Genius spoken implications. Asadour Santourian Grant” recipient and Barenboim and his AMFS Vice President for Artistic Administration and Artistic Advisor the first cellist to be wife, the celebrated signed by the prescellist Jacqueline du tigious Decca Classics label in more Pré, made the quintessential recordthan thirty years, will return to Aspen ing of Elgar’s Cello Concerto together this season to play Elgar’s Cello Con- before du Pré’s tragic death from mulcerto in E minor. Leonard Slatkin, also tiple sclerosis in 1987. After her death, an Aspen alumnus and music director Barenboim did not record the piece of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, with a female cellist again—until now. will conduct the concert at 4 pm this “That really is a signal that Alisa is a Sunday, July 21, in the Benedict Music Tent. See WEILERSTEIN, Festival Focus page 3 GRACE LYDEN

Festival Focus writer

When Alisa takes on a work, she really takes it on and gives it the full attention of her artistic, creative, and imaginative powers.

PHOTO COURTESY OF JAMIE JUNG

Cellist Alisa Weilerstein (above) will perform Elgar’s Cello Concerto in E minor with the Aspen Festival Orchestra at 4 pm this Sunday, July 21, in the Benedict Music Tent.

Dinnerstein, Merritt in ‘Night’ GRACE LYDEN

Festival Focus writer

Simone Dinnerstein is a classical pianist from New York famous for her recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations. Tift Merritt is a singer-songwriter from North Carolina who identifies primarily with folk music. Combine Dinnerstein’s touch at the keys with Merritt’s sultry voice and you have something wholly new and creative. Aspen audiences will have a chance to experience it in a concert of works from their album “Night,” released to critical acclaim this year. “Not only did we want to do songs that related to the night, but we also think of the night as being a metaphor for a time that you feel free to explore in the dark, something you might feel frightened to do in the light of day,” Dinnerstein says. “It’s a time when you feel more free, and imaginative, and open to dreams and exploring new terrain.”

Dinnerstein and Merritt will perform works from “Night” as part of the Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS) at 7:30 pm this Tuesday, July 16, in Harris Hall. The album, which came out in March, is a conglomeration of Merritt’s original songs, selections by Bach and Schubert, and new works commissioned for the duo, including one by jazz pianist Brad Mehldau. The result is an indefinable genre, which is exactly what the two musicians intended. “It’s a collaboration that is about getting away from the boxes of genre,” Dinnerstein says. “I wouldn’t call it cross-over because it’s not really that. I think that we are both trying to find what is meaningful and interesting to us in each song that we’re doing and using all of the language that we have available to us to make it speak in the way that makes sense to us.” See NIGHT, Festival Focus page 3

PHOTO COURTESY OF LISA MARIE MAZZUCCO

Pianist Simone Dinnerstein (right) and singer-songwriter Tift Merritt (left) have brought their talents together in the album, “Night.”

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