Festival Focus, Week 1

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ALEX IRVIN / AMFS

Monday, June 25, 2012

Vol 23, No. 2

AMFS Season to Feature America’s Composers seasons.” AMFS President and CEO Alan The Aspen Music Festival and School Fletcher says, “It’s in our nature as a (AMFS) enters its sixty-fourth season Festival to do what I could call mainwith an exploration and celebration of stream American classical music. That music that has been “Made in Ameri- includes doing new pieces.” ca.” Of the hundreds of works on the sumThe eight-week season will showcase mer’s concert schedule, many feature works from three groups of compos- works in line with the theme, beginers: the current ning with an opening musical luminaries night special event, on the North AmerA Gershwin Celebraican scene; Eurotion, on June 28. Led pean émigré comby Spano, the event posers who created features a big band significant music and three pianists— in America, such Inon Barnatan, Marcas Rachmaninoff, André Hamelin, and Hindemith, and Aspen alumnus and Bartók; and the en2012 Avery Fisher tire school of AmerCareer Grant reican composers, cipient Conrad Tao. Robert Spano such as Copland Each will play one AMFS Music Director and MacDowell, of Gershwin’s everwho learned their popular, jazzy piano craft in Europe and upon returning, concertos. established the first truly American “The big band sound is entirely school of composition. American,” says Asadour Santourian, Robert Spano, in his first season as AMFS vice president of artistic adminAMFS music director, helped shape the istration and artistic advisor. “It was season around the theme. made in America, so there’s no better “This summer’s season, reflect- hallmark to the theme than to start ing the theme ‘Made in America,’ has with those big band sounds of Gershbeen a joy to construct,” Spano says in win.” the AMFS 2012 season press release. The 2012 opera season, produced “Such an idea leads to myriad possi- by the AMFS’s Aspen Opera Theater bilities, and with it we could have continued to create programs for many See SEASON, Festival Focus page 3 courtney E. Thompson Festival Focus writer

This summer’s season, reflecting the theme ‘Made in America,’ has been a joy to construct.

ALEX IRVIN / AMFS

The Aspen Music Festival and School season will open with a concert in the Benedict Music Tent on June 28, featuring the music of George Gershwin.

Pianists Honor Gershwin at Opening Concert Grace Lyden

Festival Focus writer

The Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS) will open its 2012 “Made in America” season with a special event at 7:30 pm Thursday, June 28, in the Benedict Music Tent, featuring the Festival’s new music director Robert Spano, three phenomenal pianists, a big band, and a composer whose name is synonymous with America: George Gershwin. “When we think of American music, we think of Gershwin, and we just know it’s not a coincidence that United Airlines chose to have Rhapsody in Blue and Gershwin as its theme song. It’s the quintessential American music,” says Inon Barnatan, an Israeli pianist who is returning to Aspen for his fifth consecutive year. Barnatan will open the concert with Gershwin’s Piano Concerto in F, which he calls “a real piece,” despite what some critics have viewed as a lack of substance in a work that bridges the worlds of classical music and American jazz. “People sometimes look at Gershwin and think it’s lighter,” he says. “With all the fun and jazziness of it, this concerto is also a very serious piece that influenced

people like Ravel. The way that the materials are presented, and the conversation between the piano and the orchestra, and the scope of the piece—it’s beautiful.” The second of the three pianists on the program is eighteen-year-old Conrad Tao, who made his concerto debut at age eight and is currently attending the Columbia University-Juilliard School joint degree program in New York. Tao attended the AMFS every year from 2004 to 2009 as a student in piano, violin, and composition. Tao will perform Gershwin’s Second Rhapsody, a rarely performed work that Tao had not heard before the AMFS asked him to learn it. He says the piece, which has been called New York Rhapsody, reminds him of his beloved city, but is also evocative of a bygone American era, when people would listen to Tin Pan Alley songs accompanied by the sounds of crackling vinyl. “Gershwin has this extraordinary ability to conjure images beyond what’s on the page,” Tao says. “For me, the Second Rhapsody takes a lot of its inspiration from Gershwin’s language. It fluently speaks this wonderful, intoxicating street-style that would later become the See GERSHWIN Festival Focus page 3

alex irvin / amfs

Music Director Robert Spano will conduct a big band composed of AMFS students on Thursday, June 28, to open the season.

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