Fame, Prodigy and Percussion - UPDATED with videos

Wednesday, June 30, 2010

By Alan J. Benson

Jackson Hole, Wyo.-Mezzo-soprano Susan Graham can ride a horse into any cathedral in France if she chooses. In addition to the distinction of having performed both the funeral mass of the late Sen. Edward Kennedy and the second inauguration of President George W. Bush, Graham earned the aforementioned privilege when the French government bestowed her with Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur. She also earned France’s highest honorary title for a cultural figure, Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

During the second week (July 6 to 10) of this summer’s Grand Teton Music Festival, Graham will make her festival debut performing Berlioz’s Les Nuit d’ete, or rather, Summer Nights.

The Grand Teton Music Festival’s 49th season opens this Wednesday for seven weeks of more than 35 concerts, taking place almost every day in Teton Village, in addition to several satellite events around Jackson Hole. Each day of the week features a different type of concert: Wednesday night Spotlight Concerts are the festival’s version of “pops” performances, or concerts that feature more popular classical music pieces, Tuesday evenings are casual and free Inside the Music comcerts and Thursday evenings feature members of the Festival Orchestra in intimate Chamber Concerts.

The centerpiece of festival programming, the Festival Orchestra, performs Friday and Saturday evenings. Weekly themes traverse regions such as France, sections such as percussion, and phenomena such as fame and child prodigy.



Arrangements and controversy
Since 1967, the festival has made its home in Teton Village, where orchestra concerts once presented in a tent and chamber music concerts at The Mangy Moose.

The recently renovated Walk Festival Hall sits on land donated by the Jackson Hole Ski Corporation, which has provided an undeniable recreational draw and the symbiotic relationship of both festival and resort.

Over the years, GTMF’s summer programming included a training program for music students, similar to those at other summer music festivals, and in the 1980s, it hosted a two-week residency of the New York Philharmonic, intended as a fundraiser. The festival’s dedication to education remains in its mentor and education programs geared toward students in Jackson Hole.

Like any high-performing cultural organization with a base of supporters who hold strong convictions, the organization has endured controversy, the most legendary of which took place during a pivotal moment in American political-cultural history. In 1997, the festival accepted a substantial donation on the condition that it refuse funds awarded from the National Endowment for the Arts, according to an August 1997 report by The New York Times.

The future of the NEA itself was in question at that time after projects by the so-called NEA Four were condemned by Sen. Jesse Helms and overtly vetoed for subject matter by NEA chairman John Frohnmayer.

Accusations ensued that the festival board had been “bought,” the report said, and a board member even resigned from the festival’s fundraising committee. The Supreme Court ruled, only a year later that the NEA chair must ensure artistic merit that meets the “general standards of decency and respect for the diverse beliefs and values of the American public,” according to the decision on National Endowment for the Arts vs. Finley. Grants for individual artists have since been few and far between.

Natural setting wins again
Still one of the relatively undiscovered gems of the classical music summer “circuit,” GTMF maintains an identity built upon the quality of its musicians, artistic leadership, and the level of guest artists. In May 1997, The New York Times reported that summer visitors “generally head for the outdoors, taking little heed of the festival. It’s their loss, for the event … attracts first-rate musicians.”

The festival holds no formal auditions for musicians, and despite the modest stipend (relative to Jackson’s cost of living), musicians and their families trek from all corners of the country (New York, Chicago, Houston, Boston, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Minnesota, Florida and more) for a chance to be in a natural setting as inspiring to them as the music they make.

And the festival is much more than a gig: musicians maintain a stake in festival affairs, sit on the board, have an input in programming, and many have developed a special kinship for the area. Trombonist Roger Oyster, a 23-year veteran of the Festival explained that the free Tuesday concerts are an attempt to give back to the Jackson Hole community.

“One of the things I hope to try to express, is in a very small way, a thank you for sharing your community with us,” Oyster said.

Season highlights
Standard Austrian-Germanic works, including the ever-inspiring Fifth Symphony by Beethoven, open the first week (June 30 to July 4)  of chamber and orchestra concerts. Akiko Suwanai, the weekend’s soloist on Alban Berg’s violin concerto, has a biography full of firsts. In addition to being the youngest-ever winner of the International Tchaikovsky Competition, Suwanai was the first Japanese violinist invited to Shanghai Spring International Music Festival and recently gave the world premiere of Peter Eötvös’ Seven.

The second week (July 6 to 10) will focus on the music of France, featuring works by some of that nation’s greatest musical voices: Debussy, Ravel, Poulenc, Messiaen, Berlioz and more on two evenings of French chamber music and the Festival Orchestra’s program, featuring Susan Graham.

When asked if she would also sing at the Jackson Hole rodeo that week, Graham drawing from her Midland, Texas roots, said “I’ll bring the boots, if you bring the cowboy hat.”

 Week three (July 13-17) is all about child prodigy, or wunderkind, with several works by a prodigy even more popular in his time than Justin Bieber is today:

Mozart. Tuesday’s program includes a landmark work penned by Felix Mendelssohn. “He wrote this when he was frigging 16. What were you doing?” Oyster said. “I wasn’t writing masterpieces when I was 16.” In addition to playing in the orchestra, Oyster will host several of the Tuesday night programs.

The weekend’s soloist is the Korean-American violinist Sarah Chang, who made her debut with the Grand Teton Music Festival Orchestra when she was 10 years old, a late arrival to Jackson considering she had already been invited to perform with the New York Philharmonic and Philadelphia Orchestra when she was 8. Now a consummate professional, Chang will perform the classic Bruch Violin Concerto, a work she recently recorded and released on the EMI Classics label. Two of Mozart’s late symphonies bookend the program, written when he was 32 years old – rather late in his life considering he only lived until 35.



The fourth week’s (July 20 to 24) Tuesday night concert features “good guys” and “bad guys” of music, with a badass work by Michael Daugherty, an iconoclastic, pop culture-oriented composer who has written a piano concerto tribute to Liberace, an opera based on episodes of the life of Jackie Onassis (Elizabeth Taylor is even a character), and a symphony based on Superman.

Daugherty’s Dead Elvis, the final work of the evening, has a special place in the history of the Festival, having been premiered in Teton Village in 1993. Bassoonist Kristen Sonneborn will take up the mantle of invoking Elvis. This work, a humorous meditation of sorts on the most American of pop icons and the meaning behind our collective obsession with him, includes a mashup of tunes including the hymn “dies irae” and Elvis’ own “It’s Now or Never.”

A slimmed down Festival Orchestra led by Reinhard Goebel, who founded the German ensemble Musica Antiqua Köln, will perform the entire Bach family. Paolo Bordignon, a Festival regular and New York-based harpsichord and organist will be the featured soloist.

During week five, Pittsburgh Symphony clarinetist Michael Rusinek peforms in an Alan Fletcher’s concerto written especially for Rusinek, and conducted by the up-and-coming Mei-Ann Chen of the Memphis Symphony who also leads the popular fairytale-inspired Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade.

Week six (August 3 to 7) is all about fame. Tuesday’s free concert looks at how music has become famous over time, and pops legend Marvin Hamlisch, who gave the world “A Chorus Line” and film score “The Way We Were,” will be the Wednesday spotlight concert artist. Thursday features the Grand Teton Music Festival Brass Ensemble, comprised of renowned brass musicians from around the country led by Chicago Symphony Orchestra trombonist Michael Mulcahy. The week closes with Mark Wigglesworth returning to lead the orchestra in classics by Rachmaninoff and Brahms, with the distinguished Stephen Hough (a MacArthur “Genius” Award recipient) as piano soloist.

The final week (August 10 to 14) highlights the percussion section and a stroke of programmatically risky genius: no less than four works scheduled this week were written by the Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer Jennifer Higdon, who will also be in attendance that week. Young Scottish percussionist Colin Currie is featured on Higdon’s percussion concerto, which was written for and dedicated to him. Festival attendees this week will also have a rare opportunity to see Donald Runnicles off the podium and at the piano during Thursday night’s performance. JHW

HOW TO LISTEN
Concerts and music at GTMF – you’ve never been, and you’re wondering how to approach it? Or maybe you’ve gone a few times and want to get more out of hearing this type of music. Think of going to a band’s show you’ve never heard before, yet most everyone you know thinks they’re amazing. How would you prepare? Maybe you’d download a few of their albums to learn songs, but then again, you may decide to just show up to the concert and go with it. In the case of GTMF, the Web site offers a chance to listen ahead of time, and includes notes on the concert’s program.

And when you get there? If you hear a kickass band’s show you might pay close attention to the guitar player or the lead vocalist.  If you’re going to an orchestra concert, choose a player and pay attention to his or her performance through the evening – you’d be surprised at how much is being communicated with making music: a head-nod, eye-contact, slight leaning or swaying in time, and even the occasional congratulatory and collegial foot tap or knee pat.

“Classical” music itself is structured much differently than a straightforward band setup with guitars, vocals and drums.

At some concerts this summer, you may be seated in front of an assembled group of musicians numbering close to a 100, performing on more than a dozen different types of instruments, or you may find yourself at a chamber concert with only three musicians on stage. Each instrument has it’s own particular sound and color that contributes to the larger whole, and a lot of people compare the mixing of these colors to a painter’s palette. I am fascinated, when hearing classical music night after night, by the way in which composers have chosen to “paint” their work with these instrumental colors.

More importantly, according to the late, renowned American composer Aaron Copland, “the main thing you can do in listening to the orchestra, aside from enjoying the sheer beauty of the sound itself, is to extricate the principal melodic material from its surrounding and supporting elements.” Melody is key, and you’ll hear much of it this opening week in the works of Schumann, Brahms, and undoubtedly Beethoven.

The Berg, on the other hand, is without much melody, yet is beautiful, intricate, atonal, and emotionally charged– it’s dedicated “to the memory of an angel.” To some this lack of tonality is dreadful, and I wouldn’t count on singing a tune from this concerto on your next hike. But consider what Copland has to say on the subject in his book What to Listen for in Music: “If a contemporary composer’s work strikes you as cold and intellectual, ask yourself if you are not using standards of comparison that really do not apply.“

I think Roger Oyster puts it succinctly and meaningful enough, even for Twitter: come prepared with “an open mind and working ears.” – AJB

Courtesy photos

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