Bach at 325: The Boulder Bach Festival 
Saturday, March 6, I attended the Second Festival Concert given by the Boulder Bach Festival. It was presented in Boulder at the First United Methodist Church on Spruce Street. This concert celebrated the 325th birthday of the amazing composer, J. S. Bach. The works on the program included a secular Cantata entitled “Give way now, dismal shadows,” which was written to celebrate a wedding; a sacred Cantata, “I have enough;” the motet, “The Spirit comes to help our weakness;” and the motet, “Jesus, my joy.”
The Boulder Bach Festival was founded in 1981 and rapidly became one of the leading performance groups in the state of Colorado. They have a reputation of having remarkable musicians within the organization, and also for having the ability to have remarkable musicians as their guest artists. I assure you, that I use the word remarkable because it fits. Timothy Krueger is the chorus director, Krista Bennion Feeney is the concertmaster and soloist, Barbara Barber and Anne Beer are the second violinists, Erika Eckert the violist, Carole Whitney plays cello, Paul Erhard the bassist, Joseph Robinson is the principal oboe, James Brody second oboe, Kim Brody the English horn, Linda Lunbeck and Michael Lightner recorder, and Mutsumi Moteki performs on harpsichord and organ. This is a formidable group of musicians who all have the superior credentials and experience to get the job done.
Luis Gonzalez opens a new door with “The Gates of Time”
The other evening I listened to a CD recording of the music of Luis Jorge Gonzalez who is Professor Emeritus of Composition at the University of Colorado at Boulder. The name of the CD is Las Puertas del Tiempo – The Gates of Time – which is also the name of the piano trio that is the first selection on the recording. In addition, this trio is the result of a commission which was awarded in 2006 (and premiered at that time) by the Colorado State Music Teachers Association.
For those of you who are not familiar with Dr. Gonzalez’ compositions, I will quote from the liner notes that come with a CD:
“Luis Jorge Gonzalez was born in San Juan, Argentina, in 1936. After study at the Universidad Nacional de Cuyo in Mendoza, Argentina, in the early 1970s he enrolled in the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, Maryland, where he studied with Robert Hall Lewis and Earle Brown. Initially attracted to the musical avant garde, over the years he abandoned radical innovation and returned to tonality but with great imagination and individual perspective. He taught briefly at the Peabody Conservatory and in Austin, Texas, before coming to the College of Music of the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1982 as a professor of composition and music theory. He retired from that position in 2003, but still resides in the Boulder area where he composes and is active in civic and university musical affairs.
In praise of Daffy Duck
On February 5, 2010, I posted a review on this site of a performance by the Playground Ensemble. Remember that they are the avant-garde music group at the Lamont School of Music at the University of Denver. I said, and it was absolutely true, that the performance which they gave on February 4 was a very good performance. Their conductor is Conrad Kehn and he has always struck me as being a very good musician, as well as someone who is dedicated to the art of music.
However, I just saw an article in Westword which was posted on the Internet written by Dave Herrera. He interviews Kehn concerning the Mile High Voltage Festival which took place on February 19 and February 20. Dave Herrera begins his article with a question and the type of paragraph which displays his disdain for the art of music. I will quote it now:
An incomparable Beauty and The Beast
I truly hope that everyone who reads this will have a chance to go see the Colorado Ballet’s production of “Beauty and The Beast.” It is one of the most original productions of the ballet that I have seen for several years. It has a marvelous and modern musical score by the gifted Hong Kong composer, Seen-yee Lam, and absolutely stunning choreography by the gifted Israeli artist, Domy Reiter-Soffer.
Do not expect a traditional ballet where members of the corps de ballet stand upstage in pastel tutus in the first position while the lead dancers perform a grand Pas de deux downstage. Beauty and The Beasts is a fairy tale of the first order. It is a meaty ballet of great substance. It was written by Charles Perrault in 1697. Perrault also wrote Sleeping Beauty, Puss in Boots, and Cinderella. What could I possibly mean by a fairy tale of the first order? I stress that Beauty and The Beast is not all that frightening, and I certainly think that young children should go see it. But it is darker, and certainly more emotional than any production of Beauty and The Beast that I have seen. This is because of the amazing and wonderful choreography by Domy Reiter-Soffer. And we certainly need to thank Gil Boggs, the Artistic Director of the Colorado Ballet, for inviting him to stage the choreography. The New York Times said “Domy Reiter-Soffer is particularly noted for his brilliant translation of words into movement, dealing with the very essence of the subject creating sheer theatre”. I have never seen a ballet, except for those choreographed by the late Merce Cunningham, where the dancing and intense personal expression of the dancers truly tell the story.
Exciting young artists with the Denver Philharmonic
Friday night, February 19, the Denver Philharmonic Orchestra gave a special concert featuring the winners of its concerto competition which was held a few months ago. The winners of this competition ranged in age from 14 years to 19 years of age. Needless to say, they are all outstanding young musicians. The guest conductor for the night’s performance was Dr. Russell Guyver, currently the Director of Orchestras at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley.
The next performance of the Denver Philharmonic will be Friday, March 26, and will be at the King Center on the Auraria Campus and will feature Katie Mahan performing Chopin’s First Piano Concerto.
Originally from London, England, Dr. Guyver has followed a varied career as conductor, violist, composer and educator. As a violist, he has played in many orchestras including the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, English National Opera, Royal Ballet and the Orquesta Sinfonica de Venezuela. He has appeared as conductor, soloist and chamber musician on four continents and is a guest artist at several annual music festivals in the United States and in Rio de Janeiro.
A Valentine from The Ars Nova Singers
Saturday, February 13th, the Ars Nova Singers presented what was truly a pre-Valentine’s Day concert at the Bethany Lutheran Church here in Denver. The title of the program was Chanson d’Amour, and of course everything on the program had to do with love or unrequited love. There were several solos as well as duets, so the full ensemble was not used. There was a special guest artist, Jean Browne, who was the collaborative accompanist throughout the entire program.
It just so happens that Jean Browne is the sister of Evanne Browne, the Director of Music at the First United Methodist Church in Boulder. She is a fine pianist as well as a conductor. Jean Browne began piano lessons at age three and by the age of 16 debuted as a soloist with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. Jean received her Performer’s Certificate in Vocal Accompanying from the Music Conservatory in Freiburg, Germany, and her Master’s Degree in Piano from Southern Methodist University. She was a staff accompanist for the Summer Vocal Institute in Graz, Austria, for two summers and worked as a vocal coach for the opera house in Osnabrück, Germany, for three years.
Lamont Symphony Orchestra program outstanding!
Thursday night, February 11, I attended a concert given by the Lamont Symphony Orchestra in Gates Hall. It was truly an outstanding program, comprised not only of concert favorites, but also a double percussion concerto by the Israeli composer, Avner Dorman, performed by John Kinszie and Steve Hearn.
The concert opened with the Overture to “The Bartered Bride,” by Bedrich Smetana. The Bartered Bride was by far Smetana’s most popular opera, and during his life it received 117 performances, which is quite something, when you consider that he was constantly being compared to Wagner and Liszt. Smetana was a very strong-willed individual in spite of the fact that he was physically frail. When one of his operas (Dalibor) was criticized for being too Wagnerian, he countered by writing another opera, Libuse, which was quite obviously based on Wagnerian concepts. But The Bartered Bride was a success beyond his wildest dreams, and, along with his other operas, he is responsible for creating a repertoire in Czech music literature where none had previously existed.
At The Playground Ensemble on February 4th
Thursday night, February 4th, I attended a concert on the Lamont Subscription Concert Series given by The Playground. The Playground is the Artists – In – Residence group of performers that has dedicated themselves to contemporary and avant-garde music. This particular concert had a theme, which was Music/Noise/Sound/Silence. The theme offers a hidden explanation as to why some of the pieces on the program were relatively old, as music of this century is considered. Keep in mind that the increase in speed of communications in this century has shortened musical periods, and indeed, the periods of all of the arts. The speed of communication has now allowed composers in America to know almost instantly what composers in Europe are doing. Therefore, something that seems new one day can be old in a couple of weeks, because many composers have tried it; some may have discarded it is a bad idea, while others may cling to it as a new source of expression.
The whole idea about the conflict between sound and silence reached its culmination in the years 1950 to about 1975 give or take a few years. This was a period of great experimentation. Generally speaking, all composers were searching for new sounds and new ways to make sounds. Some associated their ideas about sound with new philosophies (Joseph Schillinger’s Mathematical Basis For the Arts, 1942), while some turned to “new” technologies – tape recorders – to expand their possibilities (musique concrète, for example) as the computer (and the Experimental Music Studio at the University of Illinois) loomed on the horizon.
