Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
For those moved by music, summer festivals mean vacations that offer the best of several worlds.
By JOHN FLEMING
© St. Petersburg Times, published April 29, 2001
It'll soon be summertime, when the listening is easy. For music lovers, it's the season to take a trip to hear beautiful music in beautiful places.
Nothing could be finer than to relax in Carolina at the 25th anniversary year of Spoleto Festival USA, in Charleston.
Plan to picnic on the Great Lawn of Tanglewood, nestled in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts, while listening to the Boston Symphony Orchestra play in the Koussevitsky Music Shed.
Scenic New Mexico is a musical mecca in summer, with the Santa Fe Opera performing in a remarkable theater -- open to the outdoors on the sides and to the rear of the stage -- in the high desert.
In the Adirondacks of upstate New York, music fans who also happen to appreciate the beauty of thoroughbreds can take in the horses by day at the Saratoga Racetrack and the Philadelphia Orchestra by night at the outdoor performing arts center.
Nor do Floridians have to travel far. First-rate summer music festivals are held in Sarasota, Daytona Beach and Fort Lauderdale.
Florida Orchestra fans can hear music director Jahja Ling lead the Cleveland Orchestra at Ohio's Blossom Festival, where he is in his second season as artistic director.
While there are plenty of all-Beethoven and all-Mozart programs, festivals are often more artistically adventurous than concerts during the regular season. Introducing new music or reviving neglected works is part of the strategy. This summer, for instance:
New York's Lincoln Center Festival presents the U.S. premiere of White Raven, an opera by Philip Glass and Robert Wilson. (Glass also is featured at Spoleto.)
At the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Danish composer Per Norgard will be in residence for the premiere of his string quartet.
The music of American composer Charles Wuorinen is highlighted at a number of festivals, including Santa Fe, Chamber Music Northwest and Tanglewood's Festival of Contemporary Music.
At the Bard Music Festival, Debussy's orchestral work Ode de la France gets a rare performance.
There's a music festival for almost every taste. Here's a roundup of selected festivals in the United States and Canada.
The Sarasota Music Festival, June 4-23, features student musicians and top-level faculty players, such as pianist Robert Levin, flutist Carol Wincenc and violinist Joseph Silverstein. They perform mainly chamber music at Holley Hall and Van Wezel Hall.
Tickets, information: toll-free 1-800-287-9634 or (941) 953-3434; http://www.fwcs.org/sarasota.
Beethoven gets his due in the Florida Philharmonic's fifth annual Beethoven by the Beach festival in Fort Lauderdale opening with the Fifth Symphony July 13 and winding up with the Ninth Symphony July 28. Aaron Rosand is the soloist in the Violin Concerto July 14. Most performances are at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts.
Tickets, information: toll-free 1-800-226-1812; http://www.floridaphilharmonic.org.
The London Symphony Orchestra makes its biennial pilgrimage to Daytona Beach for the Florida International Festival in July. The LSO, conducted by Yan Pascal Tortelier, Marin Alsop, Andrew Litton and Erich Kunzel, plays six concerts in Peabody Auditorium July 20-28.
Tickets, information: (904) 257-7790; http://www.fif-lso.org.
The Boston Symphony Orchestra reigns at Tanglewood Music Center, whose season opens July 6 and continues through Labor Day weekend. Highlights include two Ravel operas -- a fully staged L'Heure Espagnole and a concert version of L'Enfant et les Sortileges on July 24-25 -- and Van Cliburn in the Grieg Piano Concerto Aug. 10.
Tickets, information: toll-free 1-888-266-1200; www.bso.org. The Ravinia Festival, in a leafy suburb on Lake Michigan, is summer home to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Festival music director Christoph Eschenbach opens the season with Yo-Yo Ma in the Rococo Variations of Tchaikovsky and Boccherini's Cello Concerto in B-flat major plus Schoenberg's orchestration of Brahms' G-minor Piano Quartet.
CSO music director Daniel Barenboim conducts a concert performance of Act II of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, with Waltraud Meier and Thomas Moser, Aug. 4. There's a concert version of Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd, featuring Patti LuPone, George Hearn and Sherrill Milnes, on Aug. 24.
Tickets, information: (847) 266-5100; http://www.ravinia.org.
With an all-Tchaikovsky program on June 30, Jahja Ling opens the Cleveland Orchestra's 10-weekend residency at the Blossom Festival, just north of Akron. Ling, Cleveland's resident conductor since 1985, conducts Mahler's Fourth Symphony and Barber's Knoxville: Summer of 1915 with soprano Barbara Bonney Aug. 3.
Tickets, information: toll-free 1-800-686-1141; http://www.clevelandorchestra.com.
The Philadelphia Orchestra has a three-week residency in August at Saratoga Performing Arts Center in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. Charles Dutoit, in his 12th year as artistic director of the orchestra's summer fest, leads 11 of the 12 programs, including one with Joshua Bell playing the Brahms Violin Concerto Aug. 17.
Tickets, information: (518) 587-3330; http://www.spac.org.
The San Francisco Symphony stays home for a Mozart Festival, focusing on the composer's later music, with Neville Marriner on the podium for seven concerts in San Francisco June 20-30. Soloists include mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade, pianist Lars Vogt and clarinetist Richard Stoltzman.
Tickets, information: (415) 864-6000; http://www.sfsymphony.org.
Opera Theatre of St. Louis stages a couple of rarities this season, Rameau's Hippolytus and Arica and Dominick Argento's Miss Havisham's Fire (based on Dickens' Great Expectations). Rounding out the schedule are productions of Puccini's La Boheme and Offenbach's The Grand Duchess of Gerolstein. The St. Louis season runs May 19-June 24.
Tickets, information: (314) 961-0644; http://www.opera-stl.org.
Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor, with German soprano Alexandra von der Weth making her American debut in the title role, opens the Santa Fe Opera season June 29.
The season also includes Verdi's Falstaff, Mozart's Mitridate, Berg's Wozzeck (featuring the American debut of another German soprano, Anne Schwanewilms) and Strauss' The Egyptian Helen. It's the first season under Richard Gaddes, who succeeded the company's founder and longtime general director, John Crosby.
Tickets, information: toll-free 1-800-280-4654; http://www.santafeopera.org.
Spoleto USA specializes in European-style concept opera productions, and the 25th-anniversary season promises more of the same, with director-designer Petrika Ionesco's staging of Puccini's Manon Lescaut and Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, directed by Chen Shi-Zheng.
Other musical events include Philip Glass and West African kora virtuoso Foday Musa Suso playing selections from their collaboration on The Screens, based on a Jean Genet play, June 8-9; and the popular chamber music series, with 33 performances over 17 days in the Dock Street Theatre.
Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, which boycotted Spoleto last year over the Confederate Flag controversy, performs May 25-26.
Tickets, information: (843) 579-3100; http://www.spoletousa.org.
As befits a midsummer happening in culture-saturated New York, Lincoln Center Festival is devoted to the exotic. Among musical events presented July 10-29 are the Glass-Wilson opera White Raven, inspired by adventures of 16th-century Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama; Luci Mie Traditrici (My Treacherous Eyes), with music and libretto by Salvatore Sciarrino, directed by Trisha Brown; and the U.S. premiere of avant-garde German composer Heiner Goebbels' Black on White, performed by Ensemble Modern.
The festival also presents nine plays by Harold Pinter and the La Scala Ballet.
Tickets, information: (212) 875-5928; http://www.lincolncenter.org.
Vermont's Marlboro Music Festival celebrates its 50th anniversary with concerts on five weekends July 14-Aug. 12. Marlboro teams established artists, such as pianists Richard Goode and Mitsuko Uchida, the artistic directors, with young musicians in programs announced a few days in advance. The annual Bach cantata program, led by Marlboro founder Blanche Moyse, is July 20.
Tickets, information: (215) 569-4690; http://www.marlboromusic.org
The Swingle Singers open the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival on July 13. Among the 70 musicians appearing over the next five weeks in New Mexico's lofty capital (elevation 7,000 feet) are:
Violinist Pinchas Zukerman and pianist Marc Neikrug, the festival artistic director; mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson in Five Rilke Songs, set by her composer husband, Peter Lieberson; the Vermeer and Orion string quartets; and jazz trumpeter Terence Blanchard. Many concerts take place in the newly restored Lensic Performing Arts Center, a former movie palace.
Tickets, information: (505) 983-2075; http://www.santafechambermusic.org.
The Montreal Chamber Music Festival marks the centenary of the birth of legendary violinist Jascha Heifetz (1901-87) June 2-16. Favorite Heifetz repertoire, films and an exhibit on the violinist are among the offerings.
Featured musicians include pianists Marc-Andre Hamlin and Ursula Oppens, violinists Martin Chalifour and Eugene Drucker, and the Borromeo String Quartet.
Tickets, information: (514) 489-7444; http://www.festivalmontreal.org
June 25-July 28 in Portland, Ore., Chamber Music Northwest celebrates its 31st annual season. One highlight is the June 28-30 Schoenberg-Haydn Project of pianist Peter Serkin and some illustrious colleagues, including violinist Pamela Frank, cellist Fred Sherry and flutist Tara Helen O'Connor.
Charles Wuorinen's String Quartet No. 4 is premiered July 7 by the Brentano String Quartet.
Tickets, information: (503) 294-6400; http://www.cmnw.org.
The International Festival-Institute at Round Top, a small Texas town, has a roster of up-and-coming conductors (Stefan Sanderling, Grant Llewellyn, Miguel Harth-Bedoya) for eight programs by the Texas Festival Orchestra June 9-July 14.
Faculty performers include violinist Jorja Fleezanis, soprano Hanan Alattar and pianist (and festival founder) James Dick.
Tickets, information: (979) 249-3129; http://www.festivalhill.org
The Appalachian Summer Festival features pianist Garrick Ohlsson, soprano Dawn Upshaw and the North Carolina Symphony June 29-July 28 at Appalachian State University in Boone, N.C.
Tickets, information: toll-free 1-800-841-2787.
For 12 years, the Bard Music Festival has devoted itself to a single composer. This summer, it's Debussy, whose life and music are explored in concerts and discussions over two weekends, Aug. 10-12 and Aug. 17-19, on the campus of Bard College in the Hudson River Valley north of New York City.
High points include a rare performance of Debussy's Printemps for piano four hands and female chorus and La Mer, conducted by fest director and Bard president Leon Botstein.
Tickets, information: (845) 758-3226; http://www.bard.edu/bmf.