SPECIAL SECTION Festivals Schools & Workshops 31 “...a kind of West Coast Lincoln Center salon...” New York Times 40th Anniversary David Shifrin summer festival June 21 - July 25, 2010 Emerson Quartet Diverse repertoire and brilliant performances are the hallmarks of Chamber Music Northwest. Some of the world’s finest musicians come together each summer in Portland, Oregon to collaborate in a vibrant festival of chamber music, performing favorite masterworks alongside less familiar gems and newly commissioned works. Chamber Music Northwest celebrates its 40th anniversary with a richly rewarding summer season. The five-week festival welcomes Kaul Auditorium renowned artists and ensembles from around the world, including the Emerson Quartet, Opus One, Arnold Steinhardt, Cho-Liang Lin, Milan Turkovic, Jon Kimura Parker and André Watts. Musical highlights include three premières by Steven Stucky, Paul Schoenfield, and Sheridan Seyfried. Other works range from Bach and Vivaldi to Mozart and Brahms, to Barber and beyond. This summer, the festival also celebrates 30 years of leadership under artistic director David Shifrin and executive director Linda Magee. Sylvia McNair · 26 concerts, plus pre-concert talks, open rehearsals, family and community concerts, and outreach performances · Exhilarating repertoire, including Messiaen’s iconic Quartet for the End of Time, Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht, Bach’s six monumental Brandenburg Concertos, Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and much more! · Intimate settings on two private school campuses with Jennifer Frautschi pre-concert picnics al fresco, plus a downtown Friday series in Portland’s popular Pearl district For complete festival information, visit www.cmnw.org, or call the CMNW Box Office at (503) 294-6400. Tourism information, including travel and hotel packages, is available through www.travelportland.com. RansomVladimir Wilson Feltsman/Fred Sherry 32 march/april 2010 Chamber Music Northwest | Yeon Building, Suite 920 | 522 SW Fifth Avenue | Portland, OR 97204 PHOTOGRAPHY by Andrew Eccles, Basil Tickets and information: (503) 294-6400 | [email protected] | www.cmnw.org Childers, Laura Beatty and Jim Leisy. Celebrating 25 years of chamber music excellence with a chamber orchestra concert on Madeline Island featuring students from the class of 2010, alumni and the Pacifica String Quartet. Jorja Fleezanis, Concertmaster • Osmo Vänskä, Conductor Some of our past distinguished faculty and guest artists... Orlando Cole, Cello, Curtis Institute Menahem Pressler, Pianist, Indiana University Janos Starker, Cello, Indiana University Vartan Manoogian, Violin, University of Wisconsin Mary West, Violin, MacPhail School of Music Anthony Ross, Principal Cello, Minnesota Orchestra Steven Doane, Cello, Eastman School of Music Cynthia Phelps, Viola, New York Philharmonic Peter Slowik, Viola, Oberlin Steven Copes, Concertmaster, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra William Preucil, Concertmaster, Cleveland Orchestra Peter Oundjian, Music Director, Toronto Symphony Christopher Taylor, Pianist, University of Wisconsin-Madison Margo Garrett, Collaborative Pianist, Juilliard Norman Carol, Former Concertmaster, Philadelphia Orchestra Norm Fischer, Cellist, Shepherd School of Music, Rice University Peter Howard, Former Principal Cello, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra Toby Saks, Professor of Cello at University of Washington Lydia Artymiw, Pianist, University of Minnesota Ken Goldsmith, Professor of Violin, Shepherd School of Music, Rice University Richard Aaron, Professor of Cello, University of Michigan And String Quartets… Brentano, Shanghai, Borromeo, Pacifica, Arianna, Fry Street, Bergonzi, Chicago, Corigliano, Bergonzi Some of our alumni… Kirsten Docter, Viola, Cavani String Quartet Russell Fallstad, Viola, Fry Street Quartet Jeremy Black, Violin, Philadelphia Orchestra/Grant Park Festival Orchestra Kurt Johnson, Violin, Houston Symphony Orchestra Nathan Cole, Violin, Chicago Symphony Orchestra Eric Nowlin, Viola, Toronto Symphony Orchestra Daniel Cline, Cello, Arkansas Symphony Orchestra Evelina Chao, Music Director • Thomas M. George, Executive Director www.music-camp.org • (612) 871-7781 33 In the grotto, looking outward toward the Colorado River 34 march/april 2010 by Edward Reichel Desert, Rock,and River - Summer festivals typically situate themselves in beautiful surroundings. But Michael Barrett and Leslie Tomkins— founders of the Moab Music Festival in Utah—have taken the music-and-nature connection quite a bit further than most. he landscape is familiar to anyone who’s ever watched a western: miles of desert tinted a dark red by rich mineral deposits and dotted with weird rock formations T that seem to rise out of nowhere from the predominantly flat landscape. The red rock country around Moab in southeastern Utah is one of the most arid and desolate spots in the world, yet also one of the most yet fascinating. Home to several national parks, the region attracts visitors by the thousands. Violinist Jesse Mills Hollywood first realized the potential of Moab as a backdrop for its westerns back in performs at Muleshoe the silent era. Later on, many of John Wayne’s movies were filmed there. (Even today Canyon Musical Walk guests can book the room in the now old but well-kept-up motel in downtown Moab benefit. where Wayne used to stay when he was in town.) Edward Abbey loved this part of Utah. The late renowned writer and environmentalist first arrived in the area in the 1950s to work as a seasonal park ranger. Drawn by its natural beauty he kept returning, eventually buying a house and settling down in Moab. His most famous work, Desert Solitaire, paints an irresistible, if somewhat idealistic, portrait of Moab and the outlying area: This is the most beautiful place on earth. …Every man, every woman, carries in heart and mind the image of the ideal place, the right place, the one true home, known or unknown, actual or visionary. …For myself, I’ll take Moab, Utah. I don’t mean the town itself, of course, 35 but the country which surrounds It—the can- other I know to representing the apartness, the things. “When she saw it, she said, ‘Let’s make yonlands. The slickrock desert. The red dust otherness, the strangeness of the desert. our music festival here.’” Serious exploration and the burnt cliffs and the lonely sky—all of the feasibility of establishing a chamber that which lies beyond the end of the roads. Pianist Michael Barrett and his violist wife, music festival began. “We talked to a lot of Leslie Tomkins, understood what Abbey was different people and reiterated our plans Moab is an out-of-the-way place, where trying to say. They’re the ones who finally about the festival,” Barrett says. “We came U.S Highway 191 becomes Main Street for a brought music to Moab in a big way. Every up with a budget and set up a core group of few blocks. The town has a checkered history. September their Moab Music Festival board members.” The Moab Music Festival A major center for uranium mining, it was a transforms this town of some five thousand kicked off the next summer, 1993, with five boom town in the first half of the 20th cen- residents into a mecca of chamber music, events. “The total cost was $55,000 and we tury but ended up being forgotten by the drawing draws hundreds upon hundreds of had a balanced budget,” Barrett recalls. outside world after the uranium deposits visitors from the surrounding states and Now in its 18th season, the festival has petered out and the miners left. But the around the country. grown steadily. Normally it is held over community slowly began transitioning to a Back in 1990, Barrett’s New York Festival three weekends, starting with Labor Day tourist-based economy when offroaders and of Song was already well established, and he weekend; but in 2009 Barrett tried out a other adventure seekers discovered it and was ready to start a new venture. “It had two-weekend concept. “It was an interesting started coming in droves. been our idea to start a festival in the West, experiment running the festival over two For all its beauty, Moab is not exactly a and one of the places we were considering long weekends,” Barrett said. “We did the place where one would expect to find live was northern Utah,” he says. That summer, same number of events, and everyone was classical music. Yet, for someone like Abbey, Barrett had to go to Santa Fe to visit family, enthusiastic about it, especially the hard-core the landscape was teeming with musical and he “decided to do the great tour of the music junkies.” associations. Although not a classically Southwest by car.” That was his first time Almost from the start, the Moab commu- trained musician, Abbey felt there was a in the southern part of Utah, and he was nity embraced the festival wholeheartedly. connection between the desert and the blown away by what he saw. “The first spot “I’m very proud of how it’s turned out,” Barrett music of certain composers and commented you get to where the real red rock country says. “It started with nothing, just an idea. on it in Desert Solitaire: begins is just outside Moab,” he says. “And It’s grown organically, its growth has been while I kept driving, I came across a sign careful and sensible—and the town has taken I think of music, and of a musical analogy for Arches National Monument. I thought ownership of it. They feel like it’s theirs.” to what seems to me the unique spirit of desert to myself, ‘Okay, I’ve got to see this.’” Once With so many summer music festivals places… In the desert I am reminded of…men past the ranger station, Barrett couldn’t now sprinkled across the country, it’s easy like Berg, Schoenberg, Ernst Krenek, Webern believe his eyes. “I said, ‘Oh, my gosh! Look for any one presenter to get lost in the and the American, Elliott Carter. Quite by at this park!’” crowd. But what attracts audiences to Moab accident, no doubt, although both Schoenberg Barrett wanted to see more of the region, each September is also what makes this and Krenek lived part of their lives in the so he brought Leslie back with him the fol- series stand out from many of its competitors.