[et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.16″ global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.16″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.16″ custom_padding=”|||” global_colors_info=”{}” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.17.4″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n
photo of composer Timo Andres by Michael Wilson Soon after Peter Oundjian took over as Music Director of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra in 2004, the Canadian-American conductor started an annual two-week festival dedicated to music by living composers that continued to the end of his 14-year tenure.<\/p>\n The highly successful event included on-stage interviews with participating composers, such heavy-hitters as Henri Dutilleux, Oliver Knussen, and Esa-Pekka Salonen, and post-concert receptions where the composers, musicians, and audiences all had a chance to mingle.<\/p>\n \u201cIt created a wonderful buzz and had a great following,\u201d Oundjian said in a recent interview, \u201cand I discovered a tremendous amount about compositional style and about how to help people enjoy the experience.\u201d<\/p>\n So, when Oundjian became Music Director of the Colorado Music Festival<\/a> in 2019, instituting a similar kind of mini-festival was high on his list of priorities. \u201cI said this is a no-brainer,\u201d he said. \u201cPeople love this. It\u2019s really important to do it. We\u2019re going to do great music, we\u2019re going to discover new music, and we\u2019re going to commission new pieces.\u201d<\/p>\n He quickly received the backing of other Festival leaders, and funders stepped forward to help with commissioning costs. The first installment of the new series took place online in a reduced form in 2020 because of the COVID-19 shutdown, but it roared into full force in 2021 with an in-person mini-festival that revolved in part around esteemed American composer Joan Tower and her new cello concerto commissioned by the Festival, A Brand New Day.<\/em><\/p>\n This year\u2019s edition of the Music of Today series runs July 12-17<\/a> and puts an emphasis on diversity and inclusion. It features works by more than a dozen living composers ranging from such well-established masters like Philip Glass and Osvaldo Golijov to up-and-comers Stacy Garrop and 2013 Pulitzer Prize winner Caroline Shaw to cross-genre talents like Steven Ellison aka Flying Lotus, a Los Angeles DJ and rapper.<\/p>\n Serving as composer-in-residence and co-curator with Oundjian is John Adams, who at 75 is one of the deans of American classical music. (See our full profile on John Adams.<\/a>) A Grammy and Pulitzer Prize winner, the California resident first gained widespread attention with compositions like Harmonium<\/em> (1980-81) and his opera Nixon in China<\/em> (1985-87), which has become one of the few contemporary works in the form to gain a foothold in the standard repertoire. Adams made two visits to the Toronto Symphony when it featured pieces by him, and Oundjian recorded<\/a> Adams\u2019 Na\u00efve and Sentimental Music<\/em> and Absolute Jest<\/em> with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra in 2018.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t usually attend summer festivals because it\u2019s the best time for composing,\u201d Adams said, \u201cbut Peter is a good friend, a devoted interpreter of my music, and what I\u2019ve heard of the Colorado Music Festival makes me want to participate.\u201d<\/p>\n Two of his major works, City Noir<\/a><\/em> (2009), which evokes the spirit of vintage film noir, and the 2019 piano concerto Must the Devil Have All the Good Tunes?<\/a><\/em>, anchor the two orchestral concerts during Music of Today, July 14<\/a> and 17<\/a> respectively, with Adams taking the podium to conduct his works. Unlike composers who casually pick up the baton sometimes, Adams is a frequent conductor and has led some of the most celebrated orchestras in the world, including a program with the Berlin Philharmonic in 2016.<\/p>\n The composer\u2019s works are also being featured on the other concerts during the Music of Today, starting with a July 12 concert by the Attacca Quartet<\/a>, which has made contemporary music a central focus. It features selections from John\u2019s Book of Alleged Dances<\/em> (1994), a collection of 10 dances, six of which are accompanied by a recorded soundtrack. In addition, the Festival\u2019s second-annual Kaleidoscope<\/a> chamber concert July 15 showcases his Road Movies<\/em><\/a> (1995) for piano and violin. This latter event includes special stage lighting and projection screens with up-close looks at the musicians in action. It brings together pianist Timo Andres, violinist Tessa Lark<\/a>, saxophonist Timothy McAllister, and members of the Festival\u2019s orchestra.<\/p>\n The other works on the two orchestral programs all relate to Adams in some way. The July 17<\/a> program, for example, features a 2014 piece by Gabriella Smith, whose cello concerto is set to be premiered in 2023 by the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Adams has known her since she was a teenager growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area and is a \u201cbig fan\u201d of her writing. \u201cMy wife and I commissioned Tumblebird Contrails<\/em> from her for [conductor] Marin Alsop [and the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music] about eight years ago and it turned out to be such a terrific piece that I\u2019ve been programming elsewhere, including Cleveland, St. Louis, L.A., and I will do it again in Prague next season.\u201d<\/p>\n Rounding out that program is the one work featured as part of the Music of Today by a composer who is no longer alive. Christopher Rouse, who died in 2019 at 70, was a good friend of Adams and a fellow baseball fan. \u201cI really wanted to do the Sixth Symphony<\/a>,\u201d Oundjian said, \u201cbecause it\u2019s an extremely powerful piece.\u201d It was premiered posthumously by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, and the festival\u2019s presentation will be the first in a series of performances this year around the country.<\/p>\n Also, at Adams\u2019 urging, the festival is presenting July 14<\/a> a world premiere by Brooklyn-based Timo Andres, who in addition to being a keyboard soloist also composes. The elder composer has known the musical double threat since he was a student at Yale University. \u201cI\u2019ve already conducted several of Timo\u2019s pieces,\u201d Adams said, \u201cmost recently at the Ojai Festival, and I was delighted that Peter took my recommendation to commission a work from Timo for this festival.\u201d The other work on that program is the Chamber Concerto, a work for solo violin and chamber orchestra by Samuel Adams, the elder composer\u2019s son. Oundjian enthusiastically programmed it after seeing a score and listening to a recording. \u201cI completely fell for it,\u201d the conductor said. \u201cIt\u2019s just fantastic.\u201d<\/p>\n Presenting a festival of this kind would have been considerably more challenging in the mid- to late 20th century, when an atonal style known as 12-tone music or serialism had a near stranglehold on the classical music world. \u201cWhat\u2019s happened now,\u201d Oundjian said, \u201cis that we\u2019ve come to a point now where you can name all kinds of composers all over the world who write music that is actually really great to listen to and you don\u2019t have to have a magically trained ear to enjoy it.\u201d<\/p>\n And the Colorado Music Festival\u2019s Music of Today mini-festival<\/a> is an ideal opportunity to hear at least some of these new audience-friendly currents.<\/p>\n \u201cI love the idea that you say, \u2019OK, this week this is the world that we live in,\u2019\u201d Oundjian said. \u201cLet\u2019s hear the music that is being written by our contemporaries.\u201d<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_cta button_url=”https:\/\/coloradomusicfestival.org\/calendar\/list\/?tribe_eventcategory%5B0%5D=417&hide_subsequent_recurrences=1″ url_new_window=”on” button_text=”Music of Today” _builder_version=”4.17.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n Explore the full week of Music of Today, July 12-17.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_cta][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This year\u2019s edition of the Music of Today series runs July 12-17 and puts an emphasis on diversity and inclusion. It features works by more than a dozen living composers ranging from such well-established masters like Philip Glass and Osvaldo Golijov to up-and-comers Stacy Garrop and 2013 Pulitzer Prize winner Caroline Shaw to cross-genre talents like Steven Ellison aka Flying Lotus, a Los Angeles DJ and rapper.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":78,"featured_media":271726,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":" story by Kyle MacMillan<\/em><\/p> Soon after Peter Oundjian took over as Music Director of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra in 2004, the Canadian-American conductor started an annual two-week festival dedicated to music by living composers that continued to the end of his 14-year tenure.<\/p> The highly successful event included on-stage interviews with participating composers, such heavy-hitters as Henri Dutilleux, Oliver Knussen, and Esa-Pekka Salonen, and post-concert receptions where the composers, musicians, and audiences all had a chance to mingle.<\/p> \u201cIt created a wonderful buzz and had a great following,\u201d Oundjian said in a recent interview, \u201cand I discovered a tremendous amount about compositional style and about how to help people enjoy the experience.\u201d<\/p> So, when Oundjian became Music Director of the Colorado Music Festival<\/a> in 2019, instituting a similar kind of mini-festival was high on his list of priorities. \u201cI said this is a no-brainer,\u201d he said. \u201cPeople love this. It\u2019s really important to do it. We\u2019re going to do great music, we\u2019re going to discover new music, and we\u2019re going to commission new pieces.\u201d <\/p> He quickly received the backing of other Festival leaders, and funders stepped forward to help with commissioning costs. The first installment of the new series took place online in a reduced form in 2020 because of the COVID-19 shutdown, but it roared into full force in 2021 with an in-person mini-festival that revolved in part around esteemed American composer Joan Tower and her new cello concerto commissioned by the Festival, A Brand New Day.<\/em><\/p> This year\u2019s edition of the Music of Today series runs July 12-17<\/a> and puts an emphasis on diversity and inclusion. It features works by more than a dozen living composers ranging from such well-established masters like Philip Glass and Osvaldo Golijov to up-and-comers Stacy Garrop and 2013 Pulitzer Prize winner Caroline Shaw to cross-genre talents like Steven Ellison aka Flying Lotus, a Los Angeles DJ and rapper.<\/p> Serving as composer-in-residence and co-curator with Oundjian is John Adams, who at 75 is one of the deans of American classical music. (See our full profile on John Adams.<\/a>) A Grammy and Pulitzer Prize winner, the California resident first gained widespread attention with compositions like Harmonium<\/em> (1980-81) and his opera Nixon in China<\/em> (1985-87), which has become one of the few contemporary works in the form to gain a foothold in the standard repertoire. Adams made two visits to the Toronto Symphony when it featured pieces by him, and Oundjian recorded<\/a> Adams\u2019 Na\u00efve and Sentimental Music<\/em> and Absolute Jest<\/em> with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra in 2018.<\/p> \u201cI don\u2019t usually attend summer festivals because it\u2019s the best time for composing,\u201d Adams said, \u201cbut Peter is a good friend, a devoted interpreter of my music, and what I\u2019ve heard of the Colorado Music Festival makes me want to participate.\u201d<\/p> Two of his major works, City Noir<\/a><\/em> (2009), which evokes the spirit of vintage film noir, and the 2019 piano concerto Must the Devil Have All the Good Tunes?<\/a><\/em>, anchor the two orchestral concerts during Music of Today, July 14<\/a> and 17<\/a> respectively, with Adams taking the podium to conduct his works. Unlike composers who casually pick up the baton sometimes, Adams is a frequent conductor and has led some of the most celebrated orchestras in the world, including a program with the Berlin Philharmonic in 2016.<\/p> The composer\u2019s works are also being featured on the other concerts during the Music of Today, starting with a July 12 concert by the Attacca Quartet<\/a>, which has made contemporary music a central focus. It features selections from John\u2019s Book of Alleged Dances<\/em> (1994), a collection of 10 dances, six of which are accompanied by a recorded soundtrack. In addition, the Festival\u2019s second-annual Kaleidoscope<\/a> chamber concert July 15 showcases his Road Movies<\/em><\/a> (1995) for piano and violin. This latter event includes special stage lighting and projection screens with up-close looks at the musicians in action. It brings together pianist Timo Andres, violinist Tessa Lark<\/a>, saxophonist Timothy McAllister, and members of the Festival\u2019s orchestra.<\/p> The other works on the two orchestral programs all relate to Adams in some way. The July 17<\/a> program, for example, features a 2014 piece by Gabriella Smith, whose cello concerto is set to be premiered in 2023 by the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Adams has known her since she was a teenager growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area and is a \u201cbig fan\u201d of her writing. \u201cMy wife and I commissioned Tumblebird Contrails<\/em> from her for [conductor] Marin Alsop [and the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music] about eight years ago and it turned out to be such a terrific piece that I\u2019ve been programming elsewhere, including Cleveland, St. Louis, L.A., and I will do it again in Prague next season.\u201d<\/p> Rounding out that program is the one work featured as part of the Music of Today by a composer who is no longer alive. Christopher Rouse, who died in 2019 at 70, was a good friend of Adams and a fellow baseball fan. \u201cI really wanted to do the Sixth Symphony<\/a>,\u201d Oundjian said, \u201cbecause it\u2019s an extremely powerful piece.\u201d It was premiered posthumously by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, and the festival\u2019s presentation will be the first in a series of performances this year around the country.<\/p>
<\/em>story by Kyle MacMillan<\/em><\/p>\n