Sun Valley Music Festival to continue at the Pavilion
BY DANA DUGAN
The 2019 Sun Valley Music Festival is in full swing, with concerts scheduled through the next two weeks at the Sun Valley Pavilion. The festival is celebrating two milestones this year: the 25th year of its association with musical director Alasdair Neale and its own 35th anniversary.
There have been format and focus changes this year that inform the name change, said Daniel Hansen, marketing associate of the SVMF. Along with the addition of the winter festival, the first week of concerts, formerly known as In Focus, or chamber concerts, have folded into the full Summer Concert series. Concerts with the full festival orchestra will continue through the grand finale of Mahler’s “Second Symphony” on Wednesday, Aug. 22.
“Our organization structure has grown, too, due to the directorship of Derek Dean,” Hansen said. “We have 15 straightforward concerts, plus education recital concerts played by about 300 students from all over the U.S. All of our musicians are also instructing through the Sun Valley Music Festival’s education program, the Music Institute.”
The Family Concert, titled “Kids’ Choice—5 Minutes That Made Me Love Classical Music,” will be held Saturday, Aug. 10. The idea for the concert came from a New York Times article “about pieces that turned you on to classical music,” Hansen said.
“The festival musicians and children of musicians came up with ‘Fairy Garden’ from ‘Mother Goose,’ the ‘Imperial March’ from ‘Star Wars,’ ‘Peer Gynt,’ and others. The advanced education students will perform with the festival orchestra for this concert.”
Another aspect of the festival, which is reflected in the more encompassing name, is that there will be more genres of music than classical explored. In fact, the gala benefit on Sunday, Aug. 11. will feature Branford Marsalis, primarily known as a jazz musician.
“His quartet has been together for decades, but he’s becoming well known for his classical music, too,” Hansen said. “He’ll perform with the orchestra in the first set, and in his second it will be jazz.”
For tickets to the gala, contact svmusicfestival.org.
Mason Bates, recently named Musical America’s 2018 Composer of the Year, is in his second year of residency with the Music Festival. He will be onstage Wednesday, Aug. 14, and Sunday, Aug. 18. While Bates brings plenty of the familiar to his work, he is thought to be a draw to younger audiences for his melding of musical styles.
“Bates, 40, is one of the most-performed living American composers—precisely because he gives people something to like,” Musical America writes. “Orchestra audiences who aren’t sure about contemporary music hear thoughtful, skillfully written pieces that are at home in the modern world and offer the ear a lot to hold onto. There are electronics—Bates himself, at his laptop, often sits among the orchestra players. There is amplification. There is a propulsive, kinetic energy.”
Bates’ other persona is as a deejay, and he will work a lawn party as DJ Masonic after the “Bates and Mozart” concert Wednesday, Aug. 14. Bates will also present “Devil’s Radio,” Saturday, Aug. 18, commissioned by the Sun Valley Music Festival in 2014.
As well, Bates’ composition “Passage” will be performed, featuring Grammy Award-winning mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke. Based on President John F. Kennedy’s “moonshot” speech in 1962, and Walt Whitman’s “Passage to India,” this piece will be followed by excerpts from Gustav Holst’s “The Planets.”
On Pops night, Saturday, Aug. 17, Teddy Abrams, 32, the youngest conductor of a major orchestra (Louisville Orchestra) in the country, will take the podium as well as the piano keys for a night of Gershwin music.
“He was assistant conductor here years ago and came up under Alasdair,” Hansen said.
Abrams will be joined by Morgan James, an Idaho native and alumna of Juilliard, who got her professional start on Broadway. Since then, she has toured as a soul singer, taking the stage at such venues as the Hollywood Bowl, Montreal Jazz Festival, Carnegie Hall and The Kennedy Center.
The Aug. 22 finale featuring Mahler’s ‘Second Symphony’ is something the festival has long wanted to do, Hansen said. “It will have the full American Festival Chorus, directed by Craig Jessop, more than 250 musicians onstage, and Sasha Cooke. To accommodate the crowd, the stage will be extended,” he said.
Something not to miss in the program, while you’re waiting for the concerts to begin, are the photographs of musicians taken in some far-flung Valley locations by Caroline Woodham. These are part of the nod to the festival’s 35th season, and the incredible musicians who bring their talent, good cheer and love of Sun Valley with them each summer, and now during the winter, as well.
For a full schedule of the remainder of the season, visit svmusicfestival.org/summer-concert-series.