{"id":2446244,"date":"2019-07-11T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-07-11T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/?p=309293"},"modified":"2019-07-11T16:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-07-11T22:00:00","slug":"aspen-music-festival-stages-concerts-inspired-by-great-books-and-the-bauhaus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/aspen-music-festival-stages-concerts-inspired-by-great-books-and-the-bauhaus\/","title":{"rendered":"Aspen Music Festival stages concerts inspired by great books and the Bauhaus"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"swift-gallery p402_hide\" readability=\"6.5717647058824\">\n<ul id=\"imageGallery-309293-142\" class=\"gallery list-unstyled\">\n<li data-thumb=\"https:\/\/cdn.aspentimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2019\/07\/bamfs-atd-071219-2-150x150.jpg\" data-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.aspentimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2019\/07\/bamfs-atd-071219-2.jpg\" data-sub-html=\"Shutterstock | Walt Whitman\" class=\"h-100\" readability=\"-2\">\n<div class=\"caption\" readability=\"7\">\n<p><strong>Walt Whitman<\/strong><br \/>Shutterstock<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"row no-gutters h-100\">\n<div class=\"col my-auto\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.aspentimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2019\/07\/bamfs-atd-071219-2.jpg\" alt=\"Walt Whitman\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li data-thumb=\"https:\/\/cdn.aspentimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2019\/07\/bamfs-atd-071219-2-1-150x150.jpg\" data-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.aspentimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2019\/07\/bamfs-atd-071219-2-1.jpg\" data-sub-html=\"Shutterstock | Walt Whitman. The Aspen Music Festival is hosting several classical works based on his poems this summer.\" class=\"h-100\" readability=\"-1.5\">\n<div class=\"caption\" readability=\"8\">\n<p><strong>Walt Whitman. The Aspen Music Festival is hosting several classical works based on his poems this summer.<\/strong><br \/>Shutterstock<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"row no-gutters h-100\">\n<div class=\"col my-auto\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.aspentimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2019\/07\/bamfs-atd-071219-2-1.jpg\" alt=\"Walt Whitman. The Aspen Music Festival is hosting several classical works based on his poems this summer.\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li data-thumb=\"https:\/\/cdn.aspentimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2019\/07\/bamfs-atd-071219-2-2-150x150.jpg\" data-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.aspentimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2019\/07\/bamfs-atd-071219-2-2.jpg\" data-sub-html=\"Shutterstock | Herman Melville. The Aspen Festival Orchestra will perform a suite from the opera\" based on his class=\"h-100\" readability=\"-1\">\n<div class=\"caption\" readability=\"9\">\n<p><strong>Herman Melville. The Aspen Festival Orchestra will perform a suite from the opera &#8220;Moby-Dick,&#8221; based on his novel.<\/strong><br \/>Shutterstock<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"row no-gutters h-100\">\n<div class=\"col my-auto\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.aspentimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2019\/07\/bamfs-atd-071219-2-2.jpg\" alt=\"Herman Melville. The Aspen Festival Orchestra will perform a suite from the opera \" based on his><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li data-thumb=\"https:\/\/cdn.aspentimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2019\/07\/bamfs-atd-071219-2-3-150x150.jpg\" data-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.aspentimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2019\/07\/bamfs-atd-071219-2-3.jpg\" data-sub-html=\"Courtesy photo | Emily Dickinson. The Aspen Contemporary Ensemble will perform songs based on her poetry on Saturday afternoon.\" class=\"h-100\" readability=\"-1.5\">\n<div class=\"caption\" readability=\"8\">\n<p><strong>Emily Dickinson. The Aspen Contemporary Ensemble will perform songs based on her poetry on Saturday afternoon.<\/strong><br \/>Courtesy photo<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"row no-gutters h-100\">\n<div class=\"col my-auto\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.aspentimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2019\/07\/bamfs-atd-071219-2-3.jpg\" alt=\"Emily Dickinson. The Aspen Contemporary Ensemble will perform songs based on her poetry on Saturday afternoon.\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p class=\"caption-toggle\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/entertainment\/aspen-music-festival-stages-concerts-inspired-by-great-books-and-the-bauhaus\/#\" class=\"show-captions\">Show Captions<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/entertainment\/aspen-music-festival-stages-concerts-inspired-by-great-books-and-the-bauhaus\/#\" class=\"hide-captions\">Hide Captions<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText DropCap\">The poet Walt Whitman proudly described his sound a \u201cbarbaric yawp,\u201d but composers of symphonies and songs have some other ideas about him and his fellow great American writers, as evidenced this summer at the Aspen Music Festival.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">The opening weekend of the festival last month included baritone Zeki Nadji performing composer Kurt Weill\u2019s settings of Walt Whitman\u2019s war poetry, including the high drama of \u201cBeat! Beat! Drums!\u201d and the elegiac \u201cOh captain! My captain!\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">The following week, the Aspen Chamber Symphony opened its Friday concert with Gustav Holst\u2019s \u201cWalt Whitman Overture,\u201d the British composer\u2019s attempt to instrumentally capture the \u201cLeaves of Grass\u201d author\u2019s unbound, vibrant multitudes.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">In between those two, at pianist Conrad Tao\u2019s solo recital, the festival audience heard an unruly 1996 piece by composer Jason Eckhardt inspired by the recently deceased U.S. Poet Laureate W.S. Merwin\u2019s \u201cEchoes\u2019 White Veil.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">All this is to say that this summer season at the Aspen Music Festival is a feast for bookworms as well as the classical crowd.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Concerts are showcasing direct vocal adaptations from the texts of poets like Whitman and Emily Dickinson as well as instrumental works inspired by American authors, in what Music Fest vice president for artistic administration Asadour Santourian described as \u201ca metaphysical relationship to the author.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">The literary subtheme began, Santourian said, with the fact that both Walt Whitman and Herman Melville were born in 1819, and the world is celebrating their bicentenaries this year.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Festival CEO Alan Fletcher sees the literary subtheme as an integral part of ongoing musical debate about the definition of <a id=\"N0x10caae0N0xfe7ce0:N0x10caae0N0x10613a0\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/entertainment\/aspen-music-festival-announces-american-themed-2019-season\/\">\u201cBeing American,\u201d the festival\u2019s over-arching theme<\/a> over its two-month season.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">\u201cLooking at the way composers \u2014 American and not \u2014 have responded to these literary works seems like a great conversation to be had,\u201d Fletcher said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">This weekend\u2019s concerts include two of the centerpiece events in the literature subtheme. On Saturday evening, the always adventuresome Aspen Contemporary Ensemble will perform three of Aaron Copland\u2019s settings of poems by Emily Dickinson, sung by soprano Jennifer Niles.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">The following afternoon, in the Benedict Music Tent, the Aspen Festival Orchestra will perform a suite from Jake Heggie\u2019s opera inspired by Herman Melville\u2019s \u201cMoby-Dick.\u201d The orchestra is performing under conductor Christian Macelaru, who has conducted the opera so often that Heggie himself asked him to compose the suite for this concert.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">\u201cThe composer said, \u2018Go ahead, you know it better than I do now,\u2019\u201d Santourian said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">If you missed the two Whitman-inspired concerts early in the season, there\u2019s one more on the schedule July 29, when baritone Geoffrey Han will perform John Adams\u2019 mournful adaptation of Whitman\u2019s Civil War poem \u201cThe Wound-Dresser.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">\u201cWhitman is inspiration for so many works, so we had to scale back to make sure others were not eclipsed by him,\u201d Santourian said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText Subhead\">THE BAUHAUS SOUND<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Seemingly every cultural organization and artist in the Roaring Fork Valley has taken part in <a id=\"N0x10caae0N0xfe7f80:N0x10caae0N0x1061940\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/news\/aspens-bauhaus-ball-toasts-art-movements-centennial\/\">Aspen\u2019s yearlong centennial celebration of the Bauhaus art school and movement<\/a>, which shaped the resort after World War II.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">The Aspen Music Fest \u2014 where concerts for years were held in a tent designed by <a id=\"N0x10caae0N0xfe7fe0:N0x10caae0N0x1061a60\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/entertainment\/aspens-bauhaus-roots\/\">Bauhaus master Herbert Bayer<\/a> \u2014 is joining in the \u201cBauhaus 100\u201d festivities with five concerts this summer. (No, there\u2019s nothing in the lineup from the \u201980s rock band also called Bauhaus.)<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">The Bauhaus\u2019 global multidisciplinary design revolution blew the doors open for contemporary composers who were tossing out the established forms.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">\u201cThese musicians and composers jumped on the bandwagon because they needed an outlet for expression for their own new ways,\u201d Santourian said. \u201cAll the bad boys of classical music are coming up.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">The most high profile of the Bauhaus-inspired concerts is this Sunday\u2019s Aspen Festival Orchestra performance, under Macelaru, performing three pieces from Gunther Schuller\u2019s \u201cSeven Studies on Themes of Paul Klee.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Klee, the Bauhaus painter, is among the most music-minded of artists. The son of a music teacher, he played violin as a child and aspired to be a musician in his youth. In his years at the Bauhaus in Germany, he adapted classical works quite literally in his paintings (\u201cIn the Style of Bach,\u201d \u201cHarmony in Blue-Orange,\u201d \u201cThe Entry of the French Horn\u201d) and based paintings on musical patterns and structures, often using musical notation on the canvas.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Schuller picked up on Klee\u2019s ideas for his ethereal orchestral work, written in 1959 at a time when the composer was playing French horn on iconic jazz recordings alongside the likes of Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">The Aspen Contemporary Ensemble on July 20 will stage a solo piano piece by Bauhaus associate Arnold Schoenberg, composed in the early days of the school in 1920. On Aug. 5, the festival\u2019s Percussion Ensemble will perform George Antheil\u2019s \u201cBallet m\u00e9canique,\u201d which originally scored an experimental 1926 film by the French cubist and Bauhaus-adjacent artist Fernand L\u00e9ger. And on Aug. 17, the Contemporary Ensemble will perform Paul Hindemith piece written \u2014 in Germany in 1930 \u2014 for an unusual combination of piano with orchestral brass and two harps.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">\u201cThey are amazing,\u201d Santourian said of these Bauhaus-inspired compositions\u2019 still-shocking originality. \u201cNone of these works follow any known form or format.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText Tagline\"><a href=\"mailto:atravers@aspentimes.com\">atravers@aspentimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/entertainment\/aspen-music-festival-stages-concerts-inspired-by-great-books-and-the-bauhaus\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Walt WhitmanShutterstock Walt Whitman. The Aspen Music Festival is hosting several classical works based on his poems this summer.Shutterstock Herman Melville. The Aspen Festival Orchestra will perform a suite from the opera &#8220;Moby-Dick,&#8221; based on his novel.Shutterstock Emily Dickinson. The Aspen Contemporary Ensemble will perform songs based on her poetry on Saturday afternoon.Courtesy photo Show [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2446244","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-21 05:38:32","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley&#039;s Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2446244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2446244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2446244\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2446244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2446244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2446244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}