{"id":2446551,"date":"2019-07-20T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-07-20T06:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/?p=309719"},"modified":"2019-07-20T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-07-20T06:00:00","slug":"review-a-quirky-feast-of-american-delights-at-aspen-music-fest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/review-a-quirky-feast-of-american-delights-at-aspen-music-fest\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: A quirky feast of American delights at Aspen Music Fest"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
Kelly Birch in the Aspen Opera Center production of “A Little Night Music.”<\/strong>
Austin Colbert\/The Aspen Times<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

American music enlivened several programs this past week, some in unexpected ways.<\/p>\n

The final performance Monday of the Aspen Opera Center\u2019s \u201cA Little Night Music\u201d<\/a> presented one of Stephen Sondheim\u2019s most treasured and accessible scores. Later in the week, student singers explored American song from Stephen Foster to Broadway in a one-hour \u201ccabaret.\u201d And the American Brass Quintet finished its all-American Aspen recital with the music of a North Carolina Civil War band.<\/p>\n

Aspen Opera Center got to the heart of \u201cA Little Night Music\u201d at the Wheeler Opera House. Veteran Broadway and Sondheim conductor Andy Einhorn carefully navigated the composer\u2019s 1973 score, setting Ingmar Bergman\u2019s classic film comedy, \u201cSmiles of a Summer Night\u201d to music wittily written as waltzes and other three-beat rhythms. After a few missteps, Edward Berkeley\u2019s minimal staging came together with the first-act ensemble finale \u201cWeekend in the Country\u201d and built sure-footedly to a warm and touching ending.<\/p>\n

The singers in the central roles, both in their 30s, used their maturity to bring depth to their characters. Kelly Birch as Desiree Armfeldt carried herself with the glamor of a stage star and delivered a perfectly pitched \u201cSend In The Clowns,\u201d the score\u2019s most popular song. Michael Aiello, who was a virile Sam in last year\u2019s \u201cTrouble in Tahiti\u201d cannily underplayed Frederik Egerman, Desiree\u2019s on-and-off lover, to make their relationship feel real.<\/p>\n

That, and a nicely placed baritone voice, gave Aiello the edge over baritone Geoffrey Hahn, who overplayed Carl-Magnus, the pretentious army office and Desiree\u2019s current paramour. But the two baritones\u2019 Act Two duet, \u201cIt Would Have Been Wonderful\u201d contrasted styles nicely.<\/p>\n

Also on the plus side, the quintet of \u201cGreek chorus\u201d singers, especially soprano Charlotte Bagwell and tenor Jeh\u00fa Otero, roamed the stage, set up and transitioned between scenes with flair. Mezzo-soprano Katherine Menke delivered all of the maid Petra\u2019s uninhibited scenes; her song, \u201cThe Miller\u2019s Son,\u201d got pretty close to controlled abandon. And 17-year-old soprano Ashley Grace Chen combined charm and spot-on singing as Frederika, Desiree\u2019s inquisitive (and smart) daughter.<\/p>\n

Some of the cast missed the wry charm of their characters, however. Soprano Dorothy Gal\u2019s Anne Egerman, Frederik\u2019s flibbertigibbet young new wife, and tenor Spencer Boyd\u2019s Henrik Egerman, Frederik\u2019s seminary son, created caricatures. As well as she sang, mezzo-soprano Emily Treigle never got the world-weary wisdom of Madame Armfeldt in her potentially show-stopping \u201cLiaisons,\u201d but Erin Theodorakis not only nailed the sneaky wit in Charlotte, Carl-Magnus\u2019 resourceful wife, but found shadings of meaning in \u201cEvery Day a Little Death,\u201d her duets with Anne in Act One and with Desiree in Act Two.<\/p>\n

If Act One felt a little underwhelming, maybe it was the projected titles that telegraphed the jokes when Sondheim\u2019s lyrics aimed for a laugh with the last words of a line. Also, performing without props \u2014 probably necessary given the space limits of the Wheeler \u2014 left some of the elements of farce in the dust. But Act One, which plays out the characters\u2019 myriad romantic choices, got what it was aiming for \u2014 a satisfying finish.<\/p>\n

Billed as a \u201ccabaret evening,\u201d the Opera Center\u2019s \u201cRed, Hot and Blue\u201d Thursday in Harris Hall fielded a quirky mix of familiar and the obscure songs. The singers, all terrific voices, possessed varying degrees of chops to sing them in the vernacular. Only mezzo-soprano Menke (\u201cNight Music\u2019s\u201d Petra earlier) and baritone Korin Gregory Thomas-Smith got the sound and the rhythm of the music. The others sounded, well, operatic.<\/p>\n

Setting the tone first, we heard the voice of Jan DeGaetani, a beloved mid-20th-century mezzo-soprano who sang in the great opera houses and taught and performed at the Aspen Music Festival, in Stephen Foster\u2019s \u201cJeanie with the Light Brown Hair\u201d on a recording (with Gilbert Kalish on piano). Her unforced tone and graceful phrasing would prove hard to match.<\/p>\n

But Thomas-Smith bounded onstage and sang Foster\u2019s \u201cRing, Ring the Banjo\u201d with flair, throwing in a few dance steps, even clicking his heels athletically. Thomas-Smith brought luster to Scott Joplin\u2019s \u201cWe\u2019re Going Around\u201d (from the ragtime opera \u201cTreemonisha\u201d), and played the roles equally gracefully in such songs as Irving Berlin\u2019s \u201cIt\u2019s a Lovely Day,\u201d Vernon Duke\u2019s \u201cI Like the Likes of You\u201d and Lerner and Loewe\u2019s \u201cIf ever I Would Leave You.\u201d<\/p>\n

Menke, for her part, lent sassy swing to Berlin\u2019s \u201cSomething to Dance About\u201d and sweetness to Berlin\u2019s \u201cYou\u2019re Just in Love.\u201d She dazzled with two Cole Porter tunes \u2014 \u201cRed, Hot and Blue\u201d and a soulful rendering of \u201cSo in Love.\u201d<\/p>\n

Longtime faculty member Kenneth Merrill underlined the music nicely with his piano work, and his two solos (Vernon Duke\u2019s \u201cApril in Paris\u201d and Duke Ellington\u2019s \u201cSolitude\u201d) alluded nicely to their jazz-standard status.<\/p>\n

Other songs fell short, with relatively stiff singing on works by John Philip Sousa, Sigmund Romberg and Harold Arlen, but as an ensemble the singers romped cheerfully through a medley of Arlen\u2019s songs for the film \u201cThe Wizard of Oz,\u201d especially the women on \u201cOptimistic Voices.\u201d The ensemble encore, \u201cYou\u2019ll Never Walk Alone\u201d from Rodgers and Hammerstein\u2019s \u201cCarousel,\u201d made good use of all the rich tones.<\/p>\n

Wednesday\u2019s American Brass Quintet recital filled the Harris Hall stage for the final set with all 36 brass students in the group\u2019s seminar project playing pieces the quintet unearthed between 2001 and 2006 attributed to a Moravian brass band in Salem, North Carolina (enlisted in 1862 as the 26th NC Regimental Band). The rich sound of trumpets, horns, trombones, bass trombones and tubas made lively stuff of such tunes as \u201cEver of Thee,\u201d a sonorous arrangement of the chorale-like \u201cAux pieds de la Madonne\u201d from Herold\u2019s \u201cZampa,\u201d and a rousing \u201cGrand Confederate Quickstep\u201d to finish.<\/p>\n

The meat of the program presented works written for the quintet between 2006 and 2016. Highlights were Joan Tower\u2019s undulating and brilliant \u201cCopperwave,\u201d now a staple of the quintet\u2019s concerts, and Adam Schoenberg\u2019s emotionally resonant \u201cReflecting Light.\u201d Both were examples of how varied and complex brass music can be.<\/p>\n

NOT TO MISS IN COMING DAYS<\/p>\n

Any time Leonard Slatkin comes to Aspen to conduct, it\u2019s a don\u2019t-miss thing. His Aspen Festival Orchestra program Sunday afternoon in the tent ranges from a fun miniature by a Colorado composer to the Aspen debut of the brilliant South Korean pianist Seong-Jin Cho (playing the Rachmaninov Concerto No. 2, no less), and a Slatkin specialty, Elgar\u2019s Enigma Variations. Monday\u2019s staging of Rodgers and Hammerstein\u2019s \u201cSouth Pacific\u201d in the tent features baritone Nathan Gunn, Broadway star Christy Altomare, singers from the Opera Theater program and Einhorn conducting a 55-piece orchestra.<\/p>\n

Harvey Steiman has been writing about the Aspen Music Festival for 24 years. His reviews appear Tuesdays and Saturdays in The Aspen Times.<\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kelly Birch in the Aspen Opera Center production of “A Little Night Music.”Austin Colbert\/The Aspen Times American music enlivened several programs this past week, some in unexpected ways. The final performance Monday of the Aspen Opera Center\u2019s \u201cA Little Night Music\u201d presented one of Stephen Sondheim\u2019s most treasured and accessible scores. Later in the week, […]<\/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-2446551","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 16:26:31","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'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\/2446551","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=2446551"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2446551\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2446551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2446551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2446551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}