Colorado Music Festival Premieres Kristin Kuster's "Devil's Thumb"

The final concert of this year’s Colorado Music Festival was special for several reasons, not the least of which was that it was Michael Christie’s last concert as CMF’s full-time director.

Hired at the tender age of 26, Christie reinvigorated the festival with a series of successful innovations. In particular, his passion for today’s new music brought a sense of excitement that certainly was a factor in boosting attendance over the years.

One of Christie’s strokes of genius has been his unique CLICK! community commissioning program. Yes, unique: no other orchestra in the country offers this. Each year, beginning with 3-4 pre-selected composers, audience members (and anyone else) can vote for the composer they’d like to see receive a commission to write a 10 minute work that premieres the following season. A vote costs $10, meaning the voters collectively both select the composer and fund the commission.

This year’s winner was Kristin Kuster, an established, successful composer who grew up in Boulder, in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains which begin just west of the city. She lived near a distinctive upthrusting rock known as Devil’s Thumb, which became the title of her piece that premiered on Aug. 8-9.

Devil’s Thumb opens with a dynamic, swirling section, which then grows more relaxed, leading to a bass clarinet solo. A pattern emerges of full orchestral sections, often presenting some effective writing for strings, that alternate with solos from the violin, cello, and oboe, interspersed with passages for winds, then percussion. Some melancholic strings return, and build to a concluding climax. The piece showcases individual players, orchestral sections, and invigorating tuttis, maintaining interest and not wearing out its welcome. I hope it receives more performances.

composer Kristin Kuster

Daniel Kellogg Work Premiered at Colorado Music Festival

Daniel Kellogg's "The Gates of Paradise" received its premiere performance Thursday night at the Colorado Music Festival.

Premiering a commissioned work has become one of the season highlights of CMF, and the Click! program used to commission the works is unique to the festival. Each year, 3-4 composers are pre-selected by Maestro Michael Christie, and then the audience and anyone else can vote for a composer to get the commission by donating $10. Thus the audience both funds and selects the winning composer.

Composer Daniel Kellogg (L) and Conductor Michael Christie at a pre-concert discussion.

Last fall's top vote winner was Boulder's Kellogg, who teaches at the College of Music of the University of Colorado, and the evening affirmed that he was indeed a felicitous choice. The piece began with shimmering, misty, sustained strings, out of which various gestures emerged in the lower strings, percussion, brass, etc. Eventually these craggy peaks asserted themselves throughout the orchestra, evoking both the Gates of Paradise (impressive huge doors of the Baptistery in Florence, Italy, later named by Michelangelo) and the striking mountains that define Boulder's western limit, where the nation's High Plains meet the Rocky Mountains. A building accumulation of these strong gestures reaches a climax to conclude the piece. It's a successful, attractive work which I hope finds performances elsewhere.

Another new piece followed, and the report is quite different. Imagine creating a catalog of all the familiar, surefire things that an orchestra can do effectively. Then you skillfully cut and paste these into an old-fashioned 4-movement symphony. You even toss in a fugal passage (the practice of which I thought had been rightfully banned). The result might be Jay Greenberg's Symphony No. 5. Now if you compose this when you are around 14 years old, you become a prodigy that gets fetêd on CBS's "60 Minutes" etc. But the fact remains that the piece is strangely out of touch with today's music and seems devoid of any individual expression.

As Alex Ross commented about Greenberg in his excellent blog, "For him, it is 1904 and anything is possible," adding that many young composers "act as though the 20th century had never happened." One hopes that Greenberg, with some years and compositional studies under his belt since being deemed a modern-day Mozart, is learning to use his considerable talents to reveal a composer who has something to say.

The concert concluded with a solid, appealing performance of Beethoven's Symphony No. 5.

Three 21st Century Works Heard at the Colorado Music Festival

Featuring three 21st century works by Stephen Hartke, Christopher Theofanidis, and Aaron Jay Kernis at last night's concert, conductor Michael Christie continued his mission of having the Colorado Music Festival perform new music.

In the mid-2000s, New York's Orpheus Chamber Orchestra commissioned six composers to create pieces, each based on one of Bach's six Brandenburg Concertos and their instrumentation.

We first heard Hartke's "A Brandenburg Autumn," composed in Germany not far from where the Bach dedicatee once lived. The conservative work was well written for the ensemble (reduced from the original instrumentation of the first Brandenburg), offering some rhythmic interest through much of the piece.

Next was Theofanidis's "Muse," which drew on the instrumentation of the third Brandenberg (3 violins, 3 violas, 3 cellos, backed by a bass and keyboard continuo), augmented by additional violins. The straightforward, vitality-infused piece was well played and clearly appealed to the audience.

The final work, Kernis's "Concerto With Echoes," was easily the most distinctive of the three new works. On the surface, there seemed to be no close connection to the 6th Brandenburg that served as the work's starting point (except for the related instrumentation sans violins), and this actually affirmed that we were hearing from a composer with something to say, a piece that works on its own. The father of twins, Kernis was inspired by the 6th Brandenburg's "opening passage with two spiraling solo violas, like identical twins following each other through a hall of mirrors." The work is suffused with echoes, mirrored melodies, and other imitative orderings. Kernis avoided the strong rhythmic pulse which might as first seem so natural in this context. He also had the confidence to end the work quietly, the only piece of the evening to do so.

The three new works were each preceded by their Brandenburg counterparts, a logical line-up apparently heard here for the first time.

The original Brandenburgs served to remind us that life on occasion offers moments of wonder and joy.

The concert was also a timely reminder that, later this week, CMF will premiere a work by Daniel Kellogg, commissioned by CMF's unique Click program.

Added note: the tendency towards more and more standing ovations in concerts continues to grow, making them less and less meaningful.