Last modified: Monday, May 4, 2009
2009 IU Summer Music Festival includes collegiate premiere, orchestral concerts, chamber music
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 4, 2009
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Featuring more than 50 free and ticketed events and running from June 21 to Aug. 11, the 2009 Indiana University Summer Music Festival on the IU Bloomington campus offers the collegiate premiere of the Tony Award-winning musical The Light in the Piazza and a world-class array of orchestral concerts, chamber music, piano recitals, band concerts, percussion and other special events.
IU Opera Theater's production of The Light in the Piazza by Adam Guettel -- with performances on July 31 and Aug. 1, 7 and 8 in the Musical Arts Center (MAC) -- will be guest conducted by Dan Riddle, the associate conductor of the Broadway original, and stage directed by Vincent Liotta, with set and costume designs by C. David Higgins. Both Liotta and Higgins are Jacobs School of Music faculty members. The Light in the Piazza opened on Broadway in April 2005 and won several Tony Awards that year, including Best Original Score.
The Festival Orchestra will be led this year by renowned conductors David Robertson, Mario Venzago and Giancarlo Guerrero. Taking place July 2 and 23, and Aug. 6, respectively, the concerts will feature a variety of works, including Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique, Rachmaninoff's Isle of the Dead, Nielsen's Symphony No. 4 and Moussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain. Considered one of the finest ensembles in the region, the Festival Orchestra's musicians include distinguished faculty members and students at the Jacobs School.
Special events in the chamber music series this year include the first appearance at the festival by the Afiara Quartet. The Biava Quartet, the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson and Weiss-Kaplan-Newman trios return, and a unique Menahem Pressler and Friends program (repeated) will include Jacobs School faculty violinist Alex Kerr, violist Larry Dutton from the Emerson quartet and internationally renowned cellist Paul Watkins. The IU String Academy celebrates its 25th birthday with a special concert, and the complete Beethoven Violin Sonatas will be performed across a series of three concerts by Jacobs School alumni Sarah Kapustin, violin, and Jeanette Koekkoek, piano.
As has become customary, the festival will include a strong piano recital series, this year with alumnus Jonathan Biss in a benefit for the IU Piano Academy, Hans Boepple, Evelyne Brancart, Ruth Morrow and Read Gainsford.
Other performances to look forward to include Leigh Howard Stevens, marimba, the IU Percussion Academy faculty and the Summer Chamber Choir, conducted by William Jon Gray.
The Symphony Orchestra, composed of Jacobs students, will perform two concerts July 14 and Aug. 11 and be conducted by Cliff Colnot, principal conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's contemporary MusicNOW series and of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago.
The popular Summer Band concerts, featuring the conducting talents of Stephen W. Pratt and David C. Woodley from the IU Department of Bands, will be held on the stage of the MAC this year because of infrastructure renovations under the MAC lawn. The concerts, featuring marches, popular favorites, solos and light classics, are scheduled for 7 p.m. July 8, 15 and 22.
Some events are free and some require tickets. A limited number of Festival Passes, discounted by around 50 percent, are offered to the general public (with further reductions for any full-time students). Tickets and Festival Passes will be available beginning May 11.
For a complete list of Summer Music Festival performances and further information, visit https://music.indiana.edu/summer.
