Here is my Thursday February 18 2010 Chicago Sun-Times and suntimes.com story on the 2010 Grant Park Music Festival season announcement.
Grant Park announces free summer concert plans
76TH YEAR | First free performance scheduled for June 16
BY ANDREW PATNER
The Grant Park Music Festival on Wednesday announced the programming for its 76th summer of free classical concerts, which this year begins June 16 at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park.
On July 15, the festival also will mark the 10th anniversary season of Carlos Kalmar as its principal conductor with a festive program of Berlioz, Vivaldi, and Respighi. The popular Kalmar will lead nine of 20 programs this summer with his excellent colleague chorus director Christopher Bell leading three and preparing the Grant Park Chorus for two others.
[Violinist Christian Tetzlaff plays the Dvořák Violin Concerto on August 4]
In the first season under executive director Elizabeth Hurley, programming remains as diverse and adventurous as it had been under her predecessor, James W. Palermo. Lesser heard music from Michael Tippett, John Adams, Hindemith, Leo Sowerby, and even Dvořák and Beethoven will share the stage with key repertoire works, although few of these are normally outdoor festival fare.
Major international guest artists will include violinist Christian Tetzlaff, pianist Horacio Gutiérrez and bass-baritone John Relyea, who will make his Lyric Opera of Chicago debut this weekend in Berlioz’s The Damnation of Faust. Finland’s Elina Vähälä will be the violin soloist for opening night.
Hans Graf, music director of the Houston Symphony Orchestra, returns to guest conduct, as will Finland’s Hannu Lintu and Miguel Harth-Bedoya, music director of the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra. Xian Zhang, former associate conductor of the New York Philharmonic and a rising woman in a male-dominated field; Norway-based Pole Krzysztof Urbański, just 27, and Julian Kuerti, current assistant conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra (and son of pianist Anton Kuerti), are among the intriguing conductor debuts.
Kalmar, who also has been music director of the Oregon Symphony since 2003, became principal conductor of the Grant Park Orchestra in 2000. This summer, he will present such major works as Shostakovich’s Ninth Symphony on August 4, Beethoven’s Mass in C Major on June 18 and 19, Dvořák’s Requiem on August 13 and 14, an All-American program of Pulitzer Prize-winners June 25 and 26 (indoors at the Harris Theater, due to Taste of Chicago), and opera finales of Rossini and Mozart with singers from Lyric’s Ryan Center on August 6 and 7. He will close the season August 20 and 21 with Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, Resurrection. He also will lead the June 23 concert featuring the Grant Park debut of lounge revivalists Pink Martini.
Bell will conduct Tippett’s 1939-41 spirituals-infused oratorio A Child of Our Time on July 23 and 24, featuring Relyea and Chicago-based soprano Jonita Lattimore; indoor a cappella choral concerts of French music at the Harris Theater on July 6 and 8 during Taste of Chicago, and the annual July 4 afternoon holiday concert.
Other choral programs are the Beethoven Mass in C along with Haydn’s Te Deum and Hindemith’s 1939 Nobilissima Visione Suite and the all-American program at the Harris that includes works by Aaron Copland, William Schuman, and Leo Sowerby.
Harth-Bedoya will conduct a program July 7, co-produced with the Goodman Theatre and staged by Henry Godinez, based on a renowned historical work by Eduardo Galeano, Memoria del fuego (Memory of Fire), from Kalmar’s native Uruguay. The Galeano evening also will launch the Goodman’s 2010 Latino Theater Festival.
Polish music of Lutosławski and contemporary composer Wojciech Kilar will be featured when Urbański conducts June 30 with Krzysztof Jabłoński of the Warsaw Chopin Academy as soloist in the Chopin Piano Concerto No. 1 in E minor. Kalmar will conduct a program with Malian kora player Toumani Diabate on Aug. 11. George Fenton will conduct his own 2007 Emmy Award-winning score to accompany a screening July 21 of the BBC documentary Planet Earth.
All concerts are free and open to the public with starting times generally at 6:30 p.m. Wednesdays and 7:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays. Memberships in the Grant Park Orchestral Association, which support the not-for-profit festival and provide for reserved seating, start at $135 for the full season. The festival is presented jointly by the Chicago Park District, the City of Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs, and the Festival Association.
For more information, go to www.grantparkmusicfestival.com.
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