New at this year’s VIVO Music Festival – a homegrown guitarist, a “gamified” chamber music-meets-beer event and a work by a new composer—AI.
The eleventh season of the VIVO Music Festival is underway through Aug. 31, with chamber music performances and outreach events at venues around Columbus and beyond. Founded and led by co-artistic directors and former Columbus residents John Stulz and Siwoo Kim, the festival this year features novel high-tech programming and a new take on VIVO’s signature Beer & Beethoven event. And it continues its tradition of presenting world-class performers nurtured right here in central Ohio.
One of those performers, guitarist Jordan Dodson, is a Columbus native now enjoying a dynamic career as soloist, educator and recording artist. He’s also one of the novel attractions of this year’s festival lineup.
“We’ve never had a guitarist join VIVO before, so Jordan Dodson is our inaugural guitarist for VIVO, which will be a lot of fun,” said VIVO Music Festival Executive Director Suzanne Jennison.
As a special treat, Dodson and New York-based soprano Lucy Fitz Gibbon came to WOSU’s Performance Studio to perform Joaquin Rodrigo’s Three Spanish Songs—just for you.
Along with Dodson, artificial intelligence makes its VIVO Festival debut this year. Dodson will perform this evening in “VIVO: Meditation,” a concert featuring improvisations on the work of 20th-century Italian composer and poet Giacinto Scelsi, and with AI-adaptations created in real-time by Tina Tallon, assistant professor of artificial intelligence and music composition at Ohio State University School of Music.
“(Tallon) will have some microphones set up throughout the room, and as the musicians play and improvise, the AI system that she’s trained on the compositional techniques of Giacinto Scelsi, will spit out some ideas for them to improvise on, to change, to play,” said Oliver Pontius, the festival’s director of development.
Dodson will also be featured in Luigi Boccherini’s famous Guitar Quintet “Fandango” on Thurs., Aug. 28 at 7 p.m. in the Ohio State University School of Music’s Timashev Recital Hall. And he will perform in Aaron Jay Kernis’ intense and vivid 100 Greatest Dance Hits on the festival’s final concert, in partnership with Chamber Music Columbus, Sun., Aug. 31 at 3 p.m. in the Southern Theatre.
In between the “Fandango” and the festival finale, two iterations of Beer & Beethoven, featuring off-the-cuff music making and a kick-back-with-a-beer vibe, will take place on Fri., Aug. 29 at 6 and 9 p.m. at Natalie’s Grandview. Both events are conversational and interactive. The 9 p.m. performance will be led by musicians Isabella Prater and Liam Battle, fellows in the festival’s New VIVO: Next fellowship program, and will offer a few twists.
“Tech is going to play a role again,” Jennison said. “We’re going to be using features so that the audience can vote for what they want to hear, and they can kind of create their own evening, if you will.”
Beyond the concert venues, the festival musicians will continue their partnership with Ohio Living Westminster Thurber in open rehearsals, social events and private performances in the community’s Neil Avenue space. Under the banner of the festival’s Access for All Initiative, the musicians will lead master classes at schools at Fairbanks High School and at the Red School of Music, in Union County, and will visit Centennial High School and Fort Hayes, in Columbus—all in the name of bringing great chamber music to central Ohio.
“We’re all about democratizing classical music,” Jennison said.
The VIVO Music Festival runs through Aug. 31.
