Great American music and good American vibes are on the program for this year’s VIVO Music Festival.
Season 12 of the VIVO Music Festival unfolds Sept. 7-13 at venues around and beyond Columbus, shining the spotlight on musicians and composers with strong Ohio ties. This year’s festival also celebrates America’s 250th birthday with a lineup of American musical works with classical, pop and jazz roots.
The festival’s opening concert, Thursday, Sept. 10, in the Ohio State University School of Music’s Timashev Recital Hall, celebrates America’s 250th anniversary with performances of iconic works by American composers Leonard Bernstein and Aaron Copland in arrangements by festival musician Branden Ridenour. The program also features Amy Beach’s resplendent Piano Quintet and immigrant composer Bela Bartok’s jazz-influenced Contrasts, composed after Bartok met the famed jazz and classical clarinetist Benny Goodman.
The festival’s popular Beer and Beethoven event returns Friday, Sept. 11 at 6 p.m. at Natalie’s Grandview, with off-the-cuff performances of jazz, pop and American folk music. Sept. 11 at 9 p.m., also at Natalie’s Grandview, Steve Reich’s powerful Different Trains and works by American composers Samuel Barber and Morton Feldman appear alongside the world premiere of a commissioned work for three violas by Dayton-born composer Gregory Rowland Evans.
Evans, who currently serves as adjunct professor of music at the College of Wooster, composed Windflowers for violist and VIVO Music Festival Co-Artistic Director John Stulz to perform with VIVO Next Fellows Ethan Cavanac and James Kang.
Evan’s Windflowers takes inspiration from the poem “The Beloved Hemorrhaged Anemones” by the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish. In the poem, Darwish reads red anemones blooming on a hillside as a symbol for blood.
“I think it was important to draw attention to some of the issues right now to do with our perspective on the Middle East,” Evans said.
Viola trios are not common in the repertoire—all the more reason to commission one.
“We thought it would be great to have a piece for the two fellows of VIVO Next and myself to play,” Stulz said.
In its second year, the festival’s VIVO Next fellowship program offers musicians at the beginning of their professional careers opportunities to create and perform concerts around central Ohio in the festival’s Access for All outreach program.
Adding to festival clarinetist Gabriel Campos’ outreach performance at Our Lady of Guadalupe Center – Catholic Social Services, this year’s VIVO Next fellows—Kang, Cavanac and Oberlin Conservatory student Calvin Ray Shawler—will perform at two high schools in the Columbus City Schools district, Marysville’s Ohio Reformatory for Women, OhioHealth Hospice House (formerly Kobacker House) and elsewhere.
The VIVO Next Fellows’ outreach program will feature a new work by Shawler, who will also perform in the concerts.
“It’ll be kind of a meet-the-composer experience for our partners,” Stulz said.
And the festival continues its years-long outreach relationship with Ohio Living Westminster-Thurber retirement community, in Victorian Village. As the festival unfolds, residents can enjoy open rehearsals and social time with the musicians.
The festival closes with VIVO Hope on Sun., Sept. 13 at 1 p.m. at Columbus’ Southern Theatre, in partnership with Chamber Music Columbus. The official world premiere of Shawler’s Your Fragile Being sits shoulder-to-shoulder with works by Americans Philip Glass, Pulitzer Prize winner Gabriela Lena Frank and Aaron Copland, whose enduring Appalachian Spring will end the concert.
“There’s a reason why many people consider (Appalachian Spring) to be an American masterpiece in classical music,” Stulz said. “It’s just a fabulous piece, and we wanted to do it in a truly democratic way without a conductor, as chamber music.”
Stulz and fellow VIVO Co-Artistic Director Siwoo Kim say the festival’s positive send-off should give everyone hope for the future of America and its music.
“There’s so much promise for the future,” Stulz said, “and the question of where can classical music go in our society, in American culture, is one that, at least from Siwoo’s and my perspective, is very hopeful and very exciting.”
