2002 Season
Preview Concert
2002 Season Preview Concert
In
celebration of composer and artistic director John
Harbison's
honorary degree from UW-Madison
(May 2002),
the Token Creek Festival offers a special spring
concert:
SEASON
PREVIEW CONCERT
________
Mottetti
di Montale
by
John Harbison
(Honorary
Doctor of Fine Arts, UW-Madison, May 2002)
Janice Felty, mezzo soprano | Judith Gordon, piano
Sunday,
19 May, 2002 - 4:00 p.m.
Token Creek Fesitval Barn
4037 Highway 19
Token Creek, WI
one half mile east of Highway 51 on Highway 19
________
Admission $25 | Seating is limited. | Please reserve tickets early.
For more information or credit card orders please call (608) 241-2525
By
mail (check or credit card)
PO Box 55142, Madison, WI 53705-8942
________
Mottetti di Montale is a major setting of Italian poems by one of America's most distinguished composers. The work is a song cycle based on Eugenio Montale's poetic cycle, Le Occasoni (1940). Montale, the 1975 Nobel Laureate, has been a figure in world literature almost since the publication of his first volume of poetry in 1925. This "unmysterious little autobiographical novel" is a sequence of twenty short cryptic poems mingling the poet's memories of fighting in World War I with his memories of an American woman he once loved and will never see again. Considered a modern day Winterreise (Schubert), Mottetti is a searching, melancholy, anguish-ridden set of reflections dealing with parting and loss. Montale's acerbic but evocative verse is perfectly mirrored in musical settings alert to the sensual vocal lines and the dramatic imagery of the texts.
John Harbison is one of America's most prominent composers. Among his principal works are four string quartets, numerous large orchestral works, three operas(including The Great Gatsby, commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera), and a cantata, The Flight Into Egypt, which earned him the Pulitzer Prize (1987). Other awards include the Kennedy Center Friedheim First Prize (1980), a MacArthur Fellowship (1989), the Heinz Award (1997), and the Harvard Arts Medal (2000). He is Institute Professor at MIT and, together with his wife Rose Mary, codirects the Token Creek Chamber Music Festival held annually each August just outside of Madison, Wisconsin.
Mezzo-soprano Janice Felty is a renowned interpreter of vocal chamber music, song literature, and opera. Recognized as a leading interpreter of contemporary music, she has premiered, performed, and recorded works by many living composers. She gave the world premiere of Mottetti di Montale at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, and also its New York premiere at Lincoln Center. Recent activity includes performances of Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire with Collage New Musica and New York Philomusica and recording John Harbison's chamber version of Mottetti on the Koch label. She appeared in Peter Sellar's film of Mozart's Cosi fan tutte, and in Francesca Zambello's film of Kurt Weill's Street Scene. Ms. Felty lives with her husband in Galisteo, New Mexico.
Pianist Judith Gordon has been heard as soloist with the Boston Pops, the Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra, the Civic Symphony of Boston, and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project. Among her colleagues in recital and chamber music are violinists Rose Mary Harbison; cellists Andrés Díaz, Yo-Yo Ma, and Rhonda Rider; vocalists Lisa Saffer, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, William Hite and James Maddalena; the Borromeo and Lydian String Quartets; and many members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. A graduate of the New England Conservatory, Judith Gordon was named Musician of the Year by the Boston Globe (1996). She lives in Boston.