All the world’s a stage
THESE TRAVEL-WORTHY PERFORMANCES AND EVENTS OFFER A CHANGE OF SCENERY
By Mark Tiarks
The joys of a tourist-crammed Santa Fe summer are about to arrive. But this year, don’t get mad, get out of town, using the Pasatiempo guide to travel-worthy performances and events. Pictured above: Panoramic view of the Aspen Music Festival’s Benedict Music Tent
The joys of a Santa Fe summer are about to arrive — sidewalks crammed with slow-moving tourists, no available parking downtown, and favorite restaurants where you can’t get a reservation. This year, don’t get mad, get even — get out of town and invade someone else’s home territory, with planning help from this guide to what’s worth traveling to Colorado and Chicago this summer.
Go north!
Rocky Mountain High Notes
We no longer have to head north to acquire legal cannabis, but long-running summer music, opera, and theater festivals across our northern neighbor still make the drive worthwhile.
ASPEN MUSIC FESTIVAL AND SCHOOL
First prize for the largest number of events goes to the Aspen Music Festival and School, with more than 400 on the lineup during its eight-week summer season.
The festival’s focus is training highly talented young adult performers, around 450 each year, ranging in age from 10 to those in their mid-30s. The students and their distinguished teachers are divided into five orchestras, which play concerts and accompany opera performances; they also give chamber music concerts in a wide variety of configurations as well as solo and duo recitals.
Highlights of the 2023 festival, which runs June 29 to August 20, includes a concert appearance by Broadway star Audra Mcdonald, performing highlights from the Great American Songbook with orchestra and jazz trio, on August 3, and two performances of Terence Mcnally’s Master Class, the 1995 play that launched her stardom, on July 9-10.
Festival Music Director Robert Spano leads one of the orchestras and mezzo-soprano Kelley O’connor in Gustav Mahler’s massive six-movement Symphony No. 3 on July 30. It’s the longest regularly performed symphony in the orchestral repertory and will be preceded by one of the shortest (and quietest), John Cage’s 4’33” (four minutes, 33 seconds). Spano and O’connor team up again on August 2 for a recital featuring music by Debussy, Schumann, Elliot Carter, and George Crumb.
The Emerson Quartet’s farewell tour makes an Aspen stop on August 15, with works by Beethoven, Ravel, Shostakovich, and George Walker. Performances of Mozart’s Idomeneo (August 17) and Haydn’s The Creation (August 20) round out the festival’s final week.
A wide range of free events is offered on an almostdaily basis, starting on July 1 with the National Piping Centre of Scotland, thankfully taking place outdoors rather than in the smaller indoor recital hall. (My theory is that enjoyment of the bagpipes is directly proportional to the cube of the distance between player and listener, but you may feel differently.) The festival’s best bargain is $20 tickets to the morning dress rehearsals of orchestra concerts that cost up to $90 a few hours later.
970-925-9042; aspenmusicfestival.com
BRAVO! VAIL
Week-long residencies by four high-profile orchestras are the biggest draws at the uniquely punctuated Bravo! Vail Festival.
London’s Academy of St. Martin in the Fields is the first visiting troupe, launching the festival with a June 22 concert showcasing festival Artistic Director Anne-marie Mcdermott as soloist in Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 2. Violinist Joshua Bell joins the ensemble for works by Bach and Paganini on July 24-25.
The Dallas Symphony launches its performances on June 30 with two mainstream faves, Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto and Brahms’ Symphony No. 3. The Paul Simon Songbook concert on July 1 has limited ticket availability, even though none of the three singers is named Paul Simon. The Texan orchestra also performs the obligatory July Fourth concert, then closes its run a day later with “John Williams’ Music of the Movies.”
Stéphane Denève leads the Philadelphia Orchestra in an all-beethoven concert on July 7. The Time for Three string trio joins the orchestra as soloists in Kevin Puts’ Contact the following evening, which also includes Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite and Ravel’s Boléro.
Philadelphia’s Music Director Yannick Nézetséguin joins his orchestra for three concerts: with Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto and Florence Price’s Symphony No. 3 on July 12, Rachmaninoff’s Piano
Concerto No. 2 and Jennifer Higdon’s Fanfare Ritmico on July 13, and Mozart’s Requiem on July 14.
Highlights of the New York Philharmonic’s residency include Chick Corea’s Trombone Concerto alongside Dvorˇák’s Symphony No.
9, From the New World, on July 19; Jean Sibelius’ Finlandia and his Symphony
No. 7 on July 21; and Anton Bruckner’s Symphony No. 7 on July 25.
Four Prokofiev Nature Walks at the Vail Nature Center are on the docket for July 22 and 23. They’re led by the New York Philharmonic’s archivist and a guide from the Walking Mountains Science Center, with orchestra members performing excerpts along the route that demonstrate the great Russian composer’s skill at capturing sounds of the natural world in his music.
877-812-5700; bravovail.org
CENTRAL CITY OPERA
The country’s fifth-oldest opera company in Central City, Colorado, about 40 miles west of Denver, was founded in 1932, and it’s going all in on Shakespeare for Year 92, staging three works based on the Bard.
Charles Gounod’s Romeo and Juliet, replete with no fewer than five duets for the “star-cross’d lovers,” opens the Central City season on June 24, with performances through August 5. For something completely different, try Cole Porter’s musical comedy Kiss Me, Kate. This adaptation of The Taming of the Shrew was the first winner of the Tony Award for Best Musical, thanks in part to such classic songs as “Too Darn Hot,” “Where is the Life that Late I Led?” and “Brush
Up Your Shakespeare.” Performances run from July 1 to August 5.
For many opera fans, the chance to see and hear Rossini’s Othello will be the season’s most compelling attraction. The success of Verdi’s later version almost swept it off the boards, but recent productions have reaffirmed its worthiness.
Rossini configured his opera to the unique personnel roster at Naples’ Teatro del Fondo, where it premiered, so it’s a tenor-fest with five such roles, including Iago as well as Otello. In keeping with his standard practice, Desdemona is a mezzo-soprano.
Not every opera gets better as it goes along, but this one does, with a knock-out final act that was decades ahead of its time. There are just six Othello performances, from July 15 to August 6.
Central City’s Renaissance Revival-style opera house predates the opera company by 44 years, having opened in 1878. With just 550 seats, it’s often referred to as a jewel box, which is secret code for long on charm and short on leg room. On the plus side, its wooden seats were jettisoned in 1999, so it can no longer be called a splinter company.
303-292-6700; centralcityopera.org
COLORADO CHAUTAUQUA
What’s a Chautauqua? It’s a uniquely American phenomenon, a kind of summer camp for families and adults that offered a wide variety of performances, lectures, and other events designed to inform, inspire, or uplift.
Chautauquas were hugely popular from the 1880s to the 1920s, although only a few survive today. One of them is just outside Boulder, and it celebrates its 125th anniversary this summer. Performances take place at a rustic, open-air auditorium seating 1,300 patrons; on-site housing options include two historic lodges and almost 60 guest cottages.
Classical concerts by the Colorado Music Festival Orchestra run from July 6 to August 6. Rachmaninoff fans will appreciate the nearly back-to-back pairing of his Symphony No. 3 and Piano Concerto No. 3 on July 6 and 7, with Piano Concerto No. 4 and the Symphonic Dances on July 9.
There’s also the world premiere of a symphonic work by Adolphus Hailstork — JFK: The Last Speech — on July 16. It’s a celebration of President Kennedy’s final address, and a celebration of poet Robert Frost, at Amherst College in October 1963.
Pop music acts scheduled this summer include Mary Chapin Carpenter (June 15), Los Lobos (July 8), and the Gipsy Kings (August 9). Silent films starring Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, Clara Bow, and the original wonder dog Rin-tin-tin are screened on June 28 and July 12, 19, and 26, complete with live music accompaniment.
303-440-7666, chautauqua.com
COLORADO SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL
Shakespeare has been performed outdoors on the University of Colorado Boulder campus for 79 of the 80 summers between 1944 and 2023, making it the second-longest-running such company in North America. (The title holder is the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, founded in 1935, so the Colorado troupe is unlikely to catch up.)
The group’s 2023 season — King Lear, Much Ado About Nothing, The Winter’s Tale, and One Man, Two Guvnors — is performed by a company of actors in rotating repertory from June 11 to August 13.
The first two are staged at the Mary Rippon Outdoor Theatre, which has a seating capacity of 1,000 and offers views of the Flatiron Mountains, where the sandstone to build the amphitheater was quarried. It’s named after the first woman to teach at a state university.
Festival Producing Artistic Director Tim Orr started thinking about staging Lear during the pandemic lockdowns, seeing it in part as an homage to our oldest generations, which suffered so much. As the play’s last four lines put it,
The weight of this sad time we must obey, Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say. The oldest hath borne most; we that are young Shall never see so much nor live so long.
The smaller Roe Green Theatre, an indoor venue, hosts The Winter’s Tale and One Man, Two Guvnors. The former is one of Shakespeare’s late “romances,” which blend elements of tragedy, comedy, and myth; the former is a very clever and very funny updating of The Servant of Two Masters, a commedia dell’arte classic, set in the tacky seaside resort of Brighton during the Swinging Sixties. (James Corden shot to stardom for his portrayal of Francis Henshall, the one man who is simultaneously employed by a gangster and an upper-class twit.)
2023 also marks the farewell of the original rustic amphitheater that’s set in a campus courtyard. It was built in the late 1930s as a Works Progress Administration project and is being replaced by a spiffy new version, so outdoor performances won’t be offered in 2024 or perhaps even into 2025.
303-492-8008; cupresents.org/series/shakespeare-festival
Go east! Chicago keeps it cool
It’s not just a weather report. Many of the coolest summer events in the city take place near the Lake Michigan lakefront; here are a few highlights.
MUSICAL THEATER
Fans of musical theater have many reasons to visit the Windy City this summer, starting with West Side Story at the Lyric Opera of Chicago. The masterpiece by Leonard Bernstein (music), Stephen Sondheim (lyrics), and Arthur Laurents (book) was hugely popular in its 2019 company premiere, thanks to Francesca Zambello’s acclaimed staging, Jerome Robbins’ original choreography, and a 51-piece (!) orchestra, as well as a dynamic, 50-member cast. It’s back this summer for a Broadway-style run, with 26 performances taking place June 2-25 at the company’s imposing 3,500-seat home. 312-827-5600; lyricopera.org
The Goodman Theatre, Chicago’s largest and oldest nonprofit theater, is mounting an even more robust run of The Who’s Tommy, with 43 performances from June 13 to July 23. Composer-lyricist Pete Townshend and stage director Des Mcanuff both won Tony Awards for their 1993 staging, which ran on Broadway for more than two years. They’re teaming
up to reconceive Tommy for the 21st century in this all-new production, which showcases a 28-member cast and a nine-piece rock band. 312-443-3800; good mantheatre.org.
Two newer touring musicals are stopping this summer at the CIBC Theatre. Hadestown, an updated version of the Orpheus and Euridice myth that won the 2019 Tony Awards for best musical and best original score, is in town for a week, June 20-25. MJ, the 2022 Michael Jackson jukebox musical that’s a big seller despite mixed reviews, launches its first national tour with performances from August 1 to September 2. 312-977-1702; broadwayinchicago.com
OTHER COOL STUFF
Chicago Architecture Center offers boatloads of Chicago River Tours — more than 20 on some days — that cruise all three branches of the city’s famed “canyon of architecture.” The 90-minute docent-led trips, which were voted best North American boat tour by USA Today readers, offer unobstructed views of many of the city’s most famous buildings, in styles ranging from neoclassicism and art deco to midcentury modern and postmodern. After your cruise, you may be inspired to try one of the 84 other walking, bus, and “L” train tours. 312-922-3432; architecture.org
The Art Institute of Chicago has a blockbuster exhibit this summer. Van Gogh and the Avant-garde: The Modern Landscape includes 25 works by Van Gogh as well as 50 by his contemporaries Georges Seurat, Paul Signac, Emile Bernard, and Charles Angrand. As successors to the first wave of Impressionists, they began
to reflect the tensions between the natural world and encroaching industrialization in their work. Many of the pieces are rarely exhibited works from private collections. Bonus musical theater tie-in: The Art Institute is also the home of Seurat’s A Sunday on La Grande Jatte — 1884, the inspiration for Stephen Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George. 312-443-3600; artic.edu
You’ll think you’re in a 21st-century reboot of The Jetsons at the Grant Park Music Festival, thanks to its futuristic Frank Gehry-designed open-air pavilion. The festival opens on June 14 with Saint-saëns Violin
Concerto No. 3 and Schumann’s Symphony No. 4, plus Symphonic Dialogues by Robert Muczynski, a member of Chicago’s vibrant Polish arts community. Other highlights include Wynton Marsalis’ Violin Concerto (July 7-8), Brahms’ A German Requiem (July 21-22), and an all-russian double bill of Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 2 and Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 8 (August 11-12). There’s no charge and plenty of space for you and your beverage cooler on Millennium Park’s Great Lawn. Between you and the stage are patrons who’ve paid for actual seats. 312-742-7647; grantparkmusicfestival.com
NEWS
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2023-05-26T07:00:00.0000000Z
2023-05-26T07:00:00.0000000Z
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