Tippet Rise Art Center’s Aug. 19-22 Virtual Festival to Feature Classical Music in Unique Settings

FISHTAIL, MT – On May 25, Tippet Rise Art Center announced the details of its digital summer event Tippet Rise on Tour: August Festival, which will premiere seven short performance films between August 19 and 22.

More details from Tippet Rise Art Center (www.tippetrise.org):

The new films feature classical music performances captured at unusual locations across the country, from a tractor barn in Colorado and Ensamble Studio’s Cyclopean House in Massachusetts to the Noguchi Museum in New York City.

Since Spring 2020, Tippet Rise has produced or co-produced more than a dozen wide-ranging films. Among them, is the full-length documentary Land & Sky, directed by Hamid Shams and co-produced with the Colburn School. Other films feature Richard Goode performing piano works and reading poetry andClaire Chase performing the world premiere of a new work by Bora Yoon, commissioned by Tippet Rise and the Pnea Foundation. A two-part concert film co-produced by Tippet Rise and the Baryshnikov Arts Center features the Aizuri String Quartet performing works by female composers spanning a millennium (streaming June 23 and 30, 2021).

“Tippet Rise is delighted to continue its virtual music season with another festival of short performance films,” said Peter and Cathy Halstead, co-founders of Tippet Rise Art Center. “We are grateful to the generous cultural organizations which have allowed us to film in their homes. These unexpected spaces add sculptures, exciting architecture, and new outdoor elements to the performances, allowing for a new appreciation of and engagement with beloved works, and extending our idea of where a summer festival can happen, with both old and newly commissioned works.”

Festival Details

The festival is free and open to everyone. The films will stream each day at 8PM ET on tippetrise.org. The first night will kick off with a 7:30PM ET live “backstage” gathering via Zoom. Tippet Rise artistic advisor, Pedja Mužijević, along with the art center’s co-founders, Cathy and Peter Halstead, will host the informal conversation, which will include a Q&A component with Ensamble Studio’s Débora Mesa and Anton Garcia-Abril.

On Thursday, August 19, violinist and rising star Geneva Lewis will perform an eclectic mix of works including Biber’s Passacaglia, Ysaÿe’s Sonata No. 5 in G Major for solo violin, and Kaija Saariaho’s Nocturne. The program was filmed at the Cyclopean House, designed and owned by Ensamble Studio, in Brookline, Massachusetts. The second recording of the evening highlights returning artist Brandon Patrick George, who is the flutist of the Grammy®-nominated Imani Winds, playing Bach’s Partita in A Minor for solo flute, Thorn by David Lang, and Air by acclaimed Japanese composer Tōru Takemitsu,whose legacy includes scores to close to 100 films. This performance was filmed in the Jerome Robbins Theater at the Baryshnikov Arts Center.

On Friday, August 20, two Tippet Rise favorites, cellist Arlen Hlusko and pianist Jenny Chen, return. Hlusko will showcase new works captured at the Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum in Queens, New York. The pieces were commissioned during the pandemic via Instagram and composed by Seth Cole, John Conahan, David Jaeger, Michelle Ross, and Nicholas Yandell. Jenny Chen offers a performance showcasing Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 10 in E Major and his Concert Study No. 3 in D-flat Major, “Un Sospiro,” as well as Chopin’s Barcarolle in F-sharp Major, recorded at the Blue Gallery in Midtown Manhattan in New York City.

On Saturday, August 21, the program is devoted to one of Schubert’s masterpieces, his Piano Sonata in B-flat Major, played by pianist Anne-Marie McDermott in the most unexpected of places—a tractor barn nestled in Colorado’s Vail Valley.

The festival culminates on Sunday, August 22 with two programs. The first is performed by The New Consort, a project-based, solo-voice ensemble directed by baritone Brian Mummert. The eveningincludes vocal works by the exiled Syrian composer, poet, and multi-instrumentalist Samih Choukeir arranged by Jordanian composer and vocalist Shireen Abu-Khader, madrigals by Gesualdo and Monteverdi, a piece by American composer Ted Hearne featuring a text from one of the hundreds of thousands military cables referred to as the Iraq War Logs, which is sung a cappella by Madeline Apple Healey, Rhianna Cockrell, Clifton Massey, Brian Mummert, and Nathan Hodgson. Pianist and composer Michael Brown closes the festival with a program featuring Chopin’s Impromptu in F-sharp Major, Mendelssohn’s Rondo Capriccioso, Ravel’s Jeux d’eau, Scriabin’s Poème in F-sharp Major, as well as a work of his own composition, Breakup Etude for Right Hand Alone.

Following their premieres, the films will be available to stream on-demand, for free on the Tippet Rise website. On September 4, they will be transferred to Tippet Rise’s YouTube channel where they will remain available to stream for free. Complete details and links to excerpts of the performances are available in the detailed schedule section below.

Tippet Rise & Friends at Home

The art center’s monthly online concert series Tippet Rise & Friends at Home will continue through the summer, presenting previously unreleased video streams of some of its most treasured concerts from past seasons. On June 10, flutist Jessica Sindell, oboist Alex Klein, clarinetist Mark Nuccio, horn player Daniel Hawkins, and bassoonist Frank Morelli perform works by Buyanovsky, Doráti, D’Rivera, and Ravel. On July 15, the Escher String Quartet plays Schubert’s String Quartet No. 15 in G Major. On August 12, pianist Yevgeny Sudbin offers a program of works by Scarlatti, Scriabin, and Tchaikovsky.

Each concert can be streamed for free beginning at 6pm MT on their respective date and will remain available on the Tippet Rise website. Some will feature special intermission content, including conversations with musicians and segments showcasing Tippet Rise’s outdoor sculptures and architectural structures and other scenes from the 12,000-acre art center. The streaming series, made possible by the art center’s cutting-edge in-house audio-video recording capabilities, is available on the Tippet Rise website at www.tippetrise.org/virtual-events.