Sorry, everyone, for my long silence here. It has been a very busy time for the last 18 months, culminating in the very major 20th anniversary celebration season of the Bellingham Festival of Music. We celebrated in grand style, indeed, with the west coast premiere of a new work for cello and orchestra, Dreamsongs, by Aaron Jay Kernis. This wonderful work, co-commissioned in honor of the Festival's 20th by Anacrusis Productions, was written for our favorite and magnificent young cellist, Joshua Roman, who gave a stunning performance with yours truly and the Bellingham Festival Orchestra, to open our season. It was wonderful working on this project with Aaron and Joshua, who, along with Dreamsongs, were warmly received by our audience and orchestra. It was a great pleasure, too, to collaborate again with some of our Festival favorite guest artists, Garrick Ohlsson, Pepe Romero, and our wonderful three sopranos in excerpts from Rosenkavalier: Frederica Von Stade, Heidi Grant Murphy and Katie Van Kooten. We also had the pleasure of introducing the young violinist, Ray Chen. With all of them, we traversed a magnificent and varied artistic landscape celebrating our wonderful virtuoso orchestra, playing repertoire from Haydn and Beethoven and Brahms, right up through Kernis. It was stunning to hear at our 20th anniversary party that in our twenty years of 5 orchestral concerts per season, we have performed in the neighborhood of 640 works.
After a brief pause and the beginning of the new fall-winter-spring season, I now find myself in the midst of a very special and wonderful experience, returning as guest conductor to my alma mater, Indiana University, where I'm preparing the University Orchestra for it's first concert of the season. I'm not sure I can adequately describe to you the joys of, after 46 years, being back on this campus, at this great school of music and among so many valued colleagues with whom I've had the joy of working over the years, making music with these bright and shining talented young musicians, so in love with life AND SO IN LOVE WITH AND INSPIRED BY MUSIC. They are an inspiration and they are the future of our art. We needn't fear. The reason we don't know how they will make it, is that we are not them. They will make it. We are here to help, guide and to support in the formative stages. After that, in the final analysis, the credit will all be theirs. They are the new wave and I do mean wave - maybe, tidal wave! You should hear this Brahms #1 after only three rehearsals. Actually, those of you within striking distance of Bloomington, Indiana, have the chance to experience what I'm talking about on Sunday, September 29 at 3pm, on campus at the Musical Arts Center (affectionately known as the MAC). I hope you can be there to hear Wagner's Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan and Isolde and the Brahms Symphony #1 performed by these magnificent young artists.
Now, I have to confess that after a wonderful dinner with Andre Watts and his wife, Joan, night before last at a, to me, new and wonderful restaurant in Bloomington named Tallent, last night (being Friday) I absolutely had to relive old times and indulged myself, once again, in my old student life Friday night ritual at Nick's for beer and pizza. It looked just the same (!) and I could almost see my old roommate, Jerry, sitting across the booth from me. What a trip this is! Will catch up again soon.
