GRACE LYDENFestival Focus writer

The Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS) brings back its popular Baroque evening this year with an extra treat: Handel’s Water Music Suite, a work as beloved today as the day it premiered on July 17, 1717, when Britain’s King George I commanded that it be repeated three times. The program will be led and performed by harpsichordist, conductor, and period perfor-mance expert Nich-olas McGegan at 8:30 pm on Thurs-day, July 5, in Harris Concert Hall.

McGegan agrees with the king, in that no matter how many times he plays it, Water Music is always fresh.

“Personally, I never get tired of playing good mu-sic over and over again—there are always new things to discover,” he says. “It is easy to enjoy in the first hearing, but it is of such quality that it will repay repeated hearings, too.”

McGegan exudes a joyful effervescence that inspires both the audience and the musicians he conducts.

“Nicholas has an absolutely infectious love of music that he is able to transmit to other people,” says Asadour Santou-rian, AMFS vice president for artistic

administration and artistic advisor. “Of course, he is a Baroque/Classical spe-cialist, but I would say, above all, he is a music specialist.”

The special event will also include Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 1 in C major and Piano Concerto in D minor and Viv-aldi’s Concerto for Two Cellos in G minor, Bassoon Concerto in A minor, and Con-certo for Two Violins in D major.

Santourian says one of McGegan’s greatest gifts is his ability to communi-cate with perform-ers and instruct them in the adap-tation of articula-tion, vibrato, and bowing to mimic the instruments of the Baroque Era (1600–1750).

At that time, “the wind instruments had much fewer keys, and the horns and trumpet had

no valves,” McGegan says. String instru-ments had a lighter, softer, more delicate sound.

But McGegan helps performers find that sound, and in a limited number of rehearsals.

“He is able to translate and transfer his knowledge of Baroque performance practice to modern instruments and

GRACE LYDENFestival Focus writer

Chris Botti’s albums have sold more than three mil-lion copies, but the jazz trumpeter still says the greatest rewards of playing are the energy and excitement of live performance.

“There is nothing more satisfying than playing a live show,” Botti says. “When you record an album, it can take a long time to know if people like it, but when you perform live, it’s immediate. When the audience walks out of that theater, and they feel that they’ve been moved emo-tionally, that’s the greatest thing in music.”

The five-time Grammy-nomi-nated artist will perform at 8:30 pm Saturday, July 7, in the Bene-dict Music Tent. The concert is presented by the Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS) and Jazz As-pen Snowmass (JAS).

Botti plans to play selections from hit records such

as “Chris Botti in Boston” and “Italia,” but also new material from his latest studio album: “Impressions.” He is particularly proud of the most recent release, which explores thirteen different impressions of a ballad and features guest artists such as Herbie Han-

cock and Vince Gill.“I think that the overall tex-

ture and feel of the album is something I’ve always tried to do,” Botti says. “We wanted to take the listener on a journey but also keep them in that same mode or mood, and I think we were successful at doing that.”

The Festival and JAS work together regularly, but the col-laboration has special mean-ing during an AMFS season

that is inspired by the theme, “Made in America.”“There is no looking at American music without jazz,”

Supplement to The Aspen Times Vol 23, No. 3

Nicholas McGegan conducting AMFS students in the Festival’s 2011 Baroque Evening. McGegan is a renowned harpsichordist, conductor, and Baroque period expert.

Baroque Evening Features ‘Water Music Suite’

Buy tickets now! (970) 925-9042 or www.aspenmusicfestival.com

Cross-genre artist and phenomenal trumpeter Chris Botti will take the Benedict Music Tent stage at 8:30 pm on Saturday, July 7.

PHOTO COURTESY OF CHRIS BOTTI

Nicholas has an absolutely infectious love of music that he is able to transmit to

other people.

Asadour SantourianAMFS Vice President for Artistic Administration

and Artistic Advisor

FESTIVAL FOCUS

Chris Botti Crosses Genres, ‘Loves to Play’

YOUR WEEKLY CLASSICAL MUSIC GUIDE

Monday, July 2, 2012

See BAROQUE, Festival Focus page 3

ALEX IRVIN / AMFS

See BOTTI Festival Focus page 3

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Call ahead to reserve your seats on the day of the concert.

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ALEX IRVIN / AMFS

When the audience walks out... and they feel that they’ve been moved emotionally, that’s the greatest thing in music.

Chris Botti

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GRACE LYDENFestival Focus writer

Mason Yu, now twenty-one years old, was in second grade and taking a piano technique exam when he first heard another student play the violin. He fell in love with the sound. He went to his parents that day to ask for violin lessons.

“I rarely spoke up in terms of what I wanted to do, and that was one of the things I spoke up about,” says Yu, whose parents agreed to adding a second instrument.

Yu comes to Aspen this summer as a fellowship student of the Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS). The colors of his playing will ring throughout the Benedict Music Tent at 6 pm on Wednesday, July 11, when he performs Hindemith’s Violin Concerto with the Aspen Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Jane Glover.

The appearance as a soloist is a result of being selected as the AMFS’s Dorothy DeLay Fellow. This is Yu’s seventh summer coming to the Festival.

Yu still plays piano, and it is one of his two minors at the Cleveland Institute of Music. He studies violin there with Paul Kantor, also an AMFS artist-faculty member, and he will be a senior in the fall.

But Yu’s interests are not limited to music. He is also minoring in economics. When he was in high school, Yu wrote and designed for the newspaper, and he enjoyed physics.

“Academics were a bigger part of the time that I spent

than music, though music was a substantial part,” Yu says. “I didn’t really know exactly what I wanted to do.”

Though Yu now wants to pursue solo violin performance, he was not always so sure. His friends and family in Irvine, California, assumed he would go into music, but Yu also applied to regular universities. He decided on the Cleveland Institute of Music in part because he worried that music is difficult to go back to if not pursued from a young age.

Since going to Cleveland, Yu has taken advantage of the conservatory’s partner school, Case Western Reserve University, taking classes in topics such as computer

programming. But recently, he has become more and more certain his future lies with the violin.

“The past year has been a crossroads in how I think about music,” Yu says.

In April, his quartet went to New York on a self-arranged trip to study with Mark Steinberg, first violinist in the Brentano String Quartet, for two days. Steinberg devoted four hours a day to Yu’s chamber group, called the Omer Quartet, and Yu says they

were “blown away” by his intellect, his philosophy of giving freedom to music, and a general focus on “what the music is really about.”

“Something opened up,” Yu says. “I had always been serious, but I wasn’t sure in my inner self if I really liked what I was doing or not. Some people know they clearly love music and they really want to do it, but [before the quartet trip this year] that wasn’t me, yet.”

Steinberg inspired Yu to delve deeper into the Hindemith concerto, a rarely performed work that Yu first heard of in a twentieth-century music history course and asked to play. The piece was last performed at the Festival in 1985, and Yu is glad to be bringing it back to the stage in Aspen.

“Hindemith’s music can sometimes be severe, and people might approach it severely and objectively, but

Music Festival Competition Winner Performs July 11

The thing about music that attracts

me is the never-ending search.

Mason YuAMFS 2012 DeLay Fellow

See YU Festival Focus page 3

PHOTO BY LYDIA YU

Mason Yu

Monday, July 2, 2012 | Page 3Supplement to The Aspen Times FESTIVAL FOCUS: Your Weekly Classical Music Guide

GRACE LYDENFestival Focus writer

Vladimir Feltsman is returning to Aspen, which he calls his “home away from home,” at 6 pm Friday, July 6, to play Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5, “Emperor,” with the Aspen Chamber Symphony. The concert will be conducted by Jane Glover in the Benedict Music Tent.

The “Emperor” concerto was the last piano concerto Beethoven wrote, and Asadour Santourian, AMFS vice president for artistic administration and artistic advisor, calls it the biggest work the composer ever wrote for the instrument.

“It is the fully fledged peak of his powers as a composer,” Santourian says. “It is the showcase of all showcases for the pianist, and yet, with all of Beethoven’s music, you have to be idiomatically and expressively correct. The ‘Emperor’ demands more sound, more power, more of everything, and yet you can’t cross the border of the Classical Era into the Romantic Era.”

Both Santourian and Alan Fletcher, president and CEO of the presenting organization, the Aspen Music Festival and School (AMFS), are looking forward to hearing Feltsman play it.

“He is a complete artist; he can do anything,” Fletcher says. “‘Emperor’ is one of those pieces with out-sized personality, and that is good for Feltsman.”

He notes the piece is grandiose from the start.“Here is a piece where I think you can clap after the

first movement,” Fletcher says, half in jest.But while some performers take the piece’s nickname

to be referring to them, Feltsman hopes the audience will be listening to Beethoven, not Feltsman.

“There are two types of musicians, two types of artists,”

Feltsman says. “The first type basically play themselves. They come, they show what they think about this music, what they can do, their technique, their flamboyancy. The second type of artist is a tool through which music speaks. I flatter myself with the idea that I belong to the second type.”

Santourian has always been impressed by Feltsman’s artistry, finding that even when Feltsman plays standard repertoire, he brings something new to the work.

“He will bring a musician’s thoughtfulness, as he always does, a certain amount of elegance, a nuance that is individual to him, and despite the fact that we may all know all the notes, there will be surprising areas and dark corners of the piece that Feltsman will illuminate for us,” Santourian says.

Feltsman is also performing at an intimate benefit dinner at the home of an AMFS trustee on July 5. Tickets and additional information about this private event are available at the AMFS Box Office.

Feltsman performed a Mozart concerto with Glover a few years ago and says he looks forward to sharing the stage with her again. Glover came to the Festival in 2007 to conduct the U.S. premiere of Eliogabalo, a recently recovered Baroque opera by Cavalli, and she has been coming ever since.

This season, she is conducting two orchestral concerts.“In both programs, she’s giving us the kinds of

programs she excels in,” Santourian says.The July 6 program also includes two Mozart

symphonies and Benjamin Britten’s A Time There Was... op. 90, an orchestration of English folk tunes that takes its title from the opening line of Thomas Hardy’s nostalgic poem, “Before Life and After.”

Baroque: Audience Also LearnsContinued from Festival Focus page 1

modern instrumentalists in very quick and suc-cinct ways,” Santourian says.

Alan Fletcher, president and CEO of the Festival, says this understanding of Baroque style and per-formance practice is essential training for a clas-sical musician.

“These days just about every classical orchestral performer needs to understand the aesthetic of Ba-roque and how it’s different,” Fletcher says. “Tonal production is different. Balance is different. Experts like Nic McGegan really accomplish a lot of teaching, both for the people who are taking part—typically a mixture of students and faculty—but also just for everybody who goes.”

Audiences who have been to events featuring McGegan at the Festival before will recall that he provides commentary while the stage crew shifts instruments between pieces.

“It’s better than any program note we can offer because it comes from his experience,” Santourian says. “He’s full of anecdotes and is extraordinarily

engaging.”The performing ensemble will also include Is-

raeli pianist Inon Barnatan, who was featured last week in A Gershwin Celebration, the opening con-cert of the Festival’s season. Barnatan will perform Bach’s Piano Concerto in D minor.

“I’m having a little bit of a Bach fest this summer,” says Barnatan, who is also performing Bach concerti in Vail and Santa Fe. “I am immers-ing myself in this world. This is great music. It’s Bach; it’s the father of music as we know it.”

Hundreds of years after their composition, Bach’s works still appeal to performers and audi-ences alike, which Barnatan sees as a tribute to the music’s complexity and true beauty.

“It’s amazing to me that they’re still so compel-ling, these pieces,” Barnatan says. “A lot of these concertos were written and rewritten for different instruments and put into cantatas and all sorts of other pieces and yet, the music manages to work so beautifully in any form it takes.”

Feltsman to Play ‘Emperor’ Concerto

Aspen Music Festival and School Box Office Hours

Harris Concert Hall: 9 am through the intermission of the

evening concert, daily.

Wheeler Opera House: 9 am–5 pm daily.

says AMFS President and CEO Alan Fletcher.But Botti takes inspiration from other genres, as

well: Leonardo Amuedo, the Brazilian guitarist from “Impressions,” will appear with Botti at the Tent on July 7, along with Grammy-winning vocalist Lisa Fischer, who toured with the Rolling Stones for fif-teen years. The first track on “Impressions” is Botti’s interpretation of Chopin’s Prelude No. 20 in C minor, and Botti says his classical training “abso-lutely” helped his current musical pursuits.

“My practice regimen is the same as it has been for the past twenty-five years,” Botti says. “I do the same routine that I learned from my trumpet teacher, William Adam, whom I studied with in college. It’s very disciplined with long tones, arpeg-gios, chromatic scales, and classical exercises.”

Asadour Santourian, AMFS vice president for artistic administration and artistic advisor, says that Botti’s love of all music is at the heart of his popularity with such a range of audiences.

“He loves to play music on his instrument, and through his instrument, he loves to communicate with people,” Santourian says. “That is ultimately the key, isn’t it—the ability of an artist to communi-cate with his audience through performance.”

Botti: Jazzat the FestivalContinued from Festival Focus page 1

this concerto is expressive,” he says.Yu has been reading Hindemith’s book, The

Craft of Musical Composition, and studying the composer’s background. Hindemith was exiled from Germany for not being a Nazi and wrote the concerto in Switzerland, which is perhaps why one can hear both nostalgia and hints of sadness in the work, Yu says.

Though Hindemith is the first composer whom Yu has studied this avidly, he will not be the last.

“The thing about music that attracts me is the never-ending search,” Yu says. “You can’t ever get too deep in it. You can’t ever answer the question of each piece. There is no correct answer, but you still try to find it, and it’s the ultimate challenge.”

Yu: Searching for AnswersContinued from Festival Focus page 2

PHOTO COURTESY OF VLADIMIR FELTSMAN

Buy One, Get One Free!Buy one ticket, get one free to the season’s first performance of the Aspen Philharmonic Orchestra at 6 pm, Thursday, July 5, in the Benedict Music Tent.

Mei-Ann Chen leads a concert featuring Brahms’s Symphony No. 2, and AMFS artist-faculty member Anton Nel plays MacDowell’s romantic Piano Concerto No. 2 in D minor.

Present for One-time use. No cash value.