‘Put it all together’ and check out the IU School of Music’s annual Summer Music Festival

By Laura Baich

This year’s schedule includes five major series: the Symphonic Series, Outdoor Band Concerts, IU Opera Theater, Chamber Music Series and the new Song Recital Series. Tickets are available at the Musical Arts Center box office, all TicketMaster outlets, by phone through TicketMaster at 812-333-9955, and online (see Web site at end of story).

The Symphonic Series features three performances by the Festival Orchestra. This group comprises outstanding students and distinguished members of the School of Music faculty. The special combination of students and their mentors performing under the leadership of acclaimed guest conductors Michael Stern, Julius Rudel, and Carl St. Clair will make for exciting summer concerts. Also included in the Symphonic series is a performance by the Symphony Orchestra, conducted by the School of Music’s own Thomas Baldner.

Sondheim’s ‘Putting It Together’ a nod to composer’s 45th year in musical theater.

Audiences can enjoy Bloomington’s tranquil summer evenings at the outdoor band concerts, which feature programs of marches, popular favorites, solos and light classics. Stephen W. Pratt, Douglas Stotter and David C. Woodley will conduct free concerts in Jacobs Plaza, located in the heart of the music area of the Bloomington campus.

After numerous requests to update the popular 1976 revue Side by Side by Sondheim, Stephen Sondheim developed Putting It Together, IU Opera Theater’s first production of the summer.

A compendium of Sondheim’s music and lyrics, Putting It Together explores the variety of relationships between men and women—friends and lovers—and features both familiar and novel songs from virtually all of his works beginning with A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum through Into the Woods. Human relationships are illuminated with the wit, candor and style that have made Sondheim the pre-eminent living composer for the American musical.

To celebrate Sondheim’s 45 years of work in the musical theater, the IU Opera Theater plans to showcase two more works by this acclaimed composer and songwriter. Next spring, his first work and collaboration with Leonard Bernstein, West Side Story, will be performed as the finale to the 2002-2003 regular season, and A Little Night Music, first seen on Broadway in 1973 and the winner of two Tony Awards, will be staged during next year’s Summer Music Festival.

Set in a Vienna suburb in the 1870s, Die Fledermaus—IU Opera Theater’s second production—is a farce filled with the music that was popular in the grand ballrooms of the time: lush waltzes, polkas, and schottisches. The plot concerns Rosalinda, who dons a mask to attend a gala party where she finds romance with a count, who turns out to be her husband. Austria experienced a disastrous stock market crash just before the premiere of Die Fledermaus in April 1874, causing a backlash against the aristocracy.

The economic disaster could have spelled doom for the Strauss creation, but the charm of his music won out, and the operetta continues to be a favorite today.

The Chamber Music Series features faculty and guest artists in a more intimate setting. Audiences will have the opportunity to hear the Mendelssohn and Colorado string quartets, a piano duo featuring Charles Webb, dean emeritus of the school, and Wallace Hornibrook, professor emeritus; and a String Academy faculty concert. The Penderecki Quartet, Beaux Arts Trio and Sagee Trio will return to perform concerts as well.

The Song Recital Series is a new addition to this year’s Summer Music Festival. This series features the talents of former IU student Heidi Grant Murphy and Swedish baritone Håkan Hagegård.

http://www.music.indiana.edu/publicity/summer_fest/index.html