Sprightly

The Rivers Festival came to an end on June 9 th , although the onstage activities seemed to take a week off for a Haydn/Martinu/Scriabin program that had nothing to do with rivers, as far as I could tell. Music directors conduct what they want, when they want to, and the rest of the season kind of takes shape around that. However, among other things going on that week, there was some sort of outdoor concert which the MD took part in, and also a bunch of brass players went down the local river in a boat ( He got a real pretty mouth ain't he? - insert your favorite quote from deliverance here. I don't think Dueling Banjos arranged for Tuba and Bass Trombone made it onto the program, but who knows, I wasn't there, and since the nice web-page devoted to the festival has disappeared, everything I'm writing is based on very imprecise recollection).   To be honest, I ducked out that week for some much needed relief in order to play a set of concerts with a local period in...

Rivers Festival, May 9 – June 9     After two weeks of the Rivers Festival, it is hard to determine if we are headed up or down stream. Whatever direction, the journey has had its interesting moments. In spite of the minor drought of audience members, the Festival deserves credit for at least attempting to find some connection to the world outside the concert hall. Heaven knows we need some of that. For those interested in more background information, a handsome website has been put together. Go to {redacted} so.org and look for the link to the Rivers Festival.   Although talking about classical music programming has about as much relevance as a couple of Byzantine priests arguing over which moldering object in the reliquary might be the most holy, I'll risk putting a toe in those waters by saying I have appreciated the Festival for bringing a few seldom heard pieces to the stage. The usual dead, male, European composers will all still be dead, male, and European wh...