|
 Katonah, NY - The 2009 Caramoor International Music Festival celebrates a long Independence Day weekend, July 2nd through July 5th, with performances by guitarist David Leisner, banjo sensation Béla Fleck, the Pacifica Quartet with pianist Jeremy Denk, and great American patriotic and popular music culminating in Caramoor’s first-ever dazzling display of fireworks.
The long weekend begins with Guitar in the Garden featuring the extraordinary guitarist David Leisner performing in the magnificent, flower-scented Sunken Garden with the lyricism of works by Villa-Lobos and Paganini, as well as his own compositions and the works of others, on Thursday, July 2nd at 7:30pm. Seating will be provided in the Sunken Garden, one of several major garden areas among Caramoor’s more than 90 acres. Audience members are also invited to bring their own lawn chairs or blankets and to extend the Caramoor experience by arriving early and enjoying a picnic. Bring your own or pre-order picnics from Caramoor’s exclusive caterer, Great Performances®, by calling 212.337.6055. In the event of rain, the concert will be moved to the Venetian Theater.
On Friday, July 3rd at 8:00pm in the Venetian Theater the world’s leading banjo virtuoso, Béla Fleck, brings his Africa Project to the Festival in an extraordinary banjo and vocal summit also starring internationally acclaimed vocalist Oumou Sangaré, popularly known as “The Songbird of the Wassoulou” after her ancestral homeland in Mali.
For The Africa Project, Béla Fleck traveled to Uganda, Tanzania, Senegal, Mali, South Africa, and Madagascar for collaborations with local musicians to explore the African origins of the banjo, the prototype of which was brought to American shores by African slaves. Transcending barriers of language and culture, Fleck found common ground with musicians ranging from villagers to international superstars, including the Malian diva Oumou Sangaré, to create some of the most meaningful music of his career. The journey resulted in Fleck’s most ambitious recording, Throw Down Your Heart, the third volume in his renowned Tales From the Acoustic Planet series. A companion documentary to the recording, also titled Throw Down Your Heart, had its New York City premiere in April at the IFC Center.
The instrumental and vocal pyrotechnics onstage will be matched by a brilliant nighttime display of fireworks on Saturday, July 4th at 8:00pm when the Festival celebrates the main event, Independence Day, with Pops, Patriots & Fireworks in the Venetian Theater. Singers Darius de Haas and Julia Murney, along with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s led by Michael Barrett, will perform Alan Menken hits from Disney films and Sousa marches, as well as music by Duke Ellington, George Gershwin, and other greats. Following the performance audience members will gather on the lawn for a dazzling display of fireworks.
Tickets for children under the age of 12 are half-price for this concert which is made possible, in part, by generous support from WHUD and WEBE. Great Performances®, will grill hamburgers and hot dogs on the picnic lawns from 5:00pm until the start of the concert. Ticket holders are also invited to bring their own picnics.
The weekend celebration concludes on Sunday, July 5th at 4:30pm with this year’s Grammy® Award winning string quartet and one of the hottest string quartets in the country, the Pacifica Quartet in a return engagement to Caramoor. The Quartet, which was Caramoor’s 2001-02 Ernst Stiefel String Quartet-in-Residence, teams up with Jeremy Denk, one of today’s most compelling young pianists, in a scintillating program including Dvořák’s Piano Quintet in A Major, Op. 81, as well as Ligeti’s String Quartet No. 1 (Métamorphoses nocturnes) and Mendelssohn’s String Quartet No. 1 in E-flat Major, Op. 12.
Audiences of all ages may enjoy the Pacific Quartet with Jeremy Denk in Caramoor’s Venetian Theater or from the picnic lawns as the second Caramoor Al Fresco event of the summer.
About the Artists
Michael Barrett is Chief Executive and General Director of the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts, where he is responsible for year-round administration and programming and for the Caramoor International Music Festival each summer. In 2003, building on a career of twenty-five years of artistic programming and performing experience, Mr. Barrett assumed his position at Caramoor, where he leads the artistic mission of the organization. In the last four seasons, Mr. Barrett has reaffirmed his reputation as an innovator. He has enhanced and implemented programming for a wide variety of ambitious music rarely heard in a festival setting. In 1988, he co-founded, with Steven Blier, the New York Festival of Song (NYFOS), which presents a diversity of thematic song recitals in New York City and beyond and, in 1992, co-founded the Moab Music Festival (MMF) with his wife, violist Leslie Tomkins. Mr. Barrett has been a guest conductor with the Orchestra of St. Luke's, New York Philharmonic, London Symphony, Israel Philharmonic and the Orchestre National de France, among others. He also has served as conductor, producer, and music director of numerous special projects, among them the world premiere of Volpone by John Musto at Wolf Trap in 2004; Hopper's Wife by Stewart Wallace and Michael Korie at the Long Beach Opera; and, most recently, Lucrezia and Bastianello, a double bill of one-act comic operas by William Bolcom and John Musto at Carnegie Hall and Caramoor.
Bridging the gap between music and theater, Darius de Haas' resume reads like a multifaceted road map of the performing arts. While pursuing a double major in music and theater at Columbia College, he worked with some of Chicago's finest theater companies including Northlight and The Goodman. A scholarship to study at The American Musical and Dramatic Academy brought him to New York. After graduating, he was cast as Daniel in the first national tour of Once On This Island. He made his Broadway debut in Kiss of the Spider Woman and went on to be featured in various Broadway productions including Lincoln Center's revival of Carousel, Rent, and Marie Christine. Darius de Haas has appeared in film and TV and his voice can be heard on the film soundtracks of Anastasia, Martin & Orloff, and the Oscar winning Chicago.
In 1998, Jeremy Denk won both the Young Concert Artists International Auditions and received a prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant. Over the past decade, the pianist's career has flourished and he has garnered critical acclaim for his engagements with leading orchestras and presenters nationwide. In addition to performances at Caramoor, Ravinia, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, and Spoleto Festival, he has appeared as soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra, the St. Louis Symphony, the Houston Symphony, the San Francisco Symphony, the Atlanta Symphony, the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and with many others. Mr. Denk made his New York recital debut at Alice Tully Hall in April 1997 as the winner of the Juilliard Piano Debut Award, and his Carnegie Hall recital debut with Beethoven’s Hammerklavier and the Ives Concord, MA sonata. Recent solo appearances include all-Beethoven and all-Bach recitals in Philadelphia, two programs at the Mostly Mozart Festival at New York's Lincoln Center, as well as recitals in Boston and Washington DC.
Béla Fleck is often considered the premier banjo player in the world. A New York City native, he picked up the banjo at age 15 after being awed by the bluegrass music of Flatt & Scruggs. While still in high school he began experimenting with playing bebop jazz on his banjo, mentored by fellow banjo renegade Tony Trischka. In 1980, he released his first solo album, Crossing the Tracks, with material that ranged from straight ahead bluegrass to Chick Corea’s “Spain.” In 1982, Mr. Fleck joined the progressive bluegrass band New Grass Revival, making a name for himself on countless solo and ensemble projects ever since as a virtuoso instrumentalist. In 1989, he formed the genre-busting Flecktones, with members equally talented and adventurous as himself.
Regarded as one of the world's leading classical guitarists, David Leisner’s superb musicianship and provocative programming have been applauded by critics and audiences around the world. His career as a guitarist began auspiciously with top prizes in both the 1975 Toronto and 1981 Geneva International Guitar Competitions. In the 1980s, a disabling hand injury, focal dystonia, interrupted his performing career in mid-stream and plagued him for 12 years. Through a pioneering approach to technique based on his understanding of the physical aspects of playing the guitar, Leisner gradually rehabilitated himself. Now completely recovered, he has once again resumed an active performing career, earning accolades wherever he plays. His recent seasons have taken him around the U.S., including his solo debut with the Atlanta Symphony, a major tour of Australia and New Zealand, and debuts and reappearances in Japan, the Philippines, Germany, Hungary, Switzerland, Austria, Sweden, Denmark, Ireland, the U.K., Italy, Czech Republic, Greece, Puerto Rico and Mexico.
Julie Murney made her Broadway debut in 2005 in the musical Lennon, for which she received a Drama Desk nomination. Her Off-Broadway credits include originating the role of Queenie in Andrew Lippa's The Wild Party at the Manhattan Theatre Club, opposite Brian d'Arcy James, Idina Menzel, and Taye Diggs, for which she received her first Drama Desk nomination. She was also seen in The Vagina Monologues, Crimes of the Heart, A Class Act, Time and Again, and First Lady Suite. She has been featured on television in Sex and the City, Ed, NYPD Blue, and various episodes of Law & Order. Julia Murney starred as Elphaba in the national touring company of the musical Wicked, a role she recently reprised on Broadway. Her debut solo album, I'm Not Waiting, was released in May 2006 on the Sh-K-Boom Records label.
Oumou Sangaré was born in 1968 in Bamako, the capital of Mali. Her family, though, was from Wassoulou, in the southwestern region of Mali. Sangaré is the leading female star of the Wassoulou sound which is based on an ancient tradition of hunting rituals mixed with songs about devotion, praise, and harvest played with pentatonic (five-note) melodies. Wassoulou is typified by a strong Arabic feel along with the sound of the scraping karinyang and fle, a calabash (gourd) strung with shells, spun and thrown into the air in time to the music. Sangaré most often sings about about love and the importance of freedom of choice in marriage, an issue she feels strongly about because her father had two wives. In 1986, the 18-year-old Sangaré toured Europe and the Caribbean with a 27-piece folkloric troupe, and at 21 she already had a huge hit in the album, Moussoulou (meaning "women"). In 1995 she toured around the world on the Africa Fete tour along with Baaba Maal, Boukman Eksperyans, and Femi Kuti.
The Orchestra of St. Luke's is America's foremost and most versatile chamber orchestra. Formed at the Caramoor International Music Festival in the summer of 1979, the Orchestra evolved from the St. Luke's Chamber Ensemble (1974), with Ensemble members forming the Orchestra's artistic core as principal players. The Ensemble and the Orchestra still co-exist today, and the collaborative chamber aesthetic that is the St. Luke’s hallmark has resulted in consistent critical acclaim, both for mastery of a diverse repertoire spanning the Baroque to the contemporary, and for vibrant music-making of the highest order. In addition to serving each summer as the Orchestra-in-Residence at Caramoor, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s participates in such Carnegie Hall events as three-concert series in the Isaac Stern Auditorium, the Choral Workshop and Carnegie Family Concerts, in addition to numerous artistic collaborations with other New York City cultural organizations.
Formed in 1994, the Pacifica Quartet – Simin Ganatra and Sibbi Bernhardsson, violins; Masumi Per Rostad, viola; and Brandon Vamos, cello – swept top prizes in several leading international competitions including the Concert Artists Guild Competition and the Naumburg Chamber Music Competition. Most recent honors include the 2009 Grammy® Award for "Best Chamber Music Performance" for its recording of Elliott Carter's String Quartets Nos. 1 & 5 and being named 2009 Ensemble of the Year by Musical America. The Pacifica also won the 2003 Cleveland Quartet Award, and in 2006 it was awarded a prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant, only the second chamber music ensemble ever to be selected. The Pacifica Quartet tours extensively throughout the United States, Europe, Asia, and Australia, performing in the world's major concert halls in cities such as Paris, London, Amsterdam, Vienna, and Tokyo.
Tickets
Tickets for all events may be purchased at the Caramoor Box Office, 914.232.1252 or ordered online at www.caramoor.org.
Groups of 16 or more may purchase discounted tickets by contacting Matthew Scarella at 914.232.5035 ext. 266 or
This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it
.
Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts is located at 149 Girdle Ridge Road in Katonah, New York.
About Caramoor
Caramoor is the legacy of Walter and Lucie Rosen, who built their summer home – now known as the historic Rosen House at Caramoor – and filled it with their treasures. Walter Rosen was the master planner for the Caramoor estate, bringing to reality his dream of creating a place to entertain friends from around the world. Their musical evenings were the seeds of today’s Caramoor International Music Festival. Realizing the pleasure their friends took in the beauty of Caramoor – the house with artworks spanning the centuries from B.C.E. to the 20th-century, the gardens, and the musical programs on summer evenings – in 1946 the Rosens established a public charity to open Caramoor to the community.
Lucie Rosen survived her husband by seventeen years. During those years, she expanded the Music Festival: the Spanish Courtyard was used as a setting for musical events, as it is today, and, under her direction, the great stage of the Venetian Theater was built.
Caramoor is often described as “a Garden of Great Music” where audiences are invited to come early, explore the beautiful grounds, take a tour of the Rosen House, visit the gift shop, enjoy a pre-concert picnic, and discover beautiful music in the relaxed settings of the Venetian Theater, Spanish Courtyard, Music Room of the Rosen House, and the magnificent gardens. With its unique heritage, Caramoor remains a place where magical summer days and nights are shared and enjoyed by thousands. “Caramoor is the loveliest Festival of them all.” – The New York Times
Concert Venues, Art and Gardens
Concerts take place in two outdoor theaters: the 1,714-seat, acoustically superb Venetian Theater and the more intimate, romantic Spanish Courtyard. Caramoor is more than just music – there is beauty at every turn. The Rosens were prolific collectors and the Rosen House contains artworks spanning the centuries from B.C.E. to the 20th-century, including furniture, tapestries, sculpture, paintings, textiles, porcelain, and jade in twenty rooms that are open to the public. There are entire rooms that were imported from European palaces and villas making the Rosen House one of just five mansions in the country that imported and incorporated entire rooms. On Thursdays and Fridays, afternoon tea is served in the Summer Dining Room, overlooking the charming Spanish Courtyard.
Caramoor’s gardens are also well worth the visit and include nine unique perennial gardens. Among them are a Sense Circle for the visually handicapped, a Butterfly Garden, Tapestry Hedge, and Iris and Peony Garden, which may be enjoyed on one’s own or seen on a guided tour.
Enjoy a Picnic at Caramoor
Extend your Caramoor experience by arriving for concerts early and enjoying a picnic amidst the beautiful gardens. Bring your own picnic or pre-order from Great Performances® by calling 212.337.6055.
Caramoor Al Fresco
Introduce your family to Caramoor and enjoy the sounds of the concert from the picnic lawns for only $10.00 per ticket on the following Sunday afternoons at 4:30pm: June 28 (Tiempo Libre), July 5 (Pacifica Quartet with Jeremy Denk), July 12 (Brentano String Quartet), July 19 (Paquito D’Rivera), and July 26 (Vladimir Feltsman).
Rosen House
Guided tours of the historic Rosen House at Caramoor are provided from Wednesday through Sunday, 1:00pm-4:00pm with the last tour at 3:00pm. On Saturdays, during the Festival, tours are given from 1:00pm-5:00pm, with the last tour at 4:00pm. Tickets are $10.00 (children 16 and under free).
GETTING TO CARAMOOR
Caramoor is easy to get to by car and mass transportation. The Caramoor Caravan is available for Bel Canto at Caramoor performances.
By car from the West Side of Manhattan and New Jersey, take the Saw Mill River Parkway north to Katonah. Exit at Route 35/Cross River. Turn right and, at the first traffic light, make a right turn onto Route 22 south. Travel 1.9 miles to the junction of Girdle Ridge Road. Follow the signs to Caramoor. (For detailed directions call 914.232.5035 and press 2, or online at www.caramoor.org). Parking at Caramoor is free.
By train, take the Harlem Division of the Metro-North Railroad to Katonah, New York. Taxi service from the station to Caramoor (5 minutes away) is available.
Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts is located at 149 Girdle Ridge Road, Katonah, New York.
 |
