The University of Arizona Fred Fox School of Music will present “Music + Festival 2015: Bernstein, Adams, Berio” on Oct. 17, 18 and 24.
Directed by UA composer Daniel Asia, the eighth annual composers festival will feature a symposium, concerts and a film.
Leonard Bernstein was “a composer, conductor, educator, humanist and religious thinker. He placed his musical activities in the context of what it meant to be an American Jewish composer, how to understand the times, humanity’s relation to God and jazz,” says Asia. He describes John Adams’ post-minimalist music as “rhythmically intense and full of the energy of pop music,” while Luciano Berio’s music “is delicate and effervescent, sonorous and always in flux.”
Welsh baritone Jeremy Huw Williams will be the guest artist. Highlights of the festival will include Bernstein’s “Suite from West Side Story,” “Mass” and “Chichester Psalms”; Adams’ “The Wound Dresser,” based on Walt Whitman’s poem, and a song set from “Nixon in China;” and Berio’s “Folk Songs” and “O King.”
The symposium and four concerts, which are free, will be held at various locations in the School of Music. For a schedule, visit music.arizona.edu. The film “On the Waterfront,” with music by Bernstein, will be shown Saturday, Oct. 24 at 7:30 p.m. at the Fox Tucson Theatre, 17 W. Congress St. Film tickets are $7 (free for children under 12).
