This August, Alan Gilbert begins his residency at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival in New Mexico for its 50th anniversary season. Inspired by the landscape of southwestern Utah, Olivier Messiaen’s epic and otherworldly Des canyons aux étoiles… (“From the Canyons to the Stars…”) was written to mark the bicentennial of the Declaration of Independence.
He reprises the piece, a twelve-movement, 90-minute work with a world-class quartet of instrumental soloists – Gilmore Artist Award-winning pianist Kirill Gerstein, horn player Stefan Dohr, Juilliard percussion chair Daniel Druckman and MET Orchestra principal percussionist Gregory Zuber – together with a 40-piece orchestra on August 13.
The performance crowns a weeklong residency at Santa Fe. The late György Ligeti would have celebrated his 100th birthday this year, and Gilbert conducts Gerstein and a 21-piece orchestra in the festival premiere of the great Hungarian modernist’s Piano Concerto on August 6 & 7, before playing violin in two chamber works by Mozart: the second “Prussian” string quartet and String Quintet in G-minor, on August 9.
Learn more about Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival here.
See Alan’s full schedule here.