CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – A first-time performance by pianist Ian Hobson, and performances by jazz artist Jon Faddis, violinist Stefan Milenkovich and Grammy Award winners Nathan Gunn and the Pacifica Quartet will be among the highlights of the fourth annual Allerton Music Barn Festival, Sept. 2-6.
A violinist performs.
Each year, the festival offers music lovers a medley of world-class artists and performances in the rustic setting of a refurbished, 19th-century Dutch hay barn at the University of Illinois’ Allerton Park near Monticello, Ill.
Opening night, Sept. 2, at the festival will be “Cabaret Night,” showcasing U. of I. School of Music faculty members – and spouses – Nathan Gunn and Julie Jordan Gunn. They will perform selections from their most recent compact disc, “Just Before Sunrise,” which includes songs and lyrics from artists such as W.H. Auden, Billy Joel, Sting and Jimmy Van Heusen.
A professor of voice as well as an alumnus of Illinois, baritone Nathan Gunn has performed at many of the world’s leading operas houses and recently won his fourth Grammy Award for his recording of Benjamin Britten’s “Billy Budd.”
Pianist Julie Jordan Gunn, a professor of accompanying in the School of Music, is a music director, vocal coach and song arranger who has performed in the Carnegie Hall Pure Voice Series and at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall.
American jazz trumpeter Jon Faddis, the artistic director of the Chicago Jazz Ensemble, will raise the rafters in a reunion performance with faculty members from the U. of I.’s jazz program on the second evening of the festival, Sept. 3, in a program titled “Remembrances.”
A special treat for music lovers this year will be the Sept. 4 premiere of “Anima Liberata,” the first work to be commissioned for the festival by Karl Kramer, the director of the School of Music. “Anima Liberata” will be performed by the Pacifica Quartet and Friends, and the program also will include Dmitry Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 7, Opus 108, and Ernst Chausson’s Concert, Opus 21.
The Pacifica Quartet, which is quartet in residence at the School of Music and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, won a 2009 Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music Performance for its recording of Elliott Carter’s String Quartets Nos. 1 and 5. The quartet also was named 2009 Ensemble of the Year by Musical America.
All four members of Pacifica – Sibbi Bernhardsson, violin; Simin Ganatra, violin; Masumi Per Rostad, viola; and Brandon Vamos, cello – are faculty members in the School of Music.
Reynold Tharp, a professor of composition-theory at the U. of I. whose works have been performed throughout the U.S. and in Europe, is composing “Anima Liberata” for soprano, cello and piano. Joy Pierce Mathews, a poet, writer and violoncellist who studied at the Cleveland Institute of Music and Juilliard School of Music, is the librettist.
“It’s been an honor partnering with the very gifted composer Reynold Tharp to create a new work for the Allerton Festival,” Pierce Mathews said. “With the libretto – ‘Poems on the Latin Contemplations of Life’ – for ‘Anima Liberata,’ I wanted to write accessible poetry that communicates the beauty of Daoist thought about the interconnectedness of all matter, the relationship between humanity and the cosmos.”
On Sept. 5, there will be both morning and evening performances.
At 10 a.m., Milenkovich and the Allerton Bach Choir and Soloists will perform with the Allerton Festival Orchestra in a program titled “Johann Sebastian Bach,” conducted by U. of I. music professor Fred Stoltzfus.
Milenkovich – an internationally renowned violinist and professor of violin at the U. of I. whose audiences have included U.S. President Ronald Reagan, former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and Pope John Paul II – will perform Sonata No. 1 in G minor for solo violin. Featured performers will include music professors Ollie Watts Davis, soprano; Jerold Siena, tenor; and soprano Desiree Hassler, a doctoral student in voice.
During the evening performance, festivalgoers will be transported from the pastoral grounds of Allerton Park to Andalusia when acclaimed pianist Ian Hobson performs – for the first time – the complete “Iberia,” the masterwork by Spanish composer Isaac Albéniz.
An acclaimed conductor and pianist, Hobson is the Swanlund Professor of Piano and the Center for Advanced Studies Professor of Music at the U. of I.
The program for the final evening of the festival, Sept. 6, will be “Evening Serenade.” School of Music faculty members will perform Mozart’s “Grand Partita” and Richard Strauss’s “Symphony for Wind.” Robert Rumbelow, the director of the U. of I. Bands and the Brownfield Professor of Music, will conduct.
The complete schedule and more information about the performances are available on the festival website.
Last year, the Music Barn concerts sold out, so festivalgoers are advised to purchase tickets in advance through the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts box office, 217-333-6280 or www.krannertcenter.com. Ticket prices for individual concerts are the same as last year – $26 for adults, $20 for students and senior citizens. Weekend passes are available for $130 for adults, $100 for students and seniors.
Bistro-style food and beverage service will be available again this year on the main floor of the Music Barn prior to each performance and during intermissions.
Festivalgoers are advised to use Allerton Park’s south entrance off Allerton Road; a bridge closure inside the park has made the Music Barn inaccessible from the park’s north entrance off Old Timber Road.
