With hits like “Passionate Kisses” and “He Thinks He’ll Keep Her,” Mary Chapin Carpenter has won five Grammy Awards (with 16 nominations), two CMA awards, two Academy of Country Music awards and is one of only fifteen female members of the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. Over the course of her acclaimed career, Carpenter has sold over 16 million records. In 2020, Carpenter recorded two albums – “The Dirt And The Stars,” released in August 2020, and “One Night Lonely,” recorded live without an audience at the legendary Filene Center at Wolf Trap in Virginia during the COVID-19 shut down, and nominated for “Best Folk Album” at the 64th Grammy Awards in 2022.
Of the new album “The Dirt And The Stars,” produced by Ethan Johns (Ray LaMontagne, Paul McCartney, Kings of Leon) and recorded entirely live at Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios in Bath in southwest England, Carpenter quotes the writer Margaret Renkl, “ ‘We are all in the process of becoming.’ That doesn’t stop at a certain age. To be always a student of art and music and life, as she says, that, to me, is what makes life worth living. The songs are very personal and they’re difficult in some ways, and definitely come from places of pain and self-illumination, but also places of joy, discovery and the rewards of self- knowledge. They arrived from looking outward as much as inward, speaking to life changes, growing older, politics, compassion, #metoo, heartbreak, empathy, the power of memory, time and place. There are many themes, but they all come back to that initial truth that we are all constantly ‘becoming’ through art and expression.”
Emily Barker
Emily Barker is an award-winning singer-songwriter, best known as the writer and performer of the theme to the hugely successful PBS Masterpiece crime drama Wallander starring Kenneth Branagh.
Her latest album—A Dark Murmuration of Words—was produced by Greg Freeman and recorded at StudiOwz, a converted chapel in the Welsh countryside. Lyrically probing, by turns both dark and optimistic, Barker searches for meaning through the deafening clamour of fake news and algorithmically filtered conversation, delivering a timely exploration of the grand themes of our age through the lens of what it means to return “home.” On its release, A Dark Murmuration of Word hit number 1 on the Official Americana Album chart in the UK and has garnered widespread acclaim.
Barker has released music as a solo artist as well as with various bands and collaborations including The Red Clay Halo, Frank Turner, Vena Portae, Marry Waterson and Applewood Road(with whom she released a remarkable album of original songs recorded live around a single microphone, dubbed “flawless” by The Sunday Times) and has written for film, including composing the soundtrack for Jake Gavin’s lauded debut feature Hector starring Peter Mullan and Keith Allen.
Michael Christie, conductor and Music Director Emeritus
Michelle Cann, piano
“Fate, that fatal force” is the driving theme of Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony, with one of the most brilliant and virtuosic finales in all of music; Music Director Emeritus Michael Christie returns to conduct this mighty symphony. 2022 Sphinx Medal of Excellence recipient Michelle Cann performs Ravel’s glittering Piano Concerto in G as well as Florence Price’s Piano Concerto in One Movement; The Philadelphia Inquirer declared Cann’s recent performance “exquisite in both the Liszt-like technical sparkle and probing humanity of Price’s writing.”
Program:
Maurice Ravel, Piano Concerto in G Major
Florence Price, Piano Concerto in One Movement
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Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Symphony No. 4 in F Minor, Op. 36
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What do you get when you mix a boy, a duck, a cat, a wolf — and an orchestra? You get Peter and the Wolf, Prokofiev’s beloved symphonic fairytale that uses the playful story of a wolf on the prowl to introduce young listeners to the instruments of the orchestra. The 2023 Festival Family Concert, conducted by Kalena Bovell and featuring vocals by Jennifer Bird-Arvidsson, also includes an upbeat suite from Bizet’s Carmen,Eric Whitacre’s musical setting of the children’s classic Goodnight Moon, and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s festive overture celebrating his African culture, Danse Nègre.
Program:
Georges Bizet, Carmen Suite No. 1 for orchestra
Eric Whitacre, Goodnight Moon (2011)
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, “Danse Nègre” from African Suite, Op. 35, No. 4
Sergei Prokofiev, Peter and the Wolf, Op. 67
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In the first evening of a two-part preview performance, 2023 Artist-in-Residence Joshua Bell performs selections from Elements, an unparalleled work for violin and orchestra in five movements, each written by a different acclaimed composer. In this concert, Bell performs the first three movements of Elements: “Fire” (composed by Jake Heggie), “Air” (Jennifer Higdon); “Water” (Edgar Meyer); “Ether” (Jessie Montgomery); and “Earth” (Kevin Puts). The program closes with a beloved favorite by Debussy; the musical brushstrokes of La Mer create Impressionistic sketches of the sea.
(A co-commissioned project with five major orchestras, Elements will receive formal premieres around the world beginning in September 2023. Hear it at the Festival first!)
Program:
The Elements
Suite for Violin and Orchestra
“Fire” by Jake Heggie
“Ether” by Jessie Montgomery
“Water” by Edgar Meyer
(Commissioned by Joshua Bell)
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Claude Debussy, La Mer
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In his first appearances as 2023 artist-in-residence, the one and only Joshua Bell performs Bruch’s Violin Concerto. The great 19th century violinist Joseph Joachim, to whom the composer dedicated this masterpiece, considered this concerto to be “the richest, most seductive” of all German violin concertos. Bruch’s Violin Concerto has become one of the most legendary works for the instrument and is an exquisite vehicle for Bell’s showmanship. The second half features Mussorgsky’s instantly recognizable Pictures at an Exhibition, a suite of musical paintings inspired by the sketches of the composer’s close friend Viktor Hartmann. The program opens with Sphinx Medal of Excellence recipient Carlos Simon’s Motherboxx Connection, the first movement of his Tales: A Folklore Symphony for orchestra; in Simon’s words the motherboxx is “an all-knowing entity that is aware of the multi-faceted aspects of blackness.”
Program:
Carlos Simon, “Motherboxx Connection” from Tales: A Folklore Symphony for orchestra (2021)
Max Bruch, Violin Concerto No. 1 in G Minor
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Modest Mussorgsky, Pictures at an Exhibition (orch. Ravel)
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