Charles Ives Music Festival Presents 250 Years Of The American Sound

The Charles Ives Music Festival (CIMF) celebrates the legacy of composer Charles Ives and brings American classical music to Ridgefield and Fairfield County.Through a professional artist concert series, CIMF presents performances of wonderfully inventive and captivating music.

This summer's season celebrates America250 through an exploration of 250 Years of the American Sound.In this special year, our season draws on the incredible artistry of our world-class artists to reflect through music the many distinct cultures, traditions, and people that constitute America. Each program this season is based on a major genre of American music.

"American Classical" – Sunday, July 27^th - 4:00 PM - Lounsbury House, Ridgefield, CT
The concert program includes works that together form a classical "backbone" of American music.Before the vanguard generation of Copland, Bernstein, Barber, Gershwin, Ives, and Still, a generation of 19th century American musicians and composers was forging a new sound based in European romanticism (Arthur Foote and the "Boston Six") and in the folk tradition of freed slaves, who carried folk song forward into improvisation and eventually the blues and jazz."American Classical" explores this music and its immediate evolution in works by Foote, Gwyneth Walker and George Walker, alongside pan-American and European voices— Heitor Villa-Lobos and Benjamin Britten—that paralleled and shaped the American sound.

"Anthems, Bluegrass, and Folk" – Thursday, July 30^th - 7:00 PM - Keeler Tavern Museum & History Center, Ridgefield, CT
This concert pairs anthems alongside works inspired by folk and bluegrass, an indispensable American genre that informs much of American concert music. Works by Derek Bermel, Andrew Davis and George Meyer are borne out of the folk tradition and composer Osvaldo Golijov utilizes folk music from the Jewish tradition, all exemplifying a composition practice inherent to American music: taking folk music and transporting it into the concert hall. Barber's Adagio for Strings, one of the most famous American "anthems," is a step further in that this iconic work is not folk music, but is a beautiful summation of the American sound, to which folk music is a foundational pillar.

"Music for the Theater" – Monday, August 3^rd – 7:00 PM – First Congregational Church, Ridgefield, CT
This program is a full theatrical experience spanning dance, the experimental, and the mid-century American golden era. Just prior to Stravinsky's immigration to the U.S. in the fall of 1939, he wrote “Dumbarton Oaks”, a work that has been choreographed for ballet numerous times over. Nearly 60 years later, Osvaldo Golijov wrote Last Round, which he refers to as a sublimated tango. Taken together, these two works exemplify the influence of a melting pot of various types of dance on American theater and American music, primed for it by its early roots in jazz. Downstream of Ives, Cowell, Cage and the other modernists is an entire genre of experimental theater that evolved in the music of George Crumb, whose string quartet Black Angels involves screams and bowing crystal glasses. The percussion world, due to its inherent physical nature, embraced experimental theater as a cornerstone of percussion performance, as exemplified by Laura Kaminsky's solo marimba work Ruminations. The most iconic American theater of all is musical theater, and its most iconic voice may be Leonard Bernstein, whose big, generous, sardonic, Broadway sound comes out in Prelude, Fugue and Riffs.

"Rhapsody, Rock and Roll" – Saturday, August 8^th – 6:30 PM – Ives Concert Hall, Danbury, CT
While rock and roll is a cornerstone American musical genre, it's often seen as the polar opposite of classical music. "Rhapsody, Rock and Roll" subverts that by fusing the two together in a concert of rock and roll-inspired music and American rhapsodies, which are rhapsodic either in name, concept, or both. Missy Mazzoli's and Derek Bermel's pieces do what would have once been unthinkable — place an electric guitarist in the middle of a chamber ensemble and write what can only be considered rock and roll "classical." Paul Frucht’s work Rhapsody, Jon Cziner's Sick Beats, and Bobby Ge's Music of Innocence and Experience generate excitement and enthusiasm through rhapsodic heart-throbbing rhythmic energy. The CIMF summer concert series is capped off with George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, an original American cross-genre rhapsody that is both a summation of and predecessor to so much musical influence that is inextricable from American music and cultural identity.

For tickets and concert information, visit https://www.charlesivesmusicfestival.org/upcoming-concerts

The mission of the Charles Ives Music Festival is to honor the legacy of Charles Ives by bringing American music to the Fairfield County area, a community that is home to one of America’s most famous composers. CIMF concerts regularly feature dynamic and unique artists performing works of 20^th and 21^st-century American composers, and music that transcends the traditional boundaries of classical music.CIMF also provides interactive educational events, centered around the exploration of chamber music, for both children and adults in our community.As a program of the Western Connecticut Youth Orchestra, CIMF furthers the WCYO mission to educate and inspire young musicians through the study and performance of classical and contemporary musical works, participation in enrichment activities, and engagement with the community.