Festival Orchestra

Mason Bates brings back Devil’s Radio, an orchestral piece commissioned by the Sun Valley Music Festival for its 30th Anniversary in 2014. This year also celebrates the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing with Passage, a piece Bates wrote for mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke that incorporates excerpts from John F. Kennedy’s “moonshot” speech. Finally, fly beyond the moon to Venus, Mars, and Jupiter in Holst’s character study of the solar system, The Planets.

Life, death, and rebirth. Mahler’s modest ambition to express the totality of the human condition journeys through love, hope, nostalgia, humor, despair, a face-melting shriek of death, and finally a glorious resurrection. Does it succeed? Alasdair Neale recalls his first hearing at age 13: “It rocked my world – I had never imagined music could have that level of visceral, emotional impact.”

A special tribute to the heroes in healthcare, education, transportation, food service, social work, and emergency services who worked so hard to improve our lives these last two years. Program to be announced from the stage

American Composer Missy Mazzoli, writing about her piece, These Worlds in Us, noted that “we accumulate worlds of intense memory within us.” Mozart must have had a headful of memories when he completed his clarinet concerto in 1791, a couple months before he died. It pairs grace and gravity in equal measure, with the clarinet hinting at a sense of sadness behind its beauty. In the summer of 1873, Brahms recalled a tune he had heard a few years before, attributed to Haydn, and composed his lovely variations based on it.