Iceland & Czech Pieces Close Out Two-Season Collaboration in Abilene
We’re heading back to Abilene this October for a special musical-visual program that explores two very different European countries. The series is part of our multi-season collaboration with the Phil which previously saw a concert titled “Visions of America” and showcased our pieces The Eternal Struggle and Rodeo!. That collaboration included an evening masterworks and four coinciding educational concerts. A noteworthy addition to that concert was that the narrator for Lincoln Portrait (The Eternal Struggle piece) was Abilene’s Mayor Anthony Williams. Still serving as mayor today, Williams is the first African-American to hold that office in the city’s 141-year history.
In 2022, we’ll be presenting a similar Masterworks/Educational concert format at the Abilene Convention Center alongside Maestro David Itkin and the Phil, with one major twist: the visual themes will be coming from across the Atlantic—from Iceland and the Czech Republic.
On the first half of the program is Sagaland, which showcases the sublime landscapes of Iceland. Of course, Iceland has been a wildly popular topic for awhile, but consider combining Iceland’s staggering beauty with one of the most transcendental classical works of the 20th Century: Vaughan Williams’s Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis.
For the Sagaland production, Westwater Arts Multimedia Artist Nicholas Bardonnay crisscrossed the volcanic, high-latitude island for 2 months to photograph all of the imagery. Iceland is only about the size of Kentucky but it contains starkly contrasting landscapes—or as Nicholas likes to describe them as, “the greenest of green and the bleakest of bleak.” With huge waterfalls, fjords, black-sand beaches, glaciers, geothermal pools and spongy moss-filled lava fields, Iceland is a visual treat by any stretch of the imagination. A show of hands during Nicholas’s pre-concert talks always reveals that Iceland is on many people’s bucket lists.
Covering the whole second half of the program we’re taking the audience much further into the heart of Europe with our Czech Journeys visual piece. In this case, our artist Nicholas has choreographed the visuals to Dvořák’s dramatic Symphony No. 7. Over its four movements the music paints a vivid picture of the composer’s passionate feelings toward his Czech homeland, and fittingly the visuals are a sweeping and impassioned tour through this fascinating, and storied country.
Czech Journeys was was originally commissioned to accompany Smetana’s Má vlast by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and the Toronto Symphony, and has since seen performances from Louisiana to Liverpool. For the visual production, Nicholas and retired-Westwater Arts founder, James Westwater, spent over two months photographing many facets of the Czech Republic from the bustle and medieval grandeur of Prague to the rolling countryside and charming towns of Bohemia and Moravia.
It will be so fantastic to share these pieces with the kids (and their adult counterparts!) during the last week of October!
