“Visions” to Premiere in Montana
November is Native American Heritage Month, and we have a very special concert series planned with Montana’s Glacier Symphony. Maestro John Zoltek has put together a thoughtful program that features three of our visual concertos—one a world premiere! There are several other unique guest performers and artists that will make this an incredible experience for the audience at the GSO’s newly designed McLaren Hall.
Firstly, the world premiere. The Glacier Symphony will be premiering our latest piece, Visions, a heartfelt tribute to America’s First Peoples that combines the unmistakable, sepia-toned images of legendary photographer Edward Curtis with timeless music by Vaughan Williams, Five Variants of ‘Dives and Lazarus.’
At the turn of the 20th Century, Curtis began his all-consuming life’s work—coincidentally not too far from the Glacier Symphony’s home in Kalispell—to photograph, study, and live amongst over 80 Native American tribes from the U.S./Mexico border to Alaska. Three decades later—through WWI, the Spanish Flu, and several personal setbacks—Curtis completed one of the largest ethnographic and artistic projects of all time. Westwater Arts visual artist Nicholas Bardonnay curated and choreographed the new piece from the extensive digital archives of Curtis’s photographs that span those three decades of artistry and devotion. The performances with the GSO will usher in a completely new way of seeing this impressive volume of work alongside the energy of the modern orchestra. Read more about the new production here.
Tying into the theme set by Visions is another piece, Reflections of the Spirit, that portrays the ancient cliffside cities once occupied by the Ancestral Puebloan (Anasazi) peoples, but in this case, through contemporary color panoramic photographs. Known as “America’s pyramids,” the ruins at Mesa Verde, Canyon de Chelly, Wupatki, and the remarkable Chaco Canyon, to name a few, are some of the best preserved reminders in the country that the people, land, cultures and lifeways have been vastly different from our modern perspectives. The Reflections piece was created by retired Westwater Arts founder, James Westwater, when he traveled extensively in the Southwest’s Four Corners region to photograph all of the material on location. The resulting choreographed piece set to Barber’s stirring Adagio for Strings originally premiered with the Saint Louis Symphony.
The third visual piece on the program, National Park Suite, needs no introduction. The national parks are beloved places for most audiences members…and most Americans, in general. What might go overlooked, and what makes this piece especially relevant to this concert series, is that many of the places that are now called “national parks,” such as nearby Glacier National Park, have long been sacred and life-giving places for a vast array of Native American tribes. In this way, National Park Suite, through its contemplative montage of 30+ national parks and national monuments, weaves a story of the places that unite us all, both past and present, as Americans. This particular visual rendition is paired with Dvořák’s lovely Largo movement from his New World Symphony. That visual-musical pairing is also the one Nicholas premiered with the National Symphony at the Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts to celebrate the 2016 Centennial of the National Park Service.
If we were to leave it at that, this would still be quite the memorable concert series, however, the GSO has several other notable things planned. For one, Maestro Zoltek has composed a new musical work for this concert, The Hunting Moon, which will feature world flutist Suzanne Teng. The composition is inspired by the poetry of University of Montana professor and Salish Kootenai poet, Heather Cahoon. Additionally, the concert will be opened by ceremonial songs performed by Blackfeet singer, Kevin Kickingwoman. It will also include periodic installations featuring the artwork of painter Monica Gilles-BringsYellow.
For anyone living in the Flathead Valley, or Western Montana for that matter, this is a not-to-be-missed concert!
