Kenneth Woods oversees his third season as Artistic Director of the Boulder-based Colorado MahlerFest, which takes place from Monday, May 14 – Sunday, May 20, 2018, curating a wide-ranging schedule of chamber and symphonic concerts, lectures, master classes and symposia under the banner “Recovery and Renewal.” Throughout the Festival’s 31st season, Woods and his colleagues explore works by Mahler contemporaries Brahms, Enescu, Strauss and Zemlinsky, as well as premieres by young American composer Jesse Jones and the distinguished, late English composer John McCabe. Colorado MahlerFest XXXI culminates with performances of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde and Sibelius’ Symphony No. 7 in concerts dedicated to the memory of Stan Ruttenberg, MahlerFest’s long-serving President who oversaw an extraordinary period of growth for the internationally acclaimed festival.

“Recovery and Renewal” encapsulates periods in the featured composers’ lives when they were coping with individual crises, striving to recover their creative energies and finding a sense of renewal in the process. Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde was composed in the wake of his fateful summer of 1907 when he was forced from his position of director of the Vienna Opera, lost his daughter Maria to scarlet fever and was diagnosed with the heart disease to which he would succumb in 1911. The autobiographical overtones of one of Mahler’s final works encompass grief and doom, retrospection and renewal. Woods draws a parallel with Sibelius’ final Symphony, a work the composer struggled to complete but with which he ultimately triumphed. Brahms, Enescu, Strauss and Zemlinsky all experienced their own occasional bête noires but found repose through late-in-life composition. The themes of McCabe’s Pilgrim echo those found in Mahler’s Das Lied. Young American composer Jesse Jones – who is also a noted pianist, conductor and bluegrass musician – personifies renewal with the freshness of his performances and compositions, both of which will be on display during MahlerFest XXXI. Read more about “Recovery and Renewal” on Kenneth Woods’ perceptive blog here.

Following a rehearsal on Monday, May 14, 2018 that is free and open to the public, the first performance of Colorado MahlerFest XXXI, on Tuesday, May 15, 2018, features Jesse Jones and bassist/composer Craig Butterfield performing an adventurous instrumental folk-chamber program grounded in American roots music, jazz, world music, and the classical music tradition. Jones is, according to Woods, “the only composer I know of to be a virtuoso mandolin player as well as a conductor and pianist.” Performances of the duo can be sampled here.

Chamber music concerts on Wednesday, May 16, 2018 and Friday, May 18, 2018, feature works by Johannes Brahms, George Enescu, Jesse Jones, Richard Strauss, Alexander Zemlinsky and the U. S. premiere of John McCabe’s Pilgrim in its original string-sextet form. Strauss’ Sextet, which begins his final opera Capriccio, opens the program. The work finds the composer in an introspective mood, with his international public career in the rearview mirror and feeling distraught by mid-20th century events and the cultural collapse of the world around him. Zemlinksy, who fell under Mahler’s shadow both personally and professionally, is represented by his youthful Three Pieces for Cello and Piano. Brahms, upon finishing his String Quartet in G, Op. 111, reportedly remarked “I have worked enough; now let the young ones take over.” As Brahms often turned to gipsy and folk music for inspiration, so did Enescu in his Violin Sonata No. 3 with echoes of his native Romania. McCabe’s Pilgrim, in the composer’s words, was “a journey of self-discovery, and a recovery or renewal of faith … ideas which have a strong interest for me, not in religious terms but in their application to every aspect of human life.” Rounding out the program is Jesse Jones’ Phantasma for solo cello, written in 2010-11. The chamber music program showcases the Colorado MahlerFest’s designated “Festival Artists,” a team of leading instrumentalists who serve as both principal players of the MahlerFest Orchestra and chamber musicians throughout the festival. This year’s Festival Artists include Jorja Fleezanis, former Concertmaster of the Minnesota Orchestra; violin soloist and composer Karen Bentley-Pollick; Parry Karp, cellist of the Pro Arte String Quartet; and clarinetist Daniel Silver, Artist-in-Residence at Colorado University, among others.

In his inaugural season as Artistic Director of the Colorado MahlerFest, Woods launched the Mahler Conducting Fellowship Program. This year attracted an unprecedented number of applicants from Europe, Asia, North and South America and Australia. The 2018 Fellows – American Edo Frenkel; Hong Kong-born Pak Lok, Alvin Ho; and Bulgarian Delyana Lazarova – will work as assistant conductors to the MahlerFest Orchestra throughout the festival, conduct in the public master class on Thursday, May 17, 2018 with Kenneth Woods, and work with MahlerFest’s team of festival artists, composers and symposium speakers. Further information about the MahlerFest Conducting Fellowship and this year’s Fellows can be found here.

The Colorado MahlerFest’s annual Symposium takes place on Saturday, May 19, 2018, with Kenneth Woods joined by Professor Stephen E. Hefling, Vice President of the Internationale Gustav Mahler Gesellschaft in Vienna; Ofer Ben-Amots, Chair of Colorado College’s Department of Music; Jack Sheinbaum, Associate Professor of Musicology at the University of Denver’s Lamont School of Music; David Auerbach, President of the Colorado MahlerFest; and Juha Mäkikalli, Honorary Consul of Finland for the State of Colorado.

Colorado MahlerFest XXX culminates with orchestral concerts on Saturday, May 19 and Sunday, May 20, 2018, with Kenneth Woods conducting the Colorado MahlerFest Orchestra in Sibelius’ Symphony No. 7, and Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde with soloists mezzo-soprano Stacey Rishoi and tenor Brennan Guillory.

In 2016, Kenneth Woods became only the second Artistic Director of the Colorado MahlerFest which was founded in 1988 by Robert Olson as an annual celebration of the life and music of Gustav Mahler. Colorado MahlerFest is one of only two North American organizations to receive the Gold Medal of the International Gustav Mahler Society, the other being the New York Philharmonic. The composer’s music has been a lifelong source of inspiration for Kenneth Woods, and has played an important part in his career. He has conducted acclaimed performances of the symphonies and songs across the Americas and Europe. His first recording of Mahler’s music, Schoenberg’s chamber ensemble versions of Das Lied von der Erde and Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (Somm Records, 2011), received an IRR Outstanding rosette from International Record Review. Off the podium, Woods is in demand as an essayist and speaker on Mahler’s life and music. He has given talks and participated in panel discussions on Mahler for the BBC and NPR, and was the official blogger of The Bridgewater Hall’s Mahler in Manchester (UK) series in 2010-11. In his native US, Woods achieved national media recognition as conductor of the Pendleton-based Oregon East Symphony for staging Redneck Mahler, an event that galvanized the community of a small, western Rodeo town and gave “Mahler the ride of his life” (The Oregonian).

For all media enquiries, interview and image requests, please contact Melanne Mueller, melanne@musiccointernational.com, +44 (0) 7788 662 461 or +1 917 907 2785

For more information about Kenneth Woods please visit http://kennethwoods.net/blog1/

For more information about the Colorado MahlerFest please visit http://www.mahlerfest.org

About Kenneth Woods
Hailed by Gramophone as a “symphonic conductor of stature,” conductor Kenneth Woods has worked with the National Symphony Orchestra (USA), Royal Philharmonic, Cincinnati Symphony, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Royal Northern Sinfonia and English Chamber Orchestra. He has also appeared on the stages of some of the world’s leading music festivals, such as Aspen, Scotia and Lucerne. In 2013, he took up a new position as Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the English Symphony Orchestra, succeeding Vernon Handley. In 2015 he was made the second Artistic Director of the Colorado MahlerFest, the only American organization other than the New York Philharmonic to receive the Gold Medal of the International Gustav Mahler Society.

Under Woods’ leadership since 2013, the English Symphony Orchestra has gained widespread recognition as one of the most innovative and influential orchestras in the UK. During this period the ESO received Classical Music Magazine’s “Premiere of the Year” plaudit for both Donald Fraser’s orchestration of the Elgar Piano Quintet in 2015 and John Joubert’s opera Jane Eyre in 2016. Jane Eyre also marked the ESO’s first foray in to opera, and the premiere and subsequent Somm Recordings CD were both received with international critical acclaim including a string of five-star reviews, Disc of the Month nods and Joubert’s opera was also named the Birmingham Post classical music highlight of 2016. Woods has also helped make the ESO a major force in the recording industry after a ten-year hiatus between ESO discs. His first disc with the ESO was volume one in the Complete Piano Concertos of Ernst Krenek, selected by The Times of London as one of their “Best Recordings of 2016.” The ESO’s recording of Fraser’s acclaimed Elgar orchestrations on AVIE was a Classic FM Disc of the Month, and more recently, Nimbus have released “An Eventful Morning in East London” with Harriet Mackenzie, a collection of 21st Century Violin Concertos welcomed with a five-star review in The Times of London. In 2016, Woods and the ESO launched their 21st Century Symphony Project, an ambitious multi-year effort to commission, premiere and record nine new symphonies by leading composers, with the triumphant premiere of Philip Sawyers’ Third Symphony.

Kenneth Woods’ transformational work as an orchestra builder first came to international attention during his tenure as Principal Guest Conductor of the Stratford-upon-Avon based Orchestra of the Swan from 2010-4. His leadership there lifted the orchestra to a new level of world-wide critical acclaim and audience popularity and produced a significant string of recordings. He and the Swan recorded the first complete cycle of the symphonies of Austrian composer Hans Gál, paired with those of Robert Schumann for AVIE Records. This series was among the most successful classical recording projects in recent years, highlighted in National Public Radio’s All Things Considered, Performance Today, BBC Radio 3, the Sunday New York Times, the Sunday Telegraph and Washington Post. It also won the Diapason d’or in France and was an Editor’s Choice in Gramophone. Among his other OOTS recordings are Schoenberg’s chamber ensemble versions of Das Lied von der Erde and Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (for Somm) by Gustav Mahler, which won the coveted IRR Outstanding rosette from International Record Review, and “Spring Sounds, Spring Sea” (for MSR), a MusicWeb ‘Record of the Year’. Other highlights include orchestral music of Philip Sawyers (another MusicWeb ‘Record of the Year’) for Nimbus, music of Brahms and Schoenberg for Somm, and a disc of contemporary trumpet concerti by John McCabe, Robert Saxton and Deborah Pritchard with trumpeter Simon Desbruslais for Signum.

A widely read writer and frequent broadcaster, Woods’ blog, A View from the Podium, is one of the 25 most popular classical blogs in the world. He has spoken on Mahler on NPR’s All Things Considered and is a regular speaker on BBC radio programmes. Since 2014, he has been Honorary Patron of the Hans Gál Society.

MahlerFest XXXI
Monday, May 14 – Sunday, May 20, 2018
Boulder, Colorado

Monday, May 14, 2018
7:00 – 10:00 pm
Open Rehearsal
Macky Auditorium
University of Colorado
1595 Pleasant Street
Boulder, CO 80309
Free event

Tuesday, May 15, 2018
12:00 noon – 1:00 pm
Folk Chamber Music Concert
Jesse Jones multi-instrumentalist and composer
Craig Butterfield double bass
Boulder Public Library
1001 Arapahoe Avenue
Boulder, CO 80302
Free event

6:00 – 10:00 pm
Open Rehearsal
Macky Auditorium
University of Colorado
1595 Pleasant Street
Boulder, CO 80309
Free event

Wednesday, May 16, 2018
7:30 pm
Chamber Music Concert I
Richard Strauss (1864 – 1949) Sextet from Capriccio, Op. 85
John McCabe (1939 – 2015) Pilgrim for string sextet
Johannes Brahms (1833 – 1897) Clarinet Quintet in B minor, Op. 115
Daniel Silver clarinet
Jorja Fleezanis, Karen Bentley Pollick violins
Erika Eckert, Lauren Spaulding violas
Parry Karp, Andrew Brown, Kenneth Woods cellos
Dairy Center for the Arts
2590 Walnut Street
Boulder, CO 80302
Tickets $24, $18, $10

Thursday, May 17, 2018
1:30 – 3:30 pm
Conducting Master Class
Gustav Mahler (1860 – 1911) Das Lied von der Erde (chamber version by Arnold Schoenberg and Rainer Riehn, 1983)
Atonement Lutheran Church
685 Inca Parkway
Boulder, CO 80303
Free event

7:00 – 10:00 pm
Open Rehearsal
Macky Auditorium
University of Colorado
1595 Pleasant Street
Boulder, CO 80309
Free event

Friday, May 18, 2018
2:00 pm
Chamber Concert II
George Enescu (1881 – 1955) Sonata No. 3 for Violin and Piano in A minor, Op. 25
Jesse Jones (b. 1978) Phantasma for Solo Cello
Alexander Zemlinsky (1871 – 1942) Three Pieces for Cello and Piano
Johannes Brahms (1833 – 1897) Sonata No. 2 for Cello and Piano in F major, Op. 99
Karen Bentley Pollick violin
Parry Karp cello
Jennifer Hayghe piano
The Academy
970 Aurora Avenue
Boulder, CO 80302
Free event

6:00 – 10:00 pm
Open Dress Rehearsal
Macky Auditorium
University of Colorado
1595 Pleasant Street
Boulder, CO 80309
Free event

Saturday, May 19, 2018
9:00 am – 3:30 pm
Symposium
Stephen E. Hefling – Case Western Reserve University (Emeritus)
Ofer Ben-Amots – Chair, Department of Music – Colorado College
Kenneth Woods – Artistic Director and Conductor, Colorado MahlerFest
Jack Sheinbaum – Lamont School of Music – University of Denver
David Auerbach – President, Colorado MahlerFest
Juha V. Mäkikalli – Honorary Consul of Finland, Colorado
Imig Music Building
University of Colorado
1020 18th Street
Boulder, CO 80302
Free event (lunch $15)

7:30 pm (pre-concert lecture at 6:30 pm)
Orchestral Concert – The Stan Ruttenberg Memorail Concert
Jean Sibelius (1865 – 1957) Symphony No. 7 in C major, Op. 105
Gustav Mahler (1860 – 1911) Das Lied von der Erde
Stacey Rishoi mezzo-soprano
Brennen Guillory tenor
Kenneth Woods conducter
Colorado MahlerFest Orchestra
Macky Auditorium
University of Colorado
1595 Pleasant Street
Boulder, CO 80309
Tickets $48, $35, $20

Sunday, May 20, 2018
3:30 pm (pre-concert lecture at 2:30 pm)
Orchestral Concert
Jean Sibelius (1865 – 1957) Symphony No. 7 in C major, Op. 105
Gustav Mahler (1860 – 1911) Das Lied von der Erde
Stacey Rishoi mezzo-soprano
Brennen Guillory tenor
Kenneth Woods conducter
Colorado MahlerFest Orchestra
Macky Auditorium
University of Colorado
1595 Pleasant Street
Boulder, CO 80309
Tickets $48, $35, $20