This week’s opening of the 2024 Colorado Music Festival comes with the announcement that music director Peter Oundjian has signed a new, five-year contract, extending a collaboration with the Boulder-based concert presenter that dates back to 2018. It is very big news indeed; perhaps historic.
Remember that Oundjian is also the principal conductor with the Colorado Symphony in Denver where he takes up the baton for key performances and helps guide the programs that the ensemble plays over the course of its entire season. The maestro has been there full-time since 2022 and it is, by nearly all accounts, such a happy relationship that he is likely to remain there for years to come.
Oundjian’s deep involvement with two of the top three classical entities in the state (let’s say the third is the Aspen Music Festival, artistically speaking), and over such a long period of time, makes it hard to imagine another individual who will have more personal influence over classical music in Colorado in the first half of the 21st century.
Of course, anything can happen in show business, but Oundjian is building a legacy here that will be hard to match. He is up to it.
Oundjian is an international figure. He was born in Toronto and raised in Surrey, England, and started his career as a teenager playing concerts across Europe. He studied at the Juilliard School in New York and gained wide fame during his 14-year gig playing violin with the globe-trotting Tokyo String Quartet.
Then, facing an injury to his left hand, he made an unexpected pivot to conducting. Most famously, he helmed the Toronto Symphony Orchestra for 14 years, part of a podium career that has had him working with top-level orchestras across several continents.
He still does those duties far and wide, but he is also now a Coloradan. He lives here and works these two key jobs, and if that does not make him one of us, consider this: He suffered significant injuries to his ribcage last winter due to a skiing accident. He has earned his Colorado badge.
“It’s dangerous sometimes, but it’s lovable,” Oundjian, 68, said in an interview last week.
Oundjian is a busy guy, but he insists his patchwork conducting career makes sense and that his dual roles in Colorado are complementary.
The Colorado Symphony tends to program in a way that is traditional and formal and built for mass consumption. Boettcher Concert Hall, where it mainly performs, has 2,700 seats and the orchestra aims to fill them as much as possible over the course of the three-day weekend concert lineups that make up its major offerings.
That orchestra programs classical music more than 38 weeks a year, and Oundjian gets plenty of help with the artistic work.
“We have fabulous collaborations, and I can bring in, you know, Marin occasionally, or Andrew, or Jeff, and all my friends,” he said.
He is referring to Marin Alsop, Jeffrey Kahane and Andrew Litton; all three are past conductors in Denver and longtime associates of Oundjian.
Oundjian conducts a greater percentage of shows in Boulder, but the setting is more intimate and the season just five weeks long, so he gets to play at a different level. During his time there, the fest’s standing has improved considerably and it has developed a signature style of presenting and commissioning work that has fewer commercial pressures.
“I think it’s become the symbol of the festival that we focus very much on keeping a balance between music of yesterday, but also very much the 21st century,” he said.
One good example this season is the July 21 premiere of a commissioned concerto written by of-the-moment composer Gabriela Lena Frank. It is the rare concerto to feature a string quartet in the “soloist” position. Boulder’s Grammy-winning Takács Quartet will be featured.
The evening’s titles also include Florence Price’s 1951 “Adoration,” arranged for strings, and Joan Tower’s 1991 Concerto for Orchestra. That means the show centers around three female composers and pieces that are generally unfamiliar to audiences. Tower, who is 85, will be in attendance at the concert, held at Chautauqua Auditorium.
Oundjian, who has been pushing the composer’s work internationally, has confidence the local crowds will show up. “This seems to me to be a part of the country where there’s a rapidly increasing interest in the arts,” he said. “The audiences are just so responsive.”
This year’s fest will also feature two versions of “Scheherazade.” The first is the well-known Rimsky-Korsakov piece, set for July 25. The other is the lesser-appreciated take by Maurice Ravel, set for Aug. 4. It is the kind of daring duplication that challenges the box office but delights music fans by giving them a deeper understanding of the source material.
Oundjian has taken the adventurous step of programming a tribute to two composers on the same night. The July 14 concert celebrates Bruckner’s 200th birthday and Schoenberg’s 150th birthday.
Bruckner’s 19th-century romanticism and Schoenberg’s 20th-century dissonance could not be more different. Oundjian believes the program, despite its variety, will be “deeply spiritual and extraordinarily beautiful.”
And it might only be possible at a place like the Colorado Music Festival, where a bit of adventurous music curation, conceived and conducted by a music director on a mission, can make for a unique Sunday night of entertainment.
“This is just so odd and unusual, I wanted to give it a try,” said Oundjian. “But, I can’t imagine anyone will regret having come to it.”
If you go
The 2024 Colorado Music Festival season runs July 5-Aug. 4 with performances at the Chautauqua Auditorium. Info at 303-440-7666 or coloradomusicfestival.org.
