By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
The organizers of the 4(19) Festival want people to see how entertaining and engaging a Saturday night in Toledo Ohio can be despite what John Denver thought.
Festival organizers Scott Boberg, the Toledo Museum of Art’s manager of programs and audience engagement, and Merwin Siu, artistic administrator for the Toledo Symphony Orchestra, confront head-on the image of Toledo as a city in a stupor promoted by the late singer-songwriter. Saturday Night in Toledo Ohio is the theme for the festival’s Saturday night shows, which will extend beyond 10 p.m. when supposedly the city streets are rolled up. (See program details below.)
The festival features the original work of 19 composers with ties to the area code. It extends from Friday, Aug. 9, at 6 p.m. through Sunday afternoon, Aug. 11, mostly in the museum with the GlasSalon as the focal point and then a late night Saturday show at Bellwether at Toledo Spirits, 1324 N. Superior St. Having a show in a local distillery bar truly captures the spirit of the event, said Boberg.
The festival features ticketed and free events. That’s necessary, Boberg said, to have some ticketed performances to generate revenue to help pay for the festival. On the other hand,“we wanted this summer festival that have points of access.”
The composers included a range of age, gender, and ethnicity. Diversity was an important factor in the selection. While many of the featured composers are still living and working in the area, some have moved on including Pulitzer Prize winner Jennifer Higdon, a Bowling Green State University graduate.
BGSU composer Elainie Lillios, who will have six works performed during the festival, stated: “I’m excited that the 4(19) festival will give local arts enthusiasts the opportunity to hear music created by local (and previously local) composers. Often we know about composers, artists, and other creative individuals who live in big cities or in far away places. We don’t often connect to artists who live right in our back yard. It’s great to be part of an event showcasing our own.”
This is also a celebration of a community of musicians, from the symphony and from area communities, Boberg said. Seventy-five performers in a variety of combinations will participate. “If you can tap into what they’re most interested in you’ll get the most amazing things. These players are here because they want to perform this music.”
The festival’s performances are organized around four themes.
Friday’s concert, Glass City, in the GlasSalon pays tribute to Toledo’s tradition of glass making. A surprising number of contemporary works draw inspiration from glass, Siu said. They include Lillios’ “Liquid/Crystal/Vapor,” Jamie Leigh Sampson’s “Diaphanous Peripheries,” and Andrew Martin Smith’s “a glass mirror.” Both Smith and Sampson earned their master’s degrees from Bowling Green State University, and are founders of the ADJective New Music collective, which played a central role in organizing the 4(19) Festival.
Siu said that Smith’s piece starts with recordings of the glass blowing process and grows from there. “We’re exploring the kind of pieces that explore that intersection of tradition and innovation,” he said.
Saturday during the day is devoted to a celebration of the Black Swamp as a natural place. The concert starts in the GlasSalon at 1 pm.
From there listeners will head to the museum making a short stop in the sculpture garden where two pieces will be played near George Rickey’s Triple N Gyratory III, a wind activated sculpture.
Then the festival will move to the Wolfe Gallery and other venues within the museum.
Maya Lin’s “Silver Erie,” Boberg said, represents the link between the natural and artistic worlds of the area.
After a break for supper, Saturday Night in Toledo, Ohio, Part 1, will be presented in the Great Gallery. It will include pieces by both the current Toledo Symphony conductor, Alain Trudel, and the late Andrew Massey, who conducted the orchestra from 1991 to 2002.
The music, Siu said, explores the meaning of identity and what it means to belong. Then the party moves over to Bellwether where the youngest composers will be represented.
On the program will be the hip-hop inspired string quartet by Toledo-native Armond Wimberly. Wimberly’s roots run deep with the Toledo Symphony. He studied violin with members of the orchestra, played in the Toledo Youth Symphony, won the Young Artist Competition, and even conducted both orchestras.
The evening will end with a set of songs by Estar Cohen, winner of ASCAP’s Herb Alpert Award. Her appearance is a nod to the city’s rich jazz tradition.
The festival will conclude Sunday from 2-4 p.m. with Holy Toledo in spaces throughout the museum.
“There are so many wonderful spaces and so many works of art that celebrate the spiritual,” Siu said. Most represent the Christian tradition, but other faiths will be celebrated. BGSU graduate Evan Chambers’ “A Hundred Ways,” posits that “there are so many ways of offering praise,” Siu said.
The preponderance of Sunday’s performances will be in the The Cloister, a space that has great meaning to many museum goers, Boberg said.
Bringing these unfamiliar sounds to familiar spaces helps to bridge the gap between the arts and entertainment, Siu said.
The artistic is “fundamentally unfamiliar and challenging,” while entertainment is “fundamentally familiar and comforting.”
“We’re playing with those two elements,” Siu said. “You understand this city. You know what Holy Toledo means, and you know what the Glass City is. How can we use that lens to make things that may seem initially unfamiliar feel familiar?”
And performing that music in familiar and loved spaces makes it more welcoming as well.
The Toledo audience makes such an enterprise possible, said Boberg. “There’s so much pride in Toledo, so much enthusiasm.”
He remembers attending his first symphony concert in spring, 2014 when he had just taken the job at the museum. It was a Mahler Symphony, and at the end the crowd roared. It was like being at a football game, he remembers.
“They are so trusting of the symphony, so trusting of the museum,” he said, so he’s confident they’ll be ready to take the journey into the inner musical sanctum of the 419 area code.
This is the fifth summer festival that Boberg and Siu have collaborated on.
It started soon after Boberg joined the museum staff. Siu had long felt the need for a summer musical festival.
At the time the museum was featuring the Playtime exhibit. They thought of literally “playing with time,” Boberg said. That led to a nine and half hour marathon performance of all Dmitri Shostakovich’s string quartets.
The next year they took the concept of a marathon further with 24-hours of Bach. In 2017, the festival celebrated composer Lou Harrison on the 100th anniversary of his birth.
In 2018, the exhibit “Family Reunion” centered on the Frans Hals’ family portraits inspired a festival featuring the compositions of sister and brother Clara and Felix Mendelssohn.
“It’s not necessarily tied into the explicit subject matter. They tie into the spirit of the exhibit,” Siu said.
Now the major exhibit at the museum is Car Culture. “It’s very much rooted in this area, a very Midwestern exhibition and something that’s very much part of the Toledo ethos,” Siu said. “This seemed very serendipitous. It seemed very right to do a 4(19) festival.”
And next year the festival will celebrate Beethoven’s 250th birthday with performances of all his string quartets.
That will be a climax of a series of museum performances including pianist Robert Satterlee performing all the composer’s piano sonatas over a series of 10 recitals.
When Boberg and Siu first discussed the summer festivals in 2015, they already had that milestone in mind as the completion of an arc.
The festivals will extend beyond 2020, they said, and continue to take listeners on journeys to the known and unknown.
***
Friday, Aug. 9 – Glass City: 6-8 p.m., GlasSalon (ticket)
Evan Williams Breathe
Elainie Lillios Liquid/Crystal/Vapor
Marilyn Shrude Visions in Metaphor
Elainie Lillios After Long Drought
~intermission~
Jamie Leigh Sampson Diaphanous Peripheries
Andrew Martin Smith a glass mirror
Robert McClure drift
Saturday, Aug. 10 – Black Swamp, Part 1: 1-3 p.m., GlasSalon (ticket)
Jason Quick Tangarine Strings
Pete Ford Blustery Skies Over Michigan
Evan Williams The Waters Wrecked the Sky
Jennifer Higdon An Exaltation of Larks
~intermission~
Evan Chambers Deep Flowers
Elainie Lillios Among Fireflies
Elainie Lillios Sleep’s Undulating Tide
Saturday, Aug. 10 – Black Swamp, Part 2: 3:15-3:45 PM, Triple N Gyratory III – Gallery I (free)
Andrew Martin Smith Sync or Swarm
Brandy Hudelson Wild Nightingale
Saturday, Aug. 10 – Black Swamp, Part 3: 4-5 p.m. , Wolfe Gallery (free)
Pete Ford The Refinery
Robert McClure Struggling, In Excess
Elainie Lillios Undertow
Evan Williams Grime
Saturday, Aug. 10 – Saturday Night in Toledo Ohio, Part 1: 7:30 p.m., Great Gallery (ticket)
Jamie Leigh Sampson Anyone Lived
Alain Trudel Quartet
Elainie Lillios Immeasurable Distance
Paul Schoenfield Clarinet Trio
~intermission~
Sandra Clark Letter to Sarah by Sullivan Baillou
Andrew Massey Another Spring
Evan Williams Dead White Man Music
August 10 – Saturday Night in Toledo Ohio, Part TWO: 10 PM, Bellwether (free)
Paul Schoenfield Café Music
Armond Wimberly Canon for the Dance Floor
Estar Cohen Original Songs
Sunday, Aug. 11 – Holy Toledo: 2-4 p.m., meet in Libbey Court
Jennifer Higdon Amazing Grace
Luke Rosen Pie Jesu
Andrew Massey a slight echo, part two: votive candles burning
Evan Chambers A Hundred Ways
Luke Rosen Ave Maria
Pete Ford Suite of Fugues
Luke Rosen St. Alphonsus Rodriguez
Anne Neikirk O Leafy Branch
Jennifer Higdon. O magnum mysterium
Anne Neikirk Remembered Music
