Allerton Music Barn Festival starting to gain lofty status

MONTICELLO – A rarely produced tango opera, chamber music, jazz and American music, plus a brass band, will be on tap at the third annual Allerton Music Barn Festival over the Labor Day weekend.

The festival runs from Sept. 3 through 7, lasting one day longer than last year. Tickets are on sale now.

Most of the performances will be preceded or followed by a lecture or demonstration. Those are free and open to the public while the concerts are ticketed. Festival passes also are available.

Festival founder Karl Kramer, director of the University of Illinois School of Music, recommends that festival-goers "bring dinner or buy food from our caterer and have a wonderful evening of nature and music."

The festival in the loft of a refurbished 19th-century Dutch-style barn on the east side of the Allerton Park and Retreat Center near Monticello has garnered attention from media outside of Champaign-Urbana, with Midwest Living magazine listing it as a "new Midwest attraction."

This year the festival will last one day longer than last year's. Most of the performers will be UI faculty members and music students, with two guest artists and two UI graduate students who earlier this year won an unusual video contest, "Dance Your Ph.D.," that was sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

In their award-winning video, Markita Landry and Florin Bora performed a tango interpretation of Landry's research in single-molecule biophysics. The video won the "Popular Choice" category in the "Dance Your Ph.D." contest.

On the opening night of the festival, Landry and Bora will offer tango lessons, with beginners welcome, at 6:30 p.m., to advance the 8:30 p.m. performance of the legendary Argentinian composer Astor Piazzolla's one-act opera "Maria de Buenos Aires."

"Despite the (opera) label, 'Maria de Buenos Aires' is not really an opera," Margret Elson wrote for San Francisco Classical Voice in 1998. "Poetic oration and music share the stage equally with the singing, intended for cabaret performers, an outgrowth of Piazzolla's own quintet. The story's complexity is matched by a text derived from folklore, Catholicism and tango's origins. Meaning is often obscured, the plot only partially clarified through the libretto translation and scene synopses in the program."

The plot, according to Elson: On a day "when God was drunk," Maria was born with a curse in her voice. The curse leads her down the low road to early death. The Goblin (El Duende) curses the bandoneon (the tango accordion) for having seduced the woman he loves and eventually offers her redemption. This comes when Maria's Shadow gives birth to herself, only to return and repeat the cycle.

The Allerton performance will feature guest artists Gustavo Flores as El Duende and Julien Labrao as the bandoneon player.

Other singers in the piece will be UI faculty members Yvonne Gonzalez Redman, a soprano, and Ricardo Herrera, a baritone. UI opera chair Eduardo Diazmunõz will conduct them and the orchestra, made up mainly of UI faculty artists.

If you go

What: Allerton Music Barn Festival, featuring University of Illinois faculty artists and students and guest artists performing Astor Piazzolla's tango opera, "Maria de Buenos Aires," as well as chamber music, jazz and American music.

When: Sept. 3 to 7

Where: In refurbished 19th-century Dutch hay barn on east side of Allerton Park and Retreat Center near Monticello.

Tickets: Single-concert tickets, $26 for adults and $20, students and senior citizens. A festival pass is $154 and $105 and provides entry to all eight performances for the price of seven.

Information: www.allertonmusicbarn.com, 333-6282 or 800-527-2849.

Allerton Music Barn Festival schedule

MONTICELLO – The third annual Allerton Music Barn Festival will open the evening of Sept. 3 with Argentinian composer Astor Piazzolla's one-hour opera, "Maria de Buenos Aires." Other festival concerts:

– 8:30 p.m. Sept. 4, "The American Brass Band Journal C. 1853," a historical reminiscence of American band music featuring marches, waltzes, quicksteps, schottisches and national airs. The program, conducted by Robert Rumbelow, who will join the Illinois music faculty this fall as chair of the band division, will feature a solo performance on an E-flat cornet by music professor Ronald Romm, who played with the Canadian Brass Quintet before coming here.

At 6:30 p.m., Scott Schwartz, director of the university's Sousa Archives and Center for American Music, will give the talk, "Saxhorns: Music Instruments for the Concert Hall and the Battlefield."

– 10 a.m. Sept. 5, a reprise of "Maria de Buenos Aires."

– 8:30 p.m. Sept. 5, "Czech Chamber Music" by the Pacifica Quartet, the Grammy Award-winning quartet in residence in the UI School of Music, and others, performing music by Antonin Dvorak, Leos Janacek and Bedrich Smetana. At 6:30 p.m., UI ethnomusicologist Bruno Nettl will give the lecture, "Music in the Czech Republic."

– 10 a.m. Sept. 6, "Bach Cantatas," with the Allerton Festival Choir and Orchestra, conducted by UI choral Professor Fred Stoltzfus.

Featured performers will be faculty harpsichordist Charlotte Mattax; voice faculty members Ricardo Herrera, bass, Ollie Watts Davis, soprano, and Jerold Siena, tenor; and music student Melissa Davis, alto, the 2009 Krannert Center Debut Artist.

Before the performance, the Rev. Roger Digges, an avid birder, will lead a nature walk.

– 8:30 p.m. Sept. 6. "Boris Berman, Piano," will showcase the Moscow-born and trained pianist performing selections by Frederic Chopin and Sergei Prokoviev. Following the concert, a UI astronomer will talk about the night sky. Telescopes will be available; guests also may bring their own.

– 10 a.m. Sept. 7. Illinois jazz faculty will present "The West Coast Sound," with tunes by Shorty Rodgers, Bob Brookmeyer, Chet Baker and others.

– 8:30 p.m. Sept. 7. The festival will close with "The Great American Songbook" – standards by Hoagy Carmichael, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Johnny Mercer, Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. The vocalists will be jazz singer Lisanne Lyons and Brienn Perry.

At 6:30 p.m., UI musicology Professor Jeffery Magee will give a lecture-demonstration, "Now It Can Be Told: Irving Berlin's Songs for Stage and Screen," adapted from a presentation he gave earlier this year at the Library of Congress. Assisting Magee will be vocalists Dawn Harris, Ashley Klingler and Robert McNeily and pianist Chris White.

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