Be embarrassed. Be very embarrassed. That’s in reference, you may guess, to our local embarrassment of riches, the multitudinous cultural events available to Santa Fe audiences all year long. For a super abbreviated list of pleasures yet to come, with apologies upfront for omissions, read on, please.
The venerable Santa Fe Opera gets a nod elsewhere in this Annual Manual (see page 132). Among the many other notable summer events, pencil in the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, debuting July 20 with the first of 40 world-class concerts. As usual, plenty of distinguished visiting pianists will be on hand, 11 to be exact, including Yefim Bronfman, this year’s artist-in-residence, who’ll offer one of the five popular noon recitals. Ensembles abound, among them the Dover FLUX, Johannes, Orion and O’Connor quartets. Newly commissioned works from Brett Dean, Julian Anderson and Lowell Liebermann are on the menu, too, as well as Messiaen’s wrenching “Quartet for the End of Time,” timeless late Beethoven and Bach-to-the-present opportunities.
Opening its 32nd season, the Santa Fe Desert Chorale leads off on July 10 with a series of concerts themed “The New World: Music of the Americas.” With this, two appealing programs will alternate in the course of the summer: Spanish Mystics and A Romantic Evening with Brahms. An August highlight will be three hearings of the Mozart Requiem with guest artist Susan Graham, and four Warehouse 21 performances by pop/jazz group, Voasis, close the season.
In business since 1937, Performance Santa Fe, formerly known as the Santa Fe Concert Association, claims seniority among the City Different’s arts organizations. Over 30 concerts and events take place under its aegis in 2014-15, among them five orchestral and family concerts, four popular vocal recitals featuring this summer’s Santa Fe Opera artists, and London’s Globe Theatre bringing King Lear to the Lensic. A brilliant series of recitalists will include Andras Schiff, Susan Graham and Christian Tetzlaff, with the Academy of St Martin in the You-Know-Where writing a seasonal finis next May 11.
Winding up its current 30th season on May 17 and 18, the Santa Fe Symphony and Chorus performs Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, and their next season opens in September with a Liszt/Tchaikovsky program. Twelve more Sunday-series concerts will follow. The audience-friendly programs scheduled include a Hispano-Latino outing featuring El Amor Brujo; three holiday concerts including Messiah ; a “Shakespeare and Love” confection in February; all-Beethoven shows in March; and the Verdi Requiem in May.
Ten varied programs make up Santa Fe Pro Musica’s new season, beginning on September 20/21 with another all-Beethoven concert (the Piano Concerto No. 3 and the Fifth Symphony) at the Lensic. They’ll bring three quartets to town: the St. Lawrence, the Szymanowski and the Brentano. Pro Musica’s sell-out baroque Christmas and Holy Week concerts at Loretto Chapel continue as usual. Among other highlights, listen up for Mahler’s Fourth Symphony and, especially, Midori performing a major rarity, the Schumann Violin Concerto.
No more room for more. You’re on your own. Check websites for the Santa Fe Community Orchestra (free) with its emphasis on New Mexico composers and artists, Serenata of Santa Fe, Canticum Novum, Linda Raney’s TGIF concerts (donation, please) at First Presbyterian, the Acequia Madre House-sponsored Creative Dialogue VI (free), concerts at St. John’s College (many of them free), the SF Men’s Camerata, the Wagner Society of Santa Fe, The Met: Live in HD at the Lensic (12 operas this season), the Sunday morning Performance series at The Screen, the Aspen Santa Fe Ballet, plus many more.
Whew! Just DO it.
