Branford Marsalis, movie music, Victor's return highlight Peninsula Music Festival season

FISH CREEK - A world-famous jazzman, Grammy Award winners, movie tunes you've heard before and the one-night-only return of its longtime music director are among the highlights of Peninsula Music Festival's 72nd season, which starts Tuesday, Aug. 6.

The three-week, nine-concert Symphony Series at Door Community Auditorium in Fish Creek brings together musicians from all over the world together to form the fully professional PMF Orchestra under the baton of Rune Bergman, the native of Norway now in his second full season as PMF music director.

And the season Bergman has programmed gets off to a fast start with renowned jazz saxophonist Branford Marsalis as featured soloist on opening night, Aug. 6, and Maestro Victor Yampolsky, who served as PMF music director for 34 seasons, making his return to lead the following concert Aug. 8.

Marsalis to play John Williams' work

Actually, the opening night concert marks a return to Door County and the Door Community Auditorium stage for Marsalis as well, as the genre-crossing (notably as leader of 1990s hip-hop fusion band Buckshot LeFonque) three-time Grammy winner, onetime "The Tonight Show" bandleader and member of the legendary Marsalis family of jazz musicians played there in 2003. Marsalis was touring at the time to support a new album of jazz music he'd written inspired by the work of visual artist Romare Bearden.

For the Aug. 6 PMF program, titled "American Dream," Marsalis is the featured soloist on John Williams' "Escapades," which the famed composer wrote as a suite for alto saxophone and orchestra based on tunes from his soundtrack to the Leonardo DiCaprio-Tom Hanks movie "Catch Me If You Can."

The program also offers pieces by other American composers, Aaron Copland’s "Billy the Kid" Suite and Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings and Symphony No. 1.

Yampolsky returns for Tchaikovsky night

The Aug. 8 program brings back Yampolsky, who during his tenure as PMF music director and conductor from 1986 through 2019 helped the orchestra grow from a chamber ensemble to a full symphony orchestra boasting about 70 professional musicians and remains its conductor laureate.

Under Yampolsky's leadership, PMF also added its February Fest series of chamber concerts, opera and choral performances and an Emerging Conductors program to bring faces other than Yampolsky's to the conductor's stand on occasion.

And those accomplishments with PMF are far from the only ones in Yampolsky's music career. The 82-year-old received his training in violin and conducting in his native Russia and played for and conducted orchestras there before emigrating to the U.S. in 1973 (to audition for legendary American composer and orchestra leader Leonard Bernstein on a recommendation from renowned violinist Zubin Mehta).

In America, Yampolsky was a violinist with the Boston Symphony and went on to become music director for several orchestras across North America as well as PMF, along with being a guest conductor for symphony orchestras around the world. As an educator, he served as the Carol F. and Arthur L. Rice Jr. University Professor in Music Performance for the Bienen School of Music at Northwestern University for 38 years, from 1984 to 2022, and was named professor emeritus of the school upon his retirement.

The program Yampolsky is conducting, "A Night in Tchaikovsky's Mind," reunites him not only with the PMF Orchestra but also with guest soloist Inna Faliks. The Ukrainian-born American pianist, who's performed on stages worldwide including Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center and the Moscow Conservatory, appeared as a soloist with PMF under Yampolsky's direction twice, for a night of Prokofiev concertos in 2015 and a Beethoven concerto in 2018, and returned to PMF in 2022 to play Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4 under the baton of David Danzmayr.

This Tchaikovsky twin-bill program will have Faliks play his Concerto for Piano No. 1 in B-flat minor, Op. 73, and conclude with his Symphony No. 6 in B minor, Op. 74, "Pathétique."

"We are delighted to welcome Victor Yampolsky back to the Peninsula Music Festival," Bergmann said in a press release. "His deep understanding of Tchaikovsky's music and his ability to convey its emotional richness make him the perfect conductor for this evening's program."

New musical piece from Wisconsin native

A new musical piece by Jacob Beranek, who has ties to Door County, will be performed as the introduction to Anton Bruckner’s Symphony No. 5 on Aug. 15. PMF commissioned Beranek to write the new music for the festival performance.

Beranek’s new piece, “Introit,” drew inspiration from the same source as Bruckner.

“Bruckner was devoutly religious,” Beranek said in a press release, “and being a devout Catholic myself, this is a deeply felt spiritual piece for me. I wrote it for God, I wrote it for the audience.”

Beranek was born and raised in southeast Wisconsin, but says he has been attending PMF “since I was young.” He is currently pursuing his doctorate from The Juilliard School in New York City. His parents, Thomas and Susan, are full-time residents of Egg Harbor.

Two Stradivari violinists and an opera soprano are guest soloists

Other guest soloists in this year's Symphony Series are Julian Rhee, playing Sibelius' Violin Concerto (his only concerto) in the Aug. 17 "Scandinavian Evening" program; internationally renowned violinist Philippe Quint for the Aug. 20 program; and soprano Jacquelyn Wagner with vocals on Strauss' "Four Last Songs" in the Aug. 24 season closer.

Rhee made his debut with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra at age 8 and since has performed with orchestras around the world, coming to prominence in the past years with a silver medal in the 11th Quadrennial International Violin Competition of Indianapolis and a prize-winning performance in the Queen Elisabeth International Violin Competition in Brussels, Belgium. He plays the Antonio Stradivari 1699 violin “Lady Tennant" on loan to him from the Mary B. Galvin Foundation and the Stradivari Society.

Quint is a Russian native who came to America at age 17 and earned bachelor's and master's degrees from the prestigious Julliard School of Music. The multiple-time award-winning recording artist and Grammy nominee also plays a Stradivari violin on loan to him through the Stradivari Society, the 1708 "Ruby." For his PMF appearance, Quint will perform the Vivaldi masterpiece "The Four Seasons" and Astor Piazzolla’s "Four Seasons of Buenos Aires."

American vocalist Wagner has performed in operas and concerts and won international vocal competitions across Europe and around the world. She is singing the last four songs composed by famous German composer Richard Strauss in 1948 at age 84 before his death a year later. They were not written as part of a single composition and Strauss did not title them "Four Last Songs" as they've come to be known, but they're often considered among Strauss' most touching works. Paired with them in this concert is Mahler's Symphony No. 1, "Titan."

'West Side Story' meets 'The Good, the Bad and the Ugly'

Another highlight of the season is this year's pops concert on Aug. 22, "A Night at the Movies," featuring music from the works of composers Leonard Bernstein and Ennio Morricone.

Bernstein's works are not foreign to PMF, which over the years has played symphonies and theater ("On the Town," "Candide") and movie music by the 16-time Grammy, seven-time Emmy Award and two-time Tony Award winner, most recently his Symphonic Dances from "West Side Story" in 2018.

But according to the PMF database, this program marks the first time the orchestra has tackled Morricone. The composer perhaps is best known for scoring Italian movie director Sergio Leone's trilogy of Westerns starring Clint Eastwood, most notably "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly."

But he also wrote hundreds of scores for films as diverse as "Days of Heaven," "The Mission," "The Untouchables," "La Cage aux Folles" and "Mission to Mars." Morricone was nominated for six Academy Awards, winning in 2015 for the score to Quentin Tarantino's "The Hateful Eight" (at age 87), along with an honorary Oscar and three Grammys.

Mozart, Elgar, Bruckner

Other PMF concerts this season focus on works by specific composers.

There's a "Mozart Party" Aug. 10, with a program featuring some of Mozart's most well-known works, his Concerto for Flute and Harp and Symphony No. 40.

The Aug. 13 program, "A British Evening," features works by British composer Sir Edward Elgar, including his well-known Enigma Variations and Cello Concerto.

"Happy Birthday, Bruckner" is the title of the Aug. 15 program, offering works by Austrian composer Anton Bruckner including his monumental Symphony No. 5.

FYI

Peninsula Music Festival is in concert at 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays from Aug. 6 to 24 at Door Community Auditorium, 3926 State 42, Fish Creek. Tickets are $35 to $75 for adults, $10 students and children; subscription packages are available. For tickets or more information, visit the PMF office, 10431 N. Water St. (State 42), Ephraim; call 920-854-4060; or visit musicfestival.com; available tickets also will be sold at DCA starting at 6:30 p.m. before each concert.

Contact Christopher Clough at 920-562-8900 or [email protected].

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This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: PMF season features Branford Marsalis, movie music, Yampolsky's return