There was plenty of heat in Libby Bowl Sunday June 9th as the 63rd Music Fest wrapped up, and a lot of it was happening onstage. Things got off to a humorous start with William Walton’s “Facade – An Entertainment,” a meticulously crafted bit of fluff based on an eccentric series of poems titled “Facade” by Edith Sitwell, who commissioned him to write musical accompaniments. This bit of tom-foolery ended with some more serious Tom-foolery as Barbara Hannigan and all in the bowl paid homage to long-time Artistic Director Tom Morris, who is retiring after this Festival. Returning to some more serious musical fare, Terry Riley’s “In C” followed, as all this year’s instrumentalists filled the stage for this, the first “minimalist” composition, and precursor to a whole musical movement. It was a freewheeling sort of one note samba, at least for the marimba which maintains unwavering repetitions of C and necessitated 3 different percussionists taking turns so their arms wouldn’t fall off. The rest of the orchestra was free to improvise, creating interlocking patterns and tonalities and getting louder and softer at times as dictated by the dynamics within the group, moving spontaneously like a big flock of birds while the insistent C on the Marimba was the only constant, sort of like a beating communal heart.
The last concert of the day was also light-hearted, and celebratory, taking listeners from Stravinsky’s genre- and time-jumping “Pulcinella” to Hayden’s Symphony No. 49 “La Passione” to Barbara Hannigan’s incomparably conducted and sung “Girl Crazy Suite” by George Gershwin, arranged by Bill Elliot. The Festival closed on the wholly appropriate “I Got Rhythm” for a triumphal end to another eclectic and rousing 4 days and three nights of ecstatic music making. Who could ask for anything more?
