The Summer Arts Festival
By MARY JANE JOYALAssistant Dean of the Summer Session
s the commencement tent comes down each spring, marking the end of another academic year, scarcely a moment passes before a swirl of activity officially ushers in the summer at Colorado College. CC undergraduates and students from other colleges and universities line up in Armstrong Hall to register for a wide array of courses, many of which include overseas travel. High school students arrive for intensive bridge programs to help prepare them for college. Graduate students and practicing teachers in pursuit of a Master of Arts in Teaching degree come for a summer of intellectual rejuvenation and inspiration. Talented and gifted elementary and middle school children show up by the energetic dozens to participate in special summer programs. Elderhostelers from around the country sign up for courses that show off the arts and culture of the college's splendid Rocky Mountain environment.
The bright thread that ties this lively mix together and presses every piano on campus into full service - from the elegant Steinways in Packard Hall to the upright workhorses in dormitory basements - are the musical offerings of the Summer Arts Festival.
The first to arrive are dance students, drawn by the opportunity to participate in the Summer Ballet Intensive, a four-week program of instruction in classical ballet. Steeped in the tradition of dance established by the Hanya Holm legacy of summer dance at Colorado College, the Summer Ballet Intensive selects 45 talented ballet students from among some of the country's finest.
The faculty is led by Artistic Director Anne Adair Wilkins, formerly with the Royal Danish Ballet and the American Ballet Theatre. Wilkins is joined by Lindsay Fischer, a member of the faculty at the Toronto National Ballet School. Fischer, who took his first ballet class from Esther Geoffrey in Cossitt Hall, has distinguished himself as a principal dancer in major companies throughout the world, including the New York City Ballet. His wife, and third member of the faculty, is the English ballerina, Mandy-Jayne Richardson, formerly with the Sadler's Wells Royal Ballet and the Dutch National Ballet. Colorado Springs dancer Kalah Fuller, whose vision and dedication helped conceive the Intensive, is the program's administrative director.
A highlight of last year's Summer Ballet Intensive was the professional residency of The Daring Project, an avant-garde yet classical ballet company headed by choreographer Margot Sappington and ballerina Valentina Koslova, who defected to the United States from her position as a premiere dancer with the Bolshoi to become a principal performer with the New York City Ballet. A repeat of this residency is scheduled this summer, complete with another world premiere in Armstrong Hall on June 28.
As the last measures of dance accompaniment fade in June, the unmistakable sounds of opera-in-rehearsal drift across the campus. These voices belong to the Colorado Opera Festival, which started here in the 1970s, and has since grown into a professional company that now makes its home in Colorado Springs' Pikes Peak Center. For the past three summers the company has made a triumphant return to its roots with a concert opera production in Packard Hall.
Immediately following opera, CC celebrates the start of the Summer Music Conservatory, the crown jewel of the Summer Arts Festival that is now in its 13th year. For three grand and glorious weeks the college resounds with chamber music of a quality that grants the Colorado College Summer Music Conservatory membership in the country's most elite ranks of music festivals.
Founded in 1984 by music professor Michael Grace and now under the artistic direction of pianist and Artist-in-Residence Susan Grace, the conservatory provides an immersion program in chamber music for 40 exceptional student musicians selected from an international application pool.
The genius of the conservatory, and the phenomenon that has made it the musical event of the year for countless devoted supporters, is that conservatory faculty present four extraordinary chamber music concerts open to the public.
The arts festival comes to a sizzling close in July with the college's annual Summer Alumni Theater. The brainchild of CC drama Professor Jim Malcolm, Summer Alumni Theater lets the college bring back and show off graduates who have stepped out of Armstrong Theater and onto stage and screen sets around the country.
Heritage of the Arts Festival
By MARY JANE JOYALAssistant Dean of the Summer Session
ertain eras bear a stamp of identity that creates an institutional legend. The Summer Arts Program from the mid-60s to the mid-70s is one such era, indelibly imprinted by a host of artists and performers whose names have become college lore. Gilbert Johns, who acknowledged the spirit of the 60s by metamorphisizing from psychology professor to impresario extraordinaire, directed the lively cast that redefined summer arts at CC.
Johns remembers being coaxed by President Lew Worner out of the psychology lab and away from a National Science Foundation-sponsored research project to become dean of the Summer Session. With the vision that characterized his every gaze into the future, and encouraged by college provost and vice president Jim Stauss, President Worner saw that the summertime provided an ideal stage for the world to see Colorado College as a center for the arts.
Challenged by Worner's vision, Johns' first efforts as Summer Session dean were to carry on the tradition of summer chamber music recitals performed by pianist and chair of the music department Max Lanner, who for years had brought some of the finest musicians from around the country to join him in peformances in the Fine Arts Center. "Hanya Holm was coming each summer then," recalls Johns, "and she brought with her some of the country's most talented dancers. The college was alive with music and dance, but not many people were aware of what was happening here. My charge included increasing the visibility of summer arts."
A devotee of the Aspen Music Festival, and possibly the inventor of networking, Johns convinced Aspen Festival musicians that they could have a fine time and find a devoted audience if they came over Independence Pass on their days off and performed chamber music at Colorado College. Early and enduring friends who made the journey included the Juilliard String Quartet. Robert Mann, founder and first violinist of the quartet, especially looked forward to summer performances at the college. These concerts often coincided with his birthday. After a birthday performance, Mann and the other members of the quartet, plus an entourage of fans and supporters, would often head to Ric and Dorry Bradley's home. Once, Dorry presented Mann with a huge birthday cake, appropriately decorated with a chocolate violin.
Soon the Aspen Woodwind Quintet and the American Brass Quintet were also performing regularly in the summer. Excited about the community's enthusiastic reaction to these musical delicacies, Johns and choral music professor Donald Jenkins began to talk about opera. They were particularly inspired by the well-received summer production of Menotti's "The Telephone," featuring soprano Janet Robinson ' , who was coached by Professor Michael Grace.
Johns remembers that the time and the people were a perfect mix for launching summer opera. Herb Beattie '48, a baritone with the New York City Opera, was eager to spend the summer season in Colorado Springs. Faculty member Marti Booth was ready and waiting to apply her talents as chorus master.
The first production was born when music professor Albert Seay announced that he had on microfilm a copy of Tomasso Traetta's 1771 opera "Cavaliere Errante," a favorite in its day. According to Jenkins, Seay's transcription of the centuries-old manuscript was itself a virtuoso performance. Jenkins remembers watching Seay produce a score "in a matter of weeks, perhaps days, writing out by hand the conductor's score and scores for piano, all solo vocal parts, the chorus, as well as all the parts for a full orchestra. No one but Seay could have done it," remembers Jenkins. "It was brilliant."
Having encouraged collaboration between Holm and visiting chamber groups, Johns knew that Holm was the perfect choice to choreograph "Cavaliere Errante." He, Jenkins, and Beattie took Hanya to a music room upstairs in Armstrong Hall and played through the score for her. She listened, paced the room, stopped and said, "Ya! I do it!" The production was a resounding success. Armstrong Theatre sold out each performance, lauching the tradion of summer opera in Colorado Springs.
Just to be certain that no one regarded the success of this first performance as a one-time fluke, Johns and Jenkins immediately mounted a double bill production of Monteverdi's "Il Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda," and Stravinsky's "Histoire du Soldat," and capped that very first opera season with Verdi's "Otello." Jenkin's memory of that first summer is vivid. "We had no business doing a line-up like that our first year, but the audience loved it." Johns remembers responding with an emphatic "Yes!" to every idea, including Beattie's plan for motorcycles to roar across the stage in "Tancredi e Clorinda," Holms' and Gretchen Phillips' koochie dancer interpretation of the princess in "Histoire du Soldat," and removal of the first two rows of seats in Armstrong Hall to make room for the full "Otello" orchestra.
Continuing the high energy collaboration of Colorado College talents, augmented by world class singers who lined up in Colorado Springs and New York City to audition for roles, the College presented three or four operas a summer for 10 years. The series of triumphs included one of the first U.S. productions of Kurt Weill's "Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny," and a double bill of Ravel's "Spanish Hour" and "Lenfant et les Sortileges" and Musorgsky's "Boris Godunov." One of the most remarkable productions in that memorable decade was Handel's only comic opera, "Xerxes."
"Now, that was really something," remembers Johns. "When it became known that we were planning this opera, we received notice from Central Opera Services that our production would be an American premiere." World premiere or not, Jenkins, the college's resident Handel expert, had to cut and reorganize the opera to make it work in Armstrong Theatre. Johns' characateristic hyperbole was reduced to promising the press only that the opera "would be funnier than the 'Messiah' or folks would get their money back." Pressure mounted even higher when Harold Schonberg of The New York Times, the Pulitzer prize-winning critics' critic, got wind of the production and made it known he would be in the audience on opening night. The curtain rose, the performance commenced, and when all was sung and done, the audience loved it. Schonburg gave the production a rave review, devoting the entire music page in Sunday's edition to Colorado College.
In 1978, in one of his careful assessments of the state of the college, President Worner perceived he was not presiding over a college with an opera company, but a college and an opera company. "Lew Worner always made his decisions after careful thought and reflection about the right thing to do," recalls Jenkins. "At that time, after a decade of success, with productions bursting the seams of Armstrong Theatre and the Summer Session budget, Lew decided it was time to cut the opera's tie to the college and set it free as an independent company." The decision was made somewhat easier knowing the Pikes Peak Center was under contruction just down the street. Almost 20 years later, the Colorado Opera Festival is still going strong.
Not every thread was cut, however. The Colorado Opera Festival continues to draw much of its professional strength from the college, and familiar student, faculty and staff faces can be spotted in the opera chorus. In recent years, as the Colorado Opera Festival has overflowed with talent and energy, the college has embraced the excess and transformed it into the charming concert opera series - the newest tradition of the Colorado College Summer Arts Festival.
