Melinda Bargreen | 26 AUG 2024
They told Victoria Bond: “You’ll never get into Juilliard.”
And then they told her: “You’ll never get into the conducting program.”
And finally: “You’ll never get a conducting job.”
Wrong on all counts! Bond sailed right past all the nay-sayers to become an internationally lauded conductor/composer, esteemed for the quality of her performances and compositions. Imaginative, lyrical, and expressive, Bond’s works span many genres – including the orchestral piece, Bridges, that will be heard in this third season of The Hamptons Festival of Music (Sept. 6, 10, and 14) in Long Island’s East End, 100 miles east of New York City.
The festival’s artistic lineup, curated by festival director/conductor Michael Palmer, includes three different programs of delectable repertoire: joining Bridges on the list of featured works are such favorites as Mahler songs, a Brahms Serenade, Stravinsky’s “Pulcinella” Suite, Ravel’s lyrical Le Tombeau de Couperin, Barber’s beloved Adagio for Strings, Ginastera’s Variaciones Concertantes, Mozart’s sparkling Sinfonia Concertante, and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 8.
Bond’s Bridges – performed at this festival on Sept. 10 – originally arose at the suggestion of a close friend, John Bruce Yeh (clarinetist and member of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra). As she explains it: “John said, what about something that bridges our two cultures, Chinese and American? And then we thought, why not base the work on real bridges?”
Bond’s original concept settled on four movements, each evoking a different bridge. The first movement was inspired by Railroad Trestle Bridge in Galax, Virginia, and the music features the chugging of a train and the country-music sounds of a banjo and fiddle. Bond chose the Chinese song “Moli Hua” (“Jasmine Flower”) as a theme for her musical representation of Stone Bridge over a Reflecting Pool in Suzhou. The Golden Gate Bridge movement references one of Bond’s favorite singers, Joan Baez, by quoting her song “All My Trials” – along with a nod to the Chinese culture in the Bay Area via a quotation from the Chinese folksong, “Liu Yang River.” The Brooklyn Bridge movement takes inspiration from a musical “bridge” (the “B section” of the traditional popular song form) in homage to Gershwin’s “I Got Rhythm”. As Bond puts it: “What could be more Brooklyn than George Gershwin?”
Finally, the fifth Bridges movement references the Mackinac Bridge – the longest suspension bridge in the Western Hemisphere, connecting Michigan’s upper and lower peninsulas – by quoting the beloved folksong “The Water is Wide.” This fifth movement will be a New York premiere. (Music lovers who’d like to experience more about “Bridges” can check out the original four-movement version on YouTube, which also features videos of the bridges on which the first four movements were based.)
Bond is delighted by her musical partnership with the festival’s co-founder, conductor and Hampton Festival of Music artistic director Michael Palmer, a widely beloved maestro whose international experience with music festivals is both broad and deep. (They both also have special ties to the Hamptons: they’re East Hampton residents.)
Palmer calls Bond’s Bridges “very lovely and special,” noting the amount of structural and tonal variety that has gone into the word painting of the five movements.
“I’m always looking for wonderful pieces to work into the schedule, and Bridges is certainly one!” he says of the Hamptons concert lineup for the festival.
Founded only two years ago, the Hamptons Festival of Music draws musicians from some of the country’s finest orchestras – including the symphony orchestras of New York, Cleveland, Chicago, and Atlanta – for a beautifully curated festival that also draws on Palmer’s vast experience over three decades of international concerts. That experience includes a decade (1991-2001) of performances with Palmer’s American Sinfonietta, followed by another decade with the Bellingham Festival of Music, and (in 2022) the New American Sinfonietta – whose membership includes several musicians who have performed with Palmer for many years. That kind of partnership builds a musical rapport of amazing strength and subtlety.
The indefatigable Palmer also started the Georgia Festival of Music, launched in June with a free public concert, and featuring musicians of his New American Sinfonietta. Palmer was delighted by what he calls “a tremendous response” to the opening concert; three programs are planned for next year, including a conducting institute. “I think this will be of some value to young conductors, who need to learn how to teach and how to lead,” he explains.
“Herbert Blomstedt was one of my mentors,” Palmer observes, “and I feel privileged to pass on that legacy. It is a hell of a lot of work, interpreting and illustrating a score.”
Palmer’s enthusiasm for his work is inspirational: “There’s a whole breadth of repertoire out there! I like to do less-known works by known composers. There’s such a magnificent panoply of works ahead of us, with great repertoire like Schoenberg’s Verklaerte Nacht.
“Programming is a huge and wonderful job: I’ll never forget when I was in Atlanta as assistant conductor, and Robert Shaw called me over to look at a huge cardboard box of new scores. He asked me, what should we play? What an experience! Finding the best of the new and keeping alive the best of the old – that is the conductor’s wonderful responsibility.” ■
EXTERNAL LINKS:
- The Hamptons Festival of Music: thehamptonsfestivalofmusic.com
- Victoria Bond: victoriabond.com
- Michael Palmer: maestropalmer.com
Read more by Melinda Bargreen.
