About this time last year, the first-ever VIVO Music Festival took place in Columbus, featuring Columbus-raised classical musicians now at the cusp of promising performing careers. To mark the return of the VIVO Music Festival to Columbus (Aug. 31-Sept. 4), some of the festival’s musicians joined me in the Classical 101 studios earlier this week to give us a preview of this year’s festival.
In case you missed that exclusive live performance on Classical 101, here's your chance to sample the 2016 VIVO Music Festival.
VIVO festival co-artistic director Siwoo Kim, a violinist from Westerville, returns to Columbus for the festival by way of New York City. He spoke on Classical 101 about the diversity of performing venues where this year’s festival concerts will take place – everywhere from the Garden Theater’s Green Room, to Short North art galleries, to the North Market’s Hot Chicken Takover and beyond.
In short, the VIVO Music Festival is all over Columbus. If you’re out and about this weekend, you might just find yourself in the middle of a great performance.
Wind players from the festival gave us a taste of György Ligeti’s Six Bagatelles, then we heard a beautiful performance of the first movement of Mozart’s Oboe Quartet. Here are flutist Jacqueline Cordova-Arrington, oboist James Riggs, clarinetist Stas Chernyshev, bassoonist Brent Foster and hornist Laura Weiner with the Ligeti, then Riggs, Kim, violist Matthew Lipman and cellist Hiro Matsuo with the Mozart:
Ohio-born harpist Bridget Kibbey returned to her home state as one of the 2016 VIVO Music Festival’s guest artists. She opened the festival Aug. 31 with “Harp with Its Hair Down,” a recital of new works for the harp, and featuring the world premiere of Columbus-born composer, violist and VIVO Music Festival co-artistic director John Stulz’sSecond-Hand Time.
Over the course of the festival, Kibbey performs some earlier harp masterworks, including Debussy’s Sonata for flute, viola and harp. Here are Kibbey, flutist Jacqueline Cordova-Arrington and Lipman performing the finale of the Debussy Sonata live on Classical 101:
You can still catch the musicians in concerts tonight, Saturday and Sunday. The VIVO Music Festival performanace schedule is at vivofestival.org.
